Originally Posted by Arkham '80

Regarding the crack about sex, your answer implied that you would not be concerned about a lack of male interest, since it would allow you to converse without distraction. But this is dodging the fact that, for women who are still interested in sex with men, a general lack of male interest entails involuntary celibacy. I don't believe that women would find involuntary celibacy a reasonable price to pay for being able to converse with men without their eyes wandering.

The above implies a market where scarcity is the rule. This is not the case.

Originally Posted by Skabungus

[/B]

It might come as a surprise, but men are attracted to women for a whole lot of reasons! A man can think one woman attractive because of her figure, and another because she has a sexy-racy personality, and yet another because she's so damn smart you cant stop wondering what she'd be like in bed!

For the girl with the hour glass figure.......

............time runs out very fast.

I referred to "feminine attributes" without directly specifying physical appearance because I didn't want to discount the other sources of interest. Men are strongly visual creatures, though, so appearance is an important factor in sexual attraction to women.

Originally Posted by Skabungus

The above implies a market where scarcity is the rule. This is not the case.

The hypothetical posits that all interest, everywhere has evaporated. This is an artificial scenario, of course, because 100% disinterest would never come about in the real world, but it's sufficient to induce thoughtful reflection on just what it would mean for women if they got their wish that "men wouldn't look at me like that."

I really wish that the society would once again lighten up and stop taking life so seriously. This, BTW, is coming from someone who has been seeking a new job for over two months with no success. That was the advice I was given at a recent free workshop on the subject of job search, which emphasized to try to stay positive. Easier said than done for a lot of folks. But we had become a super uptight society before then.

A thought on the laws of attraction. I do not know all of it, but I'm sure not all men have the roving eye. Yet the laws of attraction can't really be legislated, although there have been numerous attempts to try. When I was growing up it was pretty much normal behavior for guys to, as a popular song of the time went, stand on the corner watching all the girls go by. I sure there were some girls who took the same approach in reverse, albeit fewer in number. It was far more common for boys to be girl crazy as it was for girls to be boy crazy.

Originally Posted by The Grey Badger

Wrong about courage. Courage can become a vice when it crosses the line into foolhardiness, as Aristotle pointed out and General Custer proved.

Then, however, it is no longer courage... it's suicide.

Originally Posted by Brian Rush

I disagree, for reasons I'll go into momentarily. At the moment, I'll simply say that care for children is one of the weakest points of libertarianism. Which may be why it's disproportionately advocated by the childless.



It would certainly give pause, but to say that women have "no incentive whatsoever" to refrain from becoming pregnant is absolute nonsense. Being careful about such things is hardwired into women and instinctive. It's been my (fairly) recent experience that even women who CAN independently support children have an incentive to refrain from becoming pregnant. I have never had a relationship with a women who took no thought for that matter and no precautions. In fact, it's MUCH more common for MEN to be cavalier about this.

That being the case, I can't imagine that further disincentives would make any appreciable difference in female reproductive behavior.

But even if your suggestion didn't display an unfortunate unfamiliarity with feminine psychology, there is still the point that individualizing costs is not appropriate when they are automatically borne by more than the individual in question.



Perhaps, but that's rather like saying laws against rape, murder, and robbery put money into the pockets of police, judges, etc. whose jobs would be superfluous without the apparatus of criminal law. By which I mean that family law serves a vital purpose, and we would be far, far worse off without it. As for transferring wealth from women to men, that's just silly, except when the law is abused (which it sometimes is). There are many costs to raising children, both monetary and non-monetary, and the bulk of those costs are always borne by the custodial parent. Requiring the noncustodial parent to shoulder a somewhat fair share of the monetary costs alone (there's really no way at law to require him/her to shoulder a share of the nonmonetary ones) is hardly theft.

It is an unavoidable fact that raising children is inherently a community/collective task, not an individual one, and that's why I say that this is one of the weakest points of libertarianism, which is an ultra-individualistic philosophy. When you have children, if you are at all a responsible parent, your individuality is compromised. That's a fact every parent knows. If you don't know it -- well, it's because you're not a parent, that's all.



I'm sorry, Arkham, but that is such complete and total blazingly ignorant drivel and garbage that words fail me, and I am simply flabbergasted that any human being intelligent enough to string words together with minimal coherence could possibly credit such lunacy long enough to type the words expressing it. To compare the "exploitation" of a typical noncustodial parent (who is more like me than the person you mentioned) to the suffering of a neglected child living in an impoverished single-parent family is possible only if one has not only not experienced the subject from either perspective, but also never seriously explored it.

