'Democracy' is not, nor has it ever been the form of government of the United States.
What specifically are you referring to when you say this is just like any other infrastructure protection bill?
Good citizens should fear government as an evil, last resort, solution to problems that can not otherwise be solved. Simply asserting that if it gets bad that there will just be a revolution is intellectual sloth, if not at least a gross misunderstanding the Declaration of Independence and events leading up to the American Revolution.
Are you saying that flat earth theory is a conspiracy by Intel? Hmm... I see a good parody site in the future.
Why is Intel trying to convince people the world is flat? I am sure data mining enough information about Intel one could work up a pretty good argument. As Homor Simpsons once said: "Facts are meaningless. You can use facts to prove anything that's even remotely true. Facts, schmacts."
There is a direct link between the advancement of civilization and the ability to exchange information quickly. Spoken language, to writing, to mass print, to radio and telephones to the ever increasing bandwidth and connectedness of the internet; each have resulted in radical leaps in the advancement of civilization and brought about revolution. This is also why I argue that information freedom is vital to all progress. Civilization is one giant parallel information processing machine. What we know of AI has shown us that exposure to information is the core of intelligence and learning, and processing is far superior to filtering. And superior processing methods by humans will will evolve and spread in symbiosis with the technology that we create.
Sure, the large majority of people do not use the opportunity before them in the most effective way as determined by other people. On the other hand, it amuses me how much some people can be greatly concerned about the effectiveness of other people's time use.
I doubt I would have any interest in using an ipad even if I was given one for free, but gratz to anyone that finds one enjoyable. I know I enjoy all kinds of things few other people could give a crap about.
Actually, the president may NEVER declare martial law. Just ask any United States Marine that takes their oath seriously. Most of Congress and president may not take their oath seriously, but don't mistake the actions of some bratty self appointed nobles for the honor of the guardians of liberty.
I think you can generalize even further and say that there is always an imminent crisis. Government is a business just like any other; while infomercials are trying to tell you your salad spinner is "so yesterday" and just kill your children if you don't upgrade, and the next 20 callers this hour get a complimentary Shamwow with every order, government is competing with your time to explain how they are the only ones that can rescue you from your problems. Anything that makes government particularly special typically isn't in the customers favor.
If you think used car salesmen are bad, try avoiding an IRS agent that is looking for you.
As for cyber security, I'll tell them the same thing I tell Norton: No thank you, I am doing just fine without your services (even when they present really scary metaphors and panoramas).
As usual, I can agree with a statement like "civilians need to be protected from things they don't understand", but not for one fucking second does that say anything about whose job that is. I'd take it as a call to personal responsibility against carelessness, and next maybe people should be reminding people that tolerance of crime is asking for it. Fuck people so god damned lazy that any time something important comes along they immediately use it as an excuse to expand the nanny state!
Same thing with "To each according to their their need, from each according to their ability": That isn't socialism, that is called economics. Socialism is either a) taking that philosophy and being a whiny little bitch about the matter, or b) believing you can profit by exploiting the fact that many people given the opportunity can be whiny little bitches about the matter.
If something simply needs to be "fair" at any cost including any future progress in the area, then it is a reasonable job for government. "Government taking over the networks" is about as laughable as it is disheartening knowing that their failure is everyone else success. Government can be scary, but the fact that this undertaking would require competence really leads me to believe this is unlikely to be much of an issue. Their process of discovering their own incompetence may be exceptionally frustrating though. Joe Pesci save us.
So why is it especially impressive when the government makes something really cool and fails to bring it to market? This is one step ahead of that guy everyone knows with the really brilliant ideas that would be super rich he would just get his lazy ass off the couch.
What does it say about government when we measure its milestones by Special Olympics standards. And sorry, it doesn't take a massive industry conspiracy for something something with potential to fail. How else do you think we end up with so many damn books on parenting, relationships, and self esteem?
Massive government bureaucracy is a failure because it is a bad idea based on premises that have proven to be hostile to the natural order of things. This idea that central economic planning and big government projects fail because people just didn't try hard enough is the centrists delusion that at some point any project big enough must be too big to fail. And from that we get arguments like "How else are we going to get enough people together to create the giant bureaucracy we need for this?". US Department of Tautology strikes again.
