While it is useful to define groups of people by common characteristics and then describe behaviour of the group, to assume that any member of the group shares equally all the characteristics of the definition or the behaviour can be erroneous.
I'm happy to criticise the inequity of some aspects of some Muslim societies. I'm probably left enough in a lot of my opinions that I'd fall into your characterisation of 'leftist' and/or 'Democrat' although neither are a good fit (roughly, I'm socially far left, economically centrist (ish), but have some odd opinions that would normally place me socially far right, for eg on some issues).
If you've taken criticism of a group and applied it to an individual, you're falling for one of the -ism errors and may well have been fairly criticised for being racist. If you've criticised a group, fairly, and distinguish between other examples and/or individuals within that group then the accusation may have been unfair.
But frankly, very few people are using the term 'racist/sexist/foo-ist' accurately and given your use of 'Democrat' and 'leftist' it sounds like you're just as guilty of confusing generalisations and individuals. The map is not the territory. Abstraction is great so long as you remember that's what you're doing.
How about instead of perpetuating the problem, you stop calling people 'Democrats' and 'leftists' and criticise the behaviour of the individuals you encounter?
"Health care in the US has failed not because of too much capitalism, but too little"
I'd be fascinated with either a justification of same, with some kind of argument or evidence or a rejection and clarification of my characterisation.
Meantime
libtard
Insults are usually used to pad an otherwise empty position.
Well, here's a hint
Informal tone; condescension/patronisation. Too early. You've only just introduced your position. Neither tone, information nor content justify your assumption of the superior position. This comes across as desperately insecure.
capitalism doesn't run on government handouts
Oversimplification bordering on strawman. The US system is less socialised and more capitalist than other OECD countries.
What you have there is a statist operation
Double standard. You argue that any involvement by the government means that the policy isn't capitalist, yet ignore that the US Health system is more capitalist than other nations and describe it as 'statist'.
EVEN MORE SO than in the rest of OECD
Assertion. Would you care to explain this apparently contradictory statement?
Well, colour my libertarian ass suprised
Are you, by chance, false-flagging libertarians because there are many who can at least post coherent and reasoned argument and this isn't.
Yeah, the first link you've skipped in your eagerness to criticise the second. Also most of the first few pages of a google search with terms like "US health outcomes vs world".
Have some intellectual honesty. If you are interested, I've made a point and provided some evidence. If you'd like to criticise the evidence, then please provide evidence to support your criticism. The bar has been raised. We left bare assertions a few comments back. Ante up or fold.
The evidence suggests otherwise. There's a bunch of other articles with lower standards of rigor that all say much the same thing if you google 'cost of preventative care vs emergency care', for example. I'd be fascinated to see evidence to the contrary.
Extremely indulgent free medical services
Straw man. I'm arguing that socialised medical care as used by other OECD countries costs less and has better outcomes. You're arguing some fantastic exaggeration you're calling 'extremely indulgent free medical services'.
You're not even consistent. You argue first that people don't just avoid medical care because of cost, but then argue that were it free, people would use it too much.
The people advocating for universally free non-critical care (i.e 'free checkups') are generally the vendors of said services
Ad hominem.
Just be honest. The hot dog seller in the street is honest about his advocacy, and you can be too.
When you can back up your statement with something resembling facts, and avoid some fairly basic logical fallacies, your adoption of a patronising tone will probably ring less false.
Caveat. I'm from Australia, and while there are problems with our health care, I consider myself damn lucky to be able to live in country and period in history with access to the levels of civilisation that I enjoy. I'm more than happy to pay taxes to fund these services, both for myself and my fellow citizens and recognise that probably makes me a 'socialist' in the eyes of some. I consider the plight of those in the US who cannot afford medical care to be a tragedy. I've nothing to sell, and your assumption that this can be the only motivation for someone to advocate equitable access to the wealth of society says more about your motivations than anything else.
