Imagine my surprise to read a pro-“slavery” Post oped: Imagine a kid from rural Montana who, after scoring high on the SAT, has investors clamoring to finance his college education. … 17 percent … That’s the astronomical potential return on investment of educational intervention on young children, according to the Nobel laureate economist James Heckman. …
It's not the "white black IQ gap" that would torpedo this scheme. Simply the fact that, say, men earn more than women on average would be sufficient, as men by default would be "worth" more investment. One significant consequence: if a particular segment of the population tended to earn less, and if this was due to lower education, then providing less in student loans would mean that segment's earning power could constantly degrade.
This isn't all that different from student loans except for some radical rights infringement here and there but before we change our laws to allow parents to bind children to service note that any return would be greatly reduced if we did this across a society (because the advantage of a high quality education is reduced when more people have it). Also investments that require a 20 year wait before anyone can see any sort of return is a hard sell especially when we are dealing with an investment fraught with all sorts of risks (we already discussed that the kid may default or perhaps fudge on obligations, the laws could change etc). There's a reason we don't make loans to someone with a high interest rate that they don't have to start paying for 20 years from present.
The most obvious solution that I can think of is that the parents retain the liability. They agree to pay a fraction of their child's future earnings in exchange for cash up front. If they loot it then their child is unlikely to assume the liability as an adult, but if they make a genuine investment the child would presumably help out their parents. It seems like this would increase the default risk somewhat but I think it would still leave profitable investment opportunities and it would greatly reduce at least my moral concerns.
If the parents are given vouchers for education, rather than cash, their ability to loot is significantly reduced. (not to zero, as they could substitute vouchers for cash they would otherwise invest in their child's human capital. But if they're investing anyway, they're not likely to loot.)
Additionally, investors wouldn't want to 'buy in' to children likely to be looted.
Yes, I was spanked a couple of times. If I had known to claim "impairment of emotional health," maybe I could have saved myself. :)
Ok seriously, Robin asked for a "good clear principle" that explains the line between what parents are and aren't allowed to do, and I offered one. Upon reflection, it doesn't really make sense that there would be a good clear principle that explains the line, since it's actually the result of compromise between political forces backing a variety of moral and legal principles.
Most of them didn’t see it as an ethical issue, or if it was one, it was a very tiny one.
But originally you claimed the following:
We don’t feel there’s any moral issue. . .
The latter could be used to imply a contradiction if someone says parents shouldn't have the moral discretion (as opposed to the legal discretion) to harm their children needlessly, but the former cannot be. I happen to think it's an ethical issue, and depending on how bad the health outcomes are, it could be small or large.
Exercise sufficiently, I said. What if she should exercise 60 minutes a day and only does 20 or 30? Who’s really going to see that as a moral issue? 20 or 30 is Good Enough.
Well, immoral does not mean the same thing as requiring moral censure. No one is perfect. I still see it as a moral issue, though.
. . . Apparently it’s perfectly moral to bind people to debts they didn’t contract (and Constitutions, and…). At least, I’m hard-pressed to think of a functioning civilized country with no national debt.
Social contracts are a different beast; it's hard to say exactly what voluntary and involuntary mean in this case. I don't think social contracts need the consent of every individual they bind, but I can't think of many good reasons to bind people to individual contracts they didn't consent to.
Jess, Robin asked for a clear principle.. . . Well, as most people here are consequentialists (or the deontologists and the rest are hiding out), no, it’s not a universal matter of agreement that we Just Shouldn’t Do That.
If we are not willing to agree to any universal ethical principle, how can someone present us with a universal ethical principle to determine what discretion parents should have? And why is such a principle needed?
As I tried to show above, it’s perfectly plausible that a suboptimal upbringing could be equal in goodness to an optimal upbringing with liabilities. Given that society will not intervene in most cases of suboptimal upbringing, why should it intervene in the latter case?
It could be that we would like to reduce some of the discretion that parents already have, but it is politically less feasible than denying them this new discretion. There may not be a clear way to distinguish.
But I really do think this is different. The best principle I can give, which is far from clear or universal, is that parents are more likely in this case to choose incorrectly for their children. Without publicly funded childcare and a solid primary and secondary education everywhere, parents have an obligation to work hard to provide these to their children. By enforcing contracts for indentured servitude, society would be giving parents an incentive to sell part of their children's future when they didn't need to. Investors would have an incentive to manipulate parents into doing so. Yes, I'm sure similar incentives exist in other cases, but in this case they seem especially likely to lead to bad outcomes and unlikely to do much good. And it's a case where society has to intervene dramatically in order to give parents this discretion, whereas most of the other cases mentioned would require dramatic intervention to take it away.
