HighResolutionSleep
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User ID: 172
HighResolutionSleep
4d ago
Your rules are absurd and demonstration nothing because they could apply to a lot of laws.
I would agree that there are many laws whose motivation for being bear very little to relation to their stated purpose.
No, because it expires when the child no longer needs support.
Sure, but she has less going on in her life now that needs any support. Hard to say from this one alone. Which brings me to:
How would you propose disentangling "mother support" from "child support."
Well, I would say we take a look at whose benefit the terms of the policy correlates the most with, which leads me to Exhibit A, the smoking gun:
I am fine with a rich man having to pay more than a poor man to support his children.
I am once again left to wonder if children of rich fathers need more food and clothes than the children of poor ones. What's the thing that children need more of when their father is richer? I really can't overstate how damning it is that the amount of funds demanded for child support bears almost no correlation whatsoever with the needs of any actual or theoretical children being supported.
You used the word "punitive" to describe my likely motivation for having skepticism toward modern child support policy, but to me it seems like a great descriptor for how child support policy itself actually works. Its terms make very little sense if you want to believe that it's actually about supporting children, and much more sense if you impute that its actual motivation has much more to do with look dude, ya had sex, now pay up.
If you want to propose a cap, I'd be amenable, but not if it's the bare minimum because fuck those kids (and their mother).
I'd feel a lot better if the number were derived from what children actually need, rather than how much we think we could and should extract from a given man.
Do you actually know what typical child support is?
I know how it works. It's absurd. In most places, if you go and fuck some loser who works at the grocery store deli, you get like eighty bucks a month which isn't nearly enough—and then me and other taxpayers have to pitch in to make the difference. But if you manage to sack a Guy In Finance, you get a gorillion dollars.
It gets really bad if you think of all the myriad, trivial ways that the funds could be made to better seek the actual needs of actual children that could be implemented but aren't. I'd be way less offended about how the numbers are calculated if the funds that were clearly in excess of what the child's needs went into some general pool that was drawn off to support tougher cases. But that's not how it works, all of that excess needs to go to the mother who bagged a high value guy. I suppose that's the bounty she earns for a sexual conquest that puts a high earner to work for society's reproductive needs. Sorry, little Timmy: apex maneater Stacy needs her meal ticket.
Wouldn't you still protest that she might be eating some of the food bought with the EBT card
There's a practical, happy medium of oversight that exists between none at all and hellhole 1984 panopticon. I find it suspect that we choose one of these extremes. I've given you an example of a trivial to implement solution that would substantially increase the auditability of funds ostensibly earmarked for the support of children for very little added friction and inconvenience to the people involved. I could probably think of a dozen more, but I'm not going to waste too much effort on this one as I doubt that anything I could offer would change your opinion about me. I mean, you've already read my mind over TCP/IP and know my true sentiments:
But I'd be on board with much harsher measures for men who can't/won't pay- "lithium mines," sure. I don't think you actually would be, though.
My most preferred model is that accountability for reproductive outcomes be assigned based on possession of the power to shape those outcomes. Things have gotten more complicated since Dobbs, but before that, here in the States, the entire process of human reproduction from start to finish was considered a woman's private affair by the most supreme court in the land. Responsibility should have been assigned accordingly.
I understand that this isn't how it works, and probably not how it will ever work for reasons that may never cease to frustrate me. My second-preferred solution is that we keep the spillover as contained to the most nearby man as possible, and in a way that empowers individual men to avoid this situation as far as practical.
I understand that this probably won't happen either, and that I'll probably just be made to pay women to fuck other men and bear their children for the rest of my natural life.
But I am allowed to complain about it.
I am pretty sure there are laws under which women who abuse drugs and cause their children to be born addicted, or with birth defects, can be charged, though that's another hard to enforce law.
There aren't. Not here in the States. I've looked. I did, however, find cases of children afflicted by these diseases suing their mothers for what she did to them and losing due to being considered as having no standing. Can you at least understand why I might be quite unimpressed with what our civilization demands from women when it comes to reproduction, and why I might not see where exactly it gets off demanding anything from men?
If you want to make it illegal for a woman to drink, smoke or do any drugs at all while pregnant, I think it's impractical
Why? Would it be too inconvenient to her to not have to fucking poison her own child?
Okay, if I agree in theory but also acknowledge we can't/won't do that, what now? Fuck them kids because it's unfair to men?
"Fuck the children" is indeed the position of our civilization whenever the interests of women and children collide—and yes, if we are going to continue to do that, I would like the trifling, self-centered interests of grown-ass men to prevail over the welfare of children, too. Fuck 'em.
Some things are unfair for biological reasons
Biology doesn't write our laws or determine how they're adjudicated. Simple as. Men are biologically stronger than women but that doesn't stop rape from being illegal.
usually about the time the proposal that a man should be able to disavow any responsibility or obligation for children he fathers emerges
This would, in fact, be what peak justice in reproductive affairs looks like. Although as a matter of implementation detail, I'd much prefer an opt-in model. What women do with their bodies is nobody else's business, or it is. Pick one.
