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.
Diogenes the Naïf: Can you opt-out of it? If you can’t then thats a problem. I don’t see anything wrong with a privately funded social safety net, but I don’t get why everyone is opted in.
It’s called herd immunity.
I would much rather have the money I earn now, so I can invest it, and actually have something for retirement. Social security isn’t going to do that.
Wrong, and good for you that you weren’t lucky enough to have done that with plans to retire in 2008.
Ok, so rich people are wankholes. Whatever. I’m not concerned for them because they can take care of themselves. My question has still not been answered.
Actually, the answer to your question is in that statement.
katz: Yeah, that didn’t work as well when published. I should have trimmed the first half of the sentence.
Cassandra: I did a longish post about the difference in attitude between gov’t programs and charity. Charity has a moral aspect, and charity allows the giver to judge. If a religious group doesn’t like me, they can refuse to help me (e.g. I might be gay, or poly, or the wrong sort of religious person).
And it’s not as if people like Romney are really giving ’til it hurts. He made a profit of 20 million last year. He gave 25 percent of it away. Even if he only spent half of the remainder, he’ll still make more than 20 million next year (he seems to be making about 5 percent ROI).
So he’s taking a bigger share of the pie every year.
He also may have “deferred” his retirement to maintain his heath insurance, because Anne has MS, and insurers are notorious for excluding MS as a pre-existing condition.
aworldanonymous: Stick around.
Diogenes the Naïf: Feel free to leave, no one will be offended.
@gametime
Anytime is a good time!
So, you’ll agree he isn’t a priori a racist, but ipso facto what he intends to do disproportionately affects minorities? Thats your whole argument for why he is racist?
Also, I’m not an objectivist.
@emily
I don’t want the world to turn into a jungle! I’m all for laws that protect people from one another.
@Sir Bodsworth
I could do a lot better with it than the government. Investing is generally better than saving.
@Nepenthe
There was some m word that would fit in there.
@emily
If these people are so poor they can’t invest, why are we taking large chunks out of their paychecks now?
@blitzgirl
Yes, yes. Fuck me indeed.
What makers?
Why don’t you move to North Korea? Its already what you want.
That money has already been spent. Sorry.
As to Deadwood, how is it any different now?
@katz
This is what I said: Read book x.
This is how you responded: Literacy! RAWRRRRRRRR!!! Hulk Smash!
@Myoo
Who enables it more? I’m the one against rent-seeking.
This is the best collection of stupid people ever. You win first medal.
I wonder how many times we need to call him an objectivist before he’ll get mad enough to leave.
I must say that his habit of responding without quoting to posts from several pages ago is kind of oddly amusing.
It makes it all the easier to ignore his walls of text.
What the fuck would it even mean for someone to be a racist a priori? Does it mean that he’s a racist independent of his experiences? That’d be… weird. Or do you mean that my evaluation of him as racist is a priori? Because that doesn’t make any sense either. How the fuck would I decide someone is racist without experience-based knowledge? Unless there’s some meaning of a priori I’m not familiar with, this use is completely inappropriate.
Anyway, your wack-ass attempt at ham-fistedly shoving academic terminology you don’t understand aside, yes, my “whole argument” for why he is racist is that his policies would directly contribute to the ongoing oppression of specific races. You make it sound like that’s not a big deal.
Diogenes,
Your ignorance is profound and arrogantly worn. I stand by my previous characterization of libertarians: their beliefs are based on willful ignorance, wishful thinking, and privilege. Lots of privilege.
Didn’t we already establish how little Diogynes cares about people who are not Diogynes with the whole who cares about homeless people thing?
Is this a new game – randomly throwing academic/legal/Latin generally into sentences?
Cool.
Oy well, time for me to hit the road. Niters, all!
Diogenes the Naïf Is it reading time?
Try “Debt, The First 5,000 Years”.
As to why gov’t should have some power to coerce, I can explain that in one word, Smallpox. I may soon (Oh! Frabjous Day!) be able to say Polio in the same way.
Allow me to regale you with a comment by Leo Tolstoy.
@Diogenes
Are you an objectivist?
Cloudiah: Subjectively he appears to, at the very least, in close alignment with them. I think he’s something of a paulian gLibertarian myself, but it’s possible he’s just a twit.
