Government for the people. How?

[Izzy]

The objective of this thread is to altruistically* design a political structure wherein the needs and interests of EVERY inhabitant of this country are met. (None of this "general public" crap, we should try to make everyone happy. ) It's impossible to not be aware of how inconceivable this sounds, but I think by being mindful of what we're trying to accomplish, but.. just might be feasible?**

Now, before we can even begin devising laws, creating our constitution, bill of rights, etc., I think it's best we assemble a list of what people want from their government. Feel free to contribute ANYTHING. (I stole some of these from the world's smallest political quiz and the bill of rights. >_>)

1. Government should not censor speech, press, media, or internet.
2. Military service should be voluntary.
3. There should be no laws regarding sex for consenting adults, where a consenting adult is anyone of 16 years of age or older.
4. Repeal laws prohibiting adult possession and use of drugs.
5. End government barriers to international free trade.
6. Let people control their own retirement; privatize Social Security.
7. Keep government welfare, but no taxation without representation.
8. Freedom of speech, religion, sexuality, peaceful protests, and petition.
9. Soldiers may not be quartered in a house without the consent of the owner.
10. People may not be unreasonably searched or kept in captivity.
11. The right to a free, public, and speedy trial.
12. Laws are to remain the same from State to State.
13. Eventual globalization is a priority.

*We can get into the semantics of altruism later. I have.. mixed feelings, but this most closely elucidates my intentions. (Lol, I swear, I bounce back and forth from being the apathetic hippy civilian who just wants to live to the extremely fervent humanitarian practically daily. >_>)
** Eh, truthfully, it isn't. Too many people disagree on matters of religion, which define the moral code for a LOT of people (even if they don't strictly adhere to it, haha). We need to agree now to define morals for ourselves and not base them off of religious texts. Like, if someone proposes "Don't kill", that's perfectly acceptable, and I expect it to be fully ratified. If someone else suggests "Love God", this is more open to debate. While you can submit ideas that coincide with religious texts, submit them because they are mandates you want and agree with, not just because your scripture of choice tells you to follow them.

Edited February 13, 2014 by bonanova

[Izzy]

Your hypothetical situation is meaningless, because NO operations cost that much. I don't even think they have millions. You're trying to create an argument out of nothing. Even if you say it's a trillion dollars, what you are saying is so off topic.

The basic health care it costs people an average person during their life.. is like that, maybe $10,000 a lifetime? Not even. I think my medical bills have only totaled up to like maybe.. idk. Nothing, 'cos of insurance, not the point. Okay, imagine you had to pay all your medical bills. I'd estimate like $5,000/lifetime, right? More or less, for certain people. Now, include the expensive surgeries (btw, I don't think plastic surgery or weight less surgery, or that stuff should count, obviously). That probably boosts it to around 10,000/person. With the rich and poor contributing equally, it's doable with no harm done.

omfg i am so tired . f*cking xanaxxxxxxxxx<3

i swear it look like an hour to type that. so. tired. [/clor]

[Izzy]

no, im not superstitious. thats absurd. please stop trying to make ridiculous conneections that aren't there. i believe the way i do because i care about people. you're clearly religious, stop expecting me to be religious just becasue i value human life

its not irrational. stfu. no one agrees with you because you're insane. and you just blabber on and fecking on. it's 3 am. i took drugs. i am goin to fecking sleep. did i mention no one agrees with you because your ideas they're insane? brb, may or may not reply tomorrow. take zerep's hint. move your medieval ages ideas to another thread where you might find someone that appreciates them. (didnt finish reading you post btw, LEARN TO BE CONSISE.

i am in no way supersiticious. i value human life, nothing more. get over it.

good night. maybe.

[gvg]

UtF:

1. I'm a deist, so I don't know if that counts as religious or not.

2. Going back to your potential system, you have forgotten one thing: luck. A person who seems to be able to contribute to society may all of a sudden be out of work or dead because of some sort of bad luck. Same the other way around, only with good luck.

3. It's not only rich people, it's mostly rich people. The cost (and it will never be one mil. Izzy's right) will be spread throughout the social scale, just more so on those that can support it.

You can't tell if the baby will contribute to society, and yes, we can't know if it will. But I'm willing to take that chance.

For Universal:

1. Izzy

2. Zerep (right?)

3. gvg

Against:

1. UtF

[gvg]

And yes, the patty flipper is helping society in a different way. What good is the invention of fast food if there is noone to make it?

And don't get me started on the crimes against humanity corporations have and still commit.

[Guest]

Okay, people have some serious misconceptions of scale. A million dollars actually isn't a bad estimate for major surgery/recovery. My brother had a major head injury a couple years ago and the bill from the hospital that we saw (and ended up being covered by insurance almost in full) came out to around $1 million. That's why medical insurance exists. If we could get whatever procedures we needed for $20 a pop, there would be no insurance. Somehow my brother got through the whole thing just being deaf in one ear and reduced vision and some other complications, but completely normal mentally (well as normal as he ever was ). He's also likely to spend the rest of his life taking numerous medications for seizures and the like. There was no way we would have been able to pay for it without the insurance covering it. People are paying sometimes $2000/month for health insurance for their family. That's way more than Izzy's $5,000/$10,000 per lifetime. You're paying into the system ahead of time so that the system can pay for you when you need it. Most people won't need that much health care, so the vast majority of people are losing money by paying for insurance, but that's why it's called "insurance," to be there if you need it. As it happens, my family's gotten the short straw and the insurance companies aren't likely to be making money off of my family (though I'm perfectly healthy to date ).

