If anyone wants to talk about the debates, or anything else vaguely political, have at it here!
Also, I’m not exactly sure why someone wanted to make wax Romney and Obama heads, but I figured I’d put these up in case any of you were ever wondering what that would look like.
@blitzgal
I already said I’m not an objectiveist. You know, its this kind of thing that makes me die a little inside. Its not that you can’t get it. You just don’t want to get it.
There’s a pretty obvious solution to your scenario.
Don’t call me a randoid. I already said I’m not an objectivist.
@aworldanonymous
Do you ever write anything worth reading? Just go. Go fuck yourself. As long as you go.
I’d say aworldanonymous has contributed more and better than you ever have, plus he clearly has a soul and empathy for others.
Even if you’re not a randroid, you’re still operating on the “fuck you Jack, I got mine” principle, which is all you libertarians ever do.
@Diogenes
Yes dude, the only two options are maintaining the status quo or everyone becoming poor. Disregard that rich people have trillions of untaxed dollars, which they accumulate through illegal and/or unethical means, trillions.
Do you even comprehend what a trillion is? It’s 1,000,000,000,000 dollars. The median salary in the US is approximately 45,000 dollars, if we round that out to 50,000 dollars, one trillion dollars adds up to 20,000,000 times times that, that’s enough for 200,000 people to live on for 100 years each and that’s just one trillion.
@blitzgal
9 million? Citation please.
Also, the social programs didn’t pull us out of the Depression. Read Where Keynes Went Wrong by Toronto University Press if you want to find out why.
Also, I am not an objectivist.
“If you want so much government regulation, why don’t you move to North Korea?”
Its your paradise ready-made for you, and you don’t have to go through the trouble of changing America to get it.
@mildly
You don’t have to give equally to all programs. Most people I know just take on a pet cause, and work on it. Some charities will have a little more money, and some a little less, but enough volunteering will balance things out. Thats the way it played out in the last town I lived in.
Taxes are a horribly inefficient way to help people. Governments have little incentive to do things well, and things are structured to make problems linger.
An example: When my ex was studying for her social work degree, she came up to me at the end of the day nearly in tears. She has a case where there’s an alcoholic woman being beaten every day by her alcoholic husband. She can’t leave because she’s financially dependent on her husband.
I pointed out to her that that woman probably just had low self-esteem, and concentrating on that would be the way to get her to move out, and get a job.
“We’re not allowed to change our cases.”
Yeah, they’re hired to perpetuate problems instead of solving them.
@Diogenes The Cynic
We’re well aware that libertarian literature exists. Really. You don’t need to hawk a different fucking book in every post. It’s been done. There’s a reason you can’t type R0n P4ul around here.
Also, what the fuck is that story supposed to be about? You had an ex with a difficult social services case so therefore government sucks? Government workers are hired to perpetuate problems? Have you ever actually been a government worker? Where does this theory come from? You make no sense.
You seem really irked at being called an objectivist. If the shoe fits…
Did it ever occur to you that your ex, as a student, wasn’t allowed to change anything with this patient, because student? That’s if this just-so story even happened, which I doubt, it’s too pat.
Diogynese, dude, not only is this not your blog, you are not well liked by most (any?) of the regular commenters. You do not have the authority to tell aworld to leave.
Clearly having your selfishness pointed out stings, but such is life. You might want to read a few more books if you want to continue discussing how society and economics intersect, because right now you’re barely even at a 101 level and it’s really very boring for everyone else to have to explain things like “why having lots of homeless people wandering around is a bad idea, and not just for the homeless people themselves” to you.
(The reason I’m not even going to try is that you can’t use facts or logic to talk someone into having a conscience or empathy for others, which seems to be the underlying problem here.)
And don’t you just love the way Cynical Dirtbag instantly diagnoses the problem of a woman being abused as really just being her having low self esteem? Presumably she just needed to stand up for herself and suddenly her husband would sober up and stop abusing her. Nice bit of victim blaming there. Unoriginal, though.
@Fitzy
I’m not a right-winger.
