Steve's Blog
Select a date from below to read Steves blog entries.December 2010
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Entries
Dec 20, 2010
Solving the Overpopulation Problem (with Kate Brindle)
Sometimes when you are on the road, the only thing you have to do is think. Other times, you have a traveling companion, someone you can bounce ideas off, talk to, laugh with, and generally annoy. There are a few people I travel with often... Josh Goguen, Shannon Thompson, Owen Thomas, and sometimes, Kate Brindle. Kate is a vegan/feminist/conspiracy theorist. She's beautiful and intelligent, and absolutely koo-koo for cocoa puffs. It probably doesn't make for an extreme shock that when it comes to viewpoints, we rarely see eye to eye.One subject we do agree on, however, is children. More specifically, society's views on children, family and parenthood.
Neither one of us has kids, I should point out. Neither one of us is completely against it, but would be more likely to adopt than create our own. We feel there are too many people doing it. Too many people who shouldn't be.
"Parenting is the hardest job in the world," Kate says. "Therefore, not everyone should do it. Just like everyone isn't qualified to be a nuclear physicist, not everyone is qualified to shape the future of the world."
I agree. Just because you have a uterus, doesn't mean you are required to have a child come out of it. Too many people have kids that are either too young or too ignorant to raise. Even those that have common sense are often misguided, and they raise a plethora of messed up offspring as a result. MOST of the people who have kids, are the ones who ABSOLUTELY shouldn't have kids.
So who SHOULD have kids?
People who can pass a minimum IQ test. People who have jobs, and make enough money to support a family. People who can pass a psychological eval, and take a parenting class. People who are not addicted to drugs, who are at least high school educated, who have not been to prison or committed any major crimes, especially anything that resembles abuse. "There should be a licensing system before anyone is allowed to use their ovaries or sperm. One must have a license to ride a moped; surely, creating another human being should require at least some sort of permission slip." States Kate. Again, I agree. That doesn't mean you aren't allowed to have sex without a license, just not allowed to reproduce. We aren't saying there should be forced abortions, or sterilizations... just some sort of system of preventing unlicensed people from breeding. What that system should be, is details. We don't deal with details.
It occurs to us that ONLY in America are single people without children shunned and punished. If you are 30 without children, people look at you like a pariah, like something is wrong with you. And if you have kids, you get tax breaks. Tax BREAKS?!? That is just plain wrong. "People who have children should be taxed more. It only seems fair that if you create more people that use the 'system' more (e.g. schools, roads, etc.), you should have to pay more. If you go to Cedar Point with one person, the ticket is a set price, and the more people you bring in, the more you have to pay. I see our country as one big Millennium Force: the more people that you bring to ride it, the more cash you need to shell out." Kate, again. And she makes sense! Other countries charge people more tax the more kids they have, such as Japan:
http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1912861,00.html
and just to show it is also researched and not just rantings, here is another article: This article presents some rewards you can get for just sticking to one child, but again, it cites some pretty ugly instances of punishments when people had two or more children:
http://factsanddetails.com/china.php?itemid=128&catid=4&subcatid=15
Finally, let's stop putting timeframes on who should reproduce, and when. Why force it, when there are plenty of kids who already need homes? "Adoption and abortion are wonderful things.", by now you know that if it is in quotes it was said by Kate, right? "Let's not stigmatize people who attempt to correct their mistakes. I'm sure many of us have had drunken, regrettable hook-ups with people who we would never want to be the parent of out child. So rather than penalizing people for making post-hook-up choices that would result in them not being parents, let's celebrate them."
Amen sister. Not everyone will agree with us. I am sure most parents do not. But fuck them. They are the problem. We are the solution. (insert patriotic music here). God Bless the new America.