There are a lot of women who would prefer to breastfeed but can't for a variety of physiological reasons, so this market would at least have the potential to exist even if America's maternity leave laws weren't barbaric.
> even if America's maternity leave laws weren't barbaric.
Please don't throw drive-by explosives into Hacker News comments like that. All it does, predictably, is blow up the thread. Your comment had a fine substantive part, but that, of course, was the part that got ignored.
I've detached this subthread from its parent and marked it off-topic.
Can I ask why there is a need to exaggerate creeping into hacker news, particularly where it involves gender topics?
Barbaric literally means: Savage, primitive, brutish.
You don't help a cause with such inappropriate language. I switch off if people can't use non-political language and I'm a dad with young kids so the topic is relevant to my family.
As a European, I have not been able to convince family members or friends
that aren't intimately acquainted with the US-American situation that there
is no universal, legislative framework for paid or unpaid maternity leave.
They usually respond with a variation of
"this can't be right; you must be misinformed;
it would be horrible if that were the case."
And you (as a populace) aren't even fighting for it! Not visibly, at least. So, honestly, you
seem to be the one hurting all sorts of causes with this misdirected
attitude of apologism.
Aren't you projecting your European biases and beliefs on our American system. Who's to say your system is right, and our system is wrong? Europe takes a different approach to labor and economics than the United States. You may love large socialist structures in Europe, but you trade that off with a slow-growing economy. In the US, we have a smaller socialist structure with fewer safety nets, but we get a faster growing and robust economy. There's no right or wrong.
I'm unaware of many "socialist structures" in either Europe or North America, with the exception of Mondragon. That is unless you define socialism as purely meaning "state ownership of industry", which is rather naive, even if widely accepted by the American public.
I'm a US citizen by birth. I just happen to have traveled and lived abroad for a time, and I find the labor laws especially, but the social welfare laws in general in the US to be rather backward and uncivilized: barbaric is a word I chose deliberately because in my opinion it is accurate.
dang|11 years ago
Please don't throw drive-by explosives into Hacker News comments like that. All it does, predictably, is blow up the thread. Your comment had a fine substantive part, but that, of course, was the part that got ignored.
I've detached this subthread from its parent and marked it off-topic.
rustynails|11 years ago
hf|11 years ago
As a European, I have not been able to convince family members or friends that aren't intimately acquainted with the US-American situation that there is no universal, legislative framework for paid or unpaid maternity leave.
They usually respond with a variation of "this can't be right; you must be misinformed; it would be horrible if that were the case."
And you (as a populace) aren't even fighting for it! Not visibly, at least. So, honestly, you seem to be the one hurting all sorts of causes with this misdirected attitude of apologism.
bluedevil2k|11 years ago
pessimizer|11 years ago
If your argument ends in this conclusion, you should assume that there's a fallacy somewhere.
DanBC|11 years ago
> Please avoid introducing classic flamewar topics unless you have something genuinely new to say about them.
vezzy-fnord|11 years ago
geon|11 years ago
That's debatable.
Iftheshoefits|11 years ago