To the degree that other countries are influenced by the US (directly and indirectly), there has been some 'overflow' from that war. Australia's obesity levels aren't far behind the US for all of our idealisation of 'ourselves' as a nation of sportspeople.
That's on us, btw.
Even so, it's still better to treat it early. Get people in for regular, subsidised or low cost health checks. Get doctors involved in providing lifestyle advice and warnings. Catching type II diabetes when it's still early makes it a lot easier to treat than having to amputate gangrenous limbs.
It won't fix it overnight. Hell, it's going to take generations, and as you say the cost is going to be enormous. But it's still going to cost less, overall, if it's handled by a single, regulated body or organisation that isn't looking to make a profit from it. Or multiple, state based organisations that are loosely affiliated or federated. I'm not sure what would work best in the US, and it's probably going to take a bunch of false starts to find out what does. But private and privatised health care has been failing for a long time and it's not getting any better.
If it were a polygamous society, the women would be able to have multiple husbands as well. Now for a 50/50 society every man and every woman has the same potential number of partners.
The problem is that women have less rights than men.
Your argument looks good on paper. Yet the US has worse outcomes for most people, at a higher cost than most first world countries - who are running some flavour of socialised healthcare.
Of course, they can distinguish between idealised 'pure' socialism of knee jerk rhetoric and practical, regulated socialised policies designed to try and prevent the abuses you cite.
Seriously. Take a look outside the US for other models and for examples of limited and regulated soclialism especially with respect to healthcare.
You can pay for emergency treatment when people can't afford to visit a doctor for anything less than life-threatening emergencies, by which time a condition that could have been treated cheaply and with a better patient outcome is now an expensive, risk laden venture with poor prognosis. Worse, it's tying up a system that would be better serving emergencies that couldn't be anticipated or treated.
You can try to make emergency services a user pays proposition, but then you risk increasing the wealth inequality even further, increasing crime and you pay for police, a slower legal system and increased prisons, not to mention having a growing population that are in poor health creating a pool for infectious disease.
Maybe the math doesn't perfectly balance. It's hard to put a dollar value on quality of life and engagement with the social contract, but most other first world/OECD countries achieve better health outcomes for more people, for less money and lower cost to most citizens than the US. Using some flavour of nationalised health care.
There are some things that are terrible when government run, just as there are some things you don't want to let people profit from. Health care is one of the latter.
And when the majority of people use encryption and/or it's integrated relatively seamlessly into most email clients then you'll have a point. Setting it up so it's seamless and easy for you isn't the point. Making sure every one of your recipients has low-friction for reading your email is.
Unless the overwhelming majority of your email is encrypted, then my original statement is within a margin of error of being correct.
If you aren't running the mail server, then someone, somewhere is reading your email. Maybe they aren't right now, but they are a rogue sysadmin, data breach or buyout from doing so retroactively.
It's like having a conversation in public. If you want private communication, email is not and has never been that.
My memory of signing up for Gmail was that Google was quite open about using the data anonymously for various purposes, a position more honest than many others who do the same without the courtesy of saying so.
It was never Christian land in the first place. The first crusade was to aid the Byzantines who had lost lands to the Turks. Christian Franks recaptured the land and didn't return it, went on to conquer Jerusalem, set up some puppet states and left. After that they got messier. The more things change...
If you want to look at a cleaner example of pure faith-on-faith killing with the Christians as the prosecutors, try the Albigensian crusade from which we (supposedly) get the wonderful "Kill them all. God will know his own."
The problem is that while the average soldier may be faithful and sold on the idea of god, that's often cynically manipulated by leaders more bent on land and money. With the perspective of history that becomes more obvious. The same Muslims you claim kill for a difference of opinion will, seen through the same lens of time, turn out to be no different from the soldiers of the crusades - pawns whose faith was used to drive them to a war for land and money.
You don't have the slightest idea what you are talking about.
