You neglect that perhaps I am voting against a different sort of violence.
You mean you want to use violence on me today, in order to allegedly protect me from some nebulous, unspecified violence that you think might happen in the future.
Would you be willing to stick a gun in my face and tell me to buy health insurance? If so, at least you understand what you're really doing when you vote for such things. If not, you're just a coward hiding behind paid thugs to enforce your will on others.
Either way, you're still an immoral person, and there's no common ground that can be reached between us.|||Did this turn into an anti-Jedouard mobbing campaign?
You aren't serious with your point about putting a gun into your mouth, right? People are obviously allowed to vote a party which will enforce certain laws and regulations. It's a different question whether you like them or not, but that's democracy. Enough people have voted the government and they said in advance and pretty loud that they will implement mandatory health insurance.
The state is allowed to apply certain kinds of force to enforce the law, of course. In fact, it's expected to do that and one of its foremost duties. I think you are going a bit far with calling somebody immoral because of that. If the health care system violates the constitution, then you will have to prove it before a court. If you can't, then it's all fine with it, whether you like it or not. If you want to get rid of it, vote the others next time.
If you believe that it's all a big fraud, the court is biased and the state unable to do enough of a good job to fulfill the will of the people, you will have to overthrow the state. However, I believe that there's more which you like about the USA than which you dislike, so you have to get things done within the system.|||Quote:
You mean you want to use violence on me today, in order to allegedly protect me from some nebulous, unspecified violence that you think might happen in the future.
Would you be willing to stick a gun in my face and tell me to buy health insurance? If so, at least you understand what you're really doing when you vote for such things. If not, you're just a coward hiding behind paid thugs to enforce your will on others.
Either way, you're still an immoral person
But you want to use violence on me, in order to protect some completely arbitary property rights because it`s for the "greater good".
The only good thing about you guys is that if I walk across the piece of forest you bought 50 000 km from where you live, you might actually shoot me down. At least your evil is consistent.
Either way, you are still an immoral person
|||Jmerv, here is Dawkins at 1:35 talking about how nothing is for certain.Quote:
I thought I said ''thread dead'' 2 pages ago.
Thread derailed from hurricane to tax, government, culture...
Huh??
Oh.
Oh yeah, well Krischan uses "it" too may times.|||Quote:
You mean you want to use violence on me today, in order to allegedly protect me from some nebulous, unspecified violence that you think might happen in the future.
Would you be willing to stick a gun in my face and tell me to buy health insurance? If so, at least you understand what you're really doing when you vote for such things. If not, you're just a coward hiding behind paid thugs to enforce your will on others.
Either way, you're still an immoral person, and there's no common ground that can be reached between us.
And you don't do the same? I pay taxes for that "nebulous, unspecified violence that you think might happen." I pay for the police and yet no police officer has ever directly intervened in any way in my life. Yet, I pay into policing for the entirety of my town, state and country. I pay them to protect you and your property, but I have never had anyone pose a threat to me or my property. How dare you push your policies on me for what you think might happen. Never-mind what is statistically likely to happen!
Seriously, though, you are playing with words. There is a big difference between "might" and "statistically probable".
Statistics show that without policing crime rates go up. Statistics show the same for poor health. Just because your mind can't make the connection that desperation - something that is in part achieved through poor health - leads people to commit desperate or, eventually, spiteful acts, doesn't mean that that connection doesn't exist.
You see the direct line between crime and punishment as a deterrence of crimes against you and your property, and you "put a gun in my mouth" to pay for this system. Just like you with universal health care, I *could* easily say has not directly benefited me even though statistics show chances for something bad happening to me a far higher without it.
A vast amount of data shows the direct line between poor health and desperation and the direct line between desperation and crime, and multiple countries have shown that a well-organised, universal health care system preventing poor health is a lot cheaper at the national and individual level and more humane than dealing after the fact with crime and its consequences stemming from this desperation. (And that is not to mention other direct consequences of poor health as with the number of tuberculosis infection in New York from 2000-2004, etc.)
So spare me your hypocritical "gun-in-my-mouth" morality unless you want to refund all that money that everyone has paid into your policing, sanitation, education, utilities infrastructure, recreational areas, official holiday celebrations, etc. - all of which are part of quelling desperation to keep people from losing faith in our social organisation and simply going after those whom they are envious of.
Which brings me to this: the nature of humanity isn't to peacefully interact in a market environment, it is to take the easiest route to material prosperity. If the market and the political apparatus to regulate it (i.e., contract enforcement) are culturally understood to be that route, then so much the better because physical violence has a predictable place in it. But for those who slip beyond a given threshold of disadvantage, the market and its regulatory framework are no longer perceived that way. And when these persons group together, they frequently reproduce a culture that not only perceives the market as quite the opposite of the route to material prosperity - a route to despair, but also can vilify those who participate in it such that it becomes okay target them and expropriate their material wealth.
If you want to sustain the market and yourself, then your only option is to put in provisions to curb the extremes of the market: the threshold of disadvantage as well as the threshold of over-advantage (i.e., monopolisation to bar all competition and thus potential for others' upward movement). And if you can do so in a way that also makes your own necessary expenses cheaper, then why wouldn't you? Is your hypocritical morality your explanation for this lack of rationality? Or are you that poorly informed about the statistical correlation between crime and disadvantage-driven despair and spite? Or is it that you can't believe that you might face the consequences because, despite all the studies and statistics to the contrary, the dots just aren't connecting for you?
You should know that no socio-cultural construct can survive without the social body itself reproducing it, and in order to do that, a sufficient number of persons in the social body need to feel that they can participate in the construct to their advantage (rather than vice versa). The construct of economic interaction is no exception. If the humaneness of things like curbing these extremes, the saving on individual costs and the risk posed to your person by a counterculture that vilifies your likes, then think of curbs on the extremes of the market (e.g. ensuring good health, a minimum of housing, etc.) as propaganda for the social construct, upon which your livelihood is dependent and whose number of supporters has been decreasing for 30 years and just took a nose dive.
I'd add to that that it doesn't take a majority to mess things up for you, if not by changing the construct, then at least by making the cost of living more difficult to afford. Look at London and Madrid and Cincinnati.|||Time for a break from this topic, Gentlemen. Too much banal rhetoric. FAR too much flamebait. Won't do.
Sorry for any inconvenience.
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