I think that the whole child welfare system has to be totally taken apart and built up again. Have an agency just specifically for those follow-up cases.
Because children grow up, we think a child's purpose is to grow up. But a child's purpose is to be a child. Nature doesn't disdain what lives only for a day. It pours the whole of itself into the each moment. We don't value the lily less for not being made of flint and built to last.
I don't think we would be specifically remaking "Child's Play 2" and "Child's Play 3". I imagine we'd be dreaming up whole new stories.
I went to law school. And I became a prosecutor. I took on a specialty that very few choose to pursue. I prosecuted child abuse and child homicide cases. Cases that were truly gut-wrenching. But standing up for those kids, being their voice for justice was the honor of a lifetime.
I just think giving back is in tandem with the way in which I was raised, with the, 'It takes a village to raise a child' mentality. Sometimes with the knowledge you have, you just don't know how powerful it is. I think I'm in a reasonably interesting position to recognise that. Plus we're now living in a completely different time to the one in which I grew up in. Because of my peers as well, it's the whole reason I'm doing what I'm doing. In terms of putting things back into the community, it's almost like running my sound system again.
It's a mistake to think that poor people get the benefit from the welfare system. It's a total fraud. Most welfare go to the rich of this country: the military-industrial complex, the bankers, the foreign dictators, it's totally out of control.
I think it's critically important for people to understand that this system of mass incarceration governs not just those who find themselves in prison on any given day, but also all those who are in jail, on probation or parole, as well as all those who are just months away from being locked up again because they are unable to find work or housing due to their criminal record.
Inside me, I think that an animal goes through a lot of pain in the whole cycle of death in the slaughterhouse; just living to be killed. That whole situation is really messed up for animals, growing up in those little cooped-up pens. I just don't think its worth eating that animal. I think animals should be free. There's so much other food out there that doesn't have to involve you in that cycle of pain and death.
The German system is way less fair than it is expected to be, and the difference is becoming bigger. The private system, with its privilege to pay doctors and hospitals better, is basically putting the whole system at jeopardy, because many first-class hospitals and first-class physicians are wasting their time on trivial cases of privately insured and are no longer accessible for the difficult cases from the public system, despite [the fact] that the hospitals and also the education of those professionals is paid for by public money.
Work hard, believe in your dreams, follow your dreams, don't give up, don't let failures hold you back. Those things were preached to me. They've taken a firm rooting system in my beliefs and what I'm passing on to my kids.
The most fundamental challenge of the anthropocene concerns agency. For those who lived the Enlightenment dream (always a minority but an influential one), agency was taken for granted. There were existential threats to agency (e.g., determinism) but philosophy mobilized to refute these threats (e.g., by defending libertarianism) or to defuse them (e.g., by showing that they were compatible with agency).
The goal of maximizing the welfare of all may be better achieved by an ethic that accepts our inclinations and harnesses them so that, taken as a whole, the system works to everyone's advantage.
When I grew up in the Bronx, we always had everyone telling us, 'Watch out for the system, watch out for child welfare, watch out, they'll get you,' and I grew up with this feeling of, 'Society is over there and they're dangerous and not safe.'
Labour voted to increase welfare spending again and again, without considering the effect that the spending was having, either on the people it was designed to help or those working to support the system.
There's no shortage of opinions about our agency, just like every other agency up here - and just like the Congress. I'd encourage our folks not to get too hung up on what I consider to be the noise on TV and in social media.
I'm a big believer in the system, but I just don't think we follow our own system and laws very well. I think ultimately we'll see the system collapse. Because no system has ever stayed around forever.
General welfare is a general condition - maybe sound currency is general welfare, maybe markets, maybe judicial system, maybe a national defense, but this is specific welfare. This justifies the whole welfare state - the military industrial complex, the welfare to foreigners, the welfare state that imprisons our people and impoverishes our people and gives us our recession.