Children of Rhesus negative mothers and Rhesus positive fathers will be Rhesus positive and at risk of their mother developing antibodies to their blood (as as second child after the mother has been sensitised by the first child, or as the result of the mother being exposed to the child's blood). High risk of still birth or major problems for the child.
If this is prevented, they aren't affected. They go on to be Rhesus positive. Like the majority of the population. In as much as Rhesus negative is as low as 10% in some populations, by increasing the number of surviving Rhesus positive children you are _reducing_ the risk in the general population over time.
Claiming that you're making a choice while pretending that no one else affected
Well it's a good thing I didn't make that claim, then, isn't it. You exclaimed that you wished people would treat the choice with the appropriate weight. I pointed out that you were assuming that your judgement of the weight is your own and that you are assuming that this is universal and/or has an absolute right/wrong. I'm advocating for letting people evaluate that for themselves. Nowhere in that chain is there a statement about whether their decision does or does not affect others.
If ending a life
You keep doing it.
You consider it ending a life. That's a conclusion you've reached based on your values and reasoning. Other people evaluate that differently. _That's_ my point. Then you condescend to allow that you'd see their point of view if only they'd value things the way you do.
That you cannot understand that is not a criticism of your conclusion. It's a criticism of your inability to consider that your axioms may differ from someone else's and that as a consequence the conclusions you draw may be different.
You are arguing about something 'in potentia'. The 'life' (as a singular noun) does not yet exist. This argument is/was used by the Catholic church against contraception. That a 'life' would otherwise exist except for the intervention of the condom, for example. It's a position that is well reasoned and argued. It's not proven and there are counter arguments just as well reasoned and argued. Those arguments may not persuade you, but they exist and the fact that other people find them just as compelling as the arguments you use to reach your conclusions is the thing you seem unable to understand accommodate or accept.
Trying to deny that the foetus is alive
A collection of cancerous cells in a tumour is alive. You're conflating alive with 'a life'. You attribute a value to the fact that this group of cells may go on to become a person, compared to this other group that is not. You argument relies on the value you ascribe to the potential of those cells. There are other values.
is just rationalizing
Patronising assertion and a straw man. Are you aware of the assumptions you are making in _this_ statement?
And I might adopt
I see. So abortion is ending a person based on the potential of those cells to become a person, and your virtue with respect to adoption lies in the potential likelihood of you adopting in the future.
I think I'm detecting a pattern. Some people lack your omniscience, and so come to different conclusions being, as they are, restricted to knowing only what is.
You seem to be confusing two arguments. I disagree with your position on abortion, but that's not what I'm arguing. There's no point. You refuse to admit that there could be a different position so arguing with you about that would be utterly fruitless. And the only reason I'm pointing that out is because of the hypocrisy of your position where you condescend to allow how you'd be better able to accept someone having a different point of view if only they'd value things the way you do.
"“The reasonable man adapts himself to the world: the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.” - George Bernard Shaw
People thought he was a lunatic back when he was starting to do the things that you describe as 'a lot of good'. I'm damned grateful that there's someone like him who doesn't compromise even if it makes other people 'look bad'. The man has proven to be prescient far too many times for me to dismiss what he has to say, even when I don't necessarily agree.
But on this, he's absolutely right. They are his words, in his document for his project. He gets to say 'no' when people suggest that he remove them. No matter how reasonable or unreasonable other people might think that position is.
I'm not sure you're even aware of the fact that you are assuming something as fact that others disagree with.
You equate killing the GP with the abortion of a fetus, that abortion is killing a person. That position may be one you consider incontrovertible. It is not.
the temporary inconvenience of another
I see. Are there any other dismissive phrases you'd like to use while virtue signalling how much more amenable you'd be if only 'they' would treat this with the proper 'weight'?
And if the pro-life advocates, like you, would stop insisting that the 'weight' that they attribute to the decision is the only valid one, then I'd probably be more amenable to their position.
