Blunt Amendment DefeatedFollow

You need food, water, and clear air to live. In fact, I think a lack of breathable air could kill you faster than lack of food or water. All three are necessary components of life, and therefore linked more intricately to our survival than poetry and dog. (though arguments could be made for both of those items being necessary in our development as a species, neither are as important to our immediate survival. As in, if your heat source degenerates and starts spewing carbon monoxide into your house as you sleep tonight, you don't wake up)

Of course. But what part of my saying I prefer a balanced approach makes you think I want the bar set to one extreme.

Do you understand that I believe that "free health care" is far closer to the "free candy for everyone" side than the "not getting blown up" side? I would argue that it's the folks pushing for free health care who are pushing an unreasonably extreme position for your hypothetical slide rule.




Of course there is.



Of course there is. Liberty is the state of not being subject to the authority of another. Period. To any degree that you are subject to anyone else's authority, your liberty is being infringed. The problem is that you still want to think in all-or-nothing terms. Something either infringes liberty and is thus completely wrong, or something does not and is completely ok. Because of this, you re-interpret liberty itself so as to pretend that our current state is not one of infringement.

The very act of living in a society with others infringes one's liberty. The point isn't to think we should live in absolute liberty, but to be aware of the need to minimize the degree to which our liberty is infringed. You pursue an impossible standard, and instead of realizing it, you redefine things so you can pretend that you are meeting it.

That's dangerous because it leads you to think that those things you just wrote don't infringe liberty. Of course they do.



That's the reason we broke off from England. Taxation without representation means that the infringement of liberty is "worse". It does not cease to exist just because you are represented. How the hell do you people not know this?




I'm my own primary source.

Edited, Mar 5th 2012 7:57pm by gbaji

Cite, plz

The liberty to die because healthcare is so expensive that you can't afford it, knowing that half the people in your country don't give a rats *** about your life if it might mean they'd have to indirectly pay for your healthcare (even if it would likely mean that they're cheaper off themselves)





The only liberty that counts for Gbaji is financial, any and all taxes are equal to an attack on his liberty.
The sliding scale Bijou talked about looks a little different to Gbaji, for him paying as little taxes as possible is smack dab in the middle and things like healthcare are on the far left side.
What exactly makes up the far right side of his scale I don't know.


Personally, I think it's a governments duty to protect it's citizens from harm and and to try and create an environment in which people can make the most of themselves.
Which for me includes a defense force but also healthcare and a financial safety net so that instead of people having to live in their car or the gutter, they'll have a roof over their head and the help they need to get (back) to being a contributing member of society.
Of course, for Gbaji, this ideal equals a terrifying nightmare because of the few people who are abusing this system. Sure there are people abusing the system, but I'd rather have it available for everyone and be abused on a small scale rather than not having it at all.

For Gbaji the man with the most liberty is one who lives in a cave and never sees anyone else.

Why do oil companies even need subsidies? The top oil companies made $24Billion in profits last year.

What exactly do they need $4billion in subsidies for?

With regard to liberty, asked gbaji several times if people's liberty is being taken away when they have to pay taxes towards wars they want no part in. Apparently that's not the same thing as people not wanting to pay for healthcare, though.


Also, universal healthcare works out on average per person to be cheaper than private insurance. That doesn't matter though, because the people not paying much now might have to pay slightly more, damn those people with pre-existing medical conditions! Selfish bastards the lot of them!

Edited, Mar 6th 2012 11:56am by Nilatai

I agree completely, but always find it amusing how selective you are when discussing what the government should be able to mandate you pay for, like how paying for a military to gallivant around the world killing other people is ok but paying for the well being of your fellow citizens is debilitating.

I wish I could pay more taxes to get more nice things, like a public transportation system that was worth a damn.

Public transportation is never worth a damn.

Why must you destroy my hopes and dreams?

But I like riding the metro instead of driving.
=(

Public transportation needs are totally different from place to place, it makes no sense to centralize it.