For humans, simplicity and readability are generally prerequisites to efficiency. It's so obvious that the sentence reads like a tautology.

What are you suggesting is the payload inside this trojan horse? What are you actually warning people will happen?

Did it ever occur to you that women simply didn't want to be around you (and people like you)? Or that, because everyone's gotta pay bills, the economics of the tech industry drive people to work with you (and people like you) despite the fact that they find you insufferable? Did it ever occur to you that your butthurt version of reality isn't the only one, or that you're not entitled to something just because you're "into it"? Have you ever wondered why you feel so defensive about a topic that you (and people like you) utterly dominate? Does it ever bother you that you're in an echo chamber of male anger and aggression?

These don't have anything to do with each other. I don't learn more when things are taken away from me, do you? It certainly doesn't give me any guidance about how to have safe sex, or how to make smart decisions about drugs. Those are not things that deserve punishment, they deserve mature and useful education and emotional involvement.

In what world do you think "guidance and compassion" equals destroying the meaning of achievement?

Seems to be working just fine. Right?

I would teach about the risks and rewards of different kinds of experimentation, the differences between law and morality, provide insights into where I've made mistakes and how I dealt with them, and set very clear expectations about when I will or will not consider usage a problem deserving intervention. That intervention would never result in unrelated punishment. This is all about direct involvement in real education about serious matters, rather than a convoluted risk-reward system that doesn't impart any wisdom or prepare the child for future decisions.

I'm not sure I understand your meaning, but I would not buy my kid a car to reward behavior, and I would not give a child any kind of gift and then take it away as punishment.

Not sure who or what you're attacking here, but I never suggested anything like this.

By caring, encouraging mutual trust and respect, and responding to problems and risks with sane, relevant solutions that I can explain clearly. In the event that the problem is that the child has actually done harm, the solution may well be a form of punishment that's relevant and appropriate.

More nonsense strawman attacks. Really not sure where this stuff is coming from.

You're attacking me because I don't think taking away a cell phone has anything to do with educating a child about making safe and smart sex choices. What adult would think that makes sense? But you expect a teenager to handle it better?

Still don't know what you're talking about. Did you mistake me for someone else?

Well, that will have pretty predictable effects.

I don't think the former is what you've described, and the latter isn't anything like what I've described. You've described a scenario in which "rewards" are capricious bribes that stand in for meaningfully guiding children through the obstacles that endanger them. I've described a scenario wherein the response to a potential problem should be determined by the circumstances of the potential problem and be aimed at producing a stronger, better educated child with more trust and respect for the parent guiding them.

Sure, all of that takes patience, and much of it requires learning as you go along. It probably means making some mistakes. So? Having children is a huge responsibility. It can't just be solved with bribery and manipulation.

You're right. If I were a parent, I would know that it's important to punish people who need guidance and compassion.

Thanks, I'll pass.

Far as I can tell, everyone who bikes in Seattle is constantly having sex. Even while cycling.

45 seconds? But I want it now!

As far as I can tell, you've presented three scenarios of young adults who, at worst, need some form of help from the more mature people responsible for their care, but you've also portrayed them as somehow deserving of either irrelevant punishment or bribery. Should Billy be punished for poor performance in school, or helped to understand and appreciate his education? The worst case for Tammy's judgment is that she did not understand the consequences of actions she otherwise engaged consensually, should she be deprived of a phone that has literally nothing to do with that? Chris evidently was not driving while getting high, so I'm not even sure why you care unless you're jealous. Or should those privileges be dangled in front of them only if they behave in a way you approve?

If this is truly where you're at, do yourself a favor. Visualize Billy's, Tammy's and Chris's future debt and complete paralysis in the face of it. Don't worry, it doesn't make a difference what they do now or hot their parents raise them. They're fucked, and they didn't get a choice. It'll make your schadenfreude feel better.

In my day, we didn't have friends.

I'm not prepared for anything, that's why I'm asking an honest question. Thanks for answering in the form of hostility.

People like i_ate_god aren't the reason, but points for keeping the discussion honest anyway.

Honest question, since there's a list of nazis up above: if an elderly Adolf Hitler were forced to live in prison for 50 years and released into modern life, what more harm could he do?

I dare say he could produce an astonishingly smelly old man diaper.

Most courts accept it as a given, without blinking an eye. Inertia is the strongest force in systems of power.

That is categorically not what the "social contract" means. The "social contract" is an expression that one must suspend some "natural rights" (i.e. the freedom to "do whatever you want") in order to obtain the benefits of living in a society (i.e. to protect rights that need social defense). Like any contract, it's one that must be entered into consciously, not by birth or decree; the perversion of such a "contract" to mean one inherits it by birth is a road to domination and stagnation. Being born conveys only liberties, not responsibilities. Being a member of a community conveys both. It is up to a person to choose the latter, and it is up to a child's guardians to convey the benefits and consequences of such a contract. And it is up to every person to negotiate the social fluidity of all of these.

Society's rules are also not static, and they typically only change through rebellion. This process can be peaceful or bloody, just or unjust, depending on the rules and the rebellion. The most just and peaceful evolution comes from a confluence of evolving "social contract" that challenges outdated or unwarranted rules; the least comes from the collision of an unflinching status quo with an unflinching reality. Wars are often fought, in either case, and often the "social contract" is discarded wholly in the process.

The people you listed above, had they been freed, elderly and in a different world? They would have little purchase to do any further harm. That isn't to say there is no reason to guard against a resurgence of past monstrosity, and it isn't even to say that the world isn't better absent some of the worst monsters. But the world changes—nay, people change the world—and tossing monsters into a world that was once their own but isn't any longer... doesn't give them a lot of leeway.

Deserve? Deserve what?

Justice is about making wrongs right. What does it mean to deserve? How does it square with justice?