I imagine a great world one day when politician's actions are as empty as their promises.
Well, I think we can all agree that Avram Chomsky would agree with you. Technically the only portion of the responsibility for which you can not be proportionally responsible for is the supply that would exist absent of any demand. Clearly anything else would be consequential. But what is that anyway? Unsuccessful innovation? Personally, I am not one to judge the innovation of others, but lean towards trusting innovators to be responsible. On the other hand it seems that public policy today is leaning / falling towards reducing such risks and taking responsibility for the consequences of reckless innovation.
Wouldn't it at least be a bit more honest to say "I am contributing to the problem, and I don't care" than to deny that you are a raindrop that contributed to the flood?
That is a good point. It was not till recently I realized how much influence clerks have in the supreme court. For example, when a petition for cert comes in, the justices do not look them over, the clerks / paralegals do and the ones of interest to them get shown to the justices and if four can be convinced then cert is granted. Sure it is not always that simple, but nothing is.
There is a good reason why there was meant to be a representative for every 30,000 people. I realize that is over 11,500 representatives today if we still followed the original constitution, but look at the staff of the average representative. How many representatives do you think have over 27 staff members? Why can't we just elect all of them? Make the districts smaller and maybe I won't be waiting around with nearly 2 million other people waiting to be heard by MY representative.
Lobbyists aside, only 3% of congress is elected... hmmm... basically leaving the Federal government completely unregulated, unaccountable, and hidden from public watch. Hell, there is a good argument there that lobbyists are far better regulated than our congress.
I haven't had any problems with Sony in many years. They have always lived up to my hope and expectation. Not once since I stop buying any products or services from them have they done me wrong. We have a much better relationship these days.
thank you. That raises a fair number of questions. And my apologies for the misuse of the term after market. I had meant to say, and it really should have preceded the term used, that they tend to buy later models. It is not a bad way to save money and I myself ration my own money in that way as often as possible. The implications are questionable, sure and was not meant as a counter argument, but just clarifying. If that is still incorrect I would be curious, but I would be shocked to hear that the NHS was ever an earlier adopter on such expensive medical equipment.
Just to mention, would I would want to see among those 12 countries is market capitalization, discount programs, domestic sales vs exports, and private vs. public investment and PE ratio. Yes, I'm aware that GE is heavily funded by tax dollars, possibly even more reason to compare such things.
Also, something I have found very little info on you might know more about: How does the US compare to European countries and Canada on private donations to private charity hospitals? And if you do not mind me asking, would those numbers influence your feeling at all either way / are they relevant to anything?
Wow, then let me be the first to say thank god for Corporations, the many little governments with enough motivation to save from our collective will to destroy ourselves one way or another. Corporations: "Don't kill yourselves off yet, we still need your money!"
Personally, I think it is the silver lining of optimism on an otherwise gloomy horizon. I will trust corporate greed over governmental benevolence any day.
In a respect, the last free (libre) computer was the Apple IIe. Since then more and more parts of the computer have become hidden behind proprietary closed source firmware. Of course the trade off is that software can no longer be used to damage hardware because components will only do certain tasks for which it was designed compared to the days when a malicious coder could cause serious physical damage to the computer and possibly the user. I think most of us are happy those days are gone.
BUT, I sympathize completely. There is a balance and Sony puts Software Freedom a lower priority than the long desired one-touch "deliver me a pizza" button on every new controller.
As excited as I was to hear that the PS3 was going to Linux, and it coming out with some really awesome games, I did not forget for a moment that it was still Sony. Learned a long time ago, "Don't Trust Sony!". Sony has done too many really bizarre things (I'll just leave it at that) for me to EVER buy another product from them.
Nothing against anyone that doesn't feel the same way, just grateful I am not part of this mess, or the slightest bit surprised it happened.
I know the despite being internationalized, the patent system is US bias. Also, the Nobel committee isn't completely objective. But, as it keeps being repeated over and over, health care in the US is 1/6 of our entire economy. No country (meaning the people) spends money on medical research like the US. Isn't that at least in part being addressed as part of the problem in this country? And just to be a little bitchy, you don't think that is just profits raked in by the evil insurance companies and plastic surgeons, do you?