Another serious inaccuracy was UtF's McDonald's worker. Working at minimum wage (as I don't see why a fast food worker would be paid anything more, considering the company's profit motive ) full-time (a dubious proposition as there are very few "patty flippers" who are permitted to work full-time (maybe the branch manager, but they would also be paid more than minimum wage)), a person would make about $15,000 a year. That's loads below the UtF's "estimate" of $50,000 and it's below the poverty line for even a single person. So it's unrealistic for people to be expected to survive off a minimum wage, even at full-time (40 hours/week), hence the reason that many poor people end up working 2/3/4 jobs ("Uniquely American" yes ).

UtF: What you aren't understanding is exactly what Izzy posted earlier and you discounted:

You know what you aren't realizing? Aside from new money being created, the wealth of America stays the same. The one million dollars, even if the kid "earns it back" is merely being transferred from tax payers, to the insurance companies, to whatever they decide to buy, to other people, and so forth. It's actually very economically stimulating. It's not like when that money's spent it disappears. We, as a society, still have it, and we just have one more person that benefited from it.

I'm not taking you quote back here, because you completely missed the point and what you discussed was a complete non sequitur to the issue at hand. Let's assume that health care is provided to everyone universally and paid for off the backs of the rich. As "unfair" as that may be for the rich, it can still benefit society as a whole more so than your alternative. They lose it and probably won't see it again, but they also make it back because they have a higher income. However, the people on the other end (my family and Zerep for instance) are benefiting from it and they are able to pay back to society. Maybe they can't pay back the full amount (my brother apparently has a long curve to pay back since the full cost was likely even higher since the insurance did pay for somethings outright for which we never saw the bill, but he's interested in astrophysics and the like, so maybe he will), but that doesn't mean that they are a drag on society. They still have a cost of living. The landlord, or mortgage company, is still being paid by them. The grocery store owner on the corner (not that there are too many of those around thanks to Mal-Wart ) will still appreciate their business in his store. So while the rich lose out on an insignificant portion of their wealth, the rest of society benefits (like Izzy's roughly logarithmic distribution). By propping up the least of us, we improve their condition enough that they can in turn prop up the people above them on the ladder. That's what we are trying to say. That's the Utilitarian reason for supporting the poor. (As has been said by many people here, there are other reasons, but that's the economic/advancement one that comes to mind.)

Also, the Bill Gates of the world who break through the ranks and rocket to the top are the extreme minority. You can't have a society full of Bill Gates, there just aren't enough people. And they would still be poor if there was no one to buy their products. If you have 1000 rich people and 10 million poor people who can't afford a computer, then BG sells 1000 computers are remains poor and insignificant. However, if you have 1000 rich people and 1 million middle class people and 9 million poor, then Bill Gates suddenly can sell 1,001,000 computers and make a lot of money. By helping 1 million people out of poverty, we've helped BG become rich. It seems that you want to prune society (I was going to use a different metaphor, but I changed my mind ), while we want to fertilize society. You want a society that only has the beautiful branches, while we want a society that nourishes the base and lets the whole grow more harmoniously.

[Guest]

Also, the Bill Gates of the world who break through the ranks and rocket to the top are the extreme minority. You can't have a society full of Bill Gates, there just aren't enough people. And they would still be poor if there was no one to buy their products. If you have 1000 rich people and 10 million poor people who can't afford a computer, then BG sells 1000 computers are remains poor and insignificant. However, if you have 1000 rich people and 1 million middle class people and 9 million poor, then Bill Gates suddenly can sell 1,001,000 computers and make a lot of money. By helping 1 million people out of poverty, we've helped BG become rich.

If that were true then BG would voluntarily give his money away to poor people so that they could buy his computers back from him.

Anyways, I'm very confused at why you think my argument was a nonsequitur. When Izzy said that the wealth of society stays the same when you take rich peoples' money and use it towards the poor, I argued that it wasn't worth spending a million dollars worth of energy on something so pointless (saving a newborn baby). I would think that it is you two who are using a logical fallacy to say that it is fine to pay any amount of money to save the baby as long as the rich people can afford it. If the baby isn't worth a million dollars then you're forcing rich people to spend their money on things that aren't actually productive. Here's an example of what you're doing: Bob wants to build a hole in the ground so he can create a man-made pond in his yard so he can have some ducks. The hole will cost him a million dollars. Bob is a nice person who will share the pond with others to make them more happy and whatnot. The government taxes rich people to finance this million dollar hole for Bob. You justify it because in the end all of the construction workers and other people are being employed and getting the rich peoples' money. You justify it because no money is "lost" digging the hole, but rather the money is just transferred from rich people to poor people who wouldn't have a job it it wasn't for the hole. So you justify digging the hole because it helps out the poor and these poor people will be able to buy the rich person's computers and whatnot because of the hole and the kids on Bob's street will be able to go canoeing with the ducks on his pond. Then I argue that it's not worth a million dollars building the hole and so it would be a waste for society to spend a million dollars worth of effort on such a pointless hole or such a pointless baby that isn't worth a million dollars. All that you're doing by forcing the rich to pay for the poor like this buy buying them health care and everything else is taking the rich peoples' efficient production and wasting it by using the money that they earn to pay poor people to do tasks that aren't worth the money they are getting.

(note: sorry I replied to the last comment first. I'm going to go back now and read the others.)

[Guest]

Oh, and dude, even your potential system fails. I'm sure you'd agree that I have quite a bit of potential in life, right? Nothing's stopping me from finishing uni. and then just chilling the rest of my life off of an inheritance. (I wouldn't, 'cos that's not my style, but I could.) If a child has loads of potential, that doesn't mean they're going to do anything, and even if they have no potential, it doesn't mean they won't become anything.

You misinterpreted what I meant by "potential."

[Guest]

Your hypothetical situation is meaningless, because NO operations cost that much. I don't even think they have millions. You're trying to create an argument out of nothing. Even if you say it's a trillion dollars, what you are saying is so off topic.

