The last I heard, you can be brought before a human rights tribunal for referencing portions of the Bible that say things about homosexuality that aren't approved by the State, and I'm sure similar rules apply to ideas about race and gender. I know that a big part of the law that was resulting people being drug into court for twitter comments and such was recently overturned, so maybe I'm wrong now, you'll have to tell me.
This would be another example of the 1984-style leftist control over language that I'm talking about. The reality is that the expression of certain political opinions in Canada is (was?) criminalized. However, those opinions are [i]called[/i] 'hate speech' instead of 'political opinions', so it doesn't seem like a big deal. The idea is that people have a harder time even conceptualizing that people who disagree with state-approved political views can be rational people.
And that’s why I don’t bother with personal anecdotes.
Well, yes. If he takes a political office with a primary goal of changing the country to benefit his race, he’s a racist. Seems pretty straightforward to me.
It’s quite possible. I’ll have to do my research and get back to you (but don’t hold your breath). One of these days long after I’m done with this thread, I’ll have to find a Canadian politics thread and learn about my own government.
“Hate speech” is a term given to nefarious uses, however much it might have been intended for the right uses, as almost anything can be subsumed under the term given clever enough stringing together of connections to actual harm that some speech utterance might cause. I guess this would fall under Eric’s “unenforceable laws” as it is patently difficult to identify what counts as hate speech and what doesn’t (I mean, there are the obvious cases, but there are ambiguous cases, and even cases which normal rational people would think are obviously not hate speech but some malignants patch together an argument that makes it seem like hate speech).
But just FYI, if you tell a Canadian he has no free speech, he’s probably going to laugh at you.
Again, bad joke.
No, I know racism is something anyone can be towards any other race (or even one’s own). When I used “reverse racism”, it was when I still had the image of the liberal as one who was against race discrimination (as opposed to the other strain of liberal whom you’re connecting with Marxism and eugenics), so it was difficult for me to square the idea of a “racist liberal”–except in the sense of reverse racism which I can see many liberals being.
Yes, like buying a car, and being told, if it goes above 50 it explodes, is a Con… Cars only reach the point of efficiency when they go above 50. So, sure, I’ll accept that it is a con, but then you have to explain why we need socialism, if the only thing it can do is not be efficient enough to help everyone…
Yes, that is what I meant, I was thinking state as another word for government.
No, but sorta yes. One of the biggest reasons the North won in the Civil War was because of infrastructure. The North had nicely paved roads and railroads and all that junk. The South, being largely made up of northern scots moving to America to get away from the English government, didn’t care for such things. There are writings of people noting that the scots would rather walk through the stream than build a bridge. It was also a problem in Scotland for years, until they started smartening up, possibly because the most grumpy and disagreeable moved to America, particularly the South… The North did not win because they had better people, or anything like that… The south sent their kids to military school all the time, and often kicked the shit out of the north, right until they started running out of things… The costs to move anything around was higher in the south, because of the lack of infrastructure… (This is one of many reasons, not the only reason.) (Another book worth looking at: Black Rednecks and White Liberals, by (THE MAN) Thomas Sowell)
He pointed it out because of an economic theory I presented. (Freedom of information vs protected innovation) In this case, I am presenting the idea that if we stop protecting the medical productions, even for the short time we do, we might see more innovation not less… It’s a theory alone though, a mental exercise.
Sure.
Well, that and I’m a horrible smart ass.
I’d prefer no.
I would if I could… No, I really would. I think it is a rhetorical flourish added on because it sounds good. All of the preamble stuff is… These were not set down as laws, the were set down to start off a writing. The laws were set down after that, these are just the intentions meant by those laws.
Rhetorical flourish is not a justification to take away freedoms.
No, I want the “common defense” provided for, it’s called the judicial branch and the military, both outlined in the Constitution. Justice and domestic tranquility are also dealt with via the different branches of the government, as they are set out in the Constitution… Why do you think that all of them, except promoting the general welfare was not?
It could be a lot of things, the individual society has a lot to do with what would happen… I also think that would be another thread. But my primary response is, I don’t want the government all gone, I am not a Anarchist.