How do you feel about people being allowed to get any treatment they want, but then needing to declare bankruptcy? I know many people have said that this is unacceptable, but I have had friends that have incurred quite unreasonable amounts of debt that they could not ever pay back due to medical treatments they could not afford, but they still received. To the best of my knowledge the worst thing that happened was that it ruined their credit score. All this really meant was that they were stuck for 7 years forced to only buy things they could afford. If that is the worst that can happen to you, I don't think that is a terribly bad thing but possibly a specific area that could be addressed rather than the industry as a whole. A criticism I have of the legislation is that it does not review ANY federal regulations that IMO have caused harm. I believe there has been a LOT of reform over the last 75 years and it has just been more regulation and not a plan to get certain things right. For example, I do not think the HMO Act has quite worked out as planned, restrictions on types of plans to reduce fraud has had some perverse consequences, and (without ranting on forever) I question the "necessary evil" relationship between the FDA and the medical industry. Not sure how else to put that concisely.
I am also hard pressed to believe that any area of the United states in any way resembles the third world; there are many, albeit difficult, options available in the United States that while considered unreasonable to expect someone to rely upon, I think you under estimate the lack of options available in the third world, at very least with respect to internet or library access for information that might allow a person to self help. I am not arguing that it is a substitute, but think about how much people discuss and share information about medicine (ever been to an old folks home? Wow, they love to talk about drugs) and ompare that to complete ignorance. I think it is too hard to imagine. I think there are plenty of problems that can be addressed without equating it to the third world.
I think both parties fail at protecting liberty. The Nolan test, for example, has in addition to a left and right a y-axis of libertarian vs. stateism. Mind you this was done in 1965 before there even was libertarian party and the political environment of 1965 was very different, but I think the general idea about the 5 general positions still hold true. The left generally believe in individual freedom with regard to personal matters but that the appropriate role for government is to manage / regulate the economy. Conservatives believe the opposite, that government should be a moral guide but that economic matters should be left almost entirely to the individual. Libertarianism is the belief that people are best left to manage both their own personal and economic roles in society, and stateism is where government can and should become involved in any important matter.
In my opinion an argument between left and right, particularly in government, is not over what people can be responsible enough to manage on their own, but what evil needs to be suppressed. The left pushes for less economic freedom with philosophical objections on the right while the right pushes for less personal freedom with philosophical objections on the left. They compromise and negotiate until they both get what they want with what isn't really centrist, but stateism.
As far as Republicans, it is all a matter of who you talk to. There is a lot of division and accusations over who is a real conservative. I differentiate "real conservatives" from "right of center", "moderate conservative", and "neo-conservative". From anyone I have heard that identifies themselves as a Republican hating conservative (but think the party can be "reclaimed") they label Bush as NOT conservative. Further, to my understanding, most "conservatives" would like to see the military come home and protect THIS country rather than going around the word "spreading democracy". IMO, congressional leadership and administration is interested in managing the entire world but for radically different reasons.
One of the talking points I frequently hear, and I will just ask for your opinion, how do you measure the protection of individual rights? Least harm / most freedom? Namely, with regard to the medical profession, how has this particular legislation worked to ensure the individual rights and freedoms of doctors, scientists, investors, and other professionals in the medical field?
In this thread specifically (It was the first post of yours that I read, no I had not searched out any other comments made by you in other threads) all you gave were two lines that, to me, seemed to paint a very clear picture of a particular ideology: People can be trusted with things as long as they are not important, but important things need to be managed by government. A reasonable corollary to that theory is that unimportant tasks can be distributed, but important things are best centrally planned, which I do not know if you would agree with, but I think is something important to look at and contrast one were to agree with the first and not second. Anyway...
I never made any statement as to socialism itself.
That is where I was confused and why I asked the question. I realize that signatures are always out of any kind of context and never necessarily intended to be related to the current subject. Further, I never expect things like signatures to be the crosses people bear and for even the most radical criticism to be taken as a personal attack, either an analysis is relevant or irrelevant when it comes to taking apart a 13 word statement. If I didn't think you put any time or effort into what you said, what would be the point in responding? (ok, you did answer that question already)
So rather than just saying "I disagree", I was doing my best to explain my thought process in interpreting your statement such that, if you were so inclined, you could either correct my thinking or your statement for clarity.
