I'm disgusted

[andrewducker]

If you are a woman, know one, or are related to one then you'll almost certainly be as sickened as I am by this article on discrimination against pregnant mothers.  But not terribly surprised by most of it.  The bit that gets to me is that an advisor to the government is saying it, and nobody is speaking out to contradict him...

Comments

[communicator.livejournal.com]

There's another issue which I think is important. Capitalism isn't very good at directing resources at crucial social functions. Raising children is crucial to the survival of society, and yet there is no reliable mechanism in modern capitalism for ensuring resources are directed to it. I think the stresses and strains shouldered by women are caused by this deep societal flaw, and the legislation you describe is an attempt to deal inadequately with this strain.

I personally was in a lot of pain for a long time after child birth and I didn't want to go out to work. However I had to in order to live. I did a damn good job, so the disadvantage was all to me not my employer, but in a more rational economy there would be space for people to recuperate from major medical trauma.

[khbrown.livejournal.com]

In what ways is capitalism worse than other economic systems for raising children?

We've had several hundred years of capitalism, and as far as I can see children are still raised successfully enough for society to survive, even if the false needs those children are inculcated to have are perhaps not ideal from a non-capitalist perspective.

[communicator.livejournal.com]

Gosh where to start. Society survives because people do non-capitalist things, and give money and time away: the system doesn't support them for it, but they do it anyway. There are however strains which we paper over with legislation. Before welfare systems were developed to ameliorate capitalism many children starved and many mothers worked as prostitutes (in Victorian times, something like one in ten).

Even now 80% of retired women don't have a pension, because they 'irrationally' gave their time for free to their children. If they hadn't done it, our society would have collapsed, but they get no reward, in fact they get penalised.

In the third world, which is a vital part of our economic system, billions of children do die, and women and children are forced to prostitute themselves in order to eat.

[khbrown.livejournal.com]

I'm confused: do you think welfare systems are a good or a bad thing in principle? Are they good because they prevent people from starving to death, or bad because they prevent people from realising how bad really capitalism is?

Don't forget that there were people starving and prostitution before modern capitalism as well - I think the the difference is perhaps more one of degree, as in whether it's the priest or the bourgeois who makes the decision on whether someone's poverty is their own fault or deserving of charity.

[communicator.livejournal.com]

The clue is in the word 'ameliorate'. Capitalism directs resources at certain behaviours, but these are not the full range of behaviours needed for human survival. We need to ameliorate it in order for human beings to survive. Religion was indeed a way of ameliorating earlier societies and societies where other solutions are weak (such as the USA).

[khbrown.livejournal.com]

So you're saying capitalism needs to be constantly kept in check, but not necessarily advocating doing away with it?

"Piecemeal social engineering," rather than some idealised post-capitalist utopia as it were?

I could agree with that.

[andrewducker]

Me too :->

[communicator.livejournal.com]

Capitalism won't be affected by anything I do, let alone anythign I say on the Internet, but it probably won't last much longer than 50-100 years tops. Whether what comes after is better or worse, I don't know. I would guess it will either be a world wide population collapse and fragmentation, or a highly restrictive and formalised system of social control. And then that too will change to something else, and so on.

[andrewducker]

Thankfully, I find both of those unlikely :->

[marrog.livejournal.com]

Me three.

On a somewhat related note I worry that the reason the current bipartisan system of gov is working so badly (to my mind) at the moment is directly due to a left-wing, originally pretty socialist party coming into power way back when in the first place. It seems to me as though the ideal situation sees a hard-core pro-capitalism party in majority being constantly checked and balanced and limited and second-guessed by their left-wing pro-socialism opposition, and we just don't have that anymore.

[andrewducker]

The problem is that, certainly down south, the left-wing party only came to power because it promised to move the the centre. Without both that _and_ the opposition behaving really shittily, they never would have been elected.