The essence of the pro-choice movement is that it is the choice of the individual. That they should be allowed to make that choice based on their own evaluation of the 'weight' of that choice and that other people, like yourself, imposing what _you_ think is an appropriate 'weight' is an imposition on their right to self-determination.
Some people will treat it with every bit as much 'weight' as you ask. Others will treat it as you characterise all pro-choicer advocates.
Personally, I think more harm has been done by righteous do-gooders, certain of their morally superior position and unable to admit that their position might be an opinion and not a fact than just about any other single source in human history.
When your 'opinion' is stated as broadly as you have and used as though it were a fact or date to prop up your argument, then showing a counter-example 'nullifies' your 'opinion' within the context of your argument.
It isn't censorship to remove superfulous information
Would you like to take a moment to reflect on what you've just said?
Are you really arguing that all I need do to avoid accusation of censorship is to declare something superfluous - literally 'unnecessary'?
RMS is acting like a petty dictator
You say that like it's a bad thing. The _point_ of free speech is that everyone gets to be 'a petty dictator' over what they say or write. You can argue that something is superfluous. You can ask that it be removed for various reasons. But if the author declines, then that is quite literally their right.
His words. He gets to say 'no' when you ask for them to be removed.
nor wanted any longer
Here you go, again. It doesn't matter whether you or anyone else wants this, they are his words. He gets to say what happens to them.
We are only tested on our dedication to the right to free speech when the speech is something we don't like or don't want to hear.
You have a naive and simplistic understanding of addiction.
In countries that have decriminalized and regulated drugs they have seen a drop in addiction the strongest example being Portugal.
Regulation works (along with various social programs). Treating addiction as a disease works. It costs less than criminalisation, enforcement and incarceration, it has better outcomes for users and addicts and for the community as a whole.
That the US spends more on health, for worse outcomes and more on waging a war on drugs, for worse outcomes is a historical oddity. That people continue to support this when there is strong evidence that there are better ways is weird.
Your talking point is decades out of date. Worst case estimates have break-even for both power and greenhouse gas emission for production of PV cells produced, to date, as this year. Best case was 1997. Briefly (from the abstract) every doubling of PV cell production reduces energy consumed by 12-13% and greenshouse gas by 17% and 24% for poly- and monocrystalline systems.
PV 'pay' for themselves in terms of energy production many times over. Total PV production, to date, has already 'paid' for the energy used to produce them by the most conservative estimates.
Now, do you have any evidence to base your claims on, or do you prefer to cling to your 'BigSolar' narrative?
the minimum wage is not substantially higher than the welfare
That, for me, is the heart of the problem you describe.
There's a scale between disabled-unable-to-work and healthy-and-able-to-earn-a-decent-wage that includes people with skills that have been displaced by automation (for eg), younger, less skilled members of the working populace, people who are healthy but who will never be especially skilled.
If all they have to look forward to is barely above survival when companies can make profits by paying wages that low, then why should they feel any responsibility to society. The social contract has been breached or is unfair, expecting them to honour it is naive.
Raise the minimum wage to the point that it's worth working. This will reduce the profit of companies and they will no doubt insist that they will not survive. Good. Let them be replaced by companies that pay less to their executives and owners and can survive with higher minimum wages. It works in other countries.
I agree that having more people working is better for everyone. Better for us as taxpayers, better for society to have people doing _something_ better for those people to be valued and to have a purpose. Higher minimum wages _encourage_ people to work. You have a willing working populace. Mandatory work for little more than survival creates an unwilling workforce that is less productive, has a poorer connection to society and leads to a host of secondary problems.
Slashdot Mirror
While it is useful to define groups of people by common characteristics and then describe behaviour of the group, to assume that any member of the group shares equally all the characteristics of the definition or the behaviour can be erroneous.