I have two daughters. My wife and I separated in 1991. I paid child support until May of last year. This through times when I was making decent money and times when I was flat on my ass. Was it hard? Was it a burden? You bet it was. But raising children always is. Do I regret it? Not for a second. (Regret marrying that godawful bitch, yes -- but that's another story.) Sure, this set me back, and I would be on sounder financial footing now if I hadn't had to pay that money, but my kids would have lost orders of magnitude more than I gained. Deprivation early in life is much, much more crippling, a much greater burden, than a financial obligation imposed in one's prime earning years.

That really ought to be obvious.



And I say that's crazy. If he really, truly doesn't want to have children, and he knows she does, then it's his responsibility to end the relationship on such a basic note of incompatibility. (Well, it's somebody's responsibility anyway.) If he gives her his seed, he knows what she's going to be able to do with it. If he doesn't want her to do that, he should keep it to himself, or give it to someone else who will be more inclined to -- try without really succeeding, as it were.

You cannot escape the fact that once a child is born, an obligation exists. In the end, all children are everyone's responsibility, but at minimum, to make a child fully the responsibility of only one person is cruelly stupid, and very, very bad for the child. Once again: if you become a parent, whether by intention or not, your individuality is automatically compromised. That's something every parent knows.



True. But in no viable, remotely healthy culture is it acceptable to toss children to the wolves. If you are going to absolve fathers of the responsibility of helping to support their children, then you must propose an alternative that does NOT place solitary and total responsibility on the mother. If it isn't going to be on mom and dad together, then it's going to be on the community. Don't like that? Too bad. When a child is born, individuality is compromised. That's a reality every parent knows. It's never on just one person, not in any remotely healthy culture.



The first sentence is true, but only because we generally think of "goodness" as encompassing mental/emotional qualities that can never be coerced. The second sentence is untrue. Or rather, let us say that responsible behavior can be instilled by legal compulsion. And in this case, when it doesn't arise voluntarily, it must be.

I dare say this is the best post in this whole discussion!

My parents divorced when I was 4. Child support payments were hard on my dad's finances but he payed them because he loves his son and is a very responsible guy.

Originally Posted by The Rani

That's what I'd like you to find out for yourself. About a year or so ago I was taking my dog for a late night walk, and it was very hot out so I was wearing a really thin tank top and jogging shorts. A carload of teenage boys (or at least I hope that's what they were) drove by, and one of them shouted out "show me your twat!!" For some reason I thought that was hilarious.

I think it would be an eye-opener for you.



I guess I would be in this category, maybe because my mom just got a marriage proposal on her 69th birthday.

As for "involuntary celibacy," well, get into that pregnant woman's bod and then let's talk.

You're leaving a lot up in the air. A male brain in a woman's body is still going to think quintessentially male thoughts, and interpret the new bodily sensations through a male lens. I imagine this would persist for quite some time, even with female hormones coursing through the gray matter. (Are there any transsexuals on the boards who can offer some insight?) Putting a male brain into a pregnant female body is no guarantee that the man will develop an intimate understanding of the female condition. Without counseling and a healthy transition period, it's more likely just to produce a deeply confused male brain.

And while we're at it, let's reverse the thought experiment and put a female brain in a male body, then set it loose on the world with all its female prejudices initially intact. How well do you suppose the female brain would deal with getting an erection in public for no particular reason? Or having to suppress the urge to pummel another man who speaks ill of a relative or gazes a little too long at a girlfriend? Or with being repeatedly rejected, often quite brusquely, by women in social settings with numerous witnesses?

Originally Posted by The Rani

But now, I think we will have to send you into a pregnant woman's body.

Or better yet, the body of a single mother of one-year-old triplets whose father is a penniless deported immigrant.

Arkham:

The bottom line, mock it though you do, really is care of the children. The interests of the adults involved are secondary; those interests don't entirely disappear, but their individuality is compromised and they become, to an extent, tools of nature for propagating the species. Since our species follows a K strategy rather than an R strategy, that means the care, protection, nurturance, and guidance of maturing children.