The basic health care it costs people an average person during their life.. is like that, maybe $10,000 a lifetime? Not even. I think my medical bills have only totaled up to like maybe.. idk. Nothing, 'cos of insurance, not the point. Okay, imagine you had to pay all your medical bills. I'd estimate like $5,000/lifetime, right? More or less, for certain people. Now, include the expensive surgeries (btw, I don't think plastic surgery or weight less surgery, or that stuff should count, obviously). That probably boosts it to around 10,000/person. With the rich and poor contributing equally, it's doable with no harm done.

omfg i am so tired . f*cking xanaxxxxxxxxx<3

i swear it look like an hour to type that. so. tired. [/clor]

Are you kidding? I realize I messed up by using a million dollar surgery as something expensive. I should have said something like three or four million to make the point better. As dawh pointed out though, million dollar surgeries aren't all that uncommon. My point is that with our increasing medical technologies there are many new expensive medical procedures available that most people wouldn't be able to pay for in their lifetimes. Thus I use that to say that it would be a "bad investment" in such a person to pay for such an expensive surgery on such a person. I'm all for universal cheap health care. Give people vaccines and things that aren't too costly relatively. But, I see no reason to have a government pay for the very expensive surgeries, especially if they're for newborn babies that are of very little value to society relative to older people because they can be replaced so easily.

[Guest]

no, im not superstitious. thats absurd. please stop trying to make ridiculous conneections that aren't there. i believe the way i do because i care about people. you're clearly religious, stop expecting me to be religious just becasue i value human life

its not irrational. stfu. no one agrees with you because you're insane. and you just blabber on and fecking on. it's 3 am. i took drugs. i am goin to fecking sleep. did i mention no one agrees with you because your ideas they're insane? brb, may or may not reply tomorrow. take zerep's hint. move your medieval ages ideas to another thread where you might find someone that appreciates them. (didnt finish reading you post btw, LEARN TO BE CONSISE.

i am in no way supersiticious. i value human life, nothing more. get over it.

good night. maybe.

You could have at least given a reason why you care so much about a baby the week after they are born, but you don't care about them much before they are born (you said you're pro-choice). But, if you're done, I won't ask you anymore.

[Guest]

UtF:

1. I'm a deist, so I don't know if that counts as religious or not.

2. Going back to your potential system, you have forgotten one thing: luck. A person who seems to be able to contribute to society may all of a sudden be out of work or dead because of some sort of bad luck. Same the other way around, only with good luck.

3. It's not only rich people, it's mostly rich people. The cost (and it will never be one mil. Izzy's right) will be spread throughout the social scale, just more so on those that can support it.

You can't tell if the baby will contribute to society, and yes, we can't know if it will. But I'm willing to take that chance.

For Universal:

1. Izzy

2. Zerep (right?)

3. gvg

Against:

1. UtF

99% of people used to think the world was flat to. Did that mean they were right? There's no reason to bring that into the argument.

Million dollar surgeries aren't as rare as I thought. You all are underestimating the costs of health care majorly and I did slightly too. I definitely didn't overestimate the costs as you and Izzy say I did: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB119610495315004214.html

1. You can believe in a flying pink dinosaur and as long as it doesn't affect your actions or your politics I wouldn't really consider you religious. So far from this discussion I've seen less reason to think that your values are religious than Izzy's even though Izzy says she isn't religious. Anyways, this isn't too relevant. I was just wondering if you all had reasons for valuing humans. I don't consider humans to be basic things to value. I consider humanity as a whole as the thing to value and if that means that their are weak individuals that it isn't worth it for humanity to try to save then I don't mind not spending millions of dollars to save them.

2. I didn't forget about luck and chance or probability. I know looking at two babies that are identical (except that one is missing arms and legs) that statistically and in all games of luck and chance, I would very confidently bet that the baby with arms and legs is the better one to save and is the one who is more likely to be able to contribute to society. If you disagree, please tell me what it is about a baby without arms or legs that makes them so valuable. Perhaps if you can argue that they're worth a million dollars then I would support the million dollar operation. But, I'm saying that saving such a baby lacking limbs for a million dollars is like digging a million dollar hole in the ground so that Bob and his kid neighbors can go canoeing on a duck pond. Sure that would be great to have, but it isn't worth paying a million dollars to get.

[Guest]

And yes, the patty flipper is helping society in a different way. What good is the invention of fast food if there is noone to make it?

And don't get me started on the crimes against humanity corporations have and still commit.

The reason why the person who starts the wonderful fast food restaurant makes millions of dollars is because the people deem the work worth millions of dollars when they all crowd around to buy the food. The person whose great ideas builds the restaurant is rich cause what he did (created the restaurant chain) was very valuable work, as is evident by the millions of people who eat at the restaurant everyday. I'm saying the McDonald's employee isn't as valuable because almost any human alive is skilled enough to be a patty flipper. Anybody can replace the patty flipper if he were to drop dead. If the bright businessman and inventor were to drop dead then society wouldn't ever have any McDonald's that he might have created or any computers that his creative mind might have come up with.

People who earn millions of dollars through honest work rather than scams or theft are the people who are very valuable to a society. That's why they make so much money. They don't steal the money from poor people. The common people say, "hey, I like the products you're producing, let me buy them from you." These common people's lives are better and the intelligent person becomes rich because he is so good at making things that people want.

This has nothing to do with crimes against humanity that corporations commit. I'm not supporting monopolies that give commonfolk no other choice but to work for giant companies that give them unfair treatment and wages. I'm not for forcing the companies to "be nice" either. I'm for creating more opportunities for the common people so that there are good companies that don't commit crimes against humanity that they can choose to work for, rather than going to work for the monopoly company just to stay alive.

