Sunday, September 12, 2010

[bsiprnqs] Nebraska Safe Haven

The 2008 Nebraska Safe Haven law revealed a flaw in the social fabric.  There exist parents who do not want to raise their child; there exist children who would be better off not being raised by a parent who does not want to raise them.  Everyone is better off (except for the unknown extra short-term cost it would put on the welfare system).

But we don't have such a law, except for a few months in 2008, because of various social taboos, stigma, and the paradoxical expectation of "parents are required to love their children, even if they don't".  Interesting observation 1: Democracy has failed in a weird way, and makes one wonder what other instances there might be of democracy failing this way.

Interesting observation 2: Bad laws are good.  Mistakes are good.  Nebraska legislators eventually corrected the "mistake" of the law they did not intend to pass.  But, had they been more careful beforehand, the "bad" law would have never passed, and we would never have seen this flaw in the social fabric, perhaps a fundamental flaw in democracy itself.

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