This government was created out of that same anarchy. Humans build, they grow. There is no reason to believe that we’d turn into a mad max situation… I think that for the most part people would figure out, we don’t really need the government, at least not in every aspect of our lives. And there is part of me that goes along with James at times, thinking, and this is what the government is truly afraid of people learning. But, that is hard to believe if you don’t believe in conspiracies, which I don’t…
Nope, and that is why we had two, one to start with and fail, then the current one…
Nothing is necessary, nothing is guaranteed, nothing is predestined. “We are never more than one generation away from tyranny.”
Actually, it costs quite a bit more to everyone involved. Just not to everyone individually.
That is part. I think of it like a pie. (This pertains to the average standard of living too.) Progressives, and you with this question, worry about how much of a slice everyone gets. That one person may have a bigger slice than another. This is also why I call the poverty line arbitrary, it means what the political force behind it want it to mean. I don’t care that one person has a bigger slice, I care about making the pie bigger. If we make the pie bigger, we make it so everyone has enough. Socialism and communism is attempting to distribute the pie evenly, not understanding that by doing so the pie stays the same size and everyone suffers.
How do the worst off in a society become better by giving it to them? It may be possible to create a status, so that no one changes, but are they made better? Socialism is stagnation.
And the rich, as they have more to give, generally… But what if instead we did our best to make everyone rich, then worry about the differences between one arbitrary group and another.
Sure.
I’ll take that as your conclusion. But, repeatedly through history economists have shown that in an open market, entrepreneurs have no control over price. If Canada is forcing a price to be lower that the production cost, than what is not getting paid. And if money is being lost, what reason do people have to invest in the production of new medicines? Charity only goes so far, and wouldn’t it be smarter to rely on peoples desire to make their lives better to help everyone else.
Go to a local Christian church, I don’t know if you have a denomination, but even with none, most of them’ll help you. And these are the same people that won’t want Same-Sex marriage, because they think it is harmful to those involved. People care, people give what they can, even if sometimes its an opinion that you don’t want.
I do. But People need to have enough that they feel safe to give. If you limit how much they have, they have less to give. Is it limited to conservative attitudes, no, I think the great majority of Liberals want to help people. Like, Liz, I think she is a good person, that really cares. I just don’t think there is enough proof that socialism actually helps, that transferring the freedom of decisions to “specialists” and “experts” is going to make things better.
YEAH!
The rich getting richer is a externality. I don’t care about it, though it happens when we try to get the poor less poor. If we let it go, stop fighting the “class struggle.” We should be much better off.
It is all wrong.
Sure. It never hurts to help.
The best response I got to the question of, “So, do you just not like a great set of tits?” was, “Naw, tits are great, I just like dick more.”
I left it open on purpose to laugh at the response.
I already acknowledge that, to a point. I find the lack of allowing everyone to vote, or slaves being 3/5th’s a person to be a frustrating black eye, even while acknowledging the difference in time and society. I would make several changes, including removing any and all references to sex and skin color, and the possibility for slavery…
I think it is being used for the purpose for which it was originally intended- the criminalization of unwanted political speech.
I haven’t been reading your exchanges with Eric, but laws regulating speech and the dissemination of information are very enforceable, depending on how serious you take them.
I can take it. No less true for that.
In my country, liberals support and enforce a law that says that businesses and universities are required to take a person’s race into consideration when hiring/accepting them, and can face penalties if not enough people of various races are hired. I’ve been told by university professors that it will be much harder for me to get a job in academia because I’m not a racial minority, or a woman. I suppose you I could draw a connection between this and Marxism, but racial discrimination isn’t just for the ‘way out there’ leftists.
You make it sound so innocuous–“unwanted political speech”–but if I recall (Google didn’t help me in this case), the impetus for hate speech laws came about after World War II in response to the effects of Hitler’s anti-Semitic propaganda and charismatic style of oration. I think the prevention of having that happen again was the intent… but like I said, it’s a loosy-goosy term that can be reinterpreted any way you like.
By “unenforceable” we meant “difficult to enforce justly”. It came about over the question of whether it would be useful to have a law criminalizing lies or the withholding of truth by politicians. I thought it would be rather useless since I couldn’t think of a way to enforce it (i.e. determine whether a politician really was lying or just made a mistake or remembered incorrectly…) and Eric thought it would be dangerous because it could be enforced any damn way you’d want–depending on how you interpret it or determine whether a politician was lying or not. So yeah, such laws can easily be enforced, but rarely ever justly.