He completely ignores the fact that homeless people and poverty will still cause significant costs to society regardless of if we take away all social programs. In fact, they’ll probably get worse without said programs. Unless, of course, he’s advocating actual death camps for the “have nots.” Because that’s the only way you’re going to keep roving bands of homeless from creating cesspools of disease, setting large swaths of greenbelts on fire accidentally because cooking fires, and spreading massive pollution from overcrowded camping situations out in nature where feces and urine are not properly taken care of.
Just take a look at a South African shanty town where there’s no internal plumbing, and you’ll get a good idea of what you’re proposing.
The good news is that at least it will create a new market for a career- corpse disposal specialist- you know, from all the people who are dying of exposure and malnutrition and disease.
It’s like this only not humor:
In unrelated news, I spilled a jar of honey, my kitty stepped in it and tracked it around the house, and then I found a bug in my biscuit by biting into it. All in the past half hour.
You know, I was at a County Mental Health meeting today. Also in attendance were a lot of very capable and compassionate people who were, in a serious and earnest manner, trying to figure out how to allocate scarce resources to meet the needs of a very vulnerable population. And then I think of people like Diogenes, who neither know nor want to know all that goes in to trying help these folks. It’s not nearly enough, of course, and it’s certainly not perfect, but unlike the fevered imaginings of the glibertarians, it at least represents an effort to seriously address the issue. I shudder to think what would happen if people like him get their way.
I know of a guy who pulled his own eye out while psychotic. Should he be left to fend for himself? I know of a 3 year old who saw his parents murdered. Should he not receive some kind of mental health care to help address the trauma of that experience? I know of kids who have been kept in a filthy room and burned with cigarettes, so neglected that they scarcely knew how to talk at age 5. Does the free market have a solution here? Because I don’t think it does. And given the problems I see and hear about every day, I really have a hard time shedding tears for people who don’t like paying taxes, or who conflate helping the vulnerable with totalitarianism. I’m sorry, but that’s fucking privilege.
@gametime
I was about to correct you, but I realized I fucked up on the translation. I was thinking “lechatchila”, as “to begin with” but traslated it to a priori. Well, this is embarassing.
The fact that you misspelled “embarrassing?”
His indifference to homelessness and poverty is what should embarrass him.
Fitzy, you may be onto something here. Maybe “what we’ve got here is failure to communicate.”
This is gonna sound strange coming out of the mouth of a Haredi guy, but I think we’re pretty smart apes, and since apes are social, so are we. The majority of us are hardwired and socialized to have empathy.
Unfortunately, I had to move recently, but for the past few years I lived in Monsey, NY. Its an incredible place. Filled to the brim with the nicest, kindest people you could ever imagine. Despite the fact that some areas are impoverished, there isn’t any crime. There are a ton of people who devote themselves to charity. Communities like this exist. You can will them into existence where you are too. As an aside, guess who just bought the domain meyadleyad (from hand to hand) yup.
I’ll concede that there are people out there who suck, but they’re the minority. I honestly believe that the average poor person would be better off because a richer society could provide more for them. Also, it really isn’t charity when you vote for others to give to others.
In the sense that you too dense to understand what anyone else is saying, yes.
Captainbathrobe,
Can you imagine a set of circumstances where it would make sense for someone to take their own life? Maybe they’re in terrible pain, or they don’t feel their lives are worth living, or they’ve decided that they got old enough, and they’re done. Why do we have to treat these people like there’s something wrong with them?
If someone wants to take their life, what right do we have to stop them? They own themselves.
The same goes for self-harm. Its self harm for a diabetic to eat sugar, or an obese person to eat cheeseburgers. If someone owns his own body, what right do we have to stop them from damaging it? I’m sure you’re for bodily autonomy when it comes to abortion, but can’t see why you wouldn’t extend self ownership to this as well. Now, I’m not saying its good that people are harming themselves. The person is obviously not rational when they pluck out their own eye, but his crime is against himself. How can an irrational person consent to being medicated?
Lets say they found Genie again. What do they do differently this time? I think she would have been better off having been adopted. I can concede the point to you about the child ward of the state. You’re absolutely correct that we should stop at nothing to help them. But when they become adults it becomes a moral dilemma.
Oh my fucking lord are you dim.