Obamacare unconstitutional Follow

What's "normal life?" Hurricanes? Earthquakes? Wildfires?

Is cancer "normal life?" What about disease? What's "normal" exactly?

Probably only things that are convenient to gbaji's argument.

But let's see. Well, we could say that the government is only responsible for preventing people from trying to hurt one another, but there's already plenty of precedent for government intervention where intent to harm isn't present, such as safety requirements and negligence suits. Hm, that's actually pretty analogous to requiring healthcare.

Well, I give up. Your turn, gbaji.

Then you're against the GOP initiative to redefine rape?

I didn't, but I thought I'd give you a chance to rethink that one.

So why does the government pay to protect us from natural disasters, then? Like earthquakes, hurricanes, wildfires?

If I get stabbed by another person and go to the emergency room, will I then have my medical care covered, because the government is only concerned with whether or not it was another person who harmed me?

No rethinking necessary.



Well, you're drifting off topic here, since this isn't really the same as paying directly for individual people's health care via some mandated fund.

Um... But the government also pays to build infrastructure, right? They build roads, bridges, parks, schools, etc. Most of the costs for those things are locally managed (not federal), so there's more leeway given. Also, most of that is about maintaining the infrastructure and emergency only services. They'll clear roads, and restore power, water, gas, etc and they'll set up emergency shelters and rescue cats from trees. Um... But the government generally doesn't pay to rebuild your house, right? You're expected to buy your own insurance for that. And that's your choice. The government can't mandate that you buy volcano/fire/flood insurance. It's your property and your choice.


Again, this is yet another shift off the topic and another axis of the issue of government spending, but the distinction here is between things that pay for general public services versus things that pay for direct individual benefits. There is a difference between rescuing people from a flood, and paying to rebuild their homes.



The government charges the person who stabbed you with a crime and punishes him. The hospital will treat your wounds and then charge you for it after the fact. Obviously, if you can't pay after the fact, that gets us into a completely different problem, but that's not really about rights. You don't have a right to free medical care in this case. You are required to pay for it. Now, if the person who stabbed you has enough money, you can sue that person. The government does maintain the civil and legal infrastructure to enable that. But it's not responsible for paying for your injuries. You are.

You're nitpicking cases while ignoring the pattern. That's not going to lead to understanding.

No? We don't have a disaster relief fund...? Which we are mandated to pay via taxes...?



But I also have the choice to buy a house or not. I don't really have the choice to have a body with a genetic disease or not, do I? I mean, if I do, I wish someone would tell me. 'Cause I'd like a body without a genetic disease, please.




Of course there is. But... then again... We just had a huge flood in Nashville almost a year ago now. And FEMA is paying people for their houses. The ones who didn't have insurance. Interesting, no?

And, of course, there's not all that much difference from rescuing people from a flood (which they really had no control over) or treating someone for cancer (which, again, they have no control over).



Why am I required to pay for it, if it's the government's responsibility to protect me from other people? They failed in their responsibility, so why shouldn't they pay for me to get back to my original condition?

There is all kinds of old stupid laws such as Not eating Ice Cream in a cone on sunday, this caused the invention of the sundae.

But as Gbaji would say, it means what is says, and if you don't believe me just don't retreat...reload instead.

I don't agree with that though. You're placing assumptive motivations on other people. I argue against that when it's done against my side (people insisting that we want tax cuts because we really want to help the rich tromp over the poor), and I'll equally argue against it when it's going the other direction.

Most people. Heck, the overwhelming majority of people, want to do the right thing. They are motivated by that goal and take/support actions designed to obtain that goal. It is fallacious to assume that the guys you disagree with are trying to do evil things. The disagreement isn't really about as one side being "good", and the other "evil", no matter how many times it's portrayed that way. The disagreement is over either what is "good", or how best to act in pursuit of that good.


Just attacking the other side for their position and calling them names, while it may make you feel better, and is certainly easier, also is somewhat pointless. You might sway people to "your side" by doing that, but you aren't really winning anyone over either. IMO, the better approach is to try to examine how we define "good" in any given context, establish what our priorities are, and then address proposed courses of action within that context.