[Guest]

Maybe they can't pay back the full amount (my brother apparently has a long curve to pay back since the full cost was likely even higher since the insurance did pay for somethings outright for which we never saw the bill, but he's interested in astrophysics and the like, so maybe he will), but that doesn't mean that they are a drag on society. They still have a cost of living. The landlord, or mortgage company, is still being paid by them. The grocery store owner on the corner (not that there are too many of those around thanks to Mal-Wart ) will still appreciate their business in his store.

You might have misunderstood me and/or I may have just been unclear:

When I say that the poor people receiving aid won't be able to "pay back" the cost of their surgeries, I don't literally mean they won't be able to pay the rich people back for paying for the surgery. I'm assuming that the surgery is a gift that isn't going to eventually be paid for. So when I say that they're not going to be able to pay the surgery back, what I mean is that they won't be able to create that much more income in the form of creating a product or service and selling it. When I say they won't be able to "pay back" the costs of the medical bills, I was talking about the poor person with surgery acting as a landlord, or working at a mortgage company, or selling groceries. I'm saying that you're giving him a million dollars so that he can continue living, but he won't be able to sell a million dollars worth of groceries in the rest of his life time. He isn't worth a million dollars because the best he can produce is a few hundred thousand dollars working at McDonald's for his life. The value of his work and services that other people can benefit from aren't worth nearly a million dollars. That's what I'm saying. Thus, by paying for a million dollar surgery for him, the taxpayer is just saying, "here, I'll spend a million dollars worth of effort on you so that you can give a hundred thousand dollars worth of McDonald's services to people in the remainder of your life." There's no reason to do that. It would be better to invest the millions dollars in something that can get people a million dollars worth of services or more. Now you might say that the doctors getting paid justifies it. To show why that would be an error to think that is true, look at the pond example I gave. Would you support giving a rich person's million dollars to Bob to build a pond? It's the same thing. Such a pond would be nice, but it's not worth a million dollars to the people who will benefit from it.

[Guest]

Our arguments are not derived from "logical fallacies." Because this world is a messy business, there are plenty of ways to look at a situation and come to a different logical conclusion. You're trying to dismiss our statements on a technicality, so that you can ignore the content. For one thing, you only seem to be talking about money, as if money is the only thing with any value in society. That's categorically false. Take Stephen Hawking for example. Had he had some severe illness as a baby, in your world, he likely wouldn't have survived. Fortunately for him (in your world), his ALS (Lou Gerhig's disease), didn't show up until he was college and he had already established himself as intelligent. However, based on the reasoning that you've presented, it seems to me that the logical conclusion would be that it's still not worth preserving his life in your world. Why? Because the cost of his care is greater than the amount of money he can earn in his lifetime.

Admittedly, I'm pulling numbers out of thin air here, but since he's doing theoretical study, he is primarily focused in the study of potential advancements in science. He doesn't produce much other than papers on various studies and I guess he's published a lot of books and movies, but if he hadn't he'd still be a genius, but he wouldn't be providing any material benefit to society in his lifetime. My point is, how can you provide an equation to determine who should live and who should die? Monetarily, Donald Trump makes more money than Stephen Hawking, is he more worthy of attention as a result? Trying to judge whether a person can pay back the cost of a procedure in the course of their lifetime is an extreme and generally callous process. We can't know. So you say we use statistics to decide, and we say, we give everyone a chance.

Those are two completely valid ethical branches of thought. Neither is a "logical fallacy," though we can argue about how appropriate it is to use one or the other. You are adhering to an extreme Utilitarian thought-process where you decide what to do by what's best for the whole (I was going to say "most people," but I realized that wasn't an accurate depiction of your views ), while we are in varying degrees in the Rights Advocate (can't find a link for this, must be called something else, but this is the name I know) camp, where we say you shouldn't do anything that impinges on the rights of another individual. is an example of a utilitarian idea that rights advocates generally oppose.

Both are valid ways of looking at the world from a logical perspective. So far, neither side has been able to prove the other to be logically invalid, largely because we may fall into different categories based on the situation. Take the "redistribution of wealth" issue. In that case, you are an extreme RA member, saying that people's right to their wealth shouldn't be taken away to give it to other people. We take the utilitarian view that that money could be better spent on raising people out of poverty, so that more people can experience the benefits of wealth.

We can only know how much a person contributed to society in retrospect. We can't know beforehand. So you say that we should either leave well enough alone and do nothing to externally change someone's status, or use some complicated, currently non-existent equation to determine if the chances of success outweigh the costs. We say that since we can't know until after the fact, the only fair and reasonable thing to do is to give everyone the chance to shine and those that do will make up for the cost of those that don't, sometimes through means other than money.

And we all understand exactly what you mean; we just think your ideas are INSANE! To touch on your pond example (I don't really want to handle it in case it's contagious ), PEOPLE AREN'T PONDS! A society that treats humans with the same regards as a hole in the ground is not a society with which I would wish to be affiliated. We're humans, not ants. You can't just swap out one human and expect the same result in many situations (as would be the case with worker/soldier ants). Yes, most people could do the work of a "patty flipper," but it's extremely shortsighted to say that a person's usefulness to society begins and ends with how much money they can produce for it. Janitors, sanitation workers, patty flippers, etc. are all necessary parts for the whole of our society to work. None of the people stuck in those jobs for their lifetime likely make enough money to offset their costs. So would a society be justified in getting rid of them? We still need someone to do those jobs. We just don't think that you can put a value on a person's life. Therefore, everyone should get a chance to show their mettle. You would deny the poor that chance unless they meet some arbitrary guidelines that (I would argue) no one can define. That's the problem. It's not a misunderstanding, it's a difference of opinion (among other things).