@nwoslave
Yeah, everyone was healthier, and died 20 years earlier for some reason.
@captain bathrobe
I said the government should build roads.
You responded with “WHARRRBLLLLGARBLLL who will build the roads?”
Also, I know enough about mental health. Don’t want to get into it now.
But why do we think we have the power to hold someone against their will if they’re a threat to themselves? There are a lot of legitimate reasons a person would want to kill themselves, and that doesn’t necessarily mean they’re unhinged.
With habitual criminals, we at least imprison them after they’ve committed a crime. But holding someone because they COULD harm others? Thats nonsense.
The whole thing about 72 hours unless there’s a court hearing is bullshit. Shows how much you know about your own industry.
Your charity would have to shut its doors with the government? Sounds poorly run.
Maybe they’re not ignorant. Maybe they’re just disinterested.
“Ignorance and wishful thinking”??
Read what other people here have written about economic theory if you want to see that. We have economics on our side, along with reason and logic. It only makes sense to end the drug war, doesn’t it? It only makes sense to release nonviolent offenders from jail, doesn’t it? How are you going to argue against shrinking the military without cherry-picking weak little arguments?
@cynic- “An example: When my ex was studying for her social work degree, she came up to me at the end of the day nearly in tears. She has a case where there’s an alcoholic woman being beaten every day by her alcoholic husband. She can’t leave because she’s financially dependent on her husband.
I pointed out to her that that woman probably just had low self-esteem, and concentrating on that would be the way to get her to move out, and get a job.”
———————————
What the….FUCK with the victim blaming here?
Because abuse victims just have low self esteem, and just need to pull themselves up by their bootstraps. And totally being homeless isn’t a problem at all- everyone knows that women can just cry in the street and get food and a job and a place to stay, amirite?!
And it’s not like battered spouse syndrome is a THING or anything.
Seriously. Get banninated already.
Well color me surprised. The libertarian thinks that everyone just needs enough willpower and reality will magically change to suit them.
Honestly, I think that the unspoken argument here is that they want the poor and homeless and the “takers” and “leeches” to just quietly go die somewhere (or be shunted off to camps to be “humanely euthanized” so that the rich won’t have to see them, ya know, OUT OF CHARITY), all the while acting like it is one’s god given right to be at the topmost echelon of society. Well, actually, until people like Skeptic here gets sent off to a euthanization camp because he is not a rich-rich person, and is therefore considered more of a “taker” because he cannot afford the five million dollars it costs per bottle of clean drinking water.
Yeah, I noticed the women who’re being abused just need to improve their self-esteem thing. Like many of our clueless friend’s ideas about how the world works, not only is he ignoring pertinent information, he’s also creating an either/or scenario that doesn’t actually exist. Why not work to raise the victim’s self-esteem via counselling AND provide a shelter bed so she can leave immediately? Why not government programs AND let anyone who wants to do charity or volunteer work do so as a supplement?
I wonder if he doesn’t realize that most people who’re interested or motivated enough to want to do charity or volunteer work are already doing so. Those people don’t stop volunteering just because there are also government programs in place, and the much larger group of people who just don’t really give a shit aren’t going to start giving a shit jut because government program are cut.
Diogenes, I can’t tell whether you’ve got a lot better opinion of human nature than I do, or if you’re a lot tougher.
Yes, there are rich, middle class, and poor people who do incredible works in their spare time. You sound like you put a lot of time and effort into making your community a better place. I bet you probably had a good upbringing where you were encouraged to remember the least of us, even while your family had little.
You’ve asked us all several times to please stop projecting our own selfishness on you. But I can’t help but think that you’re projecting your own philanthropic impulses onto the rest of humanity. I wish that I could believe that if everyone in the nation had an extra thousand dollars in their pocket, that they’d give $200 of it to headstart program or donate it to a shelter. However, I’ve had a woman tell me that the ideal social solution would be to feed the homeless to the hungry. When I was collecting cans for the local food pantry in high school, a man stopped to lecture me on how I was enabling people by giving them free food. There are some ugly people out there, and they have no interest in doing good for anyone but themselves.
