GOP Health Care Filibuster DefeatedFollow

Patrick Henry would disagree.

Sure. But the only way you "give liberty" is to *not* infringe it. You can't add to someone's liberty except by not taking any action which would limit their actions. You get that right? In the same way that a cast on your arm can only inhibit the motion of your arm, not increase it. We could say that by taking off the cast we are increasing the "liberty" of your arm movements, but it would be incorrect to say that we're giving you freedom of movement. We're removing something which was limiting it.

When you take away from the fruits of someone's labors, you are infringing their freedom. When you give someone benefits from the money you took, you are not giving them freedom or liberty. You're giving them what *you* want to give them. That's an expression of your power and authority, not of their freedom and liberty.



Yup. But we didn't "give" them liberty. We just stopped taking it away. You get that right? Someone has to actively do something to make and keep someone else as a slave. All that needs to happen is for them to *not* do that for that person to be free.

You are naturally free. That's what liberty is. It cannot be given to you, only taken away. I've explained this dozens of times to you in the past, but you continue to fail to grasp the concept.



No... You completely missed the point. It's not about the utility of the money. It's about the fact that the money in your pocket represents free choices you made and not others choices imposed on you. If you earn that money and the government takes some of it from you, the money left in your pocket is the result of someone else's choice affecting you. If you didn't earn any money and the government gives you some that money does not represent choices you made either. It represents choices the government made. Thus, the person who loses money loses liberty, and the person who gains the money distributed to him does not gain liberty (and can be said to lose liberty as well, but that's a slightly separate argument).



No no no no no! You don't get it. That money only gives you the ability to buy things. That's not freedom. Liberty isn't about what you can do, but what you may do (or more correctly, what no one tells you you may not do). Being able to buy a bushel of apples isn't freedom. Not having someone tell you how many apples you may buy, is.


Liberty isn't about things you have or can do. It's about things no one is telling you you may not do. I have the freedom to flap my arms and fly. No one has yet passed a law saying I can't do this. That doesn't mean that I *can* physically accomplish this feat. But I'm free to if I can figure out how.

That's what liberty is. It is all the things you don't have to ask permission to do. It's not about whether you can do those things, but whether you "may".

You learned the difference between can and may back in grade school, right? Why is this so hard to understand?



Wrong. The money and what you can buy with it isn't freedom. It does not represent freedom. It does not increase freedom. It's just money. Liberty isn't about things.



You're playing semantic games here. Being "free" to do something isn't about having the money to do it, but not having someone telling you you may not do it. All the money does is give you the ability to do that thing. Now, if someone prevents you from working to get that money, or takes it away from you after you've earned it, that is a reduction of liberty. But someone giving you the same exact amount of money doesn't give you any freedom.


It's not about what you have. Or what you can do with what you have.



Which is exactly the mistake I said you'd make. The method matters more.

It's the choices leading up to the earning of the money, not the money itself that represents liberty. If I can choose to perform some labor, that's freedom. If that choice results in a reward of salary, then that's a reward for making a good choice. The money is just the vehicle by which my own choices to benefit others can result in yet more choices which benefit me. That's freedom.

When you skip the first step and just give me some money, that money no longer represents liberty. It's not the fruits of my labor. I didn't earn it. Thus, anything I do with it is "tainted" in that it no longer represents free choices, but comes at the whim of some other entity interfering with my life. If you can give me that money, you can choose not to give me that money. Thus, the money doesn't actually represent any sort of freedom, but actually represents enslavement. I owe you for the money now.


If I gain it as a result of my own labors, it's mine. Taking it away from me represents a reduction of what I could have done with my own actions and choices. That's a reduction of liberty. Giving me the same amount of money doesn't balance that out.


Let me give you a really simple example:


You have $100 in your pocket. It's yours. You earned it. No one gave it to you. I take that $100 from you and give you $100 worth of goods and services. Have I increased or decreased your liberty?

Obviously, I've decreased it, right? You could have chosen to do anything you wanted with that money. But now you can only do what I want you to do with it. Even though you received the exact same value I took from you, I've taken away that choice, and thus your liberty.

If I give you $100 you don't have, I also have not given you any liberty. Since you didn't earn it on your own, that money isn't really yours. Even if I place no strings on what you can do with the money, your ability to buy things will always be at my whim and not your own. Next month you'll need me to give you the same money to get the same benefit. That's not freedom.


It's not about having the money which matters in this context. It's about earning it. I think part of the confusion also comes from a misunderstanding about what money is. Money is not something taken from others, but a measurement of what you have given to others. The money doesn't have value. The goods and services do. When I work for someone else, I'm giving them my labor. They give me money in return. This has no value by itself. It's just an IOU for the work I did for the other person. I have earned the right to obtain the fruits of someone else's labor in return for that money.


The money represents what I have done for others. It's only intrinsic value is as a measurement of those previous actions. When you take it from me, you are taking away the value of the fruit of my labor. When you give it to someone else, you are simply giving them something which doesn't represent anything anymore. They didn't earn it. Thus, it no longer has that same meaning. It's just a piece of paper...




