Social Engineering

[Superman]

Libs catch crap for supporting efforts to shape society. Guilty. We'd like to see everyone stand on their own two feet. We'd like to see welfare become unnecessary. We'd like people to behave better. So, we imagine taht certain efforts might help create that. Education, for instance.

Cons are also social de-engineers. No talk of encouraging or preparing disadvantaged people. No talk of educating them, or helping them envision success and security. Nope. Just get rid of welfare and they'll either starve of work. They point to successfu lentrepeneurs and other successful people, some of whom have little education, and pretend that everyone can do what they did.

Successful people. Did they become successful in order to avoid starving to death? Or were they working from a circumstance where starvation was not going to happen but financial success might. Were they seeking pleasure or avoiding pain? Would the absence of a safety net have inhibited their strategies? When does negative reinforcement work? When does positive reinforcement work? When are these two previous questions moot because the person in question just has absolutely no idea how to be an employee, let alone a business owner?

BTW, one of the bleeding heart, ridiculous, mamby pamby, liberal, coddling programs I am involved in is one where disadvantated youth are prepared to enter a construction industry apprenticeship program. There are journeymen. There are apprentices. And then there are people whose level of education and exposure are (believe it or not) insufficient to even ENTER an apprenticship program. We teach these people the importance of showing up on time. (punctuality is something that has to be explained to them, since their personal lives, the lives of their parents and friends, have no examples of this) We teach them to bathe and dress decently before approaching employers. They appreciate this coaching. They learn and practice these basic things. Before the program, they didn't know.

Those of you who scoff at this, taking the position that there is no way (except laziness and sloth) that anyone could possibly NOT know these basics........




.............simply do not get it. And because you don't get it, you will support this notion that eliminating programs is the way to get these lazy asses to work. The solution is pretty simple, as long as you don't really understand the problem.

So.....you guys think we should be fixing problems BEFORE they happen, through education for instance? Or would you rather just build more jails. BTW, jails are more expensive than actually fixing the problem.

[dhoward]

Sounds like a good program.
Good for you.
Similar to an organization here that assists women in joining or rejoing the work force by giving them access to business attire, carreer counseling, and interviewing workshops.
Ours is privately funded though...

[FrayAdjacent911]

The problem with Social Engineering is mostly like this:

The people who vehemently support it, things like welfare, equal opportunity, racial quotas and stuff..


They don't want 'equal opportunity'... they want 'equal results'.

[RallyJon]

We teach these people the importance of showing up on time. (punctuality is something that has to be explained to them, since their personal lives, the lives of their parents and friends, have no examples of this) We teach them to bathe and dress decently before approaching employers. They appreciate this coaching. They learn and practice these basic things. Before the program, they didn't know.

Those of you who scoff at this, taking the position that there is no way (except laziness and sloth) that anyone could possibly NOT know these basics........

I think that as a nation we need to accept the unpalatable reality that some of us need very basic help. There are many people who should be taken out of conventional schools and enrolled in remedial life training. As Matt implied, if you proposed such a thing, it's the liberal public education establishment that would crucify you, not conservatives.

[dhoward]

Originally posted by RallyJon
I think that as a nation we need to accept the unpalatable reality that some of us need very basic help. There are many people who should be taken out of conventional schools and enrolled in remedial life training. As Matt implied, if you proposed such a thing, it's the liberal public education establishment that would crucify you, not conservatives.

10-4.

[djmcmath]

Hmm. I was expecting something along the lines of "Social Engineering: Because There Is No Firewall for a Human." My bad...

[GDSOB]

Most people are trained on the basics by their PARENTS. However a substantial portion of our society is unequipped to have children, especially out of wedlock while still in, or dropped out of Jr. High School. The mentality is that they can get a check for just breathing (and breeding).

I was working on a rental property once and I asked the tenant why her kids weren't in school. She said " No one is paying me to send them to school" Keep in mind the gov't was paying her rent, SSI, food stamps, + child support, etc... unbelievable. I hear it all the time.

How do you break the chain of ignorance & laziness? Throwing money at it doesnt fix the problem. These people need to be put to work- you don't get a choice- and the kids need to be educated as to right & wrong. Problem is the schools can't discipline the kids that need it the most. Ain't gonna change soon...

