So far today I’ve written essay in which I condoned prostitution and condemned alcohol, another which described marketing as a form of corruption, and yet another which suggested that people should have a natural right to an internet connection. So I figured while I’m having a controversial day already, I might as well write the essay that’s been floating around in my head about children and family structure in a technosocialist society. This essay comes firmly with the disclaimer you probably have memorized by this point: do not judge this project as a whole by your opinion on this particular essay. None of the ideas presented here are “core” ideas and even if you think they’re junk, that shouldn’t impact your opinion of technosocialism as a whole.
In the essay on a citizen’s Material Rights, there was considerable discussion about the fact that no one chooses to be born. But a choice is made by someone nonetheless: by the parents of the child being created. My own personal views on the morality of having children aside, there is no question about the fact that when someone chooses to have a child, they are also choosing to place a certain level of burden on society to care for that child. In their desire to become parents, they have created a human being who must be clothed, fed, educated, and kept safe. Our current system makes them largely responsible for that by making the parent purchase the food, clothing, etc., but much of the time this creates a situation in which children of financially-disadvantaged parents are put at a further disadvantage because their parents cannot afford nutricious food or a house in a good school district. The child suffers for something that they have no control over.
Technosocialism attempts to remedy these sorts of inequalities, and therefore a way must be found to make parents responsible for the burdens they have placed on society without limiting the opportunities available to children from poor families. Ideally, this needs to be done without creating an incentive for couples to have children they might not otherwise have had for the sake of any increase in Material Rights that they might be afforded. The key here is to ensure that all citizens of any age are entitled to their Material Rights in their own right and not through any other parties. Under our current system, attempts to help poor families with children must largely be done through money, and money is far more difficult to control. Money intended to be spent for diapers can be too easily diverted to other purposes. In recent years, programs like WIC have attempted to prevent these types of abuses in the American welfare system, but they have brought their own challenges and abuses.
To ensure that parents are aware of and responsible for the consequences of having children, on the birth of their child both parents immediately become subject to an additional charge to their Consumption scores equal to 25% of the current market value of the Material Rights claimed by the average child that age. The use of the average consumption rather than the consumption of that child in particular is to ensure that children are not denied things they might need by their parents because of problems with their parents financial status.
To avoid financial exploitation of children by their parents, the Material Rights of an infant would include only things that an infant would need: baby clothes, baby food, etc.. The infant’s Market account can purchase only those necessities while the parents are still acting on behalf of the child. Non-necessitities can only be charged to a child’s account once that child has proven themselves capable of making purchases on their own.
Here’s where we get into the reasonably non-controversial areas of this essay: coming of age standards. In most cultures, levels of responsibility and adulthood expected of and given to children are determined by age. In most of the United States, for exampe, adolescents are considered ready to drive at 16, to vote at 18, and to drink at 21. The problem with this system is that across-the-board age standards are generally based on an average that fits very few people. Some young people who are interested in politics may be far more politically active at 15 than most adults of 30 would be. And some 30 year olds will be less responsible in their behavior towards alcohol than the average 18 year old. Therefore, instead of using age as the measure, technosocialism takes the same approach towards readiness for responsibility as it does towards education: proof of knowledge and capability. Each major puzzle piece of adulthood can be arrived at separately when the child is ready for it. The following list will explore what those pieces are, how they might be achieved, and what restrictions they will lift.
*Market Participation*
We covered in the chapter on education the fact that technosocialism does not view education as something that one should have to pay for, but rather something for which one should be paid for achieving. This creates an important difference from our modern society, in that instead of having to rely on their parents for an allowance and spending money, children in a technosocialist society begin earning Contribution credit quite early in their lives as they gain a basic education. This means that children who are not yet experienced enough to understand how to exercise self-control might run up considerable Consumption scores before they are old enough to realize the long term impact of their actions. To prevent this, and also to prevent parents from financially exploiting their young children, children are not able to make purchases through the Market until they have demonstrated an understanding of its use and underlying principles.
This process is largely similar to the process that we have today. Starting around Kindergarten age, when modern children would be learning how to add up dollars and cents, children in a technosocialist society would be introduced to the ideas of Contribution and Consumption and taught how a ratio works. Later on, around the stage that modern elementary school students might start recieving an allowance from their parents, students who have demonstrated a reasonable understanding of Contribution and Consumption are given the ability to make small purchases independently. These purchases will limited to avoid significant ratio changes over a short period of time (the same way allowance money is usually distributed in small amounts each week) and those limitations will gradually be loosened as students show understanding of the long-term nature of their ratio and restraint in their purchases. Eventually older students who can pass a comprehensive test on the nature of a technosocialist economy and its interactions with its citizens will be able to lift all of those restrictions and enter the economy as an independant financial adult.
