When I take over the world, everyone will be a single parent

I was going to start a new blog to talk about how I would fix things if I had a magic wand. But I have several blogs already, and I've hardly used this one at all. So I'll just make the when I take over the world stuff a section of this blog.

I wasn't sure which of the take over the world posts to start with. Recently I read someone else's blog, and she was talking about being a single mom. So I guess I'll start with that.

Every once in a while, I hear that someone has a plan to pay people to volunteer for a sterilization procedure. A mathematical formula would determine how much of a potential financial drain your future children would have on society. If you agreed to be sterilized instead of having these children, the government would pay you a percentage of the estimated tax money saved.

Sounds great to me. I don't want any kids anyway. If someone offered me a free and safe permanent method of birth-control, I'd probably take it. If someone offered pay me to do it...wow.

Of course, I like to think that my high I.Q. would prevent me from being paid much money. On the other hand, my low personal income would also be factored in, and the two would probably cancel each other out. But if I'm offered any amount of money before I'm too old to have children, I'm going to take it.

Not that it will ever happen. I like the idea, but everyone else seems to hate it. And I really don't get most of the arguments. Like a bunch of poor people will go and have the procedure, or a bunch of black people will go have the procedure. So what? What if a bunch of poor black people willingly go have a sterilization procedure done and get paid for it. A bunch of other poor black people won't go and have the procedure. That would forever put an end to the discussions about welfare moms cranking out babies to get more money. If some people were really doing that sort of thing, and you offered them something like this instead, wouldn't they take the easy money up front?

Several years ago I read a book, and I can't remember the name of the book, or even who wrote it. It was a woman, I remember that much, so I want to say it was by Anne McCaffrey or Vonda McIntyre, because that was who I was reading at the time. Anyway, in this book all the people were legally allowed custody of one child. Period. But they had sole custody. There were no custody fights and arguments about visitation or how someone thought their child's other parent wasn't raising the child right. You have custody of one child, and everyone else back off, including the child's other biological parent.

Wouldn't that just solve all kinds of problems? Custody of children is decided before they are even conceived. If a couple gets a divorce, there is no custody battle. If the custodial parent wants to pick up and move to Alaska, that's okay. There is no arguing about how much child support the non-custodial parent will have to pay, because there is no such thing as child support. If you can't afford to take care of a child yourself, don't have one. You and you alone are responsible for that one child.

Which is not to say that you couldn't have custody of one child and live with someone who has custody of another child. You could raise them together, share living expenses and all of that. For that matter, you could live with ten other people who have custody of ten other children, and raise them all together and share living expenses and all of that. But it would be very clear who had custody of a particular child, and who had the final word on all things concerning that child.

There were a lot of things in the book that would probably never work in America. In the book the custodial parent paid the other biological parent for creating the child. In general, women were paid more than men per child. On the other hand, in an individual's lifetime, a man could father many more children than a woman would be able to have. In the book, the main character's custodial parent was paid to be the biological father of over three hundred children, but he still owed money to the biological mother of the child he had custody of. Paying someone to have sex with you, even for the purpose of creating a child, is still prostitution. And it might seem too much like babies for sell. We don't buy and sell people anymore.

There are other things that did not happen in this book that I would also think about. If you have bad genes, besides paying someone of the opposite sex to help you create a child, couldn't you also hire someone of the same sex for the same purpose, so that the resulting child would not have your bad genes. And since I don't want any children anyway, could I sell my legal right to have custody of one child to someone who would like to raise more than one child?

A lot of things will be different after I take over the world.