…, but stupid is always majority.

Until it’s not. Until there are more poor but well-educated parents who educate their children in turn.

In Arabic, we have a word with no direct English equivalent: tarbiya (تربية). I think the closest translation might be “custodianship of upbringing,” but it describes the dynamics of learning rather than the mechanics. It’s a bidirectional process (though not everyone will admit that)—it doesn’t just teach children how to solve a specific problem; it teaches them how to develop their own way of tackling an unfamiliar one.

At my disgusting (in hindsight) highschool the poor got bullied. So everyone tried their best to appear "middle class". Stupid as fuck, but i heard worse stories from other schools.

I remember being bullied and being called “the genius”, sometimes genuinely by adults, and most of the time sarcastically by other kids. To clarify, the exact alias used was “عبقرينو” (which is the Arabic name for the Disney character Gyro Gearloose), and I used to hate it. It affected my behaviour because I had to mask and adjust my image in order to avoid the moment where I answer questions so thoroughly or ask for clarifications that demonstrate genuine insight that caused my teachers to point me out as an exemplar amongst my classes, because that’s what starts the bullying cycle.

Now here one could argue that bullying is a purely negative experience that should never ever be allowed to happen; or look at this thread and realise how much I’ve been shaped by that experience and see me smiling at this very moment as I reminisce on those days. Both views are valid, and both evoke a different perspective separated by 3 decades. But only the latter considers how life itself can be a teacher, and how it pressed an intelligent vessel into the required shape to hold wisdom.

I do not regret or resent those experiences now. I used to, but not anymore.

Do you not feel responsible? Or is it more like in other species? Here you are, enjoy life or not, that's 100% up to you, but I gave you the chance.

Oh, I feel accountable for the deeds of my children, but only up to the point whence they learn to say no.

For perspective: I grew up pretty spoiled. What I wanted I got. I got my own fucking large flat when I was 14 or so. Half of the rooms were empty because I didn't know what to do with them. So financially golden, but that was all, they never thought me anything useful.

…

Gave the business up, and made another one. Never had contact with them again and they cut me out of their will.

So, that probably fuels your argument, as coming from money can even be worse than growing up poor.

Actually it reframes it in much better terms: value is subjective based on need, a bottle of mineral water you’d walk into a 7/11 to buy on your way to buy a PlayStation is more valuable than its weight in gold to someone trapped in a gold mine. I’ve seen people who go around gathering cardboard and aluminium soda cans from garbage piles they then sell and exchange for their daily bread. That’s a closed trade loop of sorts, and it’s more honest than banking. A parent’s job is to provide what’s needed, not fulfil wishes. A child needs a phone for communication, they don’t need the latest iPhone with an AI chip to do that. A child needs nutrition, not snacks. Coddling is just as bad as apathy, and both are just as bad as being toxic towards the child.

How is the ability to feeding ones offspring be a reason for doing amoral stuff? It's there because of a decision I made (or failed to make or whatever). Simple survival first?

If every genome capable of spontaneously developing a sophisticated moral framework that recognises what’s wrong with its upbringing refused to pass along those genes, what’s going to have a better chance to reproduce?

Dito. As long AS respectful and fruitful for one or both. So in that spirit, I rather think you're one of the cool dads where money isn't that important, but your love and dedication.

But. In tendency - you probably wouldn't try to argue here - there's a clear correlation between wealth and misery in regard of kids.

Thank you. And yeah, there’s always a correlation, just not where we often think it is. :P

As anecdotal argument: I work, for free in my sparetime, in a shelter/helpcenter for abused or otherwise damaged adults. The correlation is very very strong here. The poorer the more fucked up the parents were, the more brutal the abuse, the more broken the adults...

I commend your efforts. And trust me, those people need you and people like you.

But depending on where you are, geographcially,, there surely are fixed prices on things you, or especially your hypothetical kid, needs, wants or craves. Period. No amount of poetic well phrased ideology is changing that. Unless a certain percentage of people think exactly alike. And that percentage needs to higher than It will ever even approximate to in both our lifetimes.