[FrayAdjacent911]

Originally posted by GDSOB


How do you break the chain of ignorance & laziness? Throwing money at it doesnt fix the problem. These people need to be put to work- you don't get a choice- and the kids need to be educated as to right & wrong. Problem is the schools can't discipline the kids that need it the most. Ain't gonna change soon...

Give a man a fish, he eats for a day. Teach a man to fish, he eats for the rest of his life.


Take away the fish we're handing out. Give them opportunities to learn something, and give them the incentive of 'you don't work, you don't eat'. People have a powerful need to eat, so they'll have to learn, you gotta work for your daily bread.

[Superman]

Originally posted by RallyJon
I think that as a nation we need to accept the unpalatable reality that some of us need very basic help. There are many people who should be taken out of conventional schools and enrolled in remedial life training. As Matt implied, if you proposed such a thing, it's the liberal public education establishment that would crucify you, not conservatives.

Bull*****. Wishful thinking for those who like to blame everything on the libs, but bull***** nonetheless.

Our public education systems has Special Education programs. The reason it does not have more is because......drum roll please......better sit down for this........FUNDING. Two of my sisters are specialists in the field of Special Education.

dhoward....our program is privately funded also.

And to those who continue to view both the problem and the solution as simple......Marie Antoinette was reputed to have said "Let them eat cake." As we know, Ms. Antoinette lost her head over that one. Similar story for a lot of you. It's easy to drive down Skid Row in your Porsche and scoff, but making a successful businessman out of one of those lifetime welfare bums is like trying to make a nuclear phsysicist out of you. In either instance, education will be necessary. You can reach it. You can be a NP. The skid row guy does not know where to start asking questions. Or what questions to ask.

[yellowline]

I love the self-righteousness and name calling.

The primary responsibility of the federal government is to provide self-defense. This is the greatest common good, as none of us would be here surfing PPOT if the country was not secure. I don't advocate that our military be constantly used, but it must be used when necessary. This includes one, perhaps two bureaus of higher-level investigation.

Government next has the role of regulating interstate commerce. They should provide roads and other major infrastructure. Right now, we have a score of D from the Army Corps of Engineers. Things are falling apart.

Why is this not being taken care of? These are basic, nonpartisan issues. No true American wants to see the country underfunded for defense, nor do we want a nation literally falling apart.

When defense is adaquately funded (not overfunded), and when we get to fixing our infrastructure, then we can care about being warm and fuzzy. If we can afford it. Welfare is indeed a leg-up situation, not a stable income. Why does it still exist from the Great Depression? The answers to 70-year old problems are irrelevant today. If you want welfare, find a way to make it work and be lean.

Many lesser countries produce better-informed citizens with poorer facilities and skimpier budgets. Money is not the solution. Most of us would agree that it's simply a waste to take the P-car to a dealer to fix every little problem. When we the citizens do the dirty work by encouraging a meritocracy and a society of responsibility, we will be far better off. Government cannot and will not be able to solve the problems of individuals.

[VaSteve]

Originally posted by Superman


BTW, one of the bleeding heart, ridiculous, mamby pamby, liberal, coddling programs I am involved in is one where disadvantated youth are prepared to enter a construction industry apprenticeship program. There are journeymen. There are apprentices. And then there are people whose level of education and exposure are (believe it or not) insufficient to even ENTER an apprenticship program. We teach these people the importance of showing up on time. (punctuality is something that has to be explained to them, since their personal lives, the lives of their parents and friends, have no examples of this) We teach them to bathe and dress decently before approaching employers. They appreciate this coaching. They learn and practice these basic things. Before the program, they didn't know.

I bet they'd know if the mailman was late with the check!

I will say it again, the world needs ditch diggers. Sometimes the child left behind, should be.

[RallyJon]

Special Education? Where did that come from? We're not talking about funding, or lack thereof, for any program that exists today. Is that where you were trolling?

Anyway, the issue is how do you tell people that they're incompetant at life? How do you go to a poor single mother and say, "You're worthless as a parent, and your child will either be in prison or a burden to society in ten years."? How do you go to that 20 year old hanging out on the street corner and tell him (and his fragile, lower class, punk ego) that he's human refuse who needs remanufacturing?

