wellspring/16-miscellaneous/10-explicit-sandboxing-of-protected-classes-apologia.md

# Wellspring: Apologia: Explicit sandboxing of protected classes:

## The rational justification for sandboxing:

Humans are a rational species, and the faculty of reason is a rational creature's only tool for survival. Experience and knowledge are the raw materials for our
minds to use to form abstractions which enable us to thrive both in terms of subsistence and in terms of our ability to forge useful relationships and integrate
into social systems.

We recognize that certain crucial categories of experience and knowledge take time to develop, and that prior to the mastery of these areas of competency, it is
expected that those individuals who have not had the chance to master those competences will err and will perform below the expected competence of one who has
mastered those competences.

Sandboxing is a necessary mechanism for the development of a rational creature which is **not omnipotent** and whose tool for survival and thriving is the
**gradual acquisition of conceptual knowledge**.

Let there be no ambiguity: `Wellspring` recognizes and champions the need for the protection of the mind of a developing rational being from exploitation by mature
predators seeking to sneak into a playpen of disarmed, underdeveloped minds and poach easy prey.

## The role of `Wellspring`'s sandboxing legal abstraction:

Every society treats certain selected groups of people with "kid gloves" and assigns them protected status within a "transparent" bubble or sandbox.
It is difficult to balance the need to preserve these sandboxes while also preserving the dignity of the people who are benefitting from the sandbox - the
people inhabiting the sandbox may find it unpleasant and demeaning to be constantly told that they are in fact, inhabiting a sandbox.
Traditionally, most cultures have balanced these requirements by never explicitly acknowledging the existence of these sandboxes.
While this is a workable approach that satisfies the needs of the persons inhabiting the sandboxes, it produces undesirable outcomes in the following ways:

* Because these sandboxes exist to protect persons who lack key knowledge and experience, it follows that the persons assigned to these sandboxes may fail to
  realize that they are in fact, receiving special treatment, and for this reason they may (and a sizeable number of them in fact, do) fail to realize that there
  is a curriculum of knowledge and experience that they are expected to master in order to graduate from the sandbox.
* The traditional strategy of not explicitly acknowledging the existence of these sandboxes often doesn't make it obscures that these sandboxes have a clear
  deadline date by which the protected class of individuals are each expected to **graduate**. Many persons find themselves ejected from these sandboxes after
  their graduation date has passed and they are surprised at how differently they are treated after they are ejected from the sandboxes. More importantly,
  they are stunned to find out that there was indeed such a curriculum and graduation deadline, and that they failed to pass a test which they were never
  explicitly made aware of.
* The traditional strategy also makes it difficult for us to reason about the fact that people often inhabit multiple different sandboxes simultaneously, each
  with its own required curriculum and graduation date because we refuse to even acknowledge the existence of the sandbox to begin with.
  * However, the law often has to refer very directly to these overlapping sandbox periods.
  * Yet because they are never articulated clearly in culture or in law, the law doesn't have the vocabulary to speak clearly about them, and usually fails to
    properly create the desired outcomes since neither the entire culture and the law itself are all avoiding talking about these sandboxes.
  * Often, because we fail to recognize the existence of sandboxes, we fail furthermore to recognize that many times we may be unknowingly speaking (in legislation)
    about several overlapping yet distinct sandboxes at the same time, and this causes us to legislate hastily and disastrously by introducing rules that affect
    unintended secondary sandboxes in unintentional ways.

Wellspring has chosen to introduce an explicit framework for thinking about these overlapping sandboxes inhabited by protected classes of individuals.

## Examples of sandboxes which should be explicitly recognized by the polity:

Not all of these sandboxes are appropriately by legislation, and private sector mechanisms are obviously both sufficient and ideal for many of them (such as the
development of manners).

Throughout history, human cultures have created various incubation systems to enable these individuals to develop these competences in a sandboxed environment.
These sandboxes permeate the entire private and public sphere and are woven into every element of the culture. An inexhaustive list of such competences includes:
* Manners and an understanding of the proper way to speak in both vertical and horizontal relationships.
* Sensitivity to the fact that there are biological differences in capability between individuals; and the proper vocabulary and level of compassion for those
  less capable.
* An understanding of sexuality and the long term personal and psychological consequences of sexual decisions. Hitherto, cultures have often encapsulated this
  in the "legal age of consent".
* A mastery of economic principles and an understanding of one's own economic interests; and skill in the art of negotiation.
  * Most cultures have expressed the protections required for the development of these skills in the form of labour laws; especially in the form of the minimum
    wage law.
  * The class of jobs known as "unskilled labour" or "minimum wage jobs" is intended to be a sandbox environment within which young workers learn the principles of
    business, finance, continuous career and skill development, and negotiation. Hitherto, because it wasn't made known explicitly to these young individuals that
    these jobs are intended to be a sandbox from which they will graduate, they tend to cling to the sandbox protections of minimum wages and other similar laws,
    beyond their expected graduation date.
  * Notice how this "sandbox" reasoning framework provides a strong case for laws prohibiting child labour.
  * We recognize that acknowledging this opens the door for arguments in favour of an age-gated miminum wage policy for example -- that is, that minimum wage laws
    would not be universal but rather they would be based on the age of the employee, with an eventual cutoff to zero when the employee passes a certain age. We
    don't take any specific policy position other than to assert that once an individual passes the legislatively defined sandbox period for the acquisition of
    these competences, all such special treatment laws should cease to have any effect on that person's contracts.
* An understanding of long-term consequences and the basic structure of various common contracts. Hitherto this has tended to be encapsulated in law as the age
  of sui juris.
* An understanding of their level of talent in the various available professions, and a clear comprehension of which skills are their strengths, and therefore
  which skills they should pursue further as careers; and which skills they should realize are not best for them. In general, this is a fairly difficult sandbox to
  get right, and most cultures generally expect young people to use their teens and their twenties to find at least one career path they are competent at and commit
  to it.

## Why `Wellspring` has chosen to make sandboxes explicit:

The purpose of sandboxing as a legal abstraction within `Wellspring` is to make explicit the reasons why sandboxing is needed, and moreover to ensure that persons
inhabiting sandboxes have the required curriculum and expected graduation date communicated clearly to them. We expect that this will ultimately result in more
desirable outcomes since individuals can better prepare themselves to graduate these sandboxes rather than to fail to graduate, yet still be held liable for failure
by the culture at large if they fail to realize that there were milestones that they were expected to achieve.

We have seen that in past cutures founded on vague elements of "capitalism", the failure by large numbers of youth to graduate from these sandboxes produces
dissatisfaction, especially because they tend to complain that they didn't even know that they were being assessed in the first place. This is essentially the
complaint that people are making when they say things such as:

"I was told that in a free society I can be anything I want to be and I followed my dreams but I eventually discovered that certain doors weren't open to me.
Sadly I spent too long knocking on those futile doors without committing to a more realistic door. I have also been convinced now by a Marxist that under Marxism,
I would have had a much longer incubation time in the sandbox, within which I could find my desired field of work. In reality, under Marxism I would have had a
much shorter sandbox time and I would have been assigned to some job without any say in the matter. My real complaint here is that I feel that the sandbox period
I was given was too short."

`WS` doesn't think that it is possible to define the perfect sandbox durations for every protected class's development -- but we do think that explicitly informing
individuals that they are in fact inhabiting a sandbox and that there is a deadline for graduation, will help them to more capably manage their development.
Moreover we hope it will reduce the number of individuals who find themselves ejected from sandboxes and labelled as failures when they never even realized that
they were being given special treatment within a sandbox in the first place.