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Notes -
This is a response to both you and @Southkraut below:
Well, a permanent class of parasites is what we have now. Part of the goal of Closing the Gap is to get Aboriginal people into the kind of economic system that would allow them to be like any other demographic in Australia.
I fully agree that it is a failure if all we do is bring Aboriginals up to the same standard of living as other Australians by throwing money into a sucking pit. The goal of all Closing the Gap schemes has to be getting the Aboriginal population to a point where they are sustainable participants in the Australian economy and even the Australian community.
The metrics by which the Gap is measured include educational and employment outcomes. The thing we are trying to do is get Aboriginal people to have jobs. I oppose just throwing charity or welfare at people forever. But if we can get most Aboriginal people to have tolerably decent jobs that are bringing them 60k AUD a year or whatever (which is well below average but enough to live on), then that is a good thing.
It seems to me that there are basically three paths before us.
Path one: Do absolutely nothing. Don't care, just let Aboriginal people starve or turn to crime or otherwise form a permanent underclass.
Path two: Provide enough welfare or charity to avoid one. Create a permanent welfare class.
Path three: Use a combination of welfare, education, and targeted social interventions to try to shift this group into sustainable participation in the Australian economy.
In [url=https://www.themotte.org/post/3705/culture-war-roundup-for-the-week/437928?context=8#context]the post you responded to[/url] I rejected path one. You now accuse me of path two. I agree that path two is bad. I therefore favour path three.
I can't think of any other path, save perhaps a 'path zero' which would be to just kill them all, or deport them all, or otherwise make Aboriginal people not exist in Australia any more. That's obviously not an acceptable path either. So what else is there?
What's your favoured path? What do you think should be done?
Option #3 is just option #2 with extra steps. You can't educate your way out of a serious IQ deficit, we've been watching the western world fail at exactly that for generations now. Targeted social intervention? Man the notion that as a group they're even capable of successfully navigating advanced civilization is, as far as I can tell, an unevidenced religious belief.
I don't have a different option for you. I'm just reminding you that all you really have are option #1, option #2, and a bunch of silly cope. Your society will maintain them at some level it's comfortable with, and where exactly on the dial between luxury welfare and Victorian poverty the dial lands isn't something I necessarily have a strong opinion on. At least not when it comes to other countries.
But if this is a place for serious discussion then I'm not taking this "closing the gaps" talk seriously. Be aware of what you're buying and don't delude yourself that the cost will ever go down. There is no real solution, this is just a permanent anchor around the neck.
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Since you tagged me - I don't really presume to favor one path over another. My personal preferences will hardly be those shared by a decisive plurality of Australians, and I'm very decidedly not even in Australia. About as far away as can be, really. I just hope whatever Australia does works out for the better, and whether or not that the results aren't ignored and that people world over can learn from it.
I'm just armchairing it, and I see the incentives for a growing class of parasites being established (if they haven't been before). Hence my question about Aboriginal birth rates.
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