1) Men are still held accountable in the courts for providing income, even if they do not want to be fathers, or even if they were effectively raped by the woman stopping birth control without their knowledge.
Why else would THESE be for sale: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/26/business/26gene.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
Addresses genetic paternity, not the far more difficult 'did you intend to make a child' question.
2) The Courts, and our culture, have a strong bias towards mothers, when their true focus should be on those with the least say in the matter, the children.
Again to the peril of men, this too can go awry: http://www.law.com/jsp/article.jsp?id=1152534921526 - Even just dating a single mom can get you nailed for child support if she coaches the little one to point at YOU and say "Dad-dy" in front of a judge. Totally unfair to the man, but 'the best interest of the child' is that the kid has SOME male to call Daddy, and TAG you're IT, so the judge hooks your wallet up to the mom's purse till the kid is 18. Or 21. Or even 23 in some cases. See again: "[T]he mother's motivation and honesty are irrelevant; the only issue for the court is how the interests of the child are best served."
This is one of the really hard questions. Does the child deserve someone to be their father? Yes. Should someone coming in and taking over that roll be given the burden of supporting the child? My answer is yes, if they're living with/in a strong (more then friends) relationship with the mother, however the binding continuing support only happens for the biological parents. (Same goes for when the genders are reversed.)
A license system for producing and another for raising children would also help, and in the later solution could award bonus children for those who are exceptionally worthy.
Yuck - that's called 'utilitarianism' - your life's worth is measured by the degree that you are 'useful' to others, or to 'the community,' or to The State if you're a fan of Marx/Lenin/Stalin/Mao - in any case it boils down to 'appeasing those who hold the power to take your stuff and starve you out should you decide not to serve them...'
Definitely not a free country. Many philosophies disagree - some teach that YOU ARE ALREADY WORTHY without having to be 'useful.' Many religions also teach away from utilitarianism - and so parenting licenses run smack into free practice of religion and even freedom of choice. The word 'choice' is another bombshell - often it refers to legal right or access to abortion and contraception (even for the poor,) but in this case 'pro-choice' means fighting equally for the choice to MAKE a family - such as access to good prenatal care (even for the poor, right? Fair's fair!) We don't want government to interfere with our precious right to CHOOSE, do we?
More immediately: WHO WOULD YOU DARE TRUST to make judgment to determine who is 'worthy?' We are all falliable to some degree, and no government or division of government has ever proven itself free of corruption over a long term. ('Who watches the watchmen?') So the licensing program will be subject to graft. A licensing system thus corrupted would eventually dole out the right to procreate among 'friends of the government.' Are you a dissident? Spotted on public surveillance camera while attending a rally? Discover a news story that embarrasses a high-profile politician, or the local police? No family for you.
Who is worthy for an additional child? Discounting the simple barriers, outright buying the right or winning it in a special global lottery, we are left with the ones that would be awarded. First, these should be a very small number, measured in the thousands per year (over the world). Second, there would be no bias as to who is most deserving in a given area, it would be a global thing. Third, the most natural candidates for this are those who are recognized (For example, nobel prize winners) as contributing significantly to technology, our understanding of how the universe works, and most importantly, in working to place 'some of our eggs' in to other baskets (that is viable colonies on other worlds.)
Further, speaking of colonies on other words, a major incentive for their creation and the risks involved in living there would be that they would not be under such a birthrate limitation. Instead, the more successful the colony, the more they could afford to allow population to grow. Likely for quite a long while as even with geometric growth it will take many generations before they get in to the issues we have on earth today.
(Or even "Look - we found pictures of you on the Internet and you wear funny clothing and watch TV shows in foreign languages ..." SUBJECT IS OTAKU. APPLICATION DENIED.)
Sound scary yet? Now add eugenics: government that can deny procreation to those who "don't look like what we want citizens to look like," or "speak with an accent," or whatever silly rationale they might come up with. No thank you, I would not hand that power over to any government...
A. A poor black family in the South is wishes to have a fifth child. This family, because of their skin color, already has difficulty assimilating within the community, and they are already at the bare minimum poverty level. License or No?
B. The mother of a family of more than 7 children is applying for No. 8. Her current husband has a history of alcohol abuse, some mental disorders, and child abuse. The mother herself is trying to care single-handedly for her large family. Two sons in the family already have a history of alcohol abuse. The mother lost custody of one other child due to special needs. None of the older children have steady, dependable jobs with which to support mom and dad. License or No?
Answers:
A: You would ban Martin Luther King, Jr.
B. You would ban Ludwig van Beethoven.
There are key differences between the examples you've cited and the reasons I support my system. The biggest key difference is the size of the global population when those individuals were born. Just thinking off the top of my head, A would have been born closest to 1900 and B closest to 1800 in the first table listed in this Wikipedia article.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_populationRounding the numbers, aprox 1 bil, and 1.6 bil. While in 2000 we had about 6 bil. In 100 years with the old rates of growth the world population increased six times.
Another factor in population size is longevity. (World) wars, plagues, pandemics (super plagues), and primitive (if any) medicine were the things that caused the most deaths historically (at least in my recollection); All of which have been addressed by technology and knowledge in today's world. We freak out over things like SARS that end up killing a few thousands in what we consider first world countries, when that is really more like the numbers that used to die during periodic Flu outbreaks in cities of a few hundred thousand.
Further, those families already had far more then the population stabilizing 2 children per 2 adults rate. Each contributing to a 2.5 and 4 times size per generation population increase.
Major point two, parenting. How many individuals do you know that have a license? Most of the people we have on the road today, even the lower end of the skill scale who I'm amazed are allowed to drive, manage to do so without accidents and help from the other drivers. Yet what about those who actually fail the test? Can you imagine what kind of world we'd have if
anyone were aloud to drive? That's the situation we have now with the actual rearing of children. If you want to be a parent, you should at least be able to take a test and fake it well enough to pass.
Are there issues of potential corruption? Certainly. I won't deny that government programs need to have a fully open book policy. Every individual case should be examinable through an anonymous filter. (It would be a little murky, addresses, landmarks, anything else that could possibly aid in resolving the exact specifics of the case must not be released publicly. Ideally a 'public details' section would cover such things separately from a fine details section for the courts.) A huge, public read only, database should track every last cent of spending. The same should be extended through every government program. Though some classified areas should be released only as they are de-classified, instead appearing as blobs of 'Top Secret' with a per program cost and target release date for each.
The same level of accountability would be extended to every additional child (public, mandatory), and every child removed (public, mandatory, likely cross-linked to the case that warranted the removal of that right).
Of course, having a single database of these things is a case ripe for abuse. The public parts of said databases should be freely mirrored and monitored by any organization that wants to keep watch. In fact, setting up or funding a watch group (who would also have to be similarly accountable and provide other watch groups and the gov group with their own data) should be tax deductible.
Minor discrepancies would be fodder for news coverage. Major ones, fodder for revolution.
