There's been so much hair-splitting about this mess, I'm surprised there's any left. And we do know that the severity is far less for the young. Taleb, who loves to argue about logical reasoning, seems to be making the blue-pilled error of counting too few anecdotes as data.
And intellectually, too.
I believe that individual rights are primary. That societal rights are a consequence.
I also believe in American exceptionalism. Admittedly things have gotten out of whack quickly, but I believe that is an artifact of technology changing so much faster than biological evolution and from people not having sufficient pressure to worry about more serious issues.
Where's all that March 4 violence that the fake news just made up again?
Jefferson was a reprobate on a number of levels, personally and otherwise.
He made a feeble attempt at seducing his neighbor's wife early on. His DNA is all over the backstory leading up to provoking the Hamilton/Burr duel. Then he tried Burr for treason and muffed that. He professed friendship for George Rogers Clark but let him die in poverty for because he would do nothing to honor the debts he incurred during the Western Campaign in Illinois and Indiana during the Revolution when he seized Kaskaskia and Vincennes from the Brits. Then he pulled the same shit when Meriwether Lewis incurred debts when he and Clark's younger brother set off to explore the Louisiana Purchase.
He was good with words. But like Nixon's boy Haldeman said, "Watch what we do, not what we say." His deeds spoke more loudly for me.
I could focus on the word "necessarily" and cut him some slack, but he knows full well the rhetorical effect he is trying to produce. He is playing for Team Fear, and I would like to know why. This one is also a real doozy. He consciously insisted on using the word "million". That is fear propaganda.
He's also selectively appealing to the collective and the individual. It could very well be antifragile to burn the dead wood of people susceptible to a novel, low fatality rate virus that mostly affects the elderly--as long as that loss does not weaken the collective more than the hassle of accommodating them did. It's just not a very nice thing to say in polite company. If the virus was killing mostly children at similar rates, the calculus might change because the collective psychological effects would be far worse. He never talks about any of this.
You need to go back and read the updates on "Bowling Alone" and what the statistics truly showed were the causal factor in the destruction of the social fabric: then you'll ask WHOSE fear of WHAT caused Putnam to be at first be so disingenuos about the findings of his research, and for so many years.
Or, if that's too academic and theoretical for you, let's get real, Hagh: in what ZIP codes did YOU grow up and go to school, who were YOUR neighbors and classmates, to make such an ignorant statement about the effect of cultures (race) on a person's existence? (Mine were an urban inner (inside the Beltway) suburb of DC, and schools in even rougher zip codes, thanks to busing and the TAG programs tricking the middle class into sending their children to these public schools, which probably was part of some real-life ivory-tower social experiment)
OK, lets use your stated goal (Im even open to you refining it if there is a grammatical mistake etc so long as you clearly restate). This clearly leads to the questions about which 'spheres' and when does 'childhood' end. I assume that education is one of the spheres, but where does education start and finish? Is it traditional 3Rs, does it include sports (including expensive ones), does it include music (and if so does it include a 'free' piano for home practice), does it include being well fed and rested to be able to learn, does it include homework supervision, does it include the value of role modelled behaviour of parents etc. What does this effectively forbid, as a parent am I allowed to pay for a private tutor because that could create a more inequality of outcome.
What does having equity to achieve equality of opportunity really mean - literally does it mean everyone has the same chance of achieving a given outcome by more support/less being provided? If sport is included do we have to coach the unathletic kid that wants to be like Michael Jordan more so he can try to keep up with people a foot taller with twice the SVJ.
Sure, Im asking about the extreme scenario, but to avoid that you have to clearly limit what you really mean in practice.