In a series of comments between Draginol and I on his thread of the analogy between a Neighborhood Association and a Nation, Draginol said the following:
I believe people should help their fellow citizens in time of need. I do not, however, believe that people should be forced to help their fellow citizens at the point of a gun.
And he also said this:
The family who has more children than they can afford demanding that I pay for the health insurance for their children is an infringement on my family's inalienable rights.
I was about to respond saying this:
Strangely enough, i agree with all of that. Where we differ is this: what do we do about those people who do these destructive things like being lazy and don’t work or just produce more kids than they can care for?
And that is not the only problems these people represent. You see, they get sick, and they get hungry, and they become criminals among other few more bad things.
Then I discovered that it will be a very very long response. So I decided to respond in this article. I think it is a very good exercise for all of us. At least I hope so.
..... let's say that YOU and I and many others like us who are not doing these bad things live in the same housing development. It is a nice one with great-looking homes with very nice market value. but these people are in it too because the developer did not evict and demolish existing houses on the parcel of land he bought to build this development. These people were not so bad when we moved in. few years later, there was an economic downturn and some of them lost their jobs, then some more and things started to go downhill for these people and now they are doing the things described above.
Now ... what do you think we should do about these people? keep in mind the following:
A- We can’t evict them. They pay their mortgage and fees.
B- We can’t move out. We love this neighborhood and we cant find any place better than this one.
C-No help of any kind is available from outside the Development. This development is self-sufficient in everything.
These people, don’t maintain their property at all, their kids are ignorant and sick and they all are hungry and stand begging on the corners. Our homes' values are going down fast .....
You are the NA president and we give you all the authorities you need.
You investigate and discover that they have no income other than to pay for mortgage and fees and some food and some utilities. they have nothing else and no one outside the development wants to offer any work for them.
We are discussing many proposals to solve this problem, here is mine:
1- Get the healthy and able bodies to work for us (maids, gardeners, street sweepers, secretaries, drivers ...etc) even if we don’t need the work and we deduct the cost of maintaining their properties from their wages.
2- Treat the sick and get them to work too when they get well.
3- Collect all these kids put them in a class in the NA building and hire a teacher for them.
4- Start an adult-education and job-training program for the adults so they can get work.
5- We all share the cost of the above according to our income.
6- The NA President is responsible for implementing the above program and must report to us on the progress or the problems with recommendations.
Ok all you guys from the right and the left what is your proposal. Change mine, discard it or get your own …. Just tell us what we do to solve our problem. Restrictions A ,B and C above strictly apply. No exceptions. You can do anything else other than these 3 restrictions.