All of this costs money. All of it costs time. To place that responsibility entirely on the mother may satisfy your atomistic, hyper-individualistic, community-be-damned libertarian soul, but as a practical measure it's crazy. Most women are simply not in a position to be able to handle all that alone. They need help. Under our current system, we require the father to provide that help. I'm not saying that system couldn't be improved, but putting the whole burden on the mother -- which amounts to throwing the kids under the bus -- would not be an improvement. What we would see is an increase in the next generation of all the pathologies associated with children rasied in poverty without proper nurturance. If you're going to let the father off the hook, or give him the option of unhooking himself, then you must place the responsibility on the community, which in our civilization means on the government. Do you like that idea better?

Why throw adults to the wolves instead of children? Because adults can fight the wolves. Children can't. Adult men (to pass from metaphor to literal statement) can manage to shoulder the financial burden of helping their children. Human children are, by biological design, relatively helpless and unable to support themselves.

The incidents you cited as successes of the fathers' movement involve proof of nonpaternity, which does not in any way alter the system, it simply helps prevent instances of injustice under that system's own rules.

What you seem to want is the liberty to have irresponsible promiscuous sex without any risks or consequences at all. You can't. Deal with it.

Oh, BTW. A lot of the "staring at tits" business has to do with the context of being in bars. Although women aren't as visually oriented as men, I get looks, too, but usually it feels different. When a man stares at a woman in a bar, assuming there's any intent behind it at all he's there to pick up a complete stranger for sex that doesn't touch her as a person. I've occasionally gotten attention like that, and I found it insulting. Of course women want to be found attractive by men, just as men want to be found attractive by women, but they want to be related to as people, of whom sexuality is only a part, not like a mindless, will-less semen receptacle.

Originally Posted by Brian Rush

All of this costs money. All of it costs time. To place that responsibility entirely on the mother may satisfy your atomistic, hyper-individualistic, community-be-damned libertarian soul, but as a practical measure it's crazy.

*expletive deleted* This hyper-atomistic, community-be-damned libertarian soul spends a lot of his time doing pretty fucking uncharacteristic things, it seems, like reading bedtime stories to eight-year-old crack babies who can't stop shaking because they have almost no body fat or wiping shit off walls after an incontinent autistic man flings his soiled diaper across the room. I live my principles, and that means doing some pretty nasty and/or emotionally taxing jobs because they need doing, even though I would never think to force anyone to do them against their will. Goodness must come from within; it can't be forced on people by fiat. I could have gotten some soul-deadening corporate job in a cubicle farm making two- or three-times what I earn in human services, but my integrity won't allow it, nor will my damnable sense of justice permit me to waste my time in useless labor when I could be making some tiny positive impact on the community I "hate" so very much. My opposition to compulsory service is not a rejection of service, but of compulsion. Compulsion breeds resentment, which is toxic to any collective enterprise. People must come to service on their own terms and in their own time, or it's not but servitude.

I would like to address the rest of your post, but I can't see that leading anywhere constructive given the irreconcilability of our worldviews and the state of mind into which you have put me. I've been at this particular debate for a couple of days already, it's the most worked up I've gotten in a long time, and I think I need to back away before I say something that draws the moderator's ire.

Originally Posted by Arkham '80

My opposition to compulsory service is not a rejection of service, but of compulsion. Compulsion breeds resentment, which is toxic to any collective enterprise. People must come to service on their own terms and in their own time, or it's not but servitude.

So when do you compel your four-year-old to pick up his room? Or do you just sit around and wait for him to come to that decision on his own?

Compulsion, or coercion, or involuntary servitude, or whatever you want to call it, is a developmental fact of life. Kids have to learn how to obey orders before they develop the intellectual capacity to question them. Otherwise you're giving in to their narcissism and pretty soon you have an entire subculture that feels its entitled to anything it wants, with no consequences. You have to pass through conventionality before you reach postconventionality. Experience and reason teach you which orders should be rejected and which should be obeyed.

You say "compulsion breeds resentment." Yeah, sure, the four-year-old resents having to pick up his toys. Big deal. He does it anyway because it needs to get done, and he won't learn responsibility by watching other people do the job. With maturity, the child doesn't need reminders, and learns to clean up his own messes without prompts.

Originally Posted by The Rani

You seriously can't think of any exceptions to this rule?

No. To do otherwise, I think, would cross into relativism.

Originally Posted by The Grey Badger

Wrong about courage. Courage can become a vice when it crosses the line into foolhardiness, as Aristotle pointed out and General Custer proved.