You have stated you think government is too big. This tells me that at some point there is an upper limit. You say there must be regulation, and I think we just disagree on where that regulation should come from which I would be interested in discussing if you were so inclined. I would be interested in your critical opinion; I would like to find someone as arrogant and suborned as am with regard to that topic.
Clever. Are you extending that argument so far as to say that without that "support" that those states would be in just as bad a position per capita were they left to fend for themselves? I would be very impressed to see anything that meaningfully connects your premise to your conclusion.
Well, fundamentally at one point because it is very expensive to be a leader. Nearly ALL medical equipment, especially new anything from MRI machines to drugs are both developed and manufactured in the United States. R&D (lets just skip embedded taxes at the moment) are nearly the entire cost all medical technology and particularly pharmaceuticals. One way that countries have saved major bucks on health care is to not contribute to the system but depend completely on used and after market sales of devices. Many countries are too small and do not have the capital to create a market for some revolutionary device. It makes more sense for countries to send their best and brightest to the United States to collaborate with researchers from other countries, let all the early adopters dump all their money into the product in the US such that in 10 to 15 years the product will be cheap enough to bring to their own country. That or counterfeit the products; popular enough in many countries (which I am not entirely against so long as they are willing to bear the consequences of trade sanctions, but that is an entirely different issue).
So on that argument 1) The US can not possibly do what other countries do because there is no country like the United States for us to leech off of or at least invest into, though I expect India or China will be more than willing to try to be such a haven, and 2) Us changing our system will be devastating to every other country that depends upon us for what out of date technology we are getting rid of at any particular point (Look what cash for clunkers did to the used car market, radically regressive legislation).
Well, this bill is not like any system in place by any other country, and at very least I know that you did not get your numbers from the WHO Report. I am shocked to hear anyone say that cost aside the US is on par with any country (Nancy Pelosi believes that Cuba has better health care than we do), most people say "its the best!" or "its the worst!" so I just got to ask now that you are making quantitative statements, might you be willing to share your source on those particular figures? Not even necessarily disagreeing, on the contrary I think such statements with sources make a meaningful contribution to an otherwise purely philosophically theoretical debate.
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'Democracy' is not, nor has it ever been the form of government of the United States.
What specifically are you referring to when you say this is just like any other infrastructure protection bill?
Good citizens should fear government as an evil, last resort, solution to problems that can not otherwise be solved. Simply asserting that if it gets bad that there will just be a revolution is intellectual sloth, if not at least a gross misunderstanding the Declaration of Independence and events leading up to the American Revolution.
Are you saying that flat earth theory is a conspiracy by Intel? Hmm... I see a good parody site in the future.
Why is Intel trying to convince people the world is flat? I am sure data mining enough information about Intel one could work up a pretty good argument. As Homor Simpsons once said: "Facts are meaningless. You can use facts to prove anything that's even remotely true. Facts, schmacts."
I like to look at the positive side.
There is a direct link between the advancement of civilization and the ability to exchange information quickly. Spoken language, to writing, to mass print, to radio and telephones to the ever increasing bandwidth and connectedness of the internet; each have resulted in radical leaps in the advancement of civilization and brought about revolution. This is also why I argue that information freedom is vital to all progress. Civilization is one giant parallel information processing machine. What we know of AI has shown us that exposure to information is the core of intelligence and learning, and processing is far superior to filtering. And superior processing methods by humans will will evolve and spread in symbiosis with the technology that we create.
Sure, the large majority of people do not use the opportunity before them in the most effective way as determined by other people. On the other hand, it amuses me how much some people can be greatly concerned about the effectiveness of other people's time use.
I doubt I would have any interest in using an ipad even if I was given one for free, but gratz to anyone that finds one enjoyable. I know I enjoy all kinds of things few other people could give a crap about.
but remove a few significant digits and you will see that the world is flat.
Actually, the president may NEVER declare martial law. Just ask any United States Marine that takes their oath seriously. Most of Congress and president may not take their oath seriously, but don't mistake the actions of some bratty self appointed nobles for the honor of the guardians of liberty.
