So much this. Was discussing this with my girlfriend on Sunday, explaining to her that, by American standards, me and her are gross. Give it another decade. 50% obesity and 90% overweight. Canada is getting bad too. That's why I'm ONE BILLION PER CENT against publicly funded health care. I take care f myself, yet I pay for people who don't.
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12-04-2012, 12:59 PM #56411175 @172
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12-04-2012, 01:01 PM #5642
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12-04-2012, 01:03 PM #5643
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12-04-2012, 01:04 PM #5644*LF Chat Crew
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12-04-2012, 01:05 PM #5645
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12-04-2012, 01:07 PM #5646
You don't buy things at the store? You don't have services at your home that require delivery and maintenance? You wouldn't call 911 in an emergency? You don't mind walking to the airport carrying your suitcase?
Gooby pls. Think about what you're saying or go write a blog.1175 @172
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12-04-2012, 01:07 PM #5647
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Not really. If you look at history, private roads were extremely common until very recently. My political views notwithstanding, this is a move towards increased statism, something that seems inevitable. Generally, some countries seem to be leading indicators of what constitutes "public services" -- the UN Economic, Social and Cultural Rights is a good example. Several European countries are signatories to it, but the US isn't (yet). Ditto for things like the EPA.
I'm not disagreeing with you -- merely that collective action problems are common in any system where the masses pay for a collective service. It's a shortcoming of all socialist/communist/Marxist/Trotskyist models.
Your argument was you pay for increased use of healthcare services by others compared to you (the argument that you'd never fall sick is pretty silly). In essence, you subsidize their use. In that regard, increased use of roads by others compared to me is as good an analogy as any other.
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12-04-2012, 01:13 PM #5648
That's loosely my argument, but in an entirely different context. Basic health care is just that. Basic. And it's used tremendously by people who CHOOSE to be unhealthy. People CHOOSE to be fat and CHOOSE to smoke and CHOOSE to do dumb chit and get injured. We NEED roads. We don't NEED to eat double Big Macs everyday for breakfast.
Edit: aside from very basic things, you need supplemental health coverage anyway. The tax dollars go mainly to treat the people who choose to be unhealthy.
Edit2: I drive 100000km a year. Does this mean I use the roads more than someone who doesn't have a licence, even though I'm on the road contributing to society as a whole? Even people going to work - somehow, as indirectly as it may be, effect your life.1175 @172
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12-04-2012, 01:18 PM #5649*LF Chat Crew
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12-04-2012, 01:19 PM #5650
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12-04-2012, 01:21 PM #5651
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You *need* healthcare and you *need* roads.
However, if someone has poor habits that expedites that need, then the others who don't pay for it.
Similarly, if someone chooses to live in suburbs and drives everyday, that expedites the need for maintenance and additional roads compared to those of us who live near our work or don't drive much.
In that regard, choosing to eat unhealthy = choosing to live far away/drive long distance. In both cases, one group is subsidizing the cost of the other.
If you make the argument that you pay for the roads in other ways (e.g. going to stores), you also pay for the healthcare in other ways (e.g. workers at the store), making the whole population "healthier" and thereby more productive.
You do not look at the two groups differently because there are enough people in both categories -- enough people who drive (both long and short distances) and enough people who use other services that it doesn't matter. And doing so would be myopic and silly, because of a variety of reasons, including simplicity and the difficulty in enforcing it. But most importantly, the fact is that the majority of the people (in the US anyway) *do* live out in the suburbs, and therefore they are paying for each others' costs. The minority of us are irrelevant, unfortunately.
Same thing with healthcare -- the majority are unhealthy, and are in effect, subsidizing one another (and that is indeed the argument they will use). The minority of us who are healthy and care are irrelevant.
Once again, I'm not disagreeing with your argument -- merely pointing out the similarities, that is all. Cheers.
