>From: "Eliezer S. Yudkowsky" <sentience@pobox.com>
>Reply-To: extropians@extropy.com
>To: extropians@extropy.com
>Subject: Re: Aid to children
>Date: Fri, 03 Sep 1999 07:57:10 -0500
>
>Bryan Moss wrote:
> >
> > Parents are the weak link in our chain; we need to remove them as early
>as
> > possible and replace them with someone who has a genuine (economic)
>interest
> > in the child. To begin with the best we can do is offer good money for
> > children, soon after we might contract women to give birth to wholely
>owned
> > children, and eventually we would grow them in labs (or farm them if
>you're
> > looking for an appropriate visual image). I want child welfare to be an
> > systematic process of our economy without interference by parents who
>expect
> > more than dividends.
>
>Whoa, whoa, whoa! I'd be real hesitant about replacing a genuine
>reproductive-fitness interest with a "genuine" economic interest if the
>first doesn't work. Love really is stronger than greed, speaking as an
>evolutionary psychologist, because the selection pressures are stronger.
>
>Note also that, as I recall the statistics, the rate of child abuse is
>roughly one hundred times larger with stepparents than with natural
>parents.
>--
> sentience@pobox.com Eliezer S. Yudkowsky
> http://pobox.com/~sentience/tmol-faq/meaningoflife.html
>Running on BeOS Typing in Dvorak Programming with
>Patterns
>Voting for Libertarians Heading for Singularity There Is A Better Way
Are you sure that you don't want to retract this letter? I actually find
myself agreeing with you. Wouldn't want to embarass you. ;)