Allegory wrote:
Additionally, penalties can be exactly duplicated by situations where no law is present.
So what? You accidentally knocking a candle over in your home can exactly duplicate the results of me lighting your home on fire. Yet one is a crime, while the other is not. Clearly *how* the house came to be on fire does actually matter to us, right?
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What laws really are is just a way of standardizing and proclaiming penalties, but at heart they are penalties and costs that are the same as any other penalty or cost.
No. They are penalties which would not have existed if someone had not chosen to create them. A certain number of people will accidentally set their homes on fire this year. While the results are exactly the same, people committing arson will increase the number of homes set on fire. Naturally, X number occur. With the addition of deliberate action, X+Y occur. The "Y" value would not exist if someone didn't choose to light your house on fire.
This is critically important to someone who would not have accidentally set his home on fire, but had it burned down by an arsonist. Every act of government causes a consequence for someone who would not have suffered one otherwise. Maybe that's a good thing. Maybe it's a bad thing. But it is something which would not have happened otherwise.
If it would have, there wouldn't have been a need for the law, would there?
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We have many words that are synonymous. Big and large, enormous and huge are both sets of synonyms, even all four could be said to be synonymous.
Yes, there are. But "liberty" and "ability" are not synonymous. I'm not sure what you're point was. That because synonyms exist in our language that you can just pretend that any two words you want actually mean the same thing?
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I think your last paragraph is the most important. The question is whether it is useful to create a distinction here. I can't see any reason to.
You can't see any reasons? Or you don't want to admit that there are?
You're sticking your head in the sand at this point.
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There is, but not in this context. What matters here is net "freedom" (if you like that term for describing the highest tier or most all encompassing idea of what we are able to do; if not, then perhaps we need to find a more appropriate word).
No. That's fine. But in order to count up the net freedom, shouldn't we first determine what things actually make up freedom (liberty)? It's like I'm trying to add up the number of square blocks and you keep insisting that triangles are the same as squares because they're both geometric shapes. To follow that analogy, I've given numerous explanations as to why squares and only squares should be counted, but you just keep insisting that we have to include the triangles as well...
I've provided a pretty complete history of the term liberty and what it means within our society and system of government. You've provided... nothing.
Why do you believe that if the government gives someone some money that they have increased their liberty? You still haven't answered this question adequately. You just keep repeating the insistence that it is true.
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I don't care what I'm free to do only according to the rules of the burger king I'm currently in, I don't care what I'm free to do only according to the rule/laws of the state I'm in, I don't care what I'm free to do only according to the laws of the country I'm in, I care about what all I can actually do.
Ok. But the owner of the burger king also has the freedom to choose what rules apply on his property, correct? That is in equal opposition with your freedom to do whatever you want on his property. Except that he owns it.
The government isn't a person. It does not have freedom. People have freedom. It does not posses liberty. People posses liberty. Thus, no interest of the government can be said to counter, much less outweigh, the liberty of the individual. Only those laws which protect greater liberty are valid.
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gbaji wrote:
Here's the difference though Allegory. I've provided fairly extensive support for my assumption about the meaning of liberty in this context. You've provided nothing except your own insistence that it's something different. Can you support your position with anything else?
I think you find that outsiders would see my position at least as supported as yours. If I'm wrong about this, then I request others to inform me that I'm simply talking out my *** and that your position is far more concrete.
What outsiders? Perhaps among people as confused about this as you appear to be, sure. But somehow I don't think that stands up quite as well as direct quotes from one of the major founding fathers and most outspoken one on the issue of liberty, and direct quotes from the philosopher upon which he and the rest of the founders based the creation of this country on.
You're lacking in foundation. Finding a few people on an internet board who agree with you isn't exactly "proof", much less even strong evidence in support of your position. Can you find any recognized expert on the issue of liberty within the context of governments and societies who states that liberty is gained by having the government pay for your medical care? Cause that would at least be a start.
I suspect that outside of nutty political pundits on the far far left, you'll be hard pressed to find anyone silly enough to take up that position. Certainly, not many people with any sort of reputation to protect would. But you are welcome to try.
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I use liberty because I see it as synonymous.
Yes. I get that. You are wrong.
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If I mention "the matrix" how many people would think I'm talking about the Wachowski brother's movie and how many would think I'm talking a rectangular array of numbers? One is more common than the other, but the correctness of the definition depends entirely on the context.
And if "ability" were actually a synonym for "liberty", you'd have a point. We could ask "Hey! When we say liberty, do we mean not having someone telling us what we may do, or do we mean having the physical or economic ability to do something?". Cause, that would be relevant in that case, right?
Of course, you don't even seem to want to acknowledge that those two things, outside of the word "liberty" itself are actually describing two different things. So where does that leave us? Personally, I think there's a world of difference between someone only being able to fill their glass up halfway and someone having their full glass of water emptied until it's only half full. One represents a limitation on the person filling the glass (or a choice by that person perhaps). The other represents theft.
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I think it's a little early to be heading back to the main argument, because I think we have unresolved issues preceding that, but this ties back to my view that the end and not the method of arrival matters.
I'm going to make a broad statement that those who insist that the end is more important than the means usually do so because they know that there's something wrong with the means they want to use. Just saying...
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By funding government health care I am letting people take away my freedom to spend that taxed money how I choose, but I am gaining (or not having taken away) the additional freedom in money I saved by not spending privately on healthcare. To further this point, let's may it clear that in this hypothetical case there is an opt out in this case. You could mark "private health insurance" on your tax form and have refunded the marginal tax money.
What about the freedom not to have health care in the first place? Is there an opt-out which allows me to simply say: "No thanks, I'll risk not getting sick"?
I completely agree that if the individual gets to choose whether he pays into it, then there is no loss of freedom. But that's not the case, is it? Not only is that not the case in the form of various taxes we all know will ultimately have to be raised to pay for this (much of which will end out at the state level btw, which is an accounting trick which allows the federal government to continue to claim a deficit neutral bill), but the government will actually make it illegal not to pay into this system. Period. Subject to fines and (possibly?) prison.
Your hypothetical is irrelevant because that's not what is at stake here. It is precisely because I have no choice but to pay into this monstrosity that I view it as an infringement of my liberty.
Edited, Jan 7th 2010 6:32pm by gbaji