What is the principle difference between the slaves relationship with his mater and my relationship with the US Government that makes slavery always immoral. I agree with Robin that it should be a question of efficiency.
Jess, Robin asked for a clear principle. You still haven't given one; your closest attempt seems to be
> Doesn’t everyone here agree that it would be wrong, as Wei Dai points out, for parents to incur liabilities on their children’s behalf? Children aren’t fully capable agents, therefore they can’t enter into most binding contracts, take on debt, etc. What’s the debate?
Well, as most people here are consequentialists (or the deontologists and the rest are hiding out), no, it's not a universal matter of agreement that we Just Shouldn't Do That.
As I tried to show above, it's perfectly plausible that a suboptimal upbringing could be equal in goodness to an optimal upbringing with liabilities. Given that society will not intervene in most cases of suboptimal upbringing, why should it intervene in the latter case?
Parents already have powers over their children that are best described as tyrannical, and those powers have always been fiercely guarded. Incurring debts binding on them wouldn't seem to be too great. (eg. parents can imprison their children until age 18 by homeschooling them and just not letting them leave etc. And in another comment I point out that parents legally have tremendous scope for using violence against their children.)
Better than acting outraged and appealing to people's intuitions that this is a Bad Thing, would be an attempt to justify the status quo by, I dunno, arguing that modifying the legal system to remove the abrogation-of-all-contracts-at-age-18 would have bad consequences.
> Society doesn’t prevent parents from making choices for their children (except in cases of clear harm), but it also doesn’t allow parents to use violence to enforce their choices. Violence or threat of violence would be necessary to enforce kid debt levels or equity shares.
Were you never spanked as a kid? As it happens, I was once told that my state's child abuse laws only covered violence that left semi-permanent traces (eg. bruises). Quickly googling, this seems correct:
"Injury by other than accidental means causing death, disfigurement, impairment of physical or emotional health; deliberate indifference causing such injury; creating substantial risk of such injury; sexual abuse, permitting sexual criminal behavior"http://law.findlaw.com/stat...
I've asked a few people questions along the line of 'if you knew that the older the parents the worse off the kids in terms of IQ/health, and some parents A elected to have their kids at 45 instead of 40, would you consider this choice to have any moral dimension?' (in various simplified or nuanced ways). Most of them didn't see it as an ethical issue, or if it was one, it was a very tiny one.
Unscientific? Sure, but in accord with intuition. Most people don't seem to take correlations or causations seriously unless the links are very strong. (A comparison here might be: Big Tobacco = murderers, environmental polluters = not murders, but just polluters.)
> First of all, a pregnant mother ought to eat well and exercise sufficiently. None of us are perfect, and we can understand when people have moral failings; but pregnant mothers and their partners do have a special obligation to care for themselves and their future children.
Exercise sufficiently, I said. What if she should exercise 60 minutes a day and only does 20 or 30? Who's really going to see that as a moral issue? 20 or 30 is Good Enough.
> The question is whether it is moral for a society to bind an individual to a debt they never incurred. I’m not well-read enough to know exactly what I am, but I’m a type of consequentialist if not a utilitarian, and I am at a loss trying to understand how this maximizes happiness.
If we judge based on what people do, apparently it's perfectly moral to bind people to debts they didn't contract (and Constitutions, and...). At least, I'm hard-pressed to think of a functioning civilized country with no national debt.
> If we’re willing to allow parents the incentive to loot by selling their children’s freedom, which never belonged to them in the first place, why not have the moral courage to allow them to loot us all by publicly funding childcare and a decent primary and secondary education? That would have the added benefit of avoiding the potential for slaveowners, err, shareholders, to manipulate financially illiterate parents into making poor decisions on their children’s behalf. (And I’m sure teaching kids to read and write properly has positive externalities. yeesh.)
In the US, apparently half the electorate considers that it's fine to loot their children, as long as it's for something like tax cuts or invading Iraq. Between looting for Iraq and bailing out financial elites, and splurging on education, I like your suggestion better. So we agree there.
I think this hits on the deeper issue that we're uncomfortable formalizing certain relationships in terms of cold hard cost benefit analysis because we prefer not to signal that we're opportunists looking for the best deal.
ad is clearly a poor person or expects to have poor children. of course low earners don't pay the full amount for their parents/ But on the flip side high earners are paying for their parents plus other people's parents.