I've been explicitly positing courage as the mean. So "too much" courage isn't considered courage at all from an Aristotelian perspective.

Originally Posted by The Rani

Not undesirable, just not possible.

Well, there is never going to be a society where there simply are no problems, but I don't think that the 'impossibility' of the endpoint negates the possibility of movement toward that goal. So I think the question of whether action toward the feminist endpoint is desirable is more important than whether the endpoint is possible.

Originally Posted by Arkham '80

Put it to arbitration. Dragging "responsibility" into the discussion, it would be in the interests of men and women under such a system to address these things beforehand (just as it is in the best interests of people now to draft wills before they die, to avoid contentious struggles over inheritance in the event of an accident), which entails rather more forethought and restraint than is fostered by current law.

You have the most peculiar views I have ever encountered on the web. You call yourself a libertarian. Libertarianism is a philosophy for life's winners. People who would kill themselves before they would let themselves become your heroin-using friend.

You are a libertarian advocating for life's losers, the very people whose needs are ignored in a libertarian world.

I see poor young men and women make all sorts of poor choices. The fact is, these poor young men choose to have their kids. They want kids because it proves their masculinity. They don't care about the consequences because they don't have to face them. Either the baby momma raises them on public assistance or their own mother will.

Only after Mom is no longer able deal with any new kids they have will they come to realize that having kids you cannot afford is a damnfool thing to do. And then they might revise history a bit to make it look that it was something that "happened to them" instead of something they did to themselves. How you described your friend's involvement with heroin is similar: you make it sound like it was something that happened to him as opposed to something he chose to do.

You want to give young, poor foolish men an out by letting them off the hook for their sexual conquests, but you want to stick young poor foolish women with the full responsibility. But they aren't any more responsible than the sperm-donors who impregnated them. In practical terms this means you will saddle taxpayers with those kids.

And if you reply, oh no, there will be no assistance for them, then you condemn their children for the sins of their parents. And to that I say, rather than destroy the lives of their children to give an out for their fathers, I'll destroy the lives of the fathers. This view is not due to rampant feminism or feminist judges. It's the natural (i.e. biological) POV for successful men vis a vis unsuccessful men who have nevertheless beat them in the reproduction Olympics. Look at Justin. Here's a guy who took Horace Greely's advice and went West as a young man to seek his fortune, did OK and is raring to go with new projects. You just know a guy that that is going to be a big success. He has three kids. Now consider the toothless, alcoholic, never-held-a-job in-his-life loser who functioned as sperm donor for two of my grandchildren. He has six kids by three different women. The next generation will have twice as many of his genes, as it will have of Justin's genes. See any problem with that?

And yet you would grant absolution of responsibility for the loser do he can go on to breed still more. Under our current system he has spend a goodly amount of time in jail, and has been denied dental care and so has no teeth and is an old man at 35. He may have had six kids while he was young and had teeth, but he's not having any more. You would have him continue outbreeding the Justin's of the world.

There is a simple solution to this problem. Restore public assistance for men and women who are not parents on the condition that are infertile, either through medications like Depo Provera or surgical sterilization. Poor young infertile men can never be saddled with a child they cannot afford. The state will avoid being saddled with supporting his descendents, and so can afford to support him (unlike his genes, he will not live forever).

This policy will mimic what happened in the past, when the poor did not reproduce themselves to any great extent.

Originally Posted by Mikebert

You have the most peculiar views I have ever encountered on the web. You call yourself a libertarian. Libertarianism is a philosophy for life's winners. People who would kill themselves before they would let themselves become your heroin-using friend.

You are a libertarian advocating for life's losers, the very people whose needs are ignored in a libertarian world.

This sentiment is so fucking frustrating and I've had to deal with it so often. What a sad state of affairs.

Originally Posted by Arkham '80

I expect that the families of the starry-eyed lovers -- and there is no reason to presume mere male-female pairings, when male-male, male-female-female, male-male-female, male-male-female-female, etc., combinations are equally plausible -- would involve themselves in the drafting of the actual contracts.

You are assuming a functionality that doesn't exist in the population from which you draw your examples.

Originally Posted by Arkham '80

I hate this canard. Yes, people must take responsibility. But most men are not saints, shit happens, and not everyone is equally equipped -- physically, mentally, emotionally -- to deal. I'm not big on Christianity, but I do have respect for Jesus, who said "Let he who is without sin cast the first stone." It's easy to pontificate about responsibility when it's all purely theoretical, to pass judgment on strangers and snub one's nose at human frailty. I do not, however, understand or condone the impulse -- which seems to be quite common in this country -- to kick people who are down and tell them it's their own fault for conveniently placing themselves so low to the ground.

