From: kevin@rotag.mi.org (Kevin Darcy)
Subject: Re: Efficiency in child support
Organization: Who, me???
Date: Thu, 7 Jan 1993 18:35:04 GMT

In article <1h40c0INNn52@gap.caltech.edu> peri@cco.caltech.edu (Michal Leah Peri) writes:
>kevin@rotag.mi.org (Kevin Darcy) writes:
>
>>Okay, if you wish, I'll make this a global question, instead of just a
>>national one (although I do this under protest, since I think global politics
>>is irrelevant to the central question of child support): would you prefer the 
>>world to adopt a global "lottery" system of child support, as I have recently
>>described, or a global "genetics-based" system of child support, such as we 
>>currently have here in the USA? Please explain the reasoning behind your 
>>answer.
>
>I prefer the "genetic-based" system that devolves on personal responsibility.

Personal responsibility, right. With the teensy-weensy little "exception" of 
completely ignoring a woman's failure to abort, i.e. the Last Clear Chance 
for ANYONE to avoid the child support expenses, in the determination of
liability. Perhaps the word you wanted was "degenerates", rather than 
"devolves"...

>I think the socialist ideals inherent in the "lottery" system have been 
>fairly well discredited by the events of the last few years.  

And the fascist ideals of scapegoating one segment of the population for
universal problems have likewise been discredited by the events of the last 
few decades, if not centuries (remember when slavery "solved" all the Old 
South's economic problems; I don't, do you? But I've read my history, and
learned from it).

Just mumbling "socialism" and waving your hands around isn't very convincing, 
Michal. After all, my lottery proposal was created to attain YOUR stated goal 
of ensuring that every child is adequately supported. And it attains that 
goal admirably. If the finished proposal is "socialist", then how much more 
"socialist" must be >>YOUR<< goal, for which it was created.

>(Besides, just thinking of the bureacracy involved makes me shudder!)

There would clearly be LESS bureaucracy, Michal. Paternity battles, blood 
tests et al. would be a thing of the past -- computers can pick thousands of 
numbers randomly off a list without even breaking a sweat, figuratively 
speaking. And there would be far less enforcement problems with support 
donors who don't make their payments, since the list would be pre-scanned for 
donors who could easily afford the liability.

Face it, Michal, _if_ all you cared about was the welfare of illegitimate 
children, and the efficiency of the system which provides their support,
the "pure" lottery system would make a hell of a lot more sense than the de 
facto "genetic lottery" system we have today. Of all measures, the genetic
similarity of a parent to their child is about the *worst* gauge of the 
former's ability to financially support the latter. Practically anything else 
would be more efficient than a system based on that.

Why don't you just admit that you're using abortion rights as a badly-disguised
political power conduit for granting women certain unjustifiable economic and 
social advantages over men? Many of the Fems who have played apologist to the 
current paternity child support status quo have eventually come out and 
admitted their true motivation: "because men have larger incomes than women". 
I find such candor refreshing. What I have yet to see, though, is the full 
sentence:

	because men have larger incomes, and generally a weaker & more 
	controllable parenting instinct, than women do

You wanna "cut men down to size", doncha, Michal? Despite all of the red 
herrings tossed out about how male-choicers want to compensate, legislatively,
for biological inequities, ironically, the converse is actually true -- the 
current laws are set up to compensate WOMEN for their disproportionately-large
parenting-instinct drives. You wanna drag us into the stereotypical, 
traditionalist model (which was originally created by men, of course) of 
"Mommy takes care of the kids, Daddy goes to work and brings home money" while 
all the while mouthing off the modern trendy rhetoric about how "independent" 
you are, and how your kids are being raised free of "male interference", 
right? You want it _both_ ways. One foot in the future; the other solidly 
planted in the past. And, as we speak, you _can_ have it all, because of a
temporary legal aberration. Enjoy your privileges while they last.

								- Kevin
Newsgroups: talk.abortion