What is the Question?

What is the problem?

The problem is that modern life holds people hostage by deliberately withholding the skillset and knowledge necessary to be self-sufficient, forcing people to ransom their labor and time in exchange for food and shelter.

People are not in a position to negotiate fairly and on equal footing.

People are stuck using majority rule to obtain any decent deals from those who control the use of force.

What is the solution?

People need the ability to walk away from a bad deal, and need the ability to exist without the deal. If you are not allowed to refuse to play, you cannot have agency.

We are setting our children up to be helpless in the face of adversity. We are training our children to be helpless when the economy goes bad, to be helpless when employees screw them over, to be helpless before the banker and the credit card company and the politician.

When a politician lies to our children, how will they cope when we have left them without the critical thinking skills to dissect the double talk?

When times get tough and companies downsize, how will your children manage when they have no job to bring in cash without the abilities to make their way without somebody to pay them?

When an employer bullies them or a spouse abuses them, how will your children defend themselves when you have taught them to always run back to a figure of authority rather than learn how to defend themselves in an appropriate manner?

It's more difficult to talk to a son or a daughter whom you've taught to catch your BS. It's more difficult to punish a son or daughter who doesn't depend upon you for spending money. It's more difficult to abuse or intimidate a son or a daughter whom you've taught to defend themselves from verbal, social, mental or even physical abuse.

We are setting out children up for failure because too many parents are afraid of the leverage that they would lose if they gave their children the real tools of adulthood. These parents are hobbling their children to make the job of parenting less taxing. Don't be those parents.

Every time a parent says "Because I said so." they fail as a parent. Not permanently of course, life is rarely that critical. But every time a parent resorts to authority with no other justification, they harm the development of their child and leave that child a little less able to cope with the ambiguity of adulthood.

We are attempting to rule our children, when we should be teaching them. It is a poor teacher whose students do not surpass them.

If you teach a fact, you are planting a twig. If you teach a skill, you are planting a seed.