You are a libertarian, which says people should be free to do as they please and let the cards fall where they may. If free people choose to be down, then they should not complain when they don't like it.

I am not a libertarian. I agree with the thrust of your sentiment, but I give you a hard time because you call yourself a libertarian. By doing so you ask for this canard.

Libertarianism assumes that people can make their own decisions (to use heroin or not) and so must (and should) face the full consequences of the decisions they make (no excuses). Your statement contradicts what libertarianism is about.

Originally Posted by Arkham '80

Feminists will never admit this, but marriage is ultimately a boon to children, and by extension their mothers, even though it comes at the cost of female sexual license, because it secures paternal investment, which cannot otherwise be counted upon.

It takes two to tango, female sexual license must also involve male sexual license.

Originally Posted by Arkham '80

From an evolutionary standpoint, a man who is tricked into unwittingly supporting another man's children has been defrauded in the most fundamental way imaginable, yet this is considered inconsequential next to the woman's "right" to dispose of her sex in whatever manner she pleases. This deplorable state of affairs has led, not unpredictably, to widespread skepticism among young men regarding marriage and fatherhood, and a growing unwillingness (arrived at through rational calculation, not some deficiency of character) to commit to any sort of binding domestic partnership.

Males have always been cuckolded, in huge numbers for millions of years. We have evolved for this reality. To use it to explain the behavior of the males of your generation is nonsense.

Originally Posted by Arkham '80

I do not, however, understand or condone the impulse -- which seems to be quite common in this country -- to kick people who are down and tell them it's their own fault for conveniently placing themselves so low to the ground.

It's not just this country. In Iran there is a saying, "If you meet a blind beggar, kick him! Why should you be kinder than God?" And in India and Indian-influenced cultures, the idea of karma is sooo open to that kind of abuse. ("He must have done something absolutely awful in a past life, which is why he suffers so badly now.")

Originally Posted by Arkham '80

Men are now wholly at the mercy of their wives, who may dissolve the marriage without cause at any time and still retain the benefits of a male provider, thanks to the aggressive intervention of the state.

And husbands can dissolve their marriage at any time and retain the benefits of a female provider.

In my generation the men outearned their wives and so women tended to benefit from the way divorce is structureed. When I went to college, there were more men than women. In looking at my siblings and in-laws, all the husbands earn more than their wives.

In your generation women have more education and are likely going to outearn men. For example, my step daughter is in her residency. Her boyfriend is an insurance investigator. Should they marry she will be the primary breadwinner, he says he will quit his job and stay home when they have kids because it makes no financial sense for her to do so. Amongst our foster children, the women generally earn more than their men. My Little Brother from the Big Brother program makes much less than his wife. The world is changing.

Originally Posted by The Rani

Yah, I've seen that most clearly with boys/teenage males raised without the presence of a father (or father-figure) in their lives. There's something they provide that moms (or mother-figures) simply can't. Single moms do much better with girls.

Have you adequate controls? For example, women outnumber men in college. It could be that fatherless boys are damaged in some way that causes them to drop out in greater numbers. There are single fathers raising children. Do their sons attend college in higher percentages than their daughters? Have any studies been done?

There is still the question of why so many single moms? At some point it must have been boys raised with a father who neglected to provide the same role to their own sons.

Originally Posted by Arkham '80

And one of the costs is the corresponding freedom of men to tell women to fuck themselves when they come seeking support for their unilateral reproductive decisions.

They are not unilateral. Why do woman involved with a man who they support, choose to have his children? It's not so they can access his earning power, since he has none, she is supporting him.

Let's look at my "kids" (including foster kids). Kid #1, had two kids with the now toothless guy (he had teeth then). When he was functioning as sperm donor, he lived with his mother, how supported him. Today he lives with baby mama #3, who supports him.

