Adoption of already existing orphans, refugees and homeless kids should take precedence over the creation of more babies. This should be mandatory in the entire world.
This seems like an enormous mismatch of needs and solutions.
First and foremost, if you are in anything close to a position to mandate this sort of policy, you should also be able to control the number of homeless—preferably by buying them homes. Taxes are good for this. If you mean runaways, in many cases the first response should be to return them to their birth parents, although there may be good reason to monitor and adjust the situation as needed.
Adoptions are good thing, and people already recognize this. The three barriers to full adoption rates are:
Red tape. Newborns and babies are in high demand. People regularly pay between $10,000 and $25,000 to adopt these kids—although it can take many months for the adoption to go through, especially when adopting from overseas. In these cases you don’t need to make anything mandatory, just make it easier.
Age. People don’t tend to want older children. This is where your model will be the most useful, but there is likely to be a lot of resistance. People who want a baby may resist a ten-year-old replacement even more than they would a random baby. I suspect that you will get a much better response if you don’t model it as a replacement. It won’t be hard to get these kids adopted (again, red tape is probably the biggest barrier), and they will be better off with parents that adopt them with the support of a stipend rather than those who adopt them as a legal mandate.
Problem children. Kids with mental, psychological, health, and behavioral problems are the ones who are hardest to place, least requested, most likely to change homes multiple times, and have the highest needs. The current lottery of children that nature has set up is pretty awful; not all parents are ready for a child with special needs. Requiring a subset of parents to raise a “problem” child as their first child is likely to help with population control, but isn’t necessarily the best choice for the child. It is probably going to be better than cycling through multiple foster homes, so your system may be an improvement, but I suspect that here is another chance for you to use your impressive power to improve things not through the power of forced placement, but through the power of taxes. In these cases, an orphanage staffed with very-long-term employees including very patient adults who have experience with a wide range of kids, along with a few mental health professionals, speech therapists, occupational therapists, and nurses, is likely to be your best bet.
There is some skepticism as to how reasonable it is create an orphanage with long-term live-in staff that can effectively act in all the roles that parents need to fill.… but I think it is a safe bet that even an imperfect but fully staffed high-needs orphanage will out-perform forced placement.
In “My moderate dictatorship where people would actually want to live,” I have to recognize that, no matter how much utilitarian sense they may seem to make under conditions of overpopulation, nobody likes forced abortions, plus their implementation is prone to ugly policy manipulation from various fringe interests.
In “My misguided dictatorship where I try to adjust the rules on a case-by-case basis, and end up being creepily intrusive in everyday affairs,” the obligatoriness of the abortion would take into account how much emotional investment is already attached to that pregnancy.
In “My dictatorship when I’m having a bad hair day and I’m feeling grumpy,” I would take that emotional investment into account and write it off as a sunk cost.
Suppose you keep finding babies, and you know with some dictatorial certainty that law-abiding citizens take in the foundlings instead of having children of their own? Would it not mean that you have established a very efficient system of genetical parasitism?..
If you were standing beside this person alone in a dark alley, and you had certain knowledge that this was the only chance to stop them growing up to become the dictator they imagine being, what would you do?
Adoption of already existing orphans, refugees and homeless kids should take precedence over the creation of more babies. This should be mandatory in the entire world.
This seems like an enormous mismatch of needs and solutions.
First and foremost, if you are in anything close to a position to mandate this sort of policy, you should also be able to control the number of homeless—preferably by buying them homes. Taxes are good for this. If you mean runaways, in many cases the first response should be to return them to their birth parents, although there may be good reason to monitor and adjust the situation as needed.
Adoptions are good thing, and people already recognize this. The three barriers to full adoption rates are:
Red tape. Newborns and babies are in high demand. People regularly pay between $10,000 and $25,000 to adopt these kids—although it can take many months for the adoption to go through, especially when adopting from overseas. In these cases you don’t need to make anything mandatory, just make it easier.
Age. People don’t tend to want older children. This is where your model will be the most useful, but there is likely to be a lot of resistance. People who want a baby may resist a ten-year-old replacement even more than they would a random baby. I suspect that you will get a much better response if you don’t model it as a replacement. It won’t be hard to get these kids adopted (again, red tape is probably the biggest barrier), and they will be better off with parents that adopt them with the support of a stipend rather than those who adopt them as a legal mandate.
Problem children. Kids with mental, psychological, health, and behavioral problems are the ones who are hardest to place, least requested, most likely to change homes multiple times, and have the highest needs. The current lottery of children that nature has set up is pretty awful; not all parents are ready for a child with special needs. Requiring a subset of parents to raise a “problem” child as their first child is likely to help with population control, but isn’t necessarily the best choice for the child. It is probably going to be better than cycling through multiple foster homes, so your system may be an improvement, but I suspect that here is another chance for you to use your impressive power to improve things not through the power of forced placement, but through the power of taxes. In these cases, an orphanage staffed with very-long-term employees including very patient adults who have experience with a wide range of kids, along with a few mental health professionals, speech therapists, occupational therapists, and nurses, is likely to be your best bet.
There is some skepticism as to how reasonable it is create an orphanage with long-term live-in staff that can effectively act in all the roles that parents need to fill.… but I think it is a safe bet that even an imperfect but fully staffed high-needs orphanage will out-perform forced placement.
You mean that pregnant women should get mandatory abortions when they could possibly adopt orphans?
In “My absolute dictatorship,” yes.
In “My moderate dictatorship where people would actually want to live,” I have to recognize that, no matter how much utilitarian sense they may seem to make under conditions of overpopulation, nobody likes forced abortions, plus their implementation is prone to ugly policy manipulation from various fringe interests.
In “My misguided dictatorship where I try to adjust the rules on a case-by-case basis, and end up being creepily intrusive in everyday affairs,” the obligatoriness of the abortion would take into account how much emotional investment is already attached to that pregnancy.
In “My dictatorship when I’m having a bad hair day and I’m feeling grumpy,” I would take that emotional investment into account and write it off as a sunk cost.
Suppose you keep finding babies, and you know with some dictatorial certainty that law-abiding citizens take in the foundlings instead of having children of their own? Would it not mean that you have established a very efficient system of genetical parasitism?..
That’s an interesting attitude.
I’d stick with birth control in the water and hefty fines, myself.
Oh, all the ways to game this...
If you were standing beside this person alone in a dark alley, and you had certain knowledge that this was the only chance to stop them growing up to become the dictator they imagine being, what would you do?