I think you can generalize even further and say that there is always an imminent crisis. Government is a business just like any other; while infomercials are trying to tell you your salad spinner is "so yesterday" and just kill your children if you don't upgrade, and the next 20 callers this hour get a complimentary Shamwow with every order, government is competing with your time to explain how they are the only ones that can rescue you from your problems. Anything that makes government particularly special typically isn't in the customers favor.
If you think used car salesmen are bad, try avoiding an IRS agent that is looking for you.
As for cyber security, I'll tell them the same thing I tell Norton: No thank you, I am doing just fine without your services (even when they present really scary metaphors and panoramas).
As usual, I can agree with a statement like "civilians need to be protected from things they don't understand", but not for one fucking second does that say anything about whose job that is. I'd take it as a call to personal responsibility against carelessness, and next maybe people should be reminding people that tolerance of crime is asking for it. Fuck people so god damned lazy that any time something important comes along they immediately use it as an excuse to expand the nanny state!
Same thing with "To each according to their their need, from each according to their ability": That isn't socialism, that is called economics. Socialism is either a) taking that philosophy and being a whiny little bitch about the matter, or b) believing you can profit by exploiting the fact that many people given the opportunity can be whiny little bitches about the matter.
If something simply needs to be "fair" at any cost including any future progress in the area, then it is a reasonable job for government. "Government taking over the networks" is about as laughable as it is disheartening knowing that their failure is everyone else success. Government can be scary, but the fact that this undertaking would require competence really leads me to believe this is unlikely to be much of an issue. Their process of discovering their own incompetence may be exceptionally frustrating though. Joe Pesci save us.
So why is it especially impressive when the government makes something really cool and fails to bring it to market? This is one step ahead of that guy everyone knows with the really brilliant ideas that would be super rich he would just get his lazy ass off the couch.
What does it say about government when we measure its milestones by Special Olympics standards. And sorry, it doesn't take a massive industry conspiracy for something something with potential to fail. How else do you think we end up with so many damn books on parenting, relationships, and self esteem?
Massive government bureaucracy is a failure because it is a bad idea based on premises that have proven to be hostile to the natural order of things. This idea that central economic planning and big government projects fail because people just didn't try hard enough is the centrists delusion that at some point any project big enough must be too big to fail. And from that we get arguments like "How else are we going to get enough people together to create the giant bureaucracy we need for this?". US Department of Tautology strikes again.
I imagine a great world one day when politician's actions are as empty as their promises.
Well, I think we can all agree that Avram Chomsky would agree with you. Technically the only portion of the responsibility for which you can not be proportionally responsible for is the supply that would exist absent of any demand. Clearly anything else would be consequential. But what is that anyway? Unsuccessful innovation? Personally, I am not one to judge the innovation of others, but lean towards trusting innovators to be responsible. On the other hand it seems that public policy today is leaning / falling towards reducing such risks and taking responsibility for the consequences of reckless innovation.
Wouldn't it at least be a bit more honest to say "I am contributing to the problem, and I don't care" than to deny that you are a raindrop that contributed to the flood?
That is a good point. It was not till recently I realized how much influence clerks have in the supreme court. For example, when a petition for cert comes in, the justices do not look them over, the clerks / paralegals do and the ones of interest to them get shown to the justices and if four can be convinced then cert is granted. Sure it is not always that simple, but nothing is.
There is a good reason why there was meant to be a representative for every 30,000 people. I realize that is over 11,500 representatives today if we still followed the original constitution, but look at the staff of the average representative. How many representatives do you think have over 27 staff members? Why can't we just elect all of them? Make the districts smaller and maybe I won't be waiting around with nearly 2 million other people waiting to be heard by MY representative.
Lobbyists aside, only 3% of congress is elected... hmmm... basically leaving the Federal government completely unregulated, unaccountable, and hidden from public watch. Hell, there is a good argument there that lobbyists are far better regulated than our congress.
Hey, it is several million more jobs than Obama has created :)
I haven't had any problems with Sony in many years. They have always lived up to my hope and expectation. Not once since I stop buying any products or services from them have they done me wrong. We have a much better relationship these days.
thank you. That raises a fair number of questions. And my apologies for the misuse of the term after market. I had meant to say, and it really should have preceded the term used, that they tend to buy later models. It is not a bad way to save money and I myself ration my own money in that way as often as possible. The implications are questionable, sure and was not meant as a counter argument, but just clarifying. If that is still incorrect I would be curious, but I would be shocked to hear that the NHS was ever an earlier adopter on such expensive medical equipment.