HighResolutionSleep
4d ago
A child support order is going to say, throughout, "for the support of the child"
I said that referring to it by name is against the rules.
If we have to black out every mention of "child" then I suppose it might be hard to figure out what the purpose of the order is.
I didn't say that, I just said you can't say "the purpose of the law is support the child because the law says so, it's in the name, stupid". You do this multiple times so I'm only addressing it once.
The fact that the support ends when the child reaches age of majority
This is also compatible with the mother support theory.
the calculation of support is based on the child's needs
Do the needs of children scale with the father's income? They eat more food? Wear more clothes?
how would you prefer to make sure she does not personally benefit from the child support
I'm less concerned about this part than other elements, but to the extent that it matters, it is a solved problem. You make it an EBT card with similar controls. Courts can pull the records on a moment's notice. There's way less deniability because the funds aren't co-mingled. This isn't rocket science. Wouldn't be surprised if some places already do this.
You could argue that without the child support she wouldn't have been able to afford to buy clothes for herself. While true, the point of child support is that children add expenses. If she weren't taking care of the child she could afford to buy clothes for herself.
If this were the modal impact of the policy, that would be a great point in favor of calling it mother support.
almost always rooted in a sense of bitterness and injustice
I will cop to feeling that there's a great amount of injustice across nearly all policy that touches men and women as such, and that I harbor a considerable measure of bitterness about it. No point in denying it. I guess that means my beliefs about the world are wrong because they come from a bad place, huh. Where do your beliefs about child support come from? Only love and honey, I'll bet. That means they're better than mine.
It always boils down to a desire to be punitive and/or bail on financial obligations
How do we know that child support policy as it exists today isn't "punitive"? Sounds like a motivation that could be attached to the fact it scales with income.
I have financial obligations to women all across the country and their children. No bailing on that one, unfortunately. I'd probably feel less bad about child support if it meant I never had to pay strange woman to raise another man's kid. Hell, raise it 10x if that's what it takes. Throw men who can't pay into lithium mines.
not actual concern for the welfare of any children in question.
Who cares? Nobody has any concern for the welfare of children when it collides with the needs/wants/whims of women. If a woman's right to drink smoke and snort as much as she wants while pregnant is inviolable, I don't see how a man's right to stay home and play video games shouldn't also be etched in sapphire. There's a thousand different policies we could pursue that would have manifest benefits to children to the inconvenience of women, and we implement exactly zero of them.
child support is to support the children
I've had this argument about a hundred times, so I'm going to experiment with a new track:
What about "child support", as currently practiced in the liberal west and particularly the United States, evidences that it is about supporting children—without referencing its name in any way, shape, or form? If I gave you a sheet describing the terms, functions, and conditions of C.S. with the name at the top blacked out, what elements would lead you to suspect ah ha, the primary function of this policy is to support children! What elements would you point to in order to refute the competing hypothesis that the primary function of the policy is actually mother support?
This is an open challenge. Anyone reading should feel free to answer.
HighResolutionSleep
6d ago
But I won't say the men are acting in any way reasonable or just in this case.
Sure, at the ELO we're listening in on, it's trash treating trash like trash and vice versa. I fail to see why I should be feeling bad for the women specifically. In fact, I see no reason to believe that the women who stick around to replay this arrangement aren't themselves fucking around. We know the men in this league aren't being completely forthcoming, why believe the women?
In all of this, is there any standard of duty, even to herself, that a woman could fail? Or is she always the one failed? Is there any point it makes sense to ridicule her for being book-porn-brained, or outright write her off as a player in the game herself? Only when she starts an OnlyFans and not a moment sooner?
HighResolutionSleep
6d ago
I mean, sure, you could overindex in on the worst example on offer. But the average between the men she's describing seems to offer little more than a shrug when it comes to commitment.
I'm assured that this is enough to completely befuddle the average woman, as though she were being promised lifelong marriage. I'm not sure what to make of this.
HighResolutionSleep
6d ago
I was responding to what this poster said, what was discussed in the article, and what you yourself said above:
This is not a new problem. The age old refrain of the cad is 'I swear I'll marry you, I just can't wait'
Is there something between the lines here that I'm missing? Do you consider a man promising nothing and promising marriage to be basically the same thing? Where does women's personhood enter in to this equation?
HighResolutionSleep
6d ago
One word that has more or less dropped out of common parlance is seducer. It means, roughly, a man who lures women in on false pretenses.
Big problem with this analysis and those like it: these men don't seem to be promising anything, like at all, and these women are still laying with them.
I'm all for giving up, but this seems like a silly reason for doing it. Should we stop telling men to grow up and work hard because lottery winners exist?
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