It's not the "white black IQ gap" that would torpedo this scheme. Simply the fact that, say, men earn more than women on average would be sufficient, as men by default would be "worth" more investment. One significant consequence: if a particular segment of the population tended to earn less, and if this was due to lower education, then providing less in student loans would mean that segment's earning power could constantly degrade.
Turns out there's something like this already:
My Rich Uncle
This isn't all that different from student loans except for some radical rights infringement here and there but before we change our laws to allow parents to bind children to service note that any return would be greatly reduced if we did this across a society (because the advantage of a high quality education is reduced when more people have it). Also investments that require a 20 year wait before anyone can see any sort of return is a hard sell especially when we are dealing with an investment fraught with all sorts of risks (we already discussed that the kid may default or perhaps fudge on obligations, the laws could change etc). There's a reason we don't make loans to someone with a high interest rate that they don't have to start paying for 20 years from present.
The most obvious solution that I can think of is that the parents retain the liability. They agree to pay a fraction of their child's future earnings in exchange for cash up front. If they loot it then their child is unlikely to assume the liability as an adult, but if they make a genuine investment the child would presumably help out their parents. It seems like this would increase the default risk somewhat but I think it would still leave profitable investment opportunities and it would greatly reduce at least my moral concerns.
If the parents are given vouchers for education, rather than cash, their ability to loot is significantly reduced. (not to zero, as they could substitute vouchers for cash they would otherwise invest in their child's human capital. But if they're investing anyway, they're not likely to loot.)
Additionally, investors wouldn't want to 'buy in' to children likely to be looted.
Yes, I was spanked a couple of times. If I had known to claim "impairment of emotional health," maybe I could have saved myself. :)
Ok seriously, Robin asked for a "good clear principle" that explains the line between what parents are and aren't allowed to do, and I offered one. Upon reflection, it doesn't really make sense that there would be a good clear principle that explains the line, since it's actually the result of compromise between political forces backing a variety of moral and legal principles.
Most of them didn’t see it as an ethical issue, or if it was one, it was a very tiny one.
But originally you claimed the following:
We don’t feel there’s any moral issue. . .
The latter could be used to imply a contradiction if someone says parents shouldn't have the moral discretion (as opposed to the legal discretion) to harm their children needlessly, but the former cannot be. I happen to think it's an ethical issue, and depending on how bad the health outcomes are, it could be small or large.
Exercise sufficiently, I said. What if she should exercise 60 minutes a day and only does 20 or 30? Who’s really going to see that as a moral issue? 20 or 30 is Good Enough.
Well, immoral does not mean the same thing as requiring moral censure. No one is perfect. I still see it as a moral issue, though.
. . . Apparently it’s perfectly moral to bind people to debts they didn’t contract (and Constitutions, and…). At least, I’m hard-pressed to think of a functioning civilized country with no national debt.
Social contracts are a different beast; it's hard to say exactly what voluntary and involuntary mean in this case. I don't think social contracts need the consent of every individual they bind, but I can't think of many good reasons to bind people to individual contracts they didn't consent to.
Jess, Robin asked for a clear principle.. . . Well, as most people here are consequentialists (or the deontologists and the rest are hiding out), no, it’s not a universal matter of agreement that we Just Shouldn’t Do That.
If we are not willing to agree to any universal ethical principle, how can someone present us with a universal ethical principle to determine what discretion parents should have? And why is such a principle needed?
As I tried to show above, it’s perfectly plausible that a suboptimal upbringing could be equal in goodness to an optimal upbringing with liabilities. Given that society will not intervene in most cases of suboptimal upbringing, why should it intervene in the latter case?
It could be that we would like to reduce some of the discretion that parents already have, but it is politically less feasible than denying them this new discretion. There may not be a clear way to distinguish.
But I really do think this is different. The best principle I can give, which is far from clear or universal, is that parents are more likely in this case to choose incorrectly for their children. Without publicly funded childcare and a solid primary and secondary education everywhere, parents have an obligation to work hard to provide these to their children. By enforcing contracts for indentured servitude, society would be giving parents an incentive to sell part of their children's future when they didn't need to. Investors would have an incentive to manipulate parents into doing so. Yes, I'm sure similar incentives exist in other cases, but in this case they seem especially likely to lead to bad outcomes and unlikely to do much good. And it's a case where society has to intervene dramatically in order to give parents this discretion, whereas most of the other cases mentioned would require dramatic intervention to take it away.
