It's Fixed!!!Follow

That's not an endpoint though, is it? Complete government control is the absence of an endpoint in terms of government control. It's like insisting that I meet you halfway between zero and infinity.



So you are saying that the Dem position is to have complete government control and thus a fair compromise would be 50%? Because otherwise your statement is irrelevant, isn't it?



Ok. Then what is your estimate of a good endpoint? At what point will we have enough government control to prevent all the abuses you want to fight against? Tell me where it ends Joph. When do you stop supporting policies which impose more government control over private citizens? Because I don't think you can answer this question with any sort of finite response. I suspect you'll say something like "When rich people can't use their wealth to abuse others", or "when everyone is equal", or some other vague and undefined platitude.


When will you be satisfied? Will you? Ever? I don't think so. I think that no matter how many times people like me compromise with people like you, you'll just move the goalposts a bit farther and insist that we compromise with you again. And when you are old and gray, and perhaps come to your senses and realize that this process maybe has gone on long enough, you'll be shouted down by the younger liberals who have followed your example and have picked up the banner and will call you a sellout because you aren't supporting them in their causes. Because to them things that even you might consider "too much" will be perfectly reasonable. That's because the left doesn't look at the big picture. They look at where they are right now and look at taking just that next step. And the next. And the next.


There is no end point. Until you realize this, you can't possibly assess what you are doing and why it's so incredibly dangerous.

How can there be no end point? Once the government has 100% control of everything, they can't gain 101%.

I don't think everyone here would believe that, either. :D

Objectively, though, it is in fact 24x.

Silly people, the endpoint is obviously whatever the democrats want.

But he's using a percentage so that doesn't matter!

You're also dealing in absolutes again. You shouldn't consider government control from a single point perspective. It needs to be piece by piece.

If you take government control of industry for example, there are very easy endpoints to define. Total ownership vs no regulation or control whatsoever.

Edited, Oct 1st 2010 5:20pm by Xsarus

Of course, since you're a Democrat and living off the government teat, you have no money. Varus is such a tool.

It's absolutely correct to say that you control 100% of the rice rations. How I feel about it personally doesn't really factor into the reality of how much rice you control.

Likewise, how oppressed you're feeling on any given day doesn't change the objective truth of how much the government controls this, that or the other. Especially when you're speaking of things such as industries.

What? You eating a different number of bowls doesn't change the number of bowls you want to eat, and therefore doesn't change the range or compromise. You still want to eat 3 bowls so a compromise would still be 1.5

And you might insist on 2.75. Or 1.66. Or .5887352511111. So... umm.... good point?

I did answer. You just didn't like my answer. That's not the same thing.

Edited, Oct 1st 2010 6:54pm by Jophiel

No, like the difference between "regulations which prevent someone from doing harm to someone else", and "regulations which mandate that someone help someone else". Surely you can see that the former is a finite restriction on my actions, while the latter is infinite? There is no end to the things I could be compelled to do to help others. But the limitation on causing harm is automatically limited to the number of actions I actually perform, not the number of actions I *could* perform.

If I say that we should restrict companies from producing more than X parts per million of specific sets of pollutants into the air/water/whatever as a byproduct of operating their widget factory, that's a concrete restriction on the amount of harm said action can cause to others in the form of pollution. If instead, I simply impose a tax on all companies and spend the money on "fighting pollution", I've created an open ended system which is no longer connected or related to the actions which create pollution. Said funds might be spent on things which may be beneficial for the environment but which have nothing at all to do with damage caused by industrial pollution (or any kind). We see this right now. Money is set aside from environmental funds, not just to design and implement better filters for factories, or come up with less intrusive construction materials or more efficient ways of using the materials around us, but also to do things like construct bike paths, and subsidize "green products", and a host of other things which are labeled as "good for the environment", but go beyond just preventing harm.


We see this in social spending (and it's frankly more obvious there). It's one thing to punish companies which have unfair hiring practices, but when you start skewing contract awards for companies with the right mix of minorities, you've gone too far. Similarly, when you go from punishing theft to mandating charity, you are stepping past that point of "enough government" to "too much government".


It's the same issue that I have with the concept of positive rights. If we look only at negative rights, we can clearly define actions which intrude on someone else and prevent them. But once you start mandating that others must step in to provide you with "positive rights", there is no end point. At what point have I provided someone with "enough health care", or "enough financial support"? Who gets to decide how much education someone is entitled to receive for free? Who decides how well someone should be able to eat? How mice must free housing be for the poor? Once you start down that path, there's no end point. There's no clear point at which you can say that you have done enough for those you seek to help.


That's ultimately what I'm getting at here. There's a huge difference between setting up a list of things people can't do, and creating a list of things they must do. No matter how long each list may be at any given time, the former can only limit me to the degree to which I'm actually doing things. I can only be prevented from polluting to the degree that I was polluting to start with. I can only be prevented from stealing to the degree to which I was stealing. I can only be prevented from hurting others to the degree that I'm hurting them. But the degree to which I can be required to do things for others is unlimited.


Maybe I'm not being as clear as I could, but that's what I'm angling towards. And there is a definable difference between those two things. Conservatives tend to want to keep us in the range of government action which limits what we can do to hurt others. And within that range, we can compromise fairly. But the left has changed the rules of the game and introduced government action which mandates what me must to do help others. That's a completely different animal. And to conservatives all mandates in that area are wrong and should be fought. It's not a matter of compromising between one and the other. None of it should be allowed. Period.

For example, this absurd insistence on the separation of church and state.

No, but then I'm not the one relying on rhetoric sophistry to try and make a point either. As the rest of your post so nicely shows.

Keep typing those paragraphs of ridiculousness though.

Sure I do. But why bother? What, you're going to say "You're right! I was totally off on describing liberals! Man, I'm sorry..."?

Of course not. I can waste a bunch of keystrokes on a "debate" no one is going to read or care about or spend that time more entertainingly.

Oh wait... umm... "Oh ho! You only said those things because you were brainwashed! An a devout acolyte of Glen Beck and Sarah Palin, you'll never understand any sort of reality! You'll forever argue because you haven't learned to think for yourself and instead argue that you're always correct and liberals are always wrong!"

Gee... I just won! Yay me!