[gvg]

UtF: Your pond example is COMPLETELY different. No, I wouldn't force people to pay for a damn pond. But the baby is a HUMAN. This is a life we're talking about, not a freakin' koi pond.

If that were true then BG would voluntarily give his money away to poor people so that they could buy his computers back from him.

Who's to say he will? What if he decides that it's his money? It's a similar argument. Just as you say that he or another rich person should give money for health care because it will never be 'payed back,' why should he feel that he has to pay people to buy his product? What if he decides that it isn't worth the risk? What if he decides that he doesn't trust those people, because he doesn't think they'll end up buying his stuff? See, I think that we're looking at humans differently. To me, it seems as though you believe that humans are naturally good, and able to tell 'good investments' from bad ones, and able to decide what is worth their money, while I, and maybe Izzy, Dawh, etc., think the opposite.

If you diagree with my conclusion, please let me know.

[Guest]

Darn, you beat me to it.

Pond: n. a small body of water formed naturally or by hollowing or embanking.

That is a pond. I'm not sure your comprehension of 'values' are quite in tune. A baby = pond is absurd. You're absurd.

Done :-)

[Izzy]

Dawh just stated that surgeries often cost $1 million dollars. Well, then, UtF, that means those million dolloar surgeries are being paid for ALL THE TIME ANYWAY. We, as a soceity, haven't suffered from it. Why not just have some taxes go to health care, and extend the benefits for EVERYONE? The percent of those in the middle class outweigh those in poverty(uh? I think? I HOPE), so you won't be getting many more million dollar operations, but you will be getting all around healthier people.

If dawh and Zerep's family didn't have people to help them pay (because, honestly, not many people can go insurance free and be all "Here brah, $1 million, take it, Imma go home in my luxury car to mah mansion now."), my best friend would either be dead or in extreme poverty and I would have never met him, and dawh might not be on this forum because he'd be trying to work off that debt or something (well, if it happened to him, not his brother at least.)

And damn, all three of you beat me to getting on him for the pond thing.

Btw, I didn't misunderstand your "potential" thing. I was using potential as a noun in that sentence, not an adjective. Either you miswrote or misarticulated what you meant.

Btw, this guy doesn't have any arms or legs. To you, he's worthless. To the world, he's an inspiration.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ApA4m_uZns&feature=related

Case closed. Stfu now.

*edit* One more thing. Did you even see my post where I proved morality and religiousness and nil connection? *facepalm*

Edited July 21, 2010 by Izzy

[Izzy]

And we all understand exactly what you mean; we just think your ideas are INSANE!

QFT.

[Guest]

You are adhering to an extreme Utilitarian thought-process where you decide what to do by what's best for the whole (I was going to say "most people," but I realized that wasn't an accurate depiction of your views ), while we are in varying degrees in the Rights Advocate (can't find a link for this, must be called something else, but this is the name I know) camp, where we say you shouldn't do anything that impinges on the rights of another individual. Eminent domain is an example of a utilitarian idea that rights advocates generally oppose.

That's not entirely correct. I'm not an extreme utilitarian. Rather, I was under the impression that Izzy and gvg cared more about the good of the society than individual's rights not to be stolen from due to the fact that they advocated stealing from rich people in the name of helping out society (or a large portion of society). Thus, I was using their beliefs to argue why if they do value the success of society as a whole, then they shouldn't steal from the rich to give to the poor like they do because in the long run that hurts society.

Personally I realize that I have very little trust in others to decide what is good for society, so I don't include that in my political views despite the fact that I do care about the success of society. Rather, I would support every individual deciding on their own if they want to spend their money on something altruistic and charitable that they think will help out society. Thus, my view is that I follow a version of the Golden Rule: I try to treat others according to their moral code. So as a result I have little respect for people who think that it's okay to steal from rich people.

Take the "redistribution of wealth" issue. In that case, you are an extreme RA member, saying that people's right to their wealth shouldn't be taken away to give it to other people. We take the utilitarian view that that money could be better spent on raising people out of poverty, so that more people can experience the benefits of wealth.

And I'd say that's very immoral of you to steal from me in the name of the greater benefit to society. Take back what I said about anything for the greater good of society. That was all only meant to show you guys that if that is your view (that if you value society's success more than an individual's right to his money and are willing to point a gun at him to take his money for your society) then you really shouldn't be pointing the gun at the rich people to take their money nearly as much as you do because in the long run that will hurt society.

I don't see my views in terms of Rights Advocates or utilitarian beliefs. I see my views as allowing me to do what I want and allowing others to do what they want. In other words, if I want poor people to have money, I'm not going to aim a gun at other people who don't want to give their money to poor people and tell them to give it to them or else I'll arrest them.

So in the end I am a libertarian, anarchist, capitalist, whatever you want to call it. I want a system of contractual governments rather than an inherently violent system like the USA where somebody points a gun at me and tells me to give me my money and in exchange they will give me some services. You're ripping me off against my will and calling it moral. That's the problem I have with all of your views.

We can only know how much a person contributed to society in retrospect. We can't know beforehand. So you say that we should either leave well enough alone and do nothing to externally change someone's status, or use some complicated, currently non-existent equation to determine if the chances of success outweigh the costs. We say that since we can't know until after the fact, the only fair and reasonable thing to do is to give everyone the chance to shine and those that do will make up for the cost of those that don't, sometimes through means other than money.

No, that's not what I'm saying. I'm saying that if there was a government that found a way to find that optimum way to take care of the poor then I would gladly give some of my money towards it.

