RoR: Forum

I'm sure to buy a candy bar, box of cookies, or can of popcorn, from youths raising money for things I know and understand. I like that bigger organizations (Scouts, etc) offer patrons value for value in some way. Sitting around with a big jar won't get much attention from me, either.

Post 1

Monday, May 4, 2009 - 6:26am

I'd like to think that those examples used are in the minority. I'm always seeing kid's league sports teams and schools fundraising with impromptu car washes. Plus, I think most elementary PTA's generally have quite aggressive fundraisers, selling one product or another to support improvements at their children's schools (in fact, there is an entire industry built up around it). All of these usually actively engage the children in the work.

That said, it is still important to guard against the type of work ethic erosion Jake mentions.

jt

Post 2

Monday, May 4, 2009 - 7:29am

Jay, sorry for the confusion: I didn't mean whatsoever to imply that all fundraisers today are done in the manner I've mentioned here. I know many fundraisers are still legitimate value for value situations. My point, I suppose, is simply that one instance of a tag day is too many, and while tag days may be in the minority, the "Take care of me because I shouldn't have to earn my way through life" mindset is all too prevalent in America.

Jacob Hamilton Moore

Post 3

Tuesday, May 5, 2009 - 7:24am

We All want something better for our children. The ultimate goal is to have everything and do nothing. It is the same with society in general. Many people really do want to help the �less fortunate.� Unfortunately for the rest of us the load on society occasioned by the intentional �less fortunate� or lazy or stupid is that those who really care do so, for the most part, without any interest in getting down in the trenches. They would rather ask you for money or use their political influence to have governments at every level rob you.

I live in a Third world country where there is an excess of absolutely untrained labor. Now it doesn�t take much to get up and work in the field for your daily bread. But this is taken to the extreme here. I hired a worker from across the road at my property. He was to plant and maintain garden areas that were to be experimental for the purpose of determining the acceptability of various plants to he local environment. My intention was to grow varieties of plants unknown here and then to distribute seeds to neighbors who were interested in the produce and cultivating their own in order to save what little money they have. When no one was actively at the property absolutely nothing was done. Eventually tall of the plants died.

The man, his wife and 3 or 4 children live off government welfare which, while not enough to support any one of them is, by sheer weight of numbers, a real drain on the economy.

Interestingly enough this man has +/- 25 acres of land with plenty of water and a year round growing season. Yet he is simply too lazy too get up and do anything with it. He won�t even go to work when he is paid.

This is what the Socialists have led the productive world into Misplaced compassion and an unwillingness to get their own hands dirty showing anyone that there can be a better future has brought the US and the rest of the world to the brink of destruction.

The US has forced �Democracy� (another concept might be mob rule) down the throat of any number of nations around the world. This was mostly done to assure their influence in the democratic governments they formed.

But an unexpected benefit came along. At some point every government realizes that there is only so much money you can extort from the working class for the benefit of the ruling political class and the �Less fortunate.� At that point the government sells the public the idea that all the social failures occurred because of capitalists and their greed.

What no one in government seems to be able to see is that the welfare class grows more hungry every minute and that load exceeds the increase in basic productivity that he working class can support. Then comes government with a solution � Inflation. Every year everyone at the base of the working class is guaranteed a raise in pay � thanks to the government sponsored Unions. This raise puts a few more pennies in the real worker�s pocket but, thanks to �progressive� taxes it is mostly absorbed by the IRS and subsequently there is no real raise but, due to inflation you actually lose ground. Of course the government can�t allow this to penetrate so they raise the poverty level each year to transfer more money �Fairly� to the welfare class.

When the whole thing become unmanageable the government must finally step in to the benefit of their wage slaves and decide that Socialism doesn�t work.

At that point, in their infinite wisdom the ultimate solution arrives in the form of Communism. Everyone owns everything. And the government gets to manage it for them. Welcome to 21st Century America.

You arrived at full blown Socialism in the 30s with a Democrat in the White House. .

On 23 June, 2005 with perhaps the worst president in the History of the US in the White House you got full blown communism when the Supreme Court decided that it was Constitutional for any government level to seize property that was privately owned for the use of a tenant that would pay more in property taxes.

One activist group tried to seize a Supreme Court Justice�s home for sale to a developer � of course that couldn�t happen.

I remember a slogan from my childhood/ Back then � well over 50 years ago � it was a concept of personal achievement. Today it is a symbol of Government gone rogue; �Only in America>� You gotta luv it.