I’ve read about those laws, and I think they’re complete bull shit. For my standards, that is “way out there” leftist. It’s as if it were a law concocted as a knee-jerk reaction by someone who was severely lacking in the department of rationality. I mean, what if not enough people of color applied for the job? What if there actually is a genetic difference between races on job preference? What if the employer simply lives in an area scarce in a certain racial group? Is he suppose to fly people in from different parts of the country just to “balance out” the diversity of races? So yeah, I’m with you on this one.
I’d support them if the statistics were held to a standard, in all jobs. It’s not enough to have the only limitation be, must hire x% of minorities, instead you must hire a specific amount of each, so the companies have “proper” racial quotas… It would be disastrous, and amazing to watch. Especially when, Basketball teams and rap music companies must suddenly hire 50% whites…
And then why stop at race or sex or religion? Why not eye color, or hair? Why not height? Why not dental hygiene?
What if the company has only 3 employees? Is each person supposed to be divided up into different races, sex, etc.?
And why would a black dude want to be working for a white supremacist employer?
This is a prime example of government fucking things up, isn’t it? And they probably knew the difficulties with this, but figured “Well, we gotta make our liberal constituents happy, so let’s just make a blanket law that sounds good on paper and let the little companies work out the difficulties on their own.”
It is an example of experts stepping in with solutions. And it gets worse, as I said, preferential treatment helps no one, regardless of what it is called, regardless of who it helps, from the whites of South Africa during the apartheid to the blacks of America with affirmative action. At best, it simply lowers the standards, resulting in an undermining of the abilities of the preferred group. At worst, it divides people by race, and distances them from each other. This was seen in South Africa, as Blacks would take jobs for less, resulting in getting hired more often (often with a white “in charge” to by pass any stupid laws) to India, were special rules for untouchables (or whatever the word is) are turned into a hated group, because when you pass over 91 people to find the one untouchable that meets the requirements, you don’t piss off just the one person that would have gotten the job, you piss off everyone else, even if it was very unlikely they where going to get the job…
It would be damned funny to watch the other groups happen, think of the CEO’s of the world, right now there are screams about not enough women, but what about red necks. There are even less red necks CEO’s of the fortune 500 companies… I demand this be fixed, with government force if necessary…
Now what, Eric? Nothing. I not trying to ‘win you over’ to my way of thinking; I have never tried. And I’m sure you realize you’re not going to change the way I think. So?
I am a bit disappointed with your reply to me, however. You and gib may think you’ve answered my questions, but I don’t think you have. You weren’t really specific about wanting to buy a gun w/o any paper work; you only got specific with gib. Then, your reply boiled down to you don’t think any of the gun control laws really work, or they don’t work as they are ‘supposed’ to work. Am I correct? I happen to agree with you. Background checks don’t do diddly-squat to keep weapons out of the hands of people who might use them at the drop of a hat.
As for health insurance, you can buy any health insurance you want, the law doesn’t limit that choice. But it does say that you have to have health insurance or pay a fine. There are several reasons for that, one of which is economics. But that brings up something that gib has already raised–for every ‘study’ made to show that caring for an uninsured sick or injured person costs the tax payer more than caring for an insured person, there will be another study that says it doesn’t. Since it’s human nature to want self-affirmation, you’ll believe any ‘study’ you want to believe. I happen to agree with the studies that show it costs the tax payer more to care for an uninsured person–plus it overcrowds the emergency rooms.
I hate having my tax money financing wars; I dislike my tax money used for what came about as the result of 9-11; I dislike my tax money being used to develop weapons, but those are all interrelated. I’d also never keep an alligator in my bathtub if I lived in Florida; it’s against Florida state law. That’s being specific; you haven’t been.
The US has had free markets. It may not have been exactly like the Austrian theory or as Sowell would have it, but the US market has been free and was until 1877 and the Commerce Act. The Commerce Act was passed because of the railroads and the lousy way the railroad owners ran them. It was the first Federal law passed to regulate the Market. You’ve said that regulation stifles invention. But then you switched, in a way, and started talking about ‘innovation’ rather than invention and went on to show that there’s innovation all over the place–so what do you mean, exactly. You say there’s no innovation in the drug business, but, if that’s true, how come there are so many variations on the same basic drug on the market? (You mentioned fashion as being an example of innovation because it changes every year. Yes, it must. But, again, the innovations in fashion are nothing more than variations on the fashions of the past–that sold. An aside: when did men’s fashions last change?)