I'm happy to criticise the inequity of some aspects of some Muslim societies. I'm probably left enough in a lot of my opinions that I'd fall into your characterisation of 'leftist' and/or 'Democrat' although neither are a good fit (roughly, I'm socially far left, economically centrist (ish), but have some odd opinions that would normally place me socially far right, for eg on some issues).
If you've taken criticism of a group and applied it to an individual, you're falling for one of the -ism errors and may well have been fairly criticised for being racist. If you've criticised a group, fairly, and distinguish between other examples and/or individuals within that group then the accusation may have been unfair.
But frankly, very few people are using the term 'racist/sexist/foo-ist' accurately and given your use of 'Democrat' and 'leftist' it sounds like you're just as guilty of confusing generalisations and individuals. The map is not the territory. Abstraction is great so long as you remember that's what you're doing.
How about instead of perpetuating the problem, you stop calling people 'Democrats' and 'leftists' and criticise the behaviour of the individuals you encounter?
Your argument appears to be of the form
"Health care in the US has failed not because of too much capitalism, but too little"
I'd be fascinated with either a justification of same, with some kind of argument or evidence or a rejection and clarification of my characterisation.
Meantime
libtard
Insults are usually used to pad an otherwise empty position.
Well, here's a hint
Informal tone; condescension/patronisation. Too early. You've only just introduced your position. Neither tone, information nor content justify your assumption of the superior position. This comes across as desperately insecure.
capitalism doesn't run on government handouts
Oversimplification bordering on strawman. The US system is less socialised and more capitalist than other OECD countries.
What you have there is a statist operation
Double standard. You argue that any involvement by the government means that the policy isn't capitalist, yet ignore that the US Health system is more capitalist than other nations and describe it as 'statist'.
EVEN MORE SO than in the rest of OECD
Assertion. Would you care to explain this apparently contradictory statement?
Well, colour my libertarian ass suprised
Are you, by chance, false-flagging libertarians because there are many who can at least post coherent and reasoned argument and this isn't.
Yeah, the first link you've skipped in your eagerness to criticise the second. Also most of the first few pages of a google search with terms like "US health outcomes vs world".
Have some intellectual honesty. If you are interested, I've made a point and provided some evidence. If you'd like to criticise the evidence, then please provide evidence to support your criticism. The bar has been raised. We left bare assertions a few comments back. Ante up or fold.
Right now, the US pays more per capita than any other OECD country.
Your outcomes are worse.
Low cost preventive care is sort of a myth
The evidence suggests otherwise.
There's a bunch of other articles with lower standards of rigor that all say much the same thing if you google 'cost of preventative care vs emergency care', for example. I'd be fascinated to see evidence to the contrary.
Extremely indulgent free medical services
Straw man. I'm arguing that socialised medical care as used by other OECD countries costs less and has better outcomes. You're arguing some fantastic exaggeration you're calling 'extremely indulgent free medical services'.
You're not even consistent. You argue first that people don't just avoid medical care because of cost, but then argue that were it free, people would use it too much.
The people advocating for universally free non-critical care (i.e 'free checkups') are generally the vendors of said services
Ad hominem.
Just be honest. The hot dog seller in the street is honest about his advocacy, and you can be too.
When you can back up your statement with something resembling facts, and avoid some fairly basic logical fallacies, your adoption of a patronising tone will probably ring less false.
Caveat. I'm from Australia, and while there are problems with our health care, I consider myself damn lucky to be able to live in country and period in history with access to the levels of civilisation that I enjoy. I'm more than happy to pay taxes to fund these services, both for myself and my fellow citizens and recognise that probably makes me a 'socialist' in the eyes of some. I consider the plight of those in the US who cannot afford medical care to be a tragedy. I've nothing to sell, and your assumption that this can be the only motivation for someone to advocate equitable access to the wealth of society says more about your motivations than anything else.
To the degree that other countries are influenced by the US (directly and indirectly), there has been some 'overflow' from that war. Australia's obesity levels aren't far behind the US for all of our idealisation of 'ourselves' as a nation of sportspeople.