Kid #2 has had three kids by three sperm donors. She has always worked. SD #1 was with her for a brief time, but he hit her and she threw him out. He's in Ohia now. SD #2 was married and lives with his wife. SD #3 was the guy who was living with her, and whom she was supporting, up until a few months ago

Kid #3 (whom we adopted) has had two kids by 2 SDs and has another on the way by SD #3. We don't know who SD #1. SD #2 moved in with her biofamily as "her man" (he needed a place to live as he had no income) and together they had the second child. When they expressed an interest in moving into a crack house, my wife and I intervened and tried to help them and the two kids make it as a family, spending about $10,000 and a lot of effort on the part of my wife in the attempt. It failed, they split up. We managed to get the older child adopted by another could since his father was unknown. The younger child, call him J, could not be adopted since his father was known and he would never consent to an adoption. So J went to live with his paternal grandma and her live-in guy who doesn't work and whom she supports. When grandma took him out of school and moved into a hotel frequented by pedophiles J had to come back to my daughter and he lives with her now and her current unemployed boyfriend who she supports, who has now become SD #3.

You see the pattern?

Originally Posted by Arkham '80

What "shit" specifically? You could be taken in this instance to mean: a) male-female complementarity; b) feminist rejection of the same in favor of male-female interchangeability; c) the conclusions concerning "patriarchy" that result from this rejection.

It's A. What do lower socioeconomic females gains from their males. As far as I can tell, it is (1) companionship (2) a sexual partner (3) someone to watch the kids when not drunk

These are traditionally reasons for men to support a woman, but today, its the other way around.

You are assuming that men (on average) in your generation still have anything to offer women in terms of support.

Originally Posted by The Rani

They're not ignored. Libertarians just have different ideas of what is helpful and what isn't.

They aren't? Can you show me otherwise? My understanding is that libertarians are meritocratic. That is, people should receive the benefits their talents allow them to gain, nothing more or less. From a strictly meritocratic POV, doesn't it make sense that society should let nature take its course with the inferior? I didn't say libertarians bear any animus towards the inferior, merely that they are necessarily unconcerned about them.

Originally Posted by Mikebert

They aren't? Can you show me otherwise? My understanding is that libertarians are meritocratic. That is, people should receive the benefits their talents allow them to gain, nothing more or less. From a strictly meritocratic POV, doesn't it make sense that society should let nature take its course with the inferior? I didn't say libertarians bear any animus towards the inferior, merely that they are necessarily unconcerned about them.

This is a common misperception among liberals, which many libertarians do a poor job of combating because of their recent tendency to ally with conservatives. Meritocracy is in no way essential to libertarianism. The supposed obsession with meritocracy stems from the fact that many of the most visible violations of liberty committed by governments are to provide some group with wealth they would not otherwise* possess. Due to the long alliance with conservatives, libertarian attention has tended to focus on government spending on the poor. Thus it looks like libertarianism is a philosophy based on the idea that the poor should be left to starve.

The correct insight is that the reason we have so many poor people in need of welfare is because of the far more substantial interventions on behalf of the ruling class.


* The word "otherwise" is tricky. Many people, even some (generally older) libertarians, seem to think of our economy as having been largely free until FDR arrived on the scene. While the U.S. government certainly spent less money before the New Deal, that is not an accurate barometer of government intervention. Before FDR, redistribution of wealth was only occurring in one direction -- up. Furthermore, simply turning off the welfare state and changing nothing else would be catastrophic to our society. Unfortunately, because libertarians have tended to talk about welfare first before explaining any other policy ideas they've generally given bad impressions to liberals.

Originally Posted by Child of Socrates

So when do you compel your four-year-old to pick up his room? Or do you just sit around and wait for him to come to that decision on his own?

Compulsion, or coercion, or involuntary servitude, or whatever you want to call it, is a developmental fact of life. Kids have to learn how to obey orders before they develop the intellectual capacity to question them. Otherwise you're giving in to their narcissism and pretty soon you have an entire subculture that feels its entitled to anything it wants, with no consequences. You have to pass through conventionality before you reach postconventionality. Experience and reason teach you which orders should be rejected and which should be obeyed.

You say "compulsion breeds resentment." Yeah, sure, the four-year-old resents having to pick up his toys. Big deal. He does it anyway because it needs to get done, and he won't learn responsibility by watching other people do the job. With maturity, the child doesn't need reminders, and learns to clean up his own messes without prompts.

Yep, Kohlberg's levels of moral development. Kids have to go through the "I must to this so I won't be punished" phase before they get to the "I must do this because it is the right thing to do" phase. Kids need to be taught boundaries that shouldn't be crossed, exactly what the Silents forgot to teach their Xer kids.