In my country outright theft, armed robbery and home invasion are the national sport. At leas there you can protect yourself � if you can afford ti. You can have armed guards at you home or business and if you don�t have guards at our home you can repel invaders with whatever force you have available. Unfortunately our �so called Leftist� president has adopted the US model for population control and order maintenance. He is in the process of disarming private citizens for the exclusive benefit of the career criminals. There are mandatory gatherings for social functions that require attendance by all and the abandonment of you r property. Life here is cheap. But there are still some vestiges of freedom. Firearms ownership and maintenance is not a �Right� here. You have it there � Guard it. The class war is coming. Pick off the politicians first. Once your Storm troopers realize they have no leadership they will fall apart like a sand castle in a tidal wave of Revolution to restore the Constitution.

Great Idea - Perhhsps training in something other than Military Basic could be accomplished under your presiedent's new forced labor act - perhaps the tykes could be taught to tie strings to the Tags others are learning to print. But, of course yo'll have to excuse the spelling errors on teh Tags. I ask your indulgence in this message. I am well over 60 and have nerve damage from Diabetes and my hans are crippled by gout. Not excuses. Just facts. Takes me a little longer to type and get it close to right.

Post 4

Thursday, May 7, 2009 - 8:27am

Thank you for the informative perspective Frank. It's appreciated for sure.

Jacob Hamilton Moore

Post 5

Thursday, May 7, 2009 - 7:27pm

I had the great good fortune to have grown up in a time when it was expected that kids would work, pulling at least some fair portion of their share in the family. Unfortunately, my dad was at heart an authoritarian who would say things like, "Well, communism is a great ideal, but people are just not good enough to achieve it." Or, harking back to his halcion days in the army in WWII, "In the army, you don't question orders; you just DO IT."
So, I worked like a dog, literally digging ditches in the rock hard clay of Georgia summer heat at age 8, but not for money, just because he would whip me if I didn't. It was my duty and all of us in his family were supposed to derive our meaning in life from our selfless committment to that family.
I did not get along very well with him. In fact, I got along so badly that he would suggest every so often that perhaps I should consider the possibility that he could have me incarcerated in juvenile hall. However, as a measure of desperation over my increasing nihilistic rebellion, I think, one summer, when I was 12 years old, I was sent up North to the tender care of our relatives. My aunt was a wannabe science fiction author, and had an enormous collection of paperbacks in the genre stuffed into her closets. I thought I was in heaven.
One of the books was "Atlas Shrugged." I read every other sf novel first, because AS looked too much like serious literature.
When I did finally read it, virtually non-stop, I discovered a new way to look at "work." In fact, I became a workaholic. I took over the job of repainting the huge ancient family mansion and put in 40+ hour weeks of scraping and painting, and my grandfather paid me the same $1 per hour that he had been paying the local kids. It was WONDERFUL! The absolute joy of making money! I had NEVER had any money of my own. Now I had over a hundred dollars, even after the buying binges!
Then, late in the summer, my dad and the rest of the family showed up, on vacation, and he promptly confiscated most of my money, on the grounds that I owed everything to "the family." And then, there was the tithe I owed to the church, as well. He was lucky that I had discovered reasons to keep living.

(Edited by Phil Osborn on 5/07, 7:29pm)

Post 6

Friday, May 8, 2009 - 6:08am

Damn Phil, despite the uplifting part about finding Atlas, that's about the most depressing post I've ever read on any forum! You need a hug, my brother!

JHM

Post 7

Saturday, May 9, 2009 - 2:32pm

Thanks, Jake. I will pretend that it happened... The hug.

Although, I could certainly cite worse cases.

One really nice guy I met in college spent his life recording music and buying the latest state-of-the-art dolby cassette decks, etc. He was very quiet and rarely talked about anything personal. Finally, however, I got his story.

He had always been considered by his family to be something of an oddball, mostly, he said, because as a kid he never could seem to figure out which of the many family lies he wasn't supposed to talk about. Or maybe it had something to do with his position in the inheritance hierarchy. His family was quite wealthy.

So, apparently as a joke, one day several of the young men in his family dressed up in duck costumes and then surrounded him, waddling and going "quack, quack, quack," over and over, until he had a complete nervous breakdown.

At that point, they had him declared incurably insane, particularly when he tried to describe how his relatives pretended to be ducks - prima facie evidence right there, and he was incarcerated in a private mental hospital on a permanent basis and subjected to regular drug and electrical shock "therapy." He was just a kid. This went on for several years, I believe, until, by great good fortune, his entire adult family died in some fire or other accident. (I don't recall what.)

Shortly thereafter, due perhaps to the influence of the family attorney in the process of looking for heirs, he suddenly found himself released, alone, and with more money than he had any conceivable need for. The problem was that by then he was seriously mentally tweaked and had a real problem emotionally relating to anyone. So he collected music.