Where this gets tricky though, is that most people also don't really understand the objectives of their actions. They act on basic associations learned over time. That's why I always try to start with principles and work my way to a position on a specific issue. The hope is that some people will see this and even if they don't agree, they'll at least maybe examine their own positions and spend some time thinking about why they hold them beyond just "it's the right thing to do". Doesn't always work, of course, but I'll keep doing it anyway. IMO, it's better than the alternative of just calling each other names.

That's great and all, but I was pointing out the irony of the dismissal of conservative predictions as slippery slope fallacies by the very same liberals who quite consistently seem to argue for some new action by pointing to some past action which set up a precedent for it. I've observed this with quite a bit of humor over the years on this forum and it never ceases to amaze me how consistently the same people do the same thing over and over and don't seem to realize it.

You cannot rationally argue for doing something on the basis of past precedent and then turn around in the next thread and dismiss a claim that "if we do this, it'll be used as precedent to do that later". Yet it happens on this forum all the damn time.




No. I, along with a lot of conservatives, argued this 15+ years ago when the issue was being debated (here in California at least).

And every time someone argues that the health care mandate is ok "because it's not much different than mandating car insurance, and we already do that", they are proving that we were right back then. Get it?




Funny how perception changes over time though. When the argument was raised 15+ years ago, the thought of a government mandate forcing people to purchase something like health insurance was pretty universally opposed as a gross violation of our rights. You do understand that the nature of a slippery slope is that each step makes the next more acceptable to the public, right? By passing mandates for car insurance, the concept of a government mandate to buy some kind of insurance enters the public conscience and becomes accepted. Then, 15 years later, you can introduce an idea which would have been soundly rejected back then, and it'll be accepted.


You don't see the health care mandate as a bad thing exactly because we passed car insurance mandates. Your perception of the issue was changed over time by the first act, leading to the next. That's why it's called a "slippery slope".



Of course it can! Because if we can realistically argue to the people today that if they make the change in front of them right now, it'll lead people a generation later to do something that the people today find unacceptable, they can make a choice to not take the step being proposed today and thus avoid that future step down the line.

It's absolutely reasonable and absolutely valid. My point was that those who want to make those gradual changes go to great lengths to dismiss those arguments as fallacious, not because they are, but exactly because they are not. Surely, you can see that? It's why every single time this happens, I'll point it out. I got so tired of having conservative predictions discounted as fallacious that every time someone argues for something and uses an argument of the form "since we already do this, there's no reason not to do that", I make a point to mention the slippery slope angle.

Funny that it *still* flies right over so many people's heads. You can put the truth in front of people, but if they don't want to see it, they wont.


Edited, Feb 2nd 2011 5:46pm by gbaji

So if my $400,000 home should be flattened in an earthquake, and I didn't pay for earthquake insurance, the government isn't going to build me a new home, or pay me for my loss?

Just checking.



That's incredibly muddled thinking. You're jumping from one thought to another without any coherent argument connecting them. We can play the game where I present a logical argument and you just randomly respond with "yeah, but what about...?" over and over, but this does get tiring after a point. You need to also provide some reason why the point you're mentioning has some relevance to the subject at hand, not just toss them out randomly.



We don't make that decision though. Again, you've got it backwards. No one made you get sick. We don't (or shouldn't) provide things for people just because they can't afford them. Like I said above, connect your words to a logical structure. What are you arguing for? Because it's not just about this case, is it? It's about all cases. What common pattern of action are you advocating, and what criteria are you saying we should use?

Should we provide anything for anyone if they can't afford it? Where are the limits? You mention an extreme (person with cancer), but what's the rule you are following here? Where's the cutoff? So we pay for cancer treatment, but not breast implants? What about cosmetic surgery? We can argue that if someone looks better they could get a better job, right? What about sex changes? Can't we argue for that as well?

What about non-medical things? Housing? Food? Clothing? Education? Transportation? Recreation? Where's the line there? Do you have one? And if you do, can you define it for me? Because you seem to argue based on a mish-mash of random cases strung together, all designed to generate emotional responses, but without ever even mentioning any sort of consistent criteria you're using. Can you do that?