What is the principle difference between the slaves relationship with his mater and my relationship with the US Government that makes slavery always immoral. I agree with Robin that it should be a question of efficiency.
But parents already are incurring liabilities on their children's behalf through inadequate parenting etc.
Jess, Robin asked for a clear principle. You still haven't given one; your closest attempt seems to be
> Doesn’t everyone here agree that it would be wrong, as Wei Dai points out, for parents to incur liabilities on their children’s behalf? Children aren’t fully capable agents, therefore they can’t enter into most binding contracts, take on debt, etc. What’s the debate?
Well, as most people here are consequentialists (or the deontologists and the rest are hiding out), no, it's not a universal matter of agreement that we Just Shouldn't Do That.
As I tried to show above, it's perfectly plausible that a suboptimal upbringing could be equal in goodness to an optimal upbringing with liabilities. Given that society will not intervene in most cases of suboptimal upbringing, why should it intervene in the latter case?
Parents already have powers over their children that are best described as tyrannical, and those powers have always been fiercely guarded. Incurring debts binding on them wouldn't seem to be too great. (eg. parents can imprison their children until age 18 by homeschooling them and just not letting them leave etc. And in another comment I point out that parents legally have tremendous scope for using violence against their children.)
Better than acting outraged and appealing to people's intuitions that this is a Bad Thing, would be an attempt to justify the status quo by, I dunno, arguing that modifying the legal system to remove the abrogation-of-all-contracts-at-age-18 would have bad consequences.
> Society doesn’t prevent parents from making choices for their children (except in cases of clear harm), but it also doesn’t allow parents to use violence to enforce their choices. Violence or threat of violence would be necessary to enforce kid debt levels or equity shares.
Were you never spanked as a kid? As it happens, I was once told that my state's child abuse laws only covered violence that left semi-permanent traces (eg. bruises). Quickly googling, this seems correct:
"Injury by other than accidental means causing death, disfigurement, impairment of physical or emotional health; deliberate indifference causing such injury; creating substantial risk of such injury; sexual abuse, permitting sexual criminal behavior"http://law.findlaw.com/stat...
I just added again to the post.
> We don’t?
I've asked a few people questions along the line of 'if you knew that the older the parents the worse off the kids in terms of IQ/health, and some parents A elected to have their kids at 45 instead of 40, would you consider this choice to have any moral dimension?' (in various simplified or nuanced ways). Most of them didn't see it as an ethical issue, or if it was one, it was a very tiny one.
Unscientific? Sure, but in accord with intuition. Most people don't seem to take correlations or causations seriously unless the links are very strong. (A comparison here might be: Big Tobacco = murderers, environmental polluters = not murders, but just polluters.)
> First of all, a pregnant mother ought to eat well and exercise sufficiently. None of us are perfect, and we can understand when people have moral failings; but pregnant mothers and their partners do have a special obligation to care for themselves and their future children.
Exercise sufficiently, I said. What if she should exercise 60 minutes a day and only does 20 or 30? Who's really going to see that as a moral issue? 20 or 30 is Good Enough.
> The question is whether it is moral for a society to bind an individual to a debt they never incurred. I’m not well-read enough to know exactly what I am, but I’m a type of consequentialist if not a utilitarian, and I am at a loss trying to understand how this maximizes happiness.
If we judge based on what people do, apparently it's perfectly moral to bind people to debts they didn't contract (and Constitutions, and...). At least, I'm hard-pressed to think of a functioning civilized country with no national debt.
> If we’re willing to allow parents the incentive to loot by selling their children’s freedom, which never belonged to them in the first place, why not have the moral courage to allow them to loot us all by publicly funding childcare and a decent primary and secondary education? That would have the added benefit of avoiding the potential for slaveowners, err, shareholders, to manipulate financially illiterate parents into making poor decisions on their children’s behalf. (And I’m sure teaching kids to read and write properly has positive externalities. yeesh.)
In the US, apparently half the electorate considers that it's fine to loot their children, as long as it's for something like tax cuts or invading Iraq. Between looting for Iraq and bailing out financial elites, and splurging on education, I like your suggestion better. So we agree there.
I think this hits on the deeper issue that we're uncomfortable formalizing certain relationships in terms of cold hard cost benefit analysis because we prefer not to signal that we're opportunists looking for the best deal.
ad is clearly a poor person or expects to have poor children. of course low earners don't pay the full amount for their parents/ But on the flip side high earners are paying for their parents plus other people's parents.