Just to mention, would I would want to see among those 12 countries is market capitalization, discount programs, domestic sales vs exports, and private vs. public investment and PE ratio. Yes, I'm aware that GE is heavily funded by tax dollars, possibly even more reason to compare such things.
Also, something I have found very little info on you might know more about: How does the US compare to European countries and Canada on private donations to private charity hospitals? And if you do not mind me asking, would those numbers influence your feeling at all either way / are they relevant to anything?
Wow, then let me be the first to say thank god for Corporations, the many little governments with enough motivation to save from our collective will to destroy ourselves one way or another. Corporations: "Don't kill yourselves off yet, we still need your money!"
Personally, I think it is the silver lining of optimism on an otherwise gloomy horizon. I will trust corporate greed over governmental benevolence any day.
In a respect, the last free (libre) computer was the Apple IIe. Since then more and more parts of the computer have become hidden behind proprietary closed source firmware. Of course the trade off is that software can no longer be used to damage hardware because components will only do certain tasks for which it was designed compared to the days when a malicious coder could cause serious physical damage to the computer and possibly the user. I think most of us are happy those days are gone.
BUT, I sympathize completely. There is a balance and Sony puts Software Freedom a lower priority than the long desired one-touch "deliver me a pizza" button on every new controller.
As excited as I was to hear that the PS3 was going to Linux, and it coming out with some really awesome games, I did not forget for a moment that it was still Sony. Learned a long time ago, "Don't Trust Sony!". Sony has done too many really bizarre things (I'll just leave it at that) for me to EVER buy another product from them.
Nothing against anyone that doesn't feel the same way, just grateful I am not part of this mess, or the slightest bit surprised it happened.
I know the despite being internationalized, the patent system is US bias. Also, the Nobel committee isn't completely objective. But, as it keeps being repeated over and over, health care in the US is 1/6 of our entire economy. No country (meaning the people) spends money on medical research like the US. Isn't that at least in part being addressed as part of the problem in this country? And just to be a little bitchy, you don't think that is just profits raked in by the evil insurance companies and plastic surgeons, do you?
How do you feel about people being allowed to get any treatment they want, but then needing to declare bankruptcy? I know many people have said that this is unacceptable, but I have had friends that have incurred quite unreasonable amounts of debt that they could not ever pay back due to medical treatments they could not afford, but they still received. To the best of my knowledge the worst thing that happened was that it ruined their credit score. All this really meant was that they were stuck for 7 years forced to only buy things they could afford. If that is the worst that can happen to you, I don't think that is a terribly bad thing but possibly a specific area that could be addressed rather than the industry as a whole. A criticism I have of the legislation is that it does not review ANY federal regulations that IMO have caused harm. I believe there has been a LOT of reform over the last 75 years and it has just been more regulation and not a plan to get certain things right. For example, I do not think the HMO Act has quite worked out as planned, restrictions on types of plans to reduce fraud has had some perverse consequences, and (without ranting on forever) I question the "necessary evil" relationship between the FDA and the medical industry. Not sure how else to put that concisely.
I am also hard pressed to believe that any area of the United states in any way resembles the third world; there are many, albeit difficult, options available in the United States that while considered unreasonable to expect someone to rely upon, I think you under estimate the lack of options available in the third world, at very least with respect to internet or library access for information that might allow a person to self help. I am not arguing that it is a substitute, but think about how much people discuss and share information about medicine (ever been to an old folks home? Wow, they love to talk about drugs) and ompare that to complete ignorance. I think it is too hard to imagine. I think there are plenty of problems that can be addressed without equating it to the third world.
I think both parties fail at protecting liberty. The Nolan test, for example, has in addition to a left and right a y-axis of libertarian vs. stateism. Mind you this was done in 1965 before there even was libertarian party and the political environment of 1965 was very different, but I think the general idea about the 5 general positions still hold true. The left generally believe in individual freedom with regard to personal matters but that the appropriate role for government is to manage / regulate the economy. Conservatives believe the opposite, that government should be a moral guide but that economic matters should be left almost entirely to the individual. Libertarianism is the belief that people are best left to manage both their own personal and economic roles in society, and stateism is where government can and should become involved in any important matter.