Finally, you place your dream of charity on religious organizations, primarily, and private charities. That’s fine, up to a point. But. . .
There are very few charitable non-profits that aren’t businesses. They pay overhead just as any business does; it’s what’s left over that goes to the poor. And it isn’t always the poor in the US that are helped. Do you know of a charity that dedicates available funds for poverty relief in the US? Even Church organizations hold donation drives to relieve the poverty of the world and a lot of that’s done to make converts.
What organization has the responsibility to care for all its people other than the Government?
Yes, the Government mucks a lot of things up–remember the Bridge to Nowhere? Yes, the Government can be too far from the people. We’re one hell of a big country. Our elected representatives are supposed to be our voice, but are they? First of all, I’d bet that most of the population doesn’t even know what they’re elected to do, and given recent events, it’s kind of obvious that the representatives themselves don’t know. According to Ucci, that would change if a balance between conservatives and liberals on university faculties were to be maintained. But is that really the answer?
This thread is about reforming democracy as exemplified by the US system (which the US wants to spread throughout the world); but, imm, that would take much more than a paradigm shift.
That is because your question equates to, list all the people you know. When I provide a small list of first names, you now say, they aren’t specific enough.
All laws limit freedom. All laws reduce the actions of the individuals, that is what they are for. When we put a law against murdering people, we are limiting freedom, the freedom to murder. And while we would be hard pressed to find, a reasonable, someone pissed off at that lack of murdering freedom in this country, that is what laws do, and what you asked for.
Why don’t you instead, list a law that doesn’t limit freedom? Cuz then, I can show you it does…
That is a boiled down. Though, I said, I am ok with a very few of those laws, As my mother has said, locks only really keep uninterested people out, anyone really interested in getting in your car is going to get in. Doesn’t mean you don’t lock your doors. The five day wait and small background check, are the equivalent of locking the door for me. People that should get in, are inconvenienced, like needing to keep track of keys or get them out to unlock the door. That inconvenience is enough of a small deterrent.
It does limit choice. People now have to pay for things they may not want, that is a limitation of choice. Taxes are laws, that limit the choice of a person to do with the resources they have earned. The new law is a tax, the Supreme Court said so. Don’t need a study, that is a definition thing. What the goal of the law was, is not part of your original question.
Yes, taxes limit choice. Also, morality is not law. But, law must be moral, else it undermines law.
Invention is innovation. I use them interchangeably, most people I know who talk about either do…
Quite often, watch a fashion show. It is usually only small things, but they change… (I paint a little, and when I was learning I picked up a lot of color theory, and my drawing class taught me lines… So, I’m better at noticing now. Though I still roll my eyes, being the person I am.)
Yes, my local church does. They have a food bank. The problem with charities is how they must be run, it results in less efficiency, so, it may actually be better that they are run as businesses. At least if you want to help the poor, more than you want to feel good about helping the poor. Overhead is a necessary thing, else those greedy business men would find a way to not pay it.
But it is not the governments responsibility to care for all its people. It is its responsibility to keep everyone from killing each other, to provide a basic level of justice. Caring for people is what parents are for, I do not want another parent in the form of government officials.
“You will find that [the] State is the kind of organisation which, though it does big things badly, does small things badly too.” - John Kenneth Galbraith
Actually, when I read Ucci, the problem isn’t that they must be maintained to a desired level, but that they must be honest about their bias. Laws demanding affirmative action don’t help anyone, even (possibly especially) the protected group.
As long as it is a shift to the right, I’m with you.
I make it sound like what it is. I don’t dress it up with a term like ‘hate speech’ to take away from what’s happening- the criminalization of unwanted political speech.
I know Germany did something like that, yeah. Are we considering hate speech laws to be a global phenomenon traced back to a single source, or might it be that Canada does it for a completely different reason than the U.S. may do it and so on?