I was saying that because it is a practically impossible task for a government to actually do that, I do not choose to support giving my government power to take peoples' money and give it to poor people. You all failed to realize that the point of me illustrating how impossible of a task it would be to make a system of government theft to give to the poor that actually helps out society as a whole was me giving my reasoning for not supporting give my government power over such things. That's why I don't voluntarily give up my money to the government so that they can dump in on the poor people. Many people (probably all of you in the discussion) think that it's morally right to take my money and give it to the poor against my will. I don't. That's why, to quote a friend, I tell you all that “I wish not to provide funds nor receive services from your twisted excuse-of-a-government.” I want a system of contractual governments, not a system where you think it's moral to enslave me in the name of helping out multiple people by giving them my money. When I argued that I didn't support that because it didn't help out society as a whole either, that was only to argue with your own values to show that what you are doing is irrational if you want to help society as a whole. Personally that's not the reason at all why I don't support taxation. I don't support taxation because it's immoral. I tell you that I don't want to give you the money that I make and you point a gun at me and say, "That's too bad. You're outnumbered." You're all advocating an inherently violent system that I very much oppose. I'm advocating contractual governments which I think is the only moral way to do it: A system of contractual governments allows me to live under a system with my own values of justice and at the same time allows for all other people, no matter how stupid they are, to live under their own standards. So the point that your taxation doesn't support society as a whole is just a side effect meant to use your values to show you that what you are doing is crazy. In reality, I would oppose your system of taxation to steal from the rich and give to the poor regardless of whether or not it would help society as a whole.

So would a society be justified in getting rid of them? We still need someone to do those jobs. We just don't think that you can put a value on a person's life. Therefore, everyone should get a chance to show their mettle. You would deny the poor that chance unless they meet some arbitrary guidelines that (I would argue) no one can define. That's the problem. It's not a misunderstanding, it's a difference of opinion (among other things).

No, it is a misunderstanding. I never said anything to suggest that I would support a society getting rid of janitors. I don't support a society doing anything. I support each individual doing things that don't infringe upon others. I support individuals treating others according to their own moral code. That means that if I don't steal money from other people to give it to the poor then its immoral for you to do that to me. Having society do anything will mean that you're being a dictator for individuals who don't fall into your society's single standard for what is justice and morally right. Thus in my system I support everybody's idea of justice by treating others the way that they treat people.

[Guest]

UtF: Your pond example is COMPLETELY different. No, I wouldn't force people to pay for a damn pond. But the baby is a HUMAN. This is a life we're talking about, not a freakin' koi pond.

So you're supporting a system that imposes one standard of morality and justice and which is thus seen as injustice to those who have different ideas of justice than you. Who are you to come up with a standard to impose on others in which you get to determine what a "right" is?? Somebody else may view the pond or a TempurPedic mattress as a "human right" and then all of a sudden you're not giving it to them. How dare you be so immoral and refuse to give them their rights?

In my system, on the other hand, I support my own idea of justice and morality while at the same time allowing others to live with their ideas of justice and morality so long as their idea of morality isn't forcing me to give my stuff to build their pond or give them their health care in which case if that is how people treat others then I would give them the same treatment and not care if someone takes their things away from them against their will.

Who's to say he will? What if he decides that it's his money? It's a similar argument. Just as you say that he or another rich person should give money for health care because it will never be 'payed back,' why should he feel that he has to pay people to buy his product? What if he decides that it isn't worth the risk? What if he decides that he doesn't trust those people, because he doesn't think they'll end up buying his stuff? See, I think that we're looking at humans differently. To me, it seems as though you believe that humans are naturally good, and able to tell 'good investments' from bad ones, and able to decide what is worth their money, while I, and maybe Izzy, Dawh, etc., think the opposite.

If you diagree with my conclusion, please let me know.

What the hell are you talking about? Are you suggesting that Bill Gates really ought to give his money away to poor people and thus you are supporting forcing him to give his money away to poor people because of the fact that he might choose not to? That's insanity! I was saying that he shouldn't give his money away to poor people so that they can buy his computers because it's not at all beneficial to himself or to anything else. There's no reason why he should do that. That's my point. And if he thought that it was beneficial to give his money away then perhaps he would. But, you don't get to decide if it's beneficial or not. He does. It's his money that he made.

[Guest]

Darn, you beat me to it.

Pond: n. a small body of water formed naturally or by hollowing or embanking.

That is a pond. I'm not sure your comprehension of 'values' are quite in tune. A baby = pond is absurd. You're absurd.

Done :-)

Are you too stupid to realize that I was using the pond as an example of something that you didn't think was a right in the same way that I don't think that health care is a right?

Your system tries to imposes your standard of morality and justice on everybody resulting in people whose ideas of justice are different from yours (e.g. me finding your actions of pointing a gun at me and taking my money to give to poor people as immoral). In your system you make yourself superior by making your opinions on what are "human rights" as the standard. In your system you justify stealing from me to give health care or ponds or whatever else to poor people. In your system, you get to decide what qualifies as a "human right." If you wanted to consider ponds as human rights then in your system the only way I could stop you from stealing my money to give to ponds would be to revolt against you.

In my system I allow myself to live in a world primarily with my own values of justice and morality while at the same time allowing everybody else to live in a world with their own ideas of morality. In other words, if you don't come stealing from me then it would be immoral for me to go steal from you. I try to treat others the way they treat people. I treat them according to their own moral code. This is the only moral way to do it because unlike your way, it doesn't declare myself superior to those who disagree with me. I don't declare myself superior to justify using force to steal other peoples' money for causes that I support.

[Guest]

Dawh just stated that surgeries often cost $1 million dollars. Well, then, UtF, that means those million dolloar surgeries are being paid for ALL THE TIME ANYWAY. We, as a soceity, haven't suffered from it. Why not just have some taxes go to health care, and extend the benefits for EVERYONE? The percent of those in the middle class outweigh those in poverty(uh? I think? I HOPE), so you won't be getting many more million dollar operations, but you will be getting all around healthier people.

