I had stupid amounts of freedom when I was a kid as well, with roughly the same basic rules (the only other two were "help each other for the common good" and "respect each other's rights and opinions"), and I believe that it was the best environment for me. I like to think that I've grown up to be a decent moral person. However, I don't believe that we can say that laws aren't a substitute for morals; laws exist because there are some basic rules that society expects people to follow, and unfortunately all people can't be expected to follow those basic rules.
So I'll compare myself with my sister. My sister spent most of her teenage life fucking herself up with whatever tobacco products, alcohol and drugs she could get her hands on. While she wasn't disrespectful, she flunked out of high school because she was basically a bludger and did no work. When people told her that she had to do some work (above what she wanted to do, ie, for the common good or her long-term good), she screamed and ranted and raved about her right to do whatever she wanted. In the abstract and long term, she broke all the rules by requiring the rest of the family to work harder to align themselves with the rules, but that didn't matter to her (or to my mother).
I believe strongly that, if our house had stricter rules (ie, curfews, no cigarettes/drugs/alcohol, etc.), then my sister would not have got away with the shit that she did. If you don't mind my saying so, I (and my other two brothers) were sensible enough to work within the rules, but my sister for whatever reason was not.
I think this is because people develop morals in the same way that they develop other characteristics (height, intelligence, etc.). We know that kids don't have the same moral sense as full grown adults, and we also know that not all adults develop to the same endpoint in respect to moral development (in the same way that not all adults are the same height or possessed of the same intelligence).
The guy to look to here is Kohlberg and his Stages of Moral Development. Unfortunately, some people only get so far in terms of their moral development as thinking "how can I do what I want and not be punished".
So, I have fewer problems with the idea of parents keeping tabs on their kids, so long as they're doing it properly (which is a whole different story.
So... Around half of all Americans are of below average intelligence?
*holds up a marshmallow on a stick*
The diversity and timing of the new anthropoids raises two scenarios. Anthropoids might simply have emerged in Africa much earlier than thought, and gone undiscovered by modern paleontologists. Or they could have crossed over from Asia, where evidence suggests that anthropoids lived 55 million years ago, flourishing and diversifying in the wide-open ecological niches of an anthropoid-free Africa.
G'day != Guten Tag.
How you goin, mate != Wie geht es Ihnen
No worries != mach dir keine sorgen
WTF mates?
Any given program will expand to fill available memory.