@Megalith
A brilliant idea. Let's explore the concept and flesh it out a bit. A woman who will be primarily responsible for raising the child should have a choice about whether to do this. And if she chooses, perhaps she should be permitted by law to deal with the child like any other interloper who inconveniences her, in whatever manner seems to her to be appropriate, without legal penalty. We could call it the "choice" movement and call people opposed to the summary execution of infants and toddlers "anti-choice." Brilliant, I say!

@skybrook
>I live at home with Mommy and Daddy
>I don't have to pay rent or buy food
>they pay all my bills
>all I do is go to school every day for a few hours during the week
>I'm not allowed to vote until next month
>clearly this is worse than the Holocaust

@Background Pony #7733
A brilliant solution. UrbanMysticDee is nuts. It looks like he's not the only one frequenting these boorus who says bizarre things and keeps on doubling down. I think maybe he was just never disciplined as a child. Maybe "skybrook" is his other account.

@Background Pony #7733

Well my silence can't solve the problem of your shitty parents but ok.

Shut up, skybrook!

See? Problem solved!

So skybrook implied he might have had shitty parents. So don't blame his parents. Blame skybrook!

@skybrook
Good point. Adding a unperson clause would solve this issue. Can’t oppress what isn’t a person.

@Background Pony #9F2F

> X people shouldn't be allowed to vote
> or drive
> or sign contracts
> even though I agree they're capable of it.
> whom am I oppressing?

@skybrook
I think 2500 years is a pretty good stand-in for "always," and that's making the assumption that the Roman family structure was unique in the classical world. It wasn't. Also, "oppression?" Whom am I oppressing, and how?

I think you are making too much of a big deal out of any inconveniences the current system may impose on the unusual or exceptional seventeen-year-old, also. Wait a few more months, problem solved. I believe this falls under the category of "First World problems."

You seem very angry about this topic. Are you sixteen years old, or something like that?

@Lotus

That too! This whole comic doesn't make sense. "Think about what you're saying; you never know who might hear?" You'll make them mute for the past three years, retroactively?

@skybrook
That can't be the implication. The child hadn't been talking for three years before this conversation, and the whole reason the conversation is happening is because the child hasn't been speaking for at least three years past the time a child should.

@Background Pony #9F2F

If I can point to 17 year olds who can vote, drive or sign legally binding contracts, then it doesn't matter what a nice guy you are for protecting toddlers from making their own decisions. You're still disenfranchising and oppressing people. If I can point to 18 year olds who are so fucked up by your oppression that they can't do that stuff, then it's a bad law. If you can't make a law that doesn't do that, then it doesn't matter if there "have" to be rules, since it proves those rules which "must" exist must not exist. Any rule that claims to save the children from voting is always a twofaced lie aimed at oppressing someone unjustly. Maybe kids can't always make great decisions, but law cannot solve that problem.

And every dysfunctional, abusive relationship has existed for a long time. Ancient humans weren't immune to fucking up. Sometimes we had healthy societies with healthy relationships, and sometimes we had Rome: people driven mad with the gnawing hunger to conquer and enslave, and the inception of the term "familia" which in Roman law established that the wife and children were slaves of the father or "patriarch." Ever since Rome died a slow horrible hubris filled death, patriarchs have been desperately trying to convince us it's "always" been that way, and they're always wrong. Humans have clans. Clans trade people because inbreeding, so you might not be related. Everything else about our "familial" relationships is a tossup.

@AA
That would immediately raise questions about who writes and administers the tests. Remember how IQ tests are so "racist" that in California it's illegal to administer them to schoolchildren? Yeah. Draw the line at eighteen years and preempt that objection. We live in Clown World and it's reached the point where we have to take this into account when proposing any kind of plan or change. Honk.

Years ago I thought that maybe it would be a good idea if adults who were incapable of the basic responsibilities of citizenship due to lack of mental capability or a proven record of irresponsible and destructive behavior—the mentally retarded, the mentally ill, convicted violent felons—should have ID cards, maybe drivers' licenses, though not everyone has a license, with a black border, so that the police and everyone else could see that this person was prohibited from voting, possess a firearm, and so on. That would, of course, get abused too. And we can't even stop people from buying fentanyl that comes halfway around the planet from China and sticking it in their arms and dying. We're not going to be able to stop people from getting fake IDs. I guess we could tattoo "PROHIBITED PERSON" on their foreheads. Or maybe on their wrists. It'd be very convenient for the government, and it could never, ever, ever be abused, right?

@Background Pony #9F2F

@skybrook
It isn't perfect, but the alternative requires the government to give teenagers IQ tests and say "you can't vote or drive or work or live on your own until you score over X," and giving those who pass the test a special card. I guess.

That's actually not a terrible idea. Children do age differently, and in any case a 17-year-old is capable of much more agency than a 3-year-old. Should the government be what determines your maturity level? I don't think so, but Skybrook is right that the current system is broken.

@skybrook
Should toddlers be able to vote, or drive, or sign legally binding contracts? No? Then there have to be rules. Custom and law make distinctions, and this is appropriate.

Also, families and extended families are much, much older than corporations or isms.

@Background Pony #9F2F

I don't think it should be the law's business, if the law isn't effective at dealing with a child's coming of age. And that age is 16 for chrissake. Regardless of what magic underpants age you pick, you have any idea how many 40 year olds I wish were banned from driving an automobile?

This trend of isolating the nuclear family and locking everyone else out is just anticommunitarian corporate bullshit. Humans had been raising children very differently for a long time, and now that's all gone. And now society is collapsing. Go figure.

@skybrook
I'm not trying to be an asshole here but it sounds like you haven't thought about this very much. Given the premise that children aren't miniature adults, aren't capable of understanding enough to take legal responsibility for everything they do, until they reach a certain age, surely you can see that it's logical for the law to take that into account, and it's simplest and most easily documented and most easily provable to draw a bright shining line through the 18th birthday. It isn't perfect, but the alternative requires the government to give teenagers IQ tests and say "you can't vote or drive or work or live on your own until you score over X," and giving those who pass the test a special card. I guess.

Likewise, please look up the term "legal guardian" and think very hard about the definition.

Also, human beings have been raising their children for a very long time. Almost all get it more or less right. Most kids grow up to be okay people. Society would collapse if they didn't. It isn't rocket surgery.

@Background Pony #9F2F

Yeah, and that's stupid. Children can do a lot for themselves, but the law is just like "You're a potato until you turn 18." But even when kids can't take care of themselves, why only parents? What about the other adults in their community? They're all expected to supplicate themselves before the holy parents praying that they deign to bless them with a tiny bit of authority, and go figure kids get raised alone by shitty parents with no help from anyone else.

And these are amazing wonderful good parents, not shitty ones. But oh no, their child's aphasia is clearly all their fault how terrible.

@skybrook
Children aren't legally responsible for themselves. Their parents are responsible for them, and what they do, until their 18th birthdays.

The stupidest thing about this is the implication that this foal is not talking because he's traumatized by their "terrible" argument here. Parents are always elevated to godlike status: if you aren't a perfect being in every way then it's your fault your sweet, innocent wooby child is a fucked up little shit. Some kids are just fucked up and it's not the parents' fault if they didn't pull the superhuman effort it would take to deal with the problem.

My parents were incompetent, but why should they be the only ones responsible for me? I'm responsible for me! And so are you! We need to take responsibility together, not blame parents for something they didn't do.