If dawh and Zerep's family didn't have people to help them pay (because, honestly, not many people can go insurance free and be all "Here brah, $1 million, take it, Imma go home in my luxury car to mah mansion now."), my best friend would either be dead or in extreme poverty and I would have never met him, and dawh might not be on this forum because he'd be trying to work off that debt or something (well, if it happened to him, not his brother at least.)

And damn, all three of you beat me to getting on him for the pond thing.

Btw, I didn't misunderstand your "potential" thing. I was using potential as a noun in that sentence, not an adjective. Either you miswrote or misarticulated what you meant.

Btw, this guy doesn't have any arms or legs. To you, he's worthless. To the world, he's an inspiration.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ApA4m_uZns&feature=related

Case closed. Stfu now.

*edit* One more thing. Did you even see my post where I proved morality and religiousness and nil connection? *facepalm*

You really aren't making any effort to understand what I'm saying, are you?

If you want to support the guy without arms and legs, be my guest. But, don't declare yourself superior to me and force me to pay money to support him. That is IDENTICAL to me acting like a lunatic and declaring myself as superior to you and using that as justification to take your money and use it to build ponds or give people TempurPedic mattresses do anything else that you don't support. That's why your system is absurd. Your system isn't a system of equality, it's a system where you try to imposes your ideas of justice and morality on everybody else. If a crazy person who thought ponds for kids were a human right did that back to you and forced you to finance the ponds then you would be complaining just the same as me because you disagreed with the idea of justice of the other person. That's why I don't support your system. I don't support forcing people to give their money to any cause, no matter how much I may like that cause, if they didn't agree to give their money to the cause.

About your religious post, I ignored most of it because you missed my point. My point was that the fact that you give some axiomatic fundamental value to human individuals is a value that is very common to religious people. Looking at that value from my perspective, I don't see it as an axiomatic value, but rather as a value that some people accidentally hold as an axiomatic value because they think it will contribute to the prosperity of the human race, etc.

[Guest]

To sum up some of what I've learned in this discussion:

You all's idea of a moral, just system is one in which you impose your arbitrary standard of what is moral and just on everybody else. You have no respect for people who disagree with you on what is justice. If somebody thinks that its immoral of you to point a gun at them and then take their money then you just say, "F*** you. We're superior to you on a moral level and thus we get to decide what to do with your money, not you. We're not going to give you a choice of whether or not you wish to participate in our sorry excuse for a government. You tell us that you would like to stop paying for our government and would like to stop receiving its services as well as if that wasn't much to ask for. Don't you realize that we're superior than you? Don't you see that we don't care what your values of justice are? If you disagree with our ideas of morality and justice and human rights or anything else then we'll use our guns to overpower you. We don't mind being a tyrannical government because we don't mind imposing our ideas of justice on others even if others find our idea of pointing a gun at people to take their money as injustice and immoral. We've already said it: We're superior. We don't care about your morals or your idea of justice. We don't care that you see what we're doing to you as immoral."

So in your system, everybody who disagrees with your standard of justice that you impose on everyone finds your actions immoral and is not content with being enslaved by your tyranny.

On the other hand, my system of contractual governments and my moral view to treat others according to their moral code causes me to respect ever last individuals idea of justice. I don't use the threat of force to steal from others or anything like that. No, I treat everybody as they treat others. Thus, in my system I not only get to live in a world that I see as just and moral, but I also allow every other person in the world, rational and irrational, to live in a world with their own ideas of justice. I treat them how they treat people. They will never live under my tyranny unless they act tyrannical themselves in which case I treat them the same way back.

I hope you all realize what you are doing and what you are supporting. You're declaring yourself superior than those who disagree with you and are tyrannically taking their money from them and imposing regulations on them that they may very likely disagree with. But you don't care, because you see yourself as superior to them: It's okay to steal from a rich person who think its immoral of you to take his money when he never agreed to it or never treated you in the same tyrannical way.

[Guest]

About your religious post, I ignored most of it because you missed my point. My point was that the fact that you give some axiomatic fundamental value to human individuals is a value that is very common to religious people. Looking at that value from my perspective, I don't see it as an axiomatic value, but rather as a value that some people accidentally hold as an axiomatic value because they think it will contribute to the prosperity of the human race, etc.

To add to this statement of mine, I think many people mistakenly desire that individual humans are content and prosperous rather than desiring that humans in general are content and prosperous. You want all humans to be free from poverty, etc, but what you don't realize is that this doesn't mean you should literally try to support every human currently in existence. It means you should try to better society and humanity collectively so that one day in the future the world may be as you desire, with every last individual free from poverty. If you try to give money to poor people directly in order to achieve your goal for every human to be free from poverty, then you will only hurt society's progress, making it take even longer to reach a level of society that can easily take care of every individual in the society so that they are free from poverty. So as my point was saying, if you want every individual to be content and free from poverty, then you better be trying to advance humanity as a whole rather than wasting $100 million on an individual baby. $1 million, $100 million, $1 billion. It doesn't matter how expensive you get to the point that I was making. The point that I was making was that it wasn't worth an extremely large sum of money (e.g. $1 billion) just to save an individual child. Doing that would only bring down society as a whole making it even more difficult for you to eliminate poverty in the future.

