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Comment by mrmaddog | Hacker News Reader

I wouldn't even argue that the kid is the problem, but rather that the kid's behavior is symptomatic of a completely dysfunctional family.

At a certain age, responsibility starts shifting to the individual, but a 6 year old can hardly be considered the heart of the problem here. How to fix the deeper problem (having a mother that doesn't/is unable to care for her children) will always be an unsolved problem, but the best solutions I have seen so far involve beefing up our public school system so that the kids have a place that they can be given individualized attention.

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You cannot possibly beef up the public school system to the point that it replaces parental attention to children.

Illiterate idiots can't raise responsible, intelligent children. Giving them free computers isn't the answer. What they need is to feel a constant sense of extreme shame for letting themselves and their situation degenerate to that degree. As it is, instead of shaming slothful, lazy, degenerate idiots, society shames itself into allowing them a free pass on the grounds that all else being equal, some people must be too stupid to figure anything out for themselves. Which turns out to be false when it comes to gaming the welfare system, cooking crystal meth or jacking peoples' shoes... but those kinds of smarts are what you get when you start coddling and nannying to the point where individuality and ambition are wiped out and the neediest and laziest survive. I hope none of my tax dollars went toward buying them a computer. In fact, I hope they eat each other. Great post, though.

What they need is to feel a constant sense of extreme shame for letting themselves and their situation degenerate to that degree.

Have you perhaps by chance considered that a sense of extreme shame is exactly what prevents them from changing their situations?

It's quite obvious that you haven't been exposed to anything beyond the silver spoon you were born with in your lifetime. If you had some life experience you'd understand how silly your comment is, given that these are issues are much more complex than people being "illiterate idiots".

I didn't grow up with a silver spoon in my mouth, and I think noduerme's comments were spot on. In fact, I wish I could give his comment ten more points, and downvote your arrogant screed by the same amount.

It really isn't that much more complex than people being "illiterate idiots". Believe me, I've seen it with my own eyes.

And the problem with you guys isn't much more complex than being "arrogant idiots".

Ostracizing people socially -- rather than using bureaucracy as a method of enforcing ever more bloated statutes -- is a tried and true human tradition. It happens all the time online. Note the emergence of up-ranking news sites, for instance. Downranking is a powerful form of social censorship that helps civilize the worse traits in human nature. To rely solely on law or on bureaucracy to keep people acting in a civilized fashion is to discard thousands of years of social/moral wisdom. The argument usually begins with moral relativism -- e.g. you don't know what it's like to be XYZ, you were born ABC, and how dare you judge anybody -- and ends with the credo that all is permissible. The problem with everything being permissible is that, contrarily, in a situation where there is a refusal on the part of individuals to judge each other, no individual has any rights. Their rights are either abrogated by the police and the faceless majority, or everyone's rights directly infringe on each other's, in an anarchic context that only begs for further control. Therefore, face-to-face settlement of conflict and the boundaries between individuals is preferable to settlement by the state, and also preferable to a complete lack of settlement. And THEREFORE, we must use the best tools in the arsenal to settle such conflicts on a local basis, which most definitely include humiliating and ostracizing and, yes, JUDGING people based on how they behave.

Of course the solution is blindingly obvious. What you don't seem to grasp are any of the multitude of forces (some self-imposed/inflicted, some not) that make proceeding down that blindingly obvious path such a monumental struggle.

These people are not "too stupid" to recover. These people are exhibiting the natural human tenancies when confronted with these set of circumstance. It takes an extraordinary amount of drive and perseverance to overcome this.

If this is lost on you, it might help to compare this to losing weight. (Given your age though this might also be something you don't learn for a few years yet.) It's much easier to stay in shape than it is to adjust your weight downwards... you need to do much more exercise than a normal person would.

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