You could argue that this is just our flawed society, and that if we could just embrace our old values of community and camraderie, we would be back on track. After all, you’d never let a neighbor want for anything. But if we changed the structure of our government tomorrow, we’d still have our anonymous society to go along with it. An anonymous society with no food stamps, no grants for homeless shelters, no subsidized medical care for poor kids, no aid for the elderly and alone, and no help for the severly handicapped.
Would some rich people give more if their tax burden was lifted? Sure. People from all over the social strata would. Would it equal the loss of the current government programs, and the grant dollars and special projects money that the Feds and state administrations routinely hand out? I don’t know, and that’s a scary proposal for someone who’s having a hard time making ends meet.
I said something rude about how Libertarianism makes me feel in an earlier comment, and this is why. All of the libertarians I’ve met IRL have been the types who were happy as long as they got theirs, and oh, yeah, other people can do charity. Now I’m willing to admit that there may be another branch of the cause that are willing to put their backs into helping the non-winners. But I can’t agree that slashing the social safety net in the name of liberty will help anyone at the bottom make their way to the top.
TL; DR – We have a lot of people who fall through the cracks in this country, and charities have a hard time keeping up with just those folks. If we take the entire floor away, how can you be sure that the empowered will come through with all the help that they need?
@dualityheart
IME with people who’re fixated on the idea that all assistance to disadvantaged people should be provided via charity there’s also a really icky tendency to prefer things to work that way because it forces the recipients to be “grateful” and display their gratitude in ways that give the charity provider the warm fuzzies. I’ve seen those folks get downright incensed about the idea that if the government just gives people help when they need it then the people being helped won’t be pathetically grateful for any scraps thrown their way, which is clearly not on because then people won’t know their place at all.
It’s a social control mechanism, basically.
When it comes to health care, this is a bunch of hooey. Single payer (a tax-funded government department) vs a kijillion insurance companies, each of which skim off money to make a profit? Yah, no.
I’m always boggled by North American libertarians who spout nonsense about how bad life would be under a big (and socialist) government, as if there weren’t all kinds of examples in the world about how life is actually pretty good in such countries.
Can’t imagine a life in which you:
– don’t have to worry about being one step away from poverty because you have national health care
– don’t have to spend more than half your income on childcare because that’s nationally provided too
– don’t have to go into thousands of dollars of debt to get an education that will lead into a high-paying job because that’s also provided?
Lots and lots of people in northern Europe are living the dream, man. Last time I checked, the only people unhappy with their nanny state in Norway and Sweden are right-wing, MRA terrorists.
@Diognenes – Not an right-winger. Noted. I have read that PJ O’Rourke book, BTW. He made some interesting points. But it didn’t change my life.
And leave aworldanonymous alone.
Everyone else – have fun! I’m calling it a night.
I didn’t bother with the debate. Tweedledum versus Tweedledee. They’re basically the same to me.
I see Diogenes the Naïf is back.
case in point:
Because marriage is just going to become unregulated the way the Soviet State was going to just melt away.
As a friend of mine said, “If both candidates are going to to screw me, I’m gonna vote for the one who will let me use Plan B in the morning”
Pecunium – and if it came to a literal choice of being screwed by one or other, Obama would win hands down anyway ‘sfar as I’m concerned! 😀
Just popping in to make sure Aworldanon knows that everyone else present wants him to stay and Diogenes to fuck off.
Diogenes the Naïf: 1. WTF is a fee-fee? Who wants people to die?
Insurance companies. Sick people cost money, corpses don’t.
Seconding what Katz said.
Aworldanonymous – yayy!
Diogenes the Septic – fuck off.
Clarifying Pecunium: a “fee-fee” is a feeling, not an insurance company. Although it would be an appropriate name for either.
Hellkell: P.J. O’Rourke? Yeah, you just outed yourself as very young and naive.
Nah, I called him on that a week ago, he’s been ignoring it.