Hell, paying for it would be easy once you get past that...

[dhoward]

Originally posted by VaSteve
I bet they'd know if the mailman was late with the check!

I will say it again, the world needs ditch diggers. Sometimes the child left behind, should be.

Agree.

[scottmandue]

Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day... teach him to fish and he will sit around in a boat drinking beer....

[Shaun @ Tru6]

Social engineering works for me. There are a lot of things missing in people's everyday lives and opportunity is one of them. Another is a presumptive, pre-emptive application of the Golden Rule. if we had that down, as a nation, we would be so much further ahead than we are now.

[daepp]

So I am a big-time conservative who also runs a food bank for the temporarily out-of-work. Why do you have to make this a liberal/conservative argument. Besides, it's a statistical fact that conservatives donate to charity more than liberals.

Libs talk the talk, but I never see them in the soup kithcens or the food banks. These are staffed by the elderly and the religious. WHERE ARE THE LIBERALS?

[jkarolyi]

>>Libs talk the talk, but I never see them in the soup kithcens or the food banks. These are staffed by the elderly and the religious. WHERE ARE THE LIBERALS?

Don't you know...THAT'S THE GOVERNMENT'S JOB! I work for a non-profit org (part of a Christian university) that helps improve health care for people all over the world at about 20% of the pay I could make elsewhere. I'm a Christian conservative as are most of my co-workers. So please don't make judgements about me and my kind. We have similar ideals for ending suffering and poverty, we just have different ideas for achieving them.

As for funding programs like yours (which I think are awesome) and Special Education, have you seen the pie charts of where education money actually goes? Get rid of the teacher's and educational employees unions and half of the administrative positions, and institute a voucher system, and you'll see real changes. More money to the gov't (the liberal's mantra) is not the answer.

What would you suggest Super, another "war on poverty"? We all know how successful that bit of well-intentioned social engineering was.

[Tim Hancock]

Supe, no amount of money or govt sponsored program is going to significantly change the attitudes of many of todays "downtrodden". The lack of morals and ethics that has taken over a majority of handout recipients, is not something that can be easily reversed. Schools nowadays cannot punish kids or demand any kind of respect out of kids. Todays inner city youth have been brought up to expect the govt. to take care of them and they have no role models at home to look up to.

IMO, the only way to break the cycle is to reduce handouts to the point that adults HAVE to work if they want to eat and if having more kids creates more hardship (instead of more money), people might, over time, learn to think twice about having 3 kids by the time they are 19. Once a couple generations start seeing their parents work, maybe the cycle will begin to break.

Like I said, there is no easy quick fix, but I firmly believe that in these times, welfare is just making the situation progressively get worse. You cant just cut these people off, but someone needs to figure out a way to start weaning people off of handouts or it will only get worse.

[Shaun @ Tru6]

Originally posted by Tim Hancock
... and they have no role models at home to look up to.

Exactly Tim. it's a degenerative cycle at best. You can't throw money at these kinds of problems, you've got to create community based infrastructure: church groups, schools, elders (lot's of wisdom there) all need to be brought together to break social cycles. People need people to break cycles; $ alone never will.

Put another way, I am really against the welfare system, mainly because it propagates cycles (poverty, need, expectation, abuse) rather than breaks them. The end game is that when you don't work for something, when it's just given to you, you'll never appreciate it, you'll never understand achievement, you'll never learn anything and be able to take those skills to modify them to tackle new challenges. Entitlement programs are poorly designed to make you FEEL like you are one thing, but don't give you the tools to actually BE that thing.

[Dantilla]

Because I lean to the conservative side, I help build houses sometimes with Habitat for Humanity. It's simple, really. It's not the government's job, it's MY job.

If it was funded through a government program, a huge percentage would be eaten up in overhead, paying the bueracrats to make sure all the right forms are filled out.

The liberals in New Orleans are waiting for goverment help to rebuild.
As a conservative, last October I spent a week doing volunteer construction work, with a great bunch of people willing to pay their own way, as I did, to help others in need. Why? Because, as an American, it's my duty.

Or you can keep complaining, while waiting for that government check.