Why are you concerning yourself with your kids’ needs? Your impression of a parent’s responsibility towards their progeny is what’s wrong in that equation. I was born in a “lower class” neighbourhood, worse than a rural village even because it’s surrounded by heavy industry and zoning laws weren’t even a thing back then. I paid the price for someone else’s mistake with my own well-being. My dad couldn’t get me everything I wanted, and my late mom had to leave her career as a teacher early to raise me and my siblings when it became obvious she couldn’t do both at the same time. That was a sacrifice she made, but not a compromise. I am both an excellent and terrible example regarding this issue, because I am very difficult to convince of anything. What she tried to deliberately instil in me rarely ever stuck, but what I learnt was the meta-process; because I challenged her at every point. That’s what I am instilling in my own children, now that I have my own. I don’t lecture them or force them to do things, I spend my time raising their capabilities to fish, not to eat the fish I bring home.

HM. Enlighten me, where are the parking-tickets ever coming due for me? I just park a bit more expensive.

Also, even if those get to me mentally or karma-wise (if you believe in such nonsense), it would to the poor too. On top of a fine being hurting already.

Karma? No. I won’t call it that because that’s a human term for an observation we have no reference frame to measure, and it lives at the fringe of equiprobable crossroads.

Besides. Haven't even tried to discuss your meme to begin with (nothing wrong with it, depending if you're pro or contra LLM), just asked why kids are always the excuse/reason for everything. If you were forced into procreation and abortion was not allowed/available/whatever and you're still trying to be your best dad: Kudos to you.

Thank you.I have two kids, the eldest is my stepdaughter and the youngest involved less steps. No forcing was involved. :P

Bad parents are legion. Still wouldn't really change my point. I would not want to be in a dilemma where I have to decide working for or with the devil or not feeding my kids. Hence I remain free of such burdens and also keep my freedom to make my own moral and ethical rules and apply to them. Bending those morals because I have a child, puts me into responsibility, not the kids ("who would feed them, if...."). I did that.

That’s your subjective projection, based on your current situation and every experience you’ve ever been through. While mine are different, I can’t force you to accept or even fully recognise them. Both our views aren’t antagonistic in nature, because they’re viewing the problem from different perspectives and seeing different aspects of it.

Not implying you were a bad person, parent, whatever. No offence meant at all.

None taken! Discussions like these are a delight for me!

The trick in the meme is simpler than it looks: they didn’t break the rules, they changed the yardstick. Make the ruler long enough and a billion-dollar fine measures out as pocket change. That’s the whole con — not cheating the game, just quietly redefining the units it’s scored in.

Here’s the part nobody says out loud: you can change the yardstick too, in the honest direction. That “embarrassing old phone,” an ordinary passport, a skill you don’t think twice about — none of those have a fixed value. It depends entirely on where you’re standing. Take them somewhere they’re rare and they’re suddenly worth a lot. You didn’t break a rule; you just stopped measuring yourself with someone else’s ruler.

The difference between you and the guys laughing in that photo is one thing, and it’s the whole thing: a line you won’t cross even when you easily could. They deleted theirs. That’s not freedom — it’s how you end up unable to tell a small wrong from an enormous one, because you threw out the ruler that measures wrongs in the first place.

And here’s the catch they forgot: you can shrink the fine, but you can’t shrink the damage. The real bill gets kept somewhere their accounting can’t reach, and it always comes due. They look like they’re winning. They’re just early.

(And the clock’s ticking on that — the rest of the world is starting to look at that particular country through a very particular set of shades.)

My viewpoint is simple: reproduction is the necessity of letting a society explore its potential. If we decide that only happy people should procreate in compassion with our own perception of what happiness should be, but if you set the criteria for who gets to be part of the next generation, you’re restricting what the future of an entire species should be based on your current situation, that’s the entirety of who and what you are.

If you do not? You’re inviting the solution to the issue of misery to exist, at a future point in time you likely won’t witness in person, but the only way for that to happen is to not gatekeep potential in the name of mercy. That’s the hedging strategy of a poor parent that can’t afford toys but has the capability to make a baby, a bacterium in unfamiliar conditions, and a country trying to stay sovereign, or even some hope that wants to reserve a place in Pandora’s futures.