The Real Bev wrote
Rod Speed wrote
The Real Bev wrote
Janie wrote

...It certainly does seem that way. Think about it: The poorest
people end up paying the highest rates for credit because they are most
likely to end up missing a credit account payment because the money had to
be used for some emergency.

And poorer people have many more financial emergencies than the wealthy! .
Today it isn't just one account that increases the
interest but perhaps all of them. And who gets the interest, the
banks of course! And who owns the banks--the wealthy...
remainder snipped

The hard-core poor are mostly stupid. Stupid people used to die before they
were old enough to reproduce.

Nope, they got used for manual labor. There is a real
sense in which you need the stupid for that sort of work.

I'm thinking caveman times, not a century ago.

It wasnt true even then. Humans have always been social animals
and that is a large part of the reason we have dominated since then.

The stupids were used to provide the numbers when
herding the dangerous animals over the cliff etc.

Remember, we haven't evolved all that much in the last couple of thousand
years.

We have actually evolved very dramatically socially.

It only takes a small number of smartys to invent agriculture
and lots of stupids to put in the manual labor to make it work.

We've changed all that.

We have indeed, basically by the mechanisation of agriculture.

You dont need anything like as many stupids as were once needed.

We keep them alive, we keep their children alive and we keep their
grandchildren alive.

And we do that with those so stupid that they cant see that
their pathetic excuse for a country is never going to be able
to sustain the huge numbers of kids they keep pumping out.

We actually pay them to have more children.

Perhaps the humane thing is to allow them to move to special
"cities" with all the usual city things -- grocery stores, shops,
movies, apartments, TV, doctors, etc. -- with no requirement that the
inhabitants be useful at all. All will be provided. Classes for those who
wish to improve will be offered, along with scholarships to real schools to
those who can qualify. No poverty, no crime, no disease, no drugs and you
can leave if you want to but you may not return for 30 days.

Such a system has got to be better for them than what they have,
and it has to be cheaper than what we're doing now since we won't
have to gear everything to the lowest common denominator.

Can somebody tell me what's wrong with this scenario?

Its basically what is there now, just with ghettos instead of separate citys.

Not really.

Fraid so, with the exception of the elimination of crime,
drugs, self inflicted disease which will never be possible.

Some of the earliest socialist communitys were very
close to what you propose and they just plain didnt work.

We have to pretend that the skid-row derelicts, crack whores and the generally
destitute are valued members of society rather than hopeless and useless
dependents.

No we dont.

We allow (require?) them to live in surroundings which nearly guarantee that
they will never be able to break out simply because they have no value at all
to the system -- we just don't NEED them.

Sure, but there's nothing new about that.

Why not move them all to a decent place where they can either try to better
themselves or stagnate without causing trouble to the people who are paying
the bills?

That's what the ghettos are, and anyone with
any sense doesnt go anywhere near them.

It doesnt work.

It's never been tried.

It has actually, most obviously with the earliest attempts
at socialism, and more recently with urban ghettos.
And in my country exactly what you propose with the
exception of the size of them, they are towns, not citys.

For one thing, it's not democratic.

Its been tried anyway. Largely because
hardly any of the dregs actually bother to vote.

Its never going to be possible to eliminate crime with the dregs of any
society.

Drugs in spades.

We could probably eliminate the drug problem by handing out whatever people
want at no cost to them.

Nope, that just changes the detail.

We're actually stupid enough to pay our welfare in
cash and the worst of the dregs just spend it on
grog and that produces the most utterly obscene
murder rates that leave the worst of yours for dead.

And those are separate towns that no one with any sense goes
anywhere near. Some of them are separate islands where the
dregs were dumped and legally prevented from leaving.

Identical to what you propose, they're just too small to be full citys.

The easy availability of free drugs wipes out a lot of crime

Just some of the crime. Doesnt do a damned thing about murder
and rape and with some of the drugs it makes both much worse.

We have utterly obscene murder and rape rates in those
communitys of ours, and that includes rape of pre school
children too with absolutely unbelievable rates of sexually
transmitted diseases in kids of that age.

The kids fry their 'brains' at such a rate with petrol and glue and paint
sniffing that we actually supply those towns with petrol that doesnt
give any effect when sniffed, the problem is so utterly obscene.

as well as a lot of people who will overdose within the next couple of months.

Sure, but its better if they overdose and die.

Are we willing to do this?

We've tried it. It doesnt work. You have too with your 'native americans'

Is it proper? It's certainly cheaper than what we're doing now...

Thats arguable too.