*Employment*
Our current economic system has a history of horrible exploitation of child labor, and in the hopes of preventing that from happening again, there are many restrictions on the hours children can work at various ages. But as we’ve discussed before in previous chapters, exploitation of others is difficult if not impossible in a technosocialist society. There can be no advantage to others in forcing children to work, because only the children could gain by it. Therefore, I see no reason to stop children who wish to work and have demonstrated proficiency with the SNA system from doing so. And I believe that a single restriction would be enough to safeguard the children involved from the kinds of abuse we saw during the Industrial Revolution: children must be treated no differently from adults. If an eight-year-old wants to do plumbing work, they must go through the same training and certification process as an adult plumber. If he wants to work with dangerous equipment, he must demonstrate his ability to use it safely just as an adult would. In practical terms, this will work to keep children largely out of the work force until they get older and have finished their schooling, while allowing the occasional prodigy to profit from their skill without undue restrictions.
*Voting*
Participation in the democratic process is an important part of citizenship in a technosocialist society. Rather than expecting citizens to simply vote for representatives every few years and then leave the governing up to them for the rest of the time, a technosocialist system depends on constant participation by all citizens. But before this duty can be undertaken, it is important that it be properly understood. Civics, rather than being a once-a-week class that some students take in eighth grade, must be a major component of any education. And as students learn more about the workings of a technosocialist society and demonstrate that knowledge, they can earn the right to participate in parts of the democratic discourse. Rather than having a single monolithic course that must be passed, civics is split into individual units on different aspects of society. Once students have demonstrated a basic knowledge of land use and city planning, for example, they can participate in discussions and votes about what we would today call zoning issues. Once they have shown that they understand the justice system and basic investigative technique, they can serve on a jury. And once all of these individual units have been passed, they can be considered full voting citizens regardless of age.
*Adulthood and citizenship*
If you told most modern citizens that they were required to pass a test before they could serve on a jury, they would be quite happy, and would make sure that they never came within ten yards of that test. Even in our current system, which requires very little of citizens in terms of voting, American elections are considered to have high turnouts if more than half the eligible citizens vote. It is important not to overestimate the importance to people of the duties and rights of citizenship. Therefore, we need to ensure a cultural tie between the reaching of these milestones and adulthood. Tell someone that leaving his education unfinished means that he cannot vote, and he’s likely not to care. Tell him that it means he is still considered a child, and he is likely to find that harder to accept. There need to be a certain number of rights which a citizen only earns after he has completed all of the steps to become a full voting and economic citizen. But how can we set that up so that it provides significant encouragement without creating a permanent rights-less underclass? What is one right that society already attaches to adulthood and which is desirable enough to push those who might not care about voting or civic participation to gain full citizenship anyway? The right to have a family of one’s own.
See? I lulled you into a false sense of security with the middle section about education and citizenship rights, but I told you this was going to be a controversial one. And here is the most controversial part of all: people should not have the right to reproduce simply because they come with the equipment. Note that I am not talking here about eugenics. The right to reproduce should not be limited to the genetic elite, because humans will probably never be able to truly understand who those are. Neither should it be limited to the economic elite who can “provide best for the children” because as we have already covered, children are entitled to their own Material Rights and will be provided for anyway. Instead, it should be limited to those who have shown the ability to be responsible parents. This is not for the sake of society or the species, although society will almost certainly benefit, but rather for the sake of the child. We talked a couple of essays back about how the imposition of existance onto people without their choice should entitle them to certain rights from society, and one of the most fundimental is to be born into a family that wants them there and will care for them well. With that end in mind, the following steps should be required before people are allowed to reproduce:
1. Both parents must have completed all the steps in becoming a full adult citizen.
2. The parents must have been engaged in a stable committed relationship for at least several years, and must be willing to agree that they will not separate until all children have grown to adulthood.
3. Both parents must pass tests on parenting techniques, child psychology, and other skills that they will need to raise a child.
Just how this restriction should be enforced is a tricky matter. My personal inclination is to require vascectomies of all males by the time they reach the age of 14. Once these conditions have been met, they can get the vascectomy reversed. Given the disproportionate burden on women in most of the reproductive process, it seems only fair that men get the short end of the stick for once.
I fully recognize that the odds of any society enacting the limitations I have outlined here is extremely slim, and I can only hope that this essay is not used in the future to discredit the idea of technosocialism in general. But I hope that even those readers who most strongly disagree with my argument can agree on a fundimental premise: that of all the rights due to a human being, one of the most important should be the right to be wanted. One of the great social arguments of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries has been the balance of an individual’s right to control over their own body and the rights of an unborn fetus. My views are somewhat difficult to place along the pro-life pro-choice spectrum, but in many ways it’s the same debate. The control of an individual over their own body should be important to any society, but can that outweigh the right of a child not to be born to abusive or neglectful parents? I have always viewed the right to life as something that can only be possessed by a being capable of anticipating and fearing death, and I would like to substitute the right to not be given life carelessly.