That's on us, btw.
Even so, it's still better to treat it early. Get people in for regular, subsidised or low cost health checks. Get doctors involved in providing lifestyle advice and warnings. Catching type II diabetes when it's still early makes it a lot easier to treat than having to amputate gangrenous limbs.
It won't fix it overnight. Hell, it's going to take generations, and as you say the cost is going to be enormous. But it's still going to cost less, overall, if it's handled by a single, regulated body or organisation that isn't looking to make a profit from it. Or multiple, state based organisations that are loosely affiliated or federated. I'm not sure what would work best in the US, and it's probably going to take a bunch of false starts to find out what does. But private and privatised health care has been failing for a long time and it's not getting any better.
If it were a polygamous society, the women would be able to have multiple husbands as well. Now for a 50/50 society every man and every woman has the same potential number of partners.
The problem is that women have less rights than men.
Your argument looks good on paper. Yet the US has worse outcomes for most people, at a higher cost than most first world countries - who are running some flavour of socialised healthcare.
Of course, they can distinguish between idealised 'pure' socialism of knee jerk rhetoric and practical, regulated socialised policies designed to try and prevent the abuses you cite.
Seriously. Take a look outside the US for other models and for examples of limited and regulated soclialism especially with respect to healthcare.
You pay one way or another.
You can pay for emergency treatment when people can't afford to visit a doctor for anything less than life-threatening emergencies, by which time a condition that could have been treated cheaply and with a better patient outcome is now an expensive, risk laden venture with poor prognosis. Worse, it's tying up a system that would be better serving emergencies that couldn't be anticipated or treated.
You can try to make emergency services a user pays proposition, but then you risk increasing the wealth inequality even further, increasing crime and you pay for police, a slower legal system and increased prisons, not to mention having a growing population that are in poor health creating a pool for infectious disease.
Maybe the math doesn't perfectly balance. It's hard to put a dollar value on quality of life and engagement with the social contract, but most other first world/OECD countries achieve better health outcomes for more people, for less money and lower cost to most citizens than the US. Using some flavour of nationalised health care.
There are some things that are terrible when government run, just as there are some things you don't want to let people profit from. Health care is one of the latter.
And when the majority of people use encryption and/or it's integrated relatively seamlessly into most email clients then you'll have a point. Setting it up so it's seamless and easy for you isn't the point. Making sure every one of your recipients has low-friction for reading your email is.
Unless the overwhelming majority of your email is encrypted, then my original statement is within a margin of error of being correct.
If you aren't running the mail server, then someone, somewhere is reading your email. Maybe they aren't right now, but they are a rogue sysadmin, data breach or buyout from doing so retroactively.
It's like having a conversation in public. If you want private communication, email is not and has never been that.
My memory of signing up for Gmail was that Google was quite open about using the data anonymously for various purposes, a position more honest than many others who do the same without the courtesy of saying so.
I stand corrected. Thank you
William Dyer wouldn't be leading that expedition, by any chance, would he?
It was never Christian land in the first place. The first crusade was to aid the Byzantines who had lost lands to the Turks. Christian Franks recaptured the land and didn't return it, went on to conquer Jerusalem, set up some puppet states and left. After that they got messier. The more things change ...
If you want to look at a cleaner example of pure faith-on-faith killing with the Christians as the prosecutors, try the Albigensian crusade from which we (supposedly) get the wonderful "Kill them all. God will know his own."
The problem is that while the average soldier may be faithful and sold on the idea of god, that's often cynically manipulated by leaders more bent on land and money. With the perspective of history that becomes more obvious. The same Muslims you claim kill for a difference of opinion will, seen through the same lens of time, turn out to be no different from the soldiers of the crusades - pawns whose faith was used to drive them to a war for land and money.
War. War never changes.
You don't have the slightest idea what you are talking about.