In my opinion an argument between left and right, particularly in government, is not over what people can be responsible enough to manage on their own, but what evil needs to be suppressed. The left pushes for less economic freedom with philosophical objections on the right while the right pushes for less personal freedom with philosophical objections on the left. They compromise and negotiate until they both get what they want with what isn't really centrist, but stateism.
As far as Republicans, it is all a matter of who you talk to. There is a lot of division and accusations over who is a real conservative. I differentiate "real conservatives" from "right of center", "moderate conservative", and "neo-conservative". From anyone I have heard that identifies themselves as a Republican hating conservative (but think the party can be "reclaimed") they label Bush as NOT conservative. Further, to my understanding, most "conservatives" would like to see the military come home and protect THIS country rather than going around the word "spreading democracy". IMO, congressional leadership and administration is interested in managing the entire world but for radically different reasons.
One of the talking points I frequently hear, and I will just ask for your opinion, how do you measure the protection of individual rights? Least harm / most freedom? Namely, with regard to the medical profession, how has this particular legislation worked to ensure the individual rights and freedoms of doctors, scientists, investors, and other professionals in the medical field?
I never made any statement as to socialism itself.
That is where I was confused and why I asked the question. I realize that signatures are always out of any kind of context and never necessarily intended to be related to the current subject. Further, I never expect things like signatures to be the crosses people bear and for even the most radical criticism to be taken as a personal attack, either an analysis is relevant or irrelevant when it comes to taking apart a 13 word statement. If I didn't think you put any time or effort into what you said, what would be the point in responding? (ok, you did answer that question already)
So rather than just saying "I disagree", I was doing my best to explain my thought process in interpreting your statement such that, if you were so inclined, you could either correct my thinking or your statement for clarity.
You have stated you think government is too big. This tells me that at some point there is an upper limit. You say there must be regulation, and I think we just disagree on where that regulation should come from which I would be interested in discussing if you were so inclined. I would be interested in your critical opinion; I would like to find someone as arrogant and suborned as am with regard to that topic.
So why not go with Menkin on this one and give them what they want good and hard. Why not just laugh at them and graciously take your own money back?
Clever. Are you extending that argument so far as to say that without that "support" that those states would be in just as bad a position per capita were they left to fend for themselves? I would be very impressed to see anything that meaningfully connects your premise to your conclusion.
Well, fundamentally at one point because it is very expensive to be a leader. Nearly ALL medical equipment, especially new anything from MRI machines to drugs are both developed and manufactured in the United States. R&D (lets just skip embedded taxes at the moment) are nearly the entire cost all medical technology and particularly pharmaceuticals. One way that countries have saved major bucks on health care is to not contribute to the system but depend completely on used and after market sales of devices. Many countries are too small and do not have the capital to create a market for some revolutionary device. It makes more sense for countries to send their best and brightest to the United States to collaborate with researchers from other countries, let all the early adopters dump all their money into the product in the US such that in 10 to 15 years the product will be cheap enough to bring to their own country. That or counterfeit the products; popular enough in many countries (which I am not entirely against so long as they are willing to bear the consequences of trade sanctions, but that is an entirely different issue).
So on that argument 1) The US can not possibly do what other countries do because there is no country like the United States for us to leech off of or at least invest into, though I expect India or China will be more than willing to try to be such a haven, and 2) Us changing our system will be devastating to every other country that depends upon us for what out of date technology we are getting rid of at any particular point (Look what cash for clunkers did to the used car market, radically regressive legislation).
Thank you! It frequently bothers me how often the points you have made are completely over looked by "supporters" of this bill.
Well, this bill is not like any system in place by any other country, and at very least I know that you did not get your numbers from the WHO Report. I am shocked to hear anyone say that cost aside the US is on par with any country (Nancy Pelosi believes that Cuba has better health care than we do), most people say "its the best!" or "its the worst!" so I just got to ask now that you are making quantitative statements, might you be willing to share your source on those particular figures? Not even necessarily disagreeing, on the contrary I think such statements with sources make a meaningful contribution to an otherwise purely philosophically theoretical debate.