[PH95VuimJjqBqy]

You know you've lost the plot when even child care is looked at through the lense of capitalistic markets.

Maybe fuck the markets and lets do what is best for the children and the parents. Or is that a radical idea nowadays?

[samatman]

Childcare is a market, the same way bread is. Like bread, family might provide it out of their own time and money, but otherwise, you have to pay someone.

Doing what is best for the children and parents is a market intervention, and ignoring how markets work when coming up with market interventions has a pretty bad track record.

Markets don't exist in a vacuum, they can involve the public sector: primary education is mainly provided through public funds and institutions, but it remains a market nonetheless. Throwing out what we know about market dynamics isn't a good way to do what's best for children and parents.

[PH95VuimJjqBqy]

and if the state actors didn't supply their own police force, policing would also be a market.

the question isn't "is it a market", the question is "should it be a market"?

The issue here is the idea that the market is more important than the upbringing of a child.

[samatman]

Of course policing is a market, what on earth makes you think it isn't?

State funded, yes, but police departments are in a labor competition with other police forces, private security, and anything else a cop could be doing instead. If a department wants more police, or better ones, they have to pay for that.

The idea that the market is more or less important than the upbringing of a child is nonsensical, I have no idea what you mean by that, it's like asking if acceleration is more important than luminance.

[YesThatTom2]

Agreed!

I’ve noticed there are two kinds of policy advocates.

Agenda advocates: no matter the problem, they push their agenda. Anti tax people are in this category. Down economy? “Lower taxes!” They shout. Up exonomy? “Lower taxes to keep the momentum!”

Issue advocate: these people are creative and will propose the best solution given the day’s issue. The solutions they propose change over the years because conditions change and new solutions appear.

The comment you rape replying to is from the former. The world needs more of the latter.

[PH95VuimJjqBqy]

> The comment you rape replying to is from the former. The world needs more of the latter.

Well that's a hell of a typo :P

I think the worst example of this I've seen on this site is when someone was advocating removing safety requirements from manufacturing plants because the rate hike in insurance would take care of making sure these companies were giving safe work conditions to their employees.

You know the people who advocate for that do so because they never expect anyone they care about to be working a manufacturing job.

[cpach]

What does that mean in practice though? That both parents should stay at home until the kids are 10?

[PH95VuimJjqBqy]

Well if we can't have that then we the line definitely should be drawn at the other extreme where we just don't give a shit about parents spending time with children.

[sethammons]

I'm an admirer of the working parents with child rearing by the grandparents. Didn't work out in our case.

[readthenotes1]

When would that not have been a radical ideal?

[fshbbdssbbgdd]

The best for children and parents would probably be that none of the parents have to work at all until the child is some age when they should go to school. But if we implemented that system, there would be a labor shortage, which would reduce the number of teachers, plumbers, mechanics, accountants, software engineers, etc, so the rest of society would suffer. There is no magic wand we can wave to solve all our problems without any tradeoffs. Money distributes resources in a capitalist system, and there are many problems and distortions. If you built a command economy with no money you would still have to make choices about these tradeoffs.

[PH95VuimJjqBqy]

> without any tradeoffs.

why did you interpret my comment as being extreme?

[larkost]

I sympathize with the underlying thought, but I think that it is worth using this as a model of when we should use the tool of socialism and when we should use the tool of capitalism... what should be the balance?

In this case the fundamental problem seems to be that not enough people want to work in childcare, for the money that those businesses are currently offering. Part of that problem is for some of the potential workers the barrier is that paying for childcare for their own children would cost enough to make working in the industry not worth the money for them.

So the two solutions proposed here are: make childcare free for those who provide childcare, and making childcare free for everyone. Both of these solutions solve the problem for potential workers whose main problem is the affordability of their own childcare.

Notably the "free for everyone" does not actually improve solving the one problem we are talking about: it does not unblock anyone else to enable more workers in this one industry. But conversely it would unblock those people from working in other industries, ones that already seem to pay more. So it would probably wind up with less people working in childcare than the more focused "childcare free for childcare workers".

The counter-point to this of course is that we are creating a huge market distortion, essentially "forcing" people into childcare work (not really, but...).

The pure capitalistic solution would be to leave it like it is: let the market decide how much childcare is worth, and that will sort itself out. The problem with this approach is that it winds up producing a less-than-optimal solution: people who would be more productive for society wind up at home doing individual child care, and there are vastly different outcomes for children of well-off families than those of the poor (so societal imbalance based on the birth lottery).

To me the only right solution is for some sort of wage stipend from the government (from tax monies) that goes directly to childcare workers. This would absolutely be the government putting its thumb on the scale to increase the supply of childcare workers, but form the government's perspective it is probably a good investment both to get more workers available in all categories, and to improve outcomes for the children of low-wage families (good both in a floats-all-boats perspective, and a social justice one).

The problem is, of course, that it is absolutely a socialist means of improving things, and those who have made capitalism a religion are going to go nuts about that.

[PH95VuimJjqBqy]

"When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail".

I've seen some pretty heinous opinions on this site, things such as safety regulations shouldn't exist just let the market decide. The companies insurance premiums will raise and so companies will naturally want to be safer!

As if that's more important than _preventing_ the loss of limbs.