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12-04-2012, 01:23 PM #5652
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I'm as capitalist as they come (in fact, one of my recent Human Rights publications was titled, "A Capitalist's Apology", and led to some controversy). But even so, I'll be the first to admit that most socialist/communist models failed because of the political systems that enforced them rather than because of economic failures per se. There are many successful socialist implementations, Scandinavia being the perfect example.
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12-04-2012, 01:26 PM #5653
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12-04-2012, 01:29 PM #5654R.I.P urukhai29, sentinel3, AncientYouth.
"Eating chips and cookies and drinking soda is just like wandering through life. These are the agents of a purposeless existence. Avocados, turkey burgers, brown rice and eggs etc are the agents of a purposeful existence." - orderoutofchaos, The Internet, 2014
2 Kings 2:23-24
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12-04-2012, 01:30 PM #5655
i'll quasi-agree with you there. (there's always a catch) i see socialism as a political ideology more-so than just an "innocent" economic system. to sum it up, i think the repeated failures of socialism (or close form) are related to both the economic and political shortcomings of the ideology itself.
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12-04-2012, 01:32 PM #5656
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12-04-2012, 01:34 PM #5657
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That is indeed a view held by many, and I believe it was the economist Joseph Schumpeter who said that socialist ideologies will always tend towards authoritarian regimes because you will always need a central planning authority to disperse resources. In contrast, in capitalism (and especially Keynesianism) the state has a limited role to play and interferes only to "course correct" as necessary.
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12-04-2012, 01:35 PM #5658
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12-04-2012, 01:35 PM #5659*LF Chat Crew
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12-04-2012, 01:37 PM #5660
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Don't know why so many Americans are scared of being socialists....we already are pretty much . I was reading this book called 'The 4th Reich' and it showed the parallels between our current society and the 3rd Reich...creepy stuff. Was identical across the board in many areas.
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12-04-2012, 01:37 PM #5661
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Why do i lol irl every. single. time. i see a yo dawg meme?
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12-04-2012, 01:37 PM #5662*LF Chat Crew
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12-04-2012, 01:37 PM #5663
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I tend to agree that socialism will always lead to "statism", with increased role of state, and that in turn will result in a system where the state will find ways to keep itself relevant, eventually at the expense of private enterprises.
But I also believe that capitalism by itself will lead to a "race to the bottom" or discover systemic inefficiencies that the market by itself cannot solve. That's where the state comes in.
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12-04-2012, 01:38 PM #5664
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12-04-2012, 01:38 PM #5665
Economics is centred around incentives, if everyone get the exact same pay and benefits from society, where is the incentive to do anything useful? Why would anyone take great amounts of time and effort to study to become a doctor, a lawyer etc. etc. when they could clean dishes for the exact same reward. In my eyes, this is the failing of the communist system. The system works in models, not in reality.
R.I.P urukhai29, sentinel3, AncientYouth.
"Eating chips and cookies and drinking soda is just like wandering through life. These are the agents of a purposeless existence. Avocados, turkey burgers, brown rice and eggs etc are the agents of a purposeful existence." - orderoutofchaos, The Internet, 2014
2 Kings 2:23-24
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12-04-2012, 01:39 PM #5666
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12-04-2012, 01:41 PM #5667
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12-04-2012, 01:42 PM #5668
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12-04-2012, 01:42 PM #5669
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12-04-2012, 01:44 PM #5670
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That really comes down to whether or not you are a cynic or an optimist. John Stuart Mill, one of my favorite superheroes, proposed that given the choice we would all rather be humans than pigs: "It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied. And if the fool, or the pig, are of a different opinion, it is because they only know their own side of the question."
I think realistically, it would be a blend of the two: free-riders and contributors, but really, there is no way to know.
On another note, there are no polymaths like Mill in this world anymore, and instead, we see Honey Boo Boo and the likes of that fat woman who wants to encourage bad behavior. I quote, from Wikipedia on John Stuart Mill:
At the age of three he was taught Greek. By the age of eight he