Sure. If the end results are all that we care about. And maybe that's all you care about, but I think that's a mistake. Even ignoring the liberty angle, and looking purely at an economic angle, the total amount of "fruits" of our collective labor is the entirety of what we have to work with at any given time. No amount of playing with the numbers and the money changes that reality. As you take money from those who earned it (by adding to that pool of fruits), and give it to those who didn't, the result over time is that we're drawing on more of our productive output than we're actually producing. This is unsustainable in the long term.



It doesn't work. Not for long. Unfortunately, it usually works quite well (or appears to) just long enough for people to adopt the practice to the point where they can't recover down the line. Someone has to produce all the goods and services we consume. The sort of redistribution some socialist programs utilize results in a decrease in productivity and an increase in consumption. You can hide that discrepancy with clever monetary policy for awhile, many decades even, but eventually it'll bite you in the rear. We see this with pension funds going belly up, industries going bankrupt, and systems like social security and medicare very clearly owing more money over time than they'll ever take in. We're reducing the amount we're putting in while increasing the amount we take out.


And that's just a really really really dumb thing to do. Not if we truly care about our children and grandchildren. They'll be the ones who'll be adults when those systems collapse. They'll be the first generation who'll still be paying into those systems while knowing that they can't draw anything out. You have to pay that bill sometime. Unfortunately, what we've been doing for decades is continuing to push the bill further down the road. We will run out of road sometime...

Semantics aside, there is no such thing as perfect liberty. Without the rule of law liberty would devolve into mob rule and the unrestrained domination of the strong over the weak.

What we disagree on is not that there has to be a line, but on where the line should be drawn.

Have you looked to see what the thresholds are for these things and where you fit? If not, you might have missed it but I'm not you, don't know your situation and am too unenthused to go looking for you.

I'm not asking with specific concern to myself. From the last version of the bill that I was somewhat familiar with, I believe I would not qualify for the government subsidy. Of course, this could have changed!

It's also clear they are addressing pre-existing conditions, but what I don't know is if it would also cap the amount I am able to be charged by the private industry (which is where a large portion of the problem lies, especially with no public option). The Health Benefits Advisory Commission will ensure that my insurer will cover me, but isn't going to limit the amount I am charged for this coverage? So those that qualify would have that protection from the government in the form of a subsidy, but others won't.

It's possible that the IRS ((shudder)) is going to demand that I carry this coverage but won't assist me in obtaining it! Even if the only help they provide is to make sure I'm not getting bent over?!

I'm not looking for you to answer these questions for my sake. I'm not rich or poor, but one of the unfortunate people in the middle class who may be taking the biggest hit. I am looking for specific information or opinions to recent changes to the policies incorporated into the bill. Detailed information is already scarce and it seems that this bill isn't going to solve the problem, just shift it to another tax bracket and eventually give the lobbyists what they want.

Edit: Apparently there will be caps, but no mention yet of what these caps will be for anyone above 400% of the federal poverty level. It's also an annual cap and not a cap on services.



Edited, Jan 6th 2010 2:42pm by sixgauge

It's great and all that you know the minds of the oh so revered founding fathers, but I'd like a cite, or an explanation of how you know the founding fathers thought that liberty was only the absence of restrictions.

Given the choice, I'd be willing to bet that most people would understand liberty to be what allegory insists it is rather then what you think it is. Given that people have this understanding it is not misleading or fallacious to base arguments on it.

I'd also like to point out that while the idea that liberty can be given is used in a social argument, it does not necessarily lead there, and one can still argue against social welfare and hold the opinion that liberty can be given.

Edited, Jan 6th 2010 4:50pm by Xsarus

Important as Locke may have been, why would you quote him instead of directly quoting the authors of the Constitution if this is what the authors thought?

I really only ask academically. Personally, I feel that I'm a big boy and can have political opinions of my own regardless of whether or not I have permission from the wraithly spirits of centuries dead Locke or Jefferson or Adams or Madison. In fact, I rather believe that if these guys knew that, 200+ years later their names would be invoked as political tools to try to win debates by saying "You must think the same as them to be correct!", they'd be deeply disappointed.

But moving on along and mentioning health care legislation over rhetoric, my off the cuff guess is that the Nelson provisions will be gone from the reconciled bill. Nelson already made several comments in the last week or two that he'd be okay with removing any special deals for Nebraska "if the governor asked him", etc. Thus laying the groundwork for a bill that lacks those provisions, robs the GOP of a talking point and still maintains Nelson's support.

Sure. I just don't hold myself hostage to the presumed divinity and omniscience of some guys from 200+ years back.

Some of the reason, gbaji, is because medicine wasn't really a business then so that whole travesty where you have to forgo a small amount of money so that some poor children can have medical care wasn't really addressed. There isn't a ton that the founding fathers could really anticipate.

I also don't take stock alot in what Jefferson said about liberty, given his slaveholdings.

Although I don't see anything that indicates he didn't think liberty could be given as well as taken away, whatever, fair enough. so?

Edited, Jan 6th 2010 9:49pm by Xsarus

No one is trying to say that liberty isn't taken away from people when you take money to give to someone else. You absolutely are taking liberty away from someone. However, the significance of that is much lower for the person who loses it then it is for the person who gains it.

Also, it's not a false or twisted veiw of liberty, it's just a different view.

Edited, Jan 6th 2010 10:19pm by Xsarus