Yeah, I’d say it can’t be enforced justly because it’s not a just premise in the first place- it would be like trying to enforce forced sterilization justly or the criminalization of religion justly.
Me too. They came about for a good reason though. After slavery and desegregation, it was decided that blacks were in this slump were nobody would hire them for good jobs because they didn't have a good education, and they didn't have good educations because they were poor from not having good jobs, etc. So it was decided that we would temporarily (for like one generation) take legal measures to get tons of blacks in schools and professional positions to get them up to a level playing field. Here we are, 50 years later, the laws still in place and no sign of it having accomplished squat.
You guys have it too, by the way, under the term Employment Equity. I'm glad you think it's 'way out there' leftist, but in terms of how many leftists seem to support it and the mainstream politicians that advocate it, it's really not far left in demographic terms...unless most leftists are far leftists.
That strays very close to hate speech. You have to ask yourself, if there was such a difference, would it be legal to teach about it in Canadian schools? I’m seriously asking. And just to remind you I’m not picking on Canada- such a difference wouldn’t be taught in American schools either, because the leftist hegemony doesn’t want something like that to be true.
I’m a little confused on that. The headline makes it sound like the law is gone, but if you read a little further down, it makes it sound like all the same stuff is illegal, they just take you to an actual court instead of a scary-sounding Human Rights Tribunal.
Oh, yeah, Goldberg is one of my favorite pundits. I’ve read Tyranny of cliches and Liberal Fascism, I also read his postings on National Review, his newest is very interesting, tying a lot of things back to WWI…
I also got to see him live in boulder… I enjoyed that very much despite being very sick at the time.
I’ll add Mamet to my list (I just picked up “Poor Economics” and’ll be working on that first.)
Sure, it might be (another research project for me I guess). I was responding to this:
I’m not sure what the original intent was when it was implemented in Canada, but I was thinking globally–as in, when the term first showed up in history… ever. Also, judging from the wording I used, I think I meant it in a hypothetical sense–as in, if it was intended for the right use, or regardless of whether it was intended for the right use.
Your wording does capture quite nicely the broad spectrum of cases in which it might be, and is being, used (or misused?), but I think if we’re talking about the first instance of such a law (if that was in Germany after World War II–I’d have to confirm this), it should be narrowed down to something like “public speech intended to reach a significant portion of the masses with the intent of arousing actions aimed at doing serious harm or of killing others [without justification?].”
Good point, if the law really is phrase as you described it:
I don’t know what the intent behind the law is (I’m guessing it can be traced back to fighting discrimination), but if you ask me, the best way to fight prejudicial discrimination in the work place is to not take race into consideration–that’s what underlies racial discrimination in the first place–the whole idea should be that one’s skin color or ethnicity or whatever is as important in a job interview or on a resume as where they buy their sneakers.
Well, I can see why leftists anger you so much, Ucci.
“I hate niggers” ← There, let’s see the authorities crack down me now. [size=50](actually, that’d be you, Ucci)[/size]
You know, I once worked with a girl who had a degree in sociology. She was a tad bit angry (let’s just say) at men (I felt sorry for the poor girl though–she had a boyfriend who knocked her up and left her to raise the kid all by herself… so you can imagine she’d have this gripe with men). When I asked her what her sociology education taught her about what the differences between the preferences, skills, personalities, etc. of each sex were based on–genetics or culture–she said “cultue”. When I asked her what she believed personally, she said “Oh, it’s culture. No genetics.”
Now I’ve got a degree in psychology, and I can remember learning in the psych 101 the number one principle of the nature/nature debate: it’s always going to be a mix of genetics and culture, sometimes more on the side of genetics, sometimes more on the side of culture, but never one without the other. It’s such a basic principle that it should almost be common sense to any educated person who thinks it over rationally–especially when it comes to the sexes as the physical differences between our bodies are so much greater than just skin color.
Yeah, the title’s a bit of a hyperbole (to say the least); I thought it was interesting anyway because it seems to be confirming something you said:
@gib and Uccisore: Limited speech is a good example of so many other things. While we must have some limited speech, because yelling “FIRE!” in a crowded room or spilling state secrets is a bad thing. To cut off speech that anyone finds offensive, is tyranny. Particularly at a federal level, because less connection between the action and the punishers exist. Your mother, an authority backed up by force, should “smack you on the back of the head” for cursing at the wrong time. Yet, I started cursing up a storm when I slammed my finger in the door (the nail is half black now) no one would have said a thing, except maybe to make sure I was OK. The federal government should not, throw you in prison for cursing, and like jaywalking, it can only outlaw hate speech, it has no ability to properly adjudicate it. The ability to adjust to small circumstances is something the government can’t do.
