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.
@lowquacks
Well, communism is one thing. I think the conservatives beat the liberals out in reckless spending though. The liberals just do their schtick, but conservatives perfected the art of rent-seeking.
Why do we need more aircraft carriers than the rest of the world combined?
We don’t!
What about those cops getting free m4’s from the military?
I see nothing wrong with giving an untrained kid in his mid 20’s a rifle. Nothing can go wrong there!
So basically you only have problems with laws that you personally dislike. That’s actually a very common feeling, but most people don’t respond to it by going libertarian, so I’m wondering if you don’t quite grasp how democracy works.
Libertarians are the most whiny, overprivileged, pampered fuckstains in the universe. “Well I would just get another job. Well I would just pay for medical insurance. Well I would just make sure I wrote a contract better. Well I would just make sure I was born rich, white and male”.
As I said above, they literally can’t conceive of not being as ridiculously privileged as they are now.
AND WE HAVE A REVOLUTIONARY POLITICAL THINKER RIGHT HERE
@thenat
I’m not an Objectivist. I’m a libertarian. Please don’t conflate the two.
1. WTF is a fee-fee? Who wants people to die?
2. I suggest you read a little pre-Marxist communism philosophy. What Owen suggested was pretty close to a co-op. So, if you wanted it, you could own the means of production without forcing others to give it up. If you want a co-op for medicare, nothing is stopping you from making one. If social security is such a good idea, why do we have to force people to contribute to it?
3. Doesn’t make it right. Thoreau protested the Mexican-American war by not paying his taxes. I’ll admit I don’t have the level of resolve he does, because I don’t want to spend time in jail, but I will protest my money being used for immoral purposes. If you don’t, what kind of person are you?
4. Why the fuck do you think everyone is just as greedy and uncharitable as you? You don’t give to causes you believe in? Do you just take your own selfishness, and project onto everyone else in society?
Charity exists, and government is not as replacement for it.
@diogenes
Think of countries as exclusive co-ops and you’re most of the way to social democracy! Fee-fees are the feelings of white men and similar.
Rich people are, generally speaking, entitled wankholes. That’s why.
More seriously, a social safety net’s far cheaper than people being homeless and mega-sick and out of work/in jail all of time.
@cassandra
I think the role of government is to protect people from one another. Building roads and stuff is good too.
I just don’t think they should do much more than that.
@thenat
How do you know I’m white, or not poor?
@diogenes
Flattening curves of income does protect people from each other pretty well, actually.
libertarianism
Same with labour laws, for example. They prevent the exploitation of poor people desperate to work, as does welfare for unemployed persons to a degree or the threat of firing being used to prevent, say, unionism or requests for adequate OH&S,
The solution to “I don’t like some laws” is not “OMG, who needs governments anyway?”
1) Feelings. People who don’t want to provide healthcare to people they’ve decided don’t ‘deserve’ it.
2) Why should healthcare be so prohibitively expensive people need to form co-ops to access it?
3) There’s a difference between protesting what money is spent on and advocating that there should be no co-operation EVAH because you don’t like poor people or whatever the fuck.
4) I’m the one advocating anarcho-communism, dipshit. How does that make me uncharitable and yet you, who thinks that poor people should be denied healthcare, Captain Social Justice? Fucking dimwit. Also, charity isn’t a reliable method of welfare because a lot of charities have caveats on who can benefit from their money (i.e. no LGBT, no immigrants, no atheists etc.) – so what do those people do then?
extra) Because you think paying taxes so people can get healthcare is the greatest oppression ever.
I just don’t think you’ve thought this through.
Providing nationalized healthcare is actually a great way to protect people from one another. For a start, it helps to protect poor people from dying because other, richer people would rather make lots of money than keep the poor people alive.
Also, not to rub it in or anything, but there are very few libertarians, and lots of people who want the government to provide services that you don’t approve of. Since we still live in a system that at least somewhat resembles a democracy, this means that your dream of a government that only does what you’d like it to and not a single other thing despite what the rest of the population wants is destined to remain nothing more than a fantasy.
You may have some tissues to gently dab away the tears, if you’d like.
@CassandraSays
Don’t give him any unless he had the foresight to buy tissue insurance. If he didn’t, he doesn’t deserve them.
Oh, I was planning to charge him at the special didn’t buy insurance and so now must pay the premium rate level. Attempts to access tissues for free will result in a lecture about bootstraps.
Governments who offer free tissues to the disadvantaged are just plying the poor for votes.
I set up a tissue-giving charity but unfortunately we think that only women with red hair and 2cm long nails who can make origami viking ships deserve them.
@lowquacks
@thenatfantastic
I’m not against government tissues, I just don’t want people using them irresponsibly. People should be provided with a ration of one a day to save up for cases of legitimate nasal illness.
I guess you could say I’m a single-tissue voter.
As a communist, born and raised (Yugoslavia), surrounded by people who’ve shared my style of upbringing (with variations which mostly revolved around free speech and immigration laws — now, free speech does seem like a huge issue, but I’ve yet to meet a person who prefers the current state of being able to tell the government to go fuck themselves while digging through dumpsters for dinner to the state of having to say the government is aaaaawesome with a huge fake grin in front of the cameras, and having that god damned dinner, and lunch and breakfast and free housing and a great job, and everything free for your kids, and almost two months of vacation time, and… well, you get the idea. And before anyone mentions this — nobody liked Ceausescu anyway), we always, always get totally baffled when we read the typical US centred health and other social care discussions.
… how the hell does a person say, with a straight face, I’d rather have a second car or my trip to Hawaii than lots of people not being denied their cancer treatment.
It just does not compute.
Not the most logical rebuttal, know, but… it does not compute. How do you live with yourself?
Granted, I also always fail to comprehend why, after mentioning this on any internet forum, I always get US-ians lecturing me what communism really is, but that’s another story.
(In short, I think some people would benefit greatly from living in poverty for a few years. *sigh*)
They live with themselves via a combination of extreme selfishness and frantic rationalization. In order for the rationalization to work it needs to be constantly maintained, which is why they never STFU.
So, like MRAs, except instead of blaming women for everything, they blame the poor people. Those horrible, horrible poor people, don’t they know any better?
Oh, I missed objectivist dudebro?
Here’s the deal, sweetie. People who don’t have health insurance avoid going to the doctor until calamity strikes. Calamity tends to be far more expensive than preventive care. People without insurance go to the emergency room, and then you and I end up paying for their care anyway, and we pay for calamity, which as I expressed above, is far more expensive than preventive care. And for as much as all you Randoids love to talk about freeloaders and takers, there is nothing more “taker” than not being in the health insurance pool with everyone else and then using the emergency room as your primary care provider. That’s the very fact that was pointed out by the Republicans and the Heritage Foundation when they came up with this exact same healthcare program back in the early 90’s. And that’s the exact same point that Mitt Romney made when he got the program into Massachusetts
Also, we live in a fucking society. NO ONE amasses wealth without using the existent public infrastructure that is paid for and maintained by tax dollars. NO ONE. And in fact, the wealthy use far more of it than the poor do. So yes, they have an obligation to pay for it.
@diogenes
You are an insult to your namesake, just thought I’d throw that out there.
Yeah, real Diogenes was cool.
I just read up on Diogenes and respectfully disagree that he was cool. In fact, to me his attempts to shock people to ‘open their minds’ seem quite similar to the actions of a surly teenager who’s just read up on an extremist political position
Rand, thinks they have seen the One True Truth and goes aroundannoyingtrying to convert everyone. In other words, I think the name suits this Diogenes perfectly.