[Guest]

To sum up some of what I've learned in this discussion:

You all's idea of a moral, just system is one in which you impose your arbitrary standard of what is moral and just on everybody else. You have no respect for people who disagree with you on what is justice. If somebody thinks that its immoral of you to point a gun at them and then take their money then you just say, "F*** you. We're superior to you on a moral level and thus we get to decide what to do with your money, not you. We're not going to give you a choice of whether or not you wish to participate in our sorry excuse for a government. You tell us that you would like to stop paying for our government and would like to stop receiving its services as well as if that wasn't much to ask for. Don't you realize that we're superior than you? Don't you see that we don't care what your values of justice are? If you disagree with our ideas of morality and justice and human rights or anything else then we'll use our guns to overpower you. We don't mind being a tyrannical government because we don't mind imposing our ideas of justice on others even if others find our idea of pointing a gun at people to take their money as injustice and immoral. We've already said it: We're superior. We don't care about your morals or your idea of justice. We don't care that you see what we're doing to you as immoral."

So in your system, everybody who disagrees with your standard of justice that you impose on everyone finds your actions immoral and is not content with being enslaved by your tyranny.

On the other hand, my system of contractual governments and my moral view to treat others according to their moral code causes me to respect ever last individuals idea of justice. I don't use the threat of force to steal from others or anything like that. No, I treat everybody as they treat others. Thus, in my system I not only get to live in a world that I see as just and moral, but I also allow every other person in the world, rational and irrational, to live in a world with their own ideas of justice. I treat them how they treat people. They will never live under my tyranny unless they act tyrannical themselves in which case I treat them the same way back.

I hope you all realize what you are doing and what you are supporting. You're declaring yourself superior than those who disagree with you and are tyrannically taking their money from them and imposing regulations on them that they may very likely disagree with. But you don't care, because you see yourself as superior to them: It's okay to steal from a rich person who think its immoral of you to take his money when he never agreed to it or never treated you in the same tyrannical way.

We are not saying that we are superior. We are saying that we support the body politic. The body politic is the consensus in the middle that holds the extreme right and the extreme left in check. Izzy was a little impractical in starting this thread with the idea that we form a government to satisfy everyone. As you have made abundantly clear, no matter what kind of government people design, someone won't like it. The best we can do is try to form a government based on the interests of the majority (with proper protections of the minority). If you were stuck living in poverty, do you think that you would still hold your current views on "morality." I kind of doubt it. Which is our point. People change their minds and opinions as they age and their circumstances change. So if we allow everyone to form their own governments, chances are people will want to change them again before the end of their own lifetimes. You can't build a society when the rules are able to alter significantly at any time because one person suddenly decides he wants them to be different. As Izzy has been saying, in your world, what happens if a group of people come together and form a government and then a few years later, they want to amend the contract, but they come to a disagreement on what the amendment should say? Now you have two factions under your system and either one gets railroaded or they split and form two new governments. The first solution is similar to our current system (so long as it's democratically decided) and antithetical to your "morals," but if we can end up with these constantly dividing subgroups as per the second solution (the one that adheres to your philosophy of "personal freedom"), then societal stability is gone and things will be destined for anarchy (so far as we can see).

So all we are saying is that you have to work with the people around you and you can't always get what you want. There's no intrinsic "right" to property, but we decided at some point in our evolution that if everyone could take anything someone else currently possessed, there would be chaos. Now that we have the concept of property, it's developed from our contractual agreements, but we still don't have a specific "right" to it. We just agree that ignoring property rights would be more chaotic. Ignoring laws would be the same way. If people could opt-out of any law with which they disagreed (something that seems to me to be inevitable in your society), then it would only be a matter of time for chaos to reign.

To add to this statement of mine, I think many people mistakenly desire that individual humans are content and prosperous rather than desiring that humans in general are content and prosperous. You want all humans to be free from poverty, etc, but what you don't realize is that this doesn't mean you should literally try to support every human currently in existence. It means you should try to better society and humanity collectively so that one day in the future the world may be as you desire, with every last individual free from poverty. If you try to give money to poor people directly in order to achieve your goal for every human to be free from poverty, then you will only hurt society's progress, making it take even longer to reach a level of society that can easily take care of every individual in the society so that they are free from poverty. So as my point was saying, if you want every individual to be content and free from poverty, then you better be trying to advance humanity as a whole rather than wasting $100 million on an individual baby. $1 million, $100 million, $1 billion. It doesn't matter how expensive you get to the point that I was making. The point that I was making was that it wasn't worth an extremely large sum of money (e.g. $1 billion) just to save an individual child. Doing that would only bring down society as a whole making it even more difficult for you to eliminate poverty in the future.

This is entirely speculation on your part. You do not know what will benefit society in the long run; none of us do. You think that dropping the lower class from the scale will help, while we think boosting the lower class will solve the problem. None of us know beyond a shadow of a doubt if either method would work. You said that you've only been interested in politics for about a year and that the breadth and depth of your experience with political philosophies is somewhat lacking. And yet, you seem utterly convinced that you know what is best for everyone. We're saying that based on our collective experiences, these are what we are thinking is best. You categorically refuse to accept anything we've said and think that you've got the solution all figured out, even though you admit to being something of a political neophyte. People have been debating civilization and government for centuries. You should just ignore everything they've written because it's old and the world has changed. We all know that, but we can still learn from them. If you're really interested in this process, read John Locke, read Jean-Jacques Rousseau, even read Thomas Hobbes. Find sources recommended by your Libertarian friend, but read what people have said over the centuries and form your own opinions. You don't have to agree with what they say; you can call them morons if you like compared to your genius, but at least try looking at the world from different perspectives before you dismiss them out of hand.

And I will say that any questions posed to you here are largely rhetorical on my part as I think we've come (and probably long passed ) a completely intractable ideological impasse on this subject and debating you was not the original purpose of this thread (though the topic is certainly related to the OP).

[gvg]

UtF: dawh said everything I was thinking on your posts.

About the health care: My idea is that you would have had to have tried to get a job in order to be able to get anything. Any company you apply for must send proof of your attempt to the government, and you must apply to at least 3 places a month (or have a job of course) to be qualified. I agree that we have to eliminate the free riders.