This is why Socialism and Communism fail. They both rely on the ability of the federal government to make those trillions of small decisions, that every person does in their own lives.
Thanks for conceding that point. Like I said, I’m not trying to prove that we need socialism (not at this point), I’m trying to understand why even a little bit of it has the effect of turning that con into a negative net balance (I mean, you have to balance it out against the pros before you can say anything about the net balance). Here’s how I think of it, and how I believe most liberals (or just non-economists) think of it:
This is how socialism is supposed to work in theory anyway. That blue wedge represents the taxes one pays on income (plus goods and services if you’re living in Canada). What the government is supposed to do in a socialist system is take that blue wedge and rotate it 180 so that the thick end gets redistributed to the poor and the pointy end gets redistributed to the rich, as in the “after” graph (of course, no money actually gets redistributed to the rich, but you get what I mean). The effect is a bit more of a flattened curve–everyone’s closer to equal.
That’s how it’s supposed to work.
But what you’re saying is that it actually works like this:
Everything goes down. We all get poorer.
What this seems to suggest is that even if the government imposes a tax rate of (say) 0.001% and gives the proceeds to even just one homeless shelter, the entire economy takes a hit and even the homeless end up worse off.
Now I know you said the government is exceptionally inefficient at reallocating resources appropriately, but I have to believe that some of our tax dollars do end up going to those who, in a socialist system, are deemed to require it. So I’m guessing the reality is probably something more like a mix of the two graphs above:
So while the economy as a whole does take a hit, the poor and needy do still get something. The curve flattens out and falls at the same time… but that means there’s the possibility that maybe the poor end of the curve gets raised at a faster rate than it falls, in which case the net effect for the poor is to enjoy at least a little bit of an improvement in their standards of living. I would think this possibility is there when we implement a little bit of socialism–obviously a system like full-on communism, for example, would have a curve falling too fast for any flattening to raise the poor up by any measure–but if socialism were implemented in such a way as to reduce the rate at which the curve falls, is it at least possible–according to your knowledge, Eric–that the rate at which the poor are helped can out-run the effects of the hit that the economy as a whole takes? If it can, then when it does, the falling of the curve is a con only, but if it can’t–if the curve always falls faster than the flattening raises the poor up–then the con is also a negative net balance, and socialism is harmful period (all this notwithstanding the rate at which charity might raise the poor up; if charity works better at raising the poor up than socialism does even in its successful moments, then I’ll take charity over socialism any day).
I see. So we should really look at the laws in the Constitution.
Eric, I’m trying to understand in what sense you think it is “necessary” for the government to provide the basic infrustructures of society (I thought I was helping you with the above). I traced this branch that we’re on back to here:
The bold texts are what lead me to believe you thought something basic, at least at the start, is necessary. Those plus these:
Admittedly, the sarcasm of the first bold text was lost on me, and the second is a poor basis for interpreting you as saying it is necessary for government to oversee certain basic elements of society (plus you were summarizing the book), but in what way should I interpret you here? Do you not agree with my assessment above–that it is necessary for government to at least temporarily oversee certain aspects of a republic in order to get it started?
I’m not sure I understand. If the price is lower than the production cost, as you say, I can only imagine it means Canadian drug companies are going to find cheaper ways to produce (probably at the expense of quality), but what does this have to do with “the US facing the cold”?
Ok, then I take this to mean I’ve finally understood where you’re coming from… finally!
I’m nothing if not supremely magnanimous… (and humble. )
The biggest missing measurement would be an over time aspect. While within a small amount of time yes, you might see a small lift in the wealth of the “poor” as money is given to them, and a reduction in the wealth of the “rich.” Over time, the reduction in the amount of wealth of the rich results in less investment from the “rich,” which ultimately, results in a reduction in the wealth of the “poor.” We cannot predict what the future holds, regardless how much Marxists tell you otherwise. We are however, great at projecting our current problems into the future. When we limit the amount of money that can be made we limit the amount of money made. Money is knowledge transfer…
Yes, though few people would want such a thing. There are roads and Military to pay for.