Children of Rhesus negative mothers and Rhesus positive fathers will be Rhesus positive and at risk of their mother developing antibodies to their blood (as as second child after the mother has been sensitised by the first child, or as the result of the mother being exposed to the child's blood). High risk of still birth or major problems for the child.
If this is prevented, they aren't affected. They go on to be Rhesus positive. Like the majority of the population. In as much as Rhesus negative is as low as 10% in some populations, by increasing the number of surviving Rhesus positive children you are _reducing_ the risk in the general population over time.
Claiming that you're making a choice while pretending that no one else affected
Well it's a good thing I didn't make that claim, then, isn't it. You exclaimed that you wished people would treat the choice with the appropriate weight. I pointed out that you were assuming that your judgement of the weight is your own and that you are assuming that this is universal and/or has an absolute right/wrong. I'm advocating for letting people evaluate that for themselves. Nowhere in that chain is there a statement about whether their decision does or does not affect others.
If ending a life
You keep doing it.
You consider it ending a life. That's a conclusion you've reached based on your values and reasoning. Other people evaluate that differently.
_That's_ my point. Then you condescend to allow that you'd see their point of view if only they'd value things the way you do.
That you cannot understand that is not a criticism of your conclusion. It's a criticism of your inability to consider that your axioms may differ from someone else's and that as a consequence the conclusions you draw may be different.
Abortion is intentionally ending a life
You are arguing about something 'in potentia'. The 'life' (as a singular noun) does not yet exist. This argument is/was used by the Catholic church against contraception. That a 'life' would otherwise exist except for the intervention of the condom, for example. It's a position that is well reasoned and argued. It's not proven and there are counter arguments just as well reasoned and argued. Those arguments may not persuade you, but they exist and the fact that other people find them just as compelling as the arguments you use to reach your conclusions is the thing you seem unable to understand accommodate or accept.
Trying to deny that the foetus is alive
A collection of cancerous cells in a tumour is alive. You're conflating alive with 'a life'. You attribute a value to the fact that this group of cells may go on to become a person, compared to this other group that is not. You argument relies on the value you ascribe to the potential of those cells. There are other values.
is just rationalizing
Patronising assertion and a straw man. Are you aware of the assumptions you are making in _this_ statement?
And I might adopt
I see. So abortion is ending a person based on the potential of those cells to become a person, and your virtue with respect to adoption lies in the potential likelihood of you adopting in the future.
I think I'm detecting a pattern. Some people lack your omniscience, and so come to different conclusions being, as they are, restricted to knowing only what is.
You seem to be confusing two arguments. I disagree with your position on abortion, but that's not what I'm arguing. There's no point. You refuse to admit that there could be a different position so arguing with you about that would be utterly fruitless. And the only reason I'm pointing that out is because of the hypocrisy of your position where you condescend to allow how you'd be better able to accept someone having a different point of view if only they'd value things the way you do.
Well of course you would. Then they'd be wrong.
"“The reasonable man adapts himself to the world: the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.” - George Bernard Shaw
People thought he was a lunatic back when he was starting to do the things that you describe as 'a lot of good'. I'm damned grateful that there's someone like him who doesn't compromise even if it makes other people 'look bad'. The man has proven to be prescient far too many times for me to dismiss what he has to say, even when I don't necessarily agree.
But on this, he's absolutely right. They are his words, in his document for his project. He gets to say 'no' when people suggest that he remove them. No matter how reasonable or unreasonable other people might think that position is.
where someone's
I'm not sure you're even aware of the fact that you are assuming something as fact that others disagree with.
You equate killing the GP with the abortion of a fetus, that abortion is killing a person. That position may be one you consider incontrovertible. It is not.
the temporary inconvenience of another
I see. Are there any other dismissive phrases you'd like to use while virtue signalling how much more amenable you'd be if only 'they' would treat this with the proper 'weight'?
It's called adoption
Cool. How many children have you adopted?