To what point? It seems to be that your point stops at the point someone can't afford to pay for it themselves. Which is kinda the same as saying that there isn't really a point or limit, right?



I don't know? Does it? Where does it say in the constitution that the government's job is to make sure no body dies? That seems kind of silly, doesn't it? How much money do you think the government must pay to try to prevent people from dying? There must be a limit, right? We only have so much money.

You're trying to make this into a morally black vs white argument, but the reality is that no matter what we do, there will be a point at which we must shut off the care. It gets too expensive in comparison to the returns. We see this in debates about pulling the plug on someone all the time, and if one discusses the issue of "death panels" in more than surface depth, it's there as well. Every health care system must at some point place limits on care. Government run systems are no different. You're limited by your money. If you don't have enough, you might not get the care you need, and that may result in your death. That's not changed with a government run system. The main difference is that the determinant of whether care is obtained isn't your own financial situation (which you have some control over), but government guidelines for care (which you have almost no control over).


Some people will die because they could have received more care but didn't because it was too expensive no matter what system we do. You can contrive the situation of a poor person who is denied life extending care because he can't afford it. I can contrive situations too. But there is no moral advantage of one over the other, despite how often it's argued this way.

There is, however, a liberty argument. In one, our own actions and decisions are the primary determinants of our outcomes. In the other, we're all thrown into a pot and get the same thing. Personally, I'll take the first option.



I don't believe government should be involved in charity. We do have real charities who help people who've lost their homes. We really do not need big government programs to do this. Government is not very good at it anyway.



You are. When you argue for something in the form of "It's ok to do this because we already do that", you are arguing for a slippery slope. Which is what you did.



It's bad because government isn't very good at determining need. And the mechanisms which prevent charities from getting out of control with the things they provide don't apply to government. I can choose which charities to support based on the things they do. I don't get to decide which government social programs to fund with my tax dollars. There are so many layers between the taxpayer and the social programs themselves that it's impossible to prevent massive abuse and waste.

We would be dramatically better off as a society eliminating every single social program based solely on need and letting private charities handle it instead. Much much much much better off.




No. I haven't. You keep bringing up tearful cases where it's "obvious" that we should help those people, and anyone who denies them help is just a horrible person, but despite me asking several times, you still have not said where that government charity ends. When I do ask it, you dismiss the question itself.

It's not irrelevant. It's the core of the point I'm making. We should not hand power and responsibility over something to the government unless we can clearly define the limits to that power and responsibility. It ought to be pretty darn obvious why, but if you need me to explain it to you, I'm more than willing to.

Given that truth, it's very relevant for me to ask that question. Where does government charity end? If we are to accept your premise that the government should provide for anyone who can't provide for themselves, then you must also provide a limit for that. What things will we not provide under any circumstances? And what criteria will we use to determine which category something is in?

Because if we can't do that, then we shouldn't step foot into that area. And no, the fact that we have already done many things in which we make the government provide for people in need does *not* constitute a good reason to continue doing so, let alone expand the scope of our actions. That's the "slippery slope" argument I keep talking about.




This is an entirely different argument though. Now we're getting into the debate about whether the medical profession absorbing the costs of those who can't pay and passing it onto those who can (which has always been done btw, so this is nothing new) is why our health care costs are so high today, and whether we can reduce that by going to some other system. I disagree with a whole number of assumptions with that argument, but that's honestly a completely different aspect of this.

We weren't talking about cost savings, were we? We were talking about whether the concept itself is a violation of our rights.

Goddamn, gbaji. You shouldn't have to write a mountain just to make a point.

Also: You're retarded and I disagree with you, but good job filibustering me.

Edited, Feb 2nd 2011 8:50pm by Kachi

Government charity ends when it's no longer a net gain to society to insure that all it's citizens have access to basic necessities. You're forever implying that our social system is a hand-out. It's not. Need has to be established.

Sure, the system needs constant maintenance but declaring that some rapes are more worthy of a free government abortion than another is just ...well, I don't even know...it's so fricking senseless.

edit - i failed at breaking the swear filter. So much for an impact expletive.



Edited, Feb 4th 2011 2:33am by Elinda