This graph is little different than the first.
I’m sure we could crunch the numbers in such a way that this is what it shows yes. Over time though, I think it falls apart.
Though not having them over time fits well with a liberal understanding. A snap shot taken, a moment in time froze… What all liberal policies rely on…
The amount of money given, lets say it’s $10… In 20 years, due to a high inflation, that is going to be largely meaningless. Meanwhile, the $10 invested in innovation, when it was worth more, would produce more, particularly 20 years in the future. So that the investment will be effectively worth $15, but the inflation would turn the $10 to $5 in its new value. Additionally, the supporters of giving the $10 dollars of someone else’s money away, are going to want to give $15 now, because that is the new “poverty line.”
(Numbers are arbitrary, not based on actual number crunching.)
Rather than the preamble, yes.
Yes, I think we need a base line, as I think of it. But, I think there needs to be a consent fight on where that line is. With many things changing as equilibrium is sought (I am pro politics, they must happen, we must fight over these things, true piece can never be reached). The problem is, we have never been temporary on any of these things. They have never been given some sort of kick start, then allowed to drop. Instead they become “rights” that people fight tooth and nail to keep going… See Affirmative Action.
Further, no support has been shown that they have actually helped a single person anymore than that person allows. Instead, it is assumed, in causality style, that because people did not directly suffer, it is because of these things. Gun control has the same problem… A friend of mine once suggested that all laws, particularly welfare laws, should automatically expire after 8 years, so they must be re-voted in. I like the idea, though I don’t think much would be accomplished with it.
(I still feel stupid for that sarcastic comment, a good example of how our assumptions are not always other peoples assumptions.)
Any proof that people starve? Are you maybe worrying about a non-problem? Americans, particularly the poor, have a problem with being overweight… We have so much food… A lot of the starving families are based on bad numbers.
Though, it should be noted, that the poor suffer more, because they already have less. By increasing everyone’s amount, even if they have less of a share, the poor gain considerably more, proportionally, than the rich.
Much like price floors, price ceilings do not work the way people want. When a price limit, that is the amount something can be charge for an object, the result is shortage. It’s one thing economists can tell you how to do. We can cause shortages and surpluses without question. Create a shortage by limiting the amount of money that can be made, create a surplus by limiting the amount of money that can be paid. The costs to produce drugs is a hard thing to pin down, yes, it may have only cost $.50 to make that pill when looking at what the pill is made up of, but did you include all of the research that was done? Not every pill is a success, did you include all of the costs of the failures? If we only look at the make up of the pill, and say it costs $.50, then only allow the maker to charge $.55 for each one. We are refusing to pay the costs of making the pill. This results in a shortage, as no one is making money, making that pill. It is like looking at a chair, knowing that it is only $15 worth of wood, and refusing to pay the $75 that the maker has put on it, even though we have no idea the skill level of the maker or the amount of time going into the chair, or the costs of the machines used to make it, we only know the cost of the wood… If the government put a price limit on chair to $16, the result would be no one would make good chairs.
When Canada put the price limit on medicine, so that no one gets put out in the cold (which were your words at the time), the result is that Americans paid the difference, and Americans stood out in the cold, so that Canada did not have too.
If I get nothing else across to you, this would be my choice of things. Costs do not stop happening, just because we refuse to pay them. Instead, we are saying, these things are not good places to apply resources, and no one will apply resources to them. While we may not care much when it comes to chairs, medicine is a pretty big deal, especially new medicines.
It took me long enough to make it clear.
I got a minor one, I was expecting Liz or UPF to respond with exasperation, not you. (especially as it was a reply to liz…)
Interestingly, 3/5th’s, though the value is arbitrary, is actually a good thing. It undermined the value to continue slavery. The people in support of slavery were reduced in the amount of pro-slavery votes that they had because of it. If they had been able to count all of the slaves as full people, they would have more political power to continue slavery. Truly, we, you and I, should want them to count for zero… At least if we wanted it to stop.
So, because they are attachments, I can not get the images to carry through. I left the names in, but people are going to have to reference your original post above.
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