For decades in Georgia, it was common practice to have inconvenient people, especially wealthy elders, simply put away on the order of a single doctor, with no hearing or any recourse.

Or, there is the recent real-life-story movie, "The Changling," produced and directed by Clint Eastwood and starring Angelina Jolie. It's well worth watching. Really bad things happen. The worse problem is when people try to pretend otherwise. Then the problems don't ever get solved and the victims feel like they're invisable - like they don't exist.

Post 8

Wednesday, May 13, 2009 - 7:59pm

Oops, broke the thread. Darn.

Ok, in compensation for my sin, here's a great reference:

http://www.behaviormodsuperkids.com/AEH.html

Actually, this guy, Alan Harrison, spoke at one of the Future of Freedom conferences that I helped organize in the early '80's.
He's not an objectivist. In fact, he's a Christian, last time I checked. And, looking at his site above, he is probably his own worst enemy as far as marketing is concerned. Be brave. Look for the logic. Logic is logic, even from a Christian.

However, regardless, Harrison's system works, by all accounts. Very briefly, Harrison started it in the OC public schools in the '60's, where he was SO successful that the Teachers Union threatened a walkout if he was even allowed to discuss his system with other teachers. I actually read about it in a newspaper on the East Coast.

Basically, he instituted a monetary system in his classes, in which everything was for sale, and it was run by the kids. Everyone had a bank account in class dollars, and kids could earn money by doing work, whether passing a test or writing an essay, or sweeping the floor, or via private deals with other students to tutor them. Discipline was via trial and jury and cost the miscreant in class dollars. The dollars were backed up with trips to Disneyland.

It worked so well that Harrison in his second year teaching asked for all the problem kids, the complete incorrigibles that nobody else would touch - and he had them scoring 50% higher than the norm within one school year, with ZERO discipline problems. As I recall, his third year he asked for and got a double-sized class, again with all the rejects and problem kids, and did the same thing again. The next year, he asked for another doubling, at which point the Teachers Union started getting scared. One teacher successfully teaching 200 kids? J.H. Christ! The Union dues gone!!!!

The OC Register ran a whole series of articles back then, expounding on how great Harrison's system was, and the School Board was solidly behind him, at which point he fell getting on the bus to one of his reward outings and broke his arm. The Teacher's Union cancelled his insurance, claiming that it was not an authorized school trip, leaving him disabled and owing huge bucks to the hospital, and then they threatened the School Board with a walk-out if any other teachers were allowed to use Harrison's system or even learn about it. They wanted a total gag on Harrison.

OK. I'm not a fan of schools, much less state (so-called "public") incarceration and indoctrination facilities. Something that makes them actually work gets mixed reviews from me at best. Harrison's system did work, really well, and it doesn't make me particularly happy that it did.

However, after he left the school system in disgust, he went on to extend the application of his system to re-organizing the home. And there, his system really hit its stride. Imagine a sound and equitable financial sytem in the home, in which everyone pulls their weight and the family runs like a highly profitable business - without taking away from any of the legitimate and invaluable emotional rewards of family life. Again, by all accounts that I've seen, Harrison succeeded.

Check it out.

Hopefully that expiated my guilt...

Post 9

Thursday, May 14, 2009 - 4:51am

As an interesting aside related to the original thread. My daughter does the pre-scouts thing, the daisies. I recently found out that they are prohibited from using online resources, such as craigslist, to sell the cookies. The reason? Some kid tried it and was spectacularly successful....

Post 10

Thursday, May 14, 2009 - 5:23pm

Then there was the 12 yr. old who I found demonstrating the FIRST graphic adventure on a VIC-20, sometime around '79, which he had written himself, or the trio of teens too young to drive legally who wrote the multi-tasking GEOS operating system that ended up bundled with several applications, including a desktop publishing program - on the C-64. Or, more recently, the elementary school kid who made a fortune on the stock market, simply by making multiple predictions and then focusing net attention on the times he was right, so that people started following his predictions, which enabled him to place his bets and then watch them become a self-fulfilling prophecy...

Post 11

Saturday, May 16, 2009 - 8:14am

Phil: That post about Harrison was particularly interesting, and I'm about to check out his site right after posting this reply.

Ryan: We wouldn't want kids to get an advantage would we? No matter how fair it is! haha I'm never home for the girl scout cookie sales, so I miss out every year. If I could buy them online, that would be awesome. Let me know when your daughter is selling some cookies and I'll buy some from her. We'll pretend she didn't use RoR as an online resource... haha

JHM

Post 12

Saturday, May 16, 2009 - 10:54am