And if the pro-life advocates, like you, would stop insisting that the 'weight' that they attribute to the decision is the only valid one, then I'd probably be more amenable to their position.
The essence of the pro-choice movement is that it is the choice of the individual. That they should be allowed to make that choice based on their own evaluation of the 'weight' of that choice and that other people, like yourself, imposing what _you_ think is an appropriate 'weight' is an imposition on their right to self-determination.
Some people will treat it with every bit as much 'weight' as you ask. Others will treat it as you characterise all pro-choicer advocates.
Personally, I think more harm has been done by righteous do-gooders, certain of their morally superior position and unable to admit that their position might be an opinion and not a fact than just about any other single source in human history.
there are a lot of people who now don't exist
There are even more people who don't exist because of all the people who have failed to have children with me. Some of them I've never even met.
When your 'opinion' is stated as broadly as you have and used as though it were a fact or date to prop up your argument, then showing a counter-example 'nullifies' your 'opinion' within the context of your argument.
It isn't censorship to remove superfulous information
Would you like to take a moment to reflect on what you've just said?
Are you really arguing that all I need do to avoid accusation of censorship is to declare something superfluous - literally 'unnecessary'?
RMS is acting like a petty dictator
You say that like it's a bad thing. The _point_ of free speech is that everyone gets to be 'a petty dictator' over what they say or write. You can argue that something is superfluous. You can ask that it be removed for various reasons. But if the author declines, then that is quite literally their right.
His words. He gets to say 'no' when you ask for them to be removed.
nor wanted any longer
Here you go, again. It doesn't matter whether you or anyone else wants this, they are his words. He gets to say what happens to them.
We are only tested on our dedication to the right to free speech when the speech is something we don't like or don't want to hear.
Calling it "censorship" is asinine.
Denying that it is is ignorant.
You have a naive and simplistic understanding of addiction.
In countries that have decriminalized and regulated drugs they have seen a drop in addiction the strongest example being Portugal.
Regulation works (along with various social programs). Treating addiction as a disease works. It costs less than criminalisation, enforcement and incarceration, it has better outcomes for users and addicts and for the community as a whole.
That the US spends more on health, for worse outcomes and more on waging a war on drugs, for worse outcomes is a historical oddity. That people continue to support this when there is strong evidence that there are better ways is weird.
Your talking point is decades out of date. Worst case estimates have break-even for both power and greenhouse gas emission for production of PV cells produced, to date, as this year. Best case was 1997. Briefly (from the abstract) every doubling of PV cell production reduces energy consumed by 12-13% and greenshouse gas by 17% and 24% for poly- and monocrystalline systems.
PV 'pay' for themselves in terms of energy production many times over. Total PV production, to date, has already 'paid' for the energy used to produce them by the most conservative estimates.
Now, do you have any evidence to base your claims on, or do you prefer to cling to your 'BigSolar' narrative?
the minimum wage is not substantially higher than the welfare
That, for me, is the heart of the problem you describe.
There's a scale between disabled-unable-to-work and healthy-and-able-to-earn-a-decent-wage that includes people with skills that have been displaced by automation (for eg), younger, less skilled members of the working populace, people who are healthy but who will never be especially skilled.
If all they have to look forward to is barely above survival when companies can make profits by paying wages that low, then why should they feel any responsibility to society. The social contract has been breached or is unfair, expecting them to honour it is naive.
Raise the minimum wage to the point that it's worth working. This will reduce the profit of companies and they will no doubt insist that they will not survive. Good. Let them be replaced by companies that pay less to their executives and owners and can survive with higher minimum wages. It works in other countries.
I agree that having more people working is better for everyone. Better for us as taxpayers, better for society to have people doing _something_ better for those people to be valued and to have a purpose. Higher minimum wages _encourage_ people to work. You have a willing working populace. Mandatory work for little more than survival creates an unwilling workforce that is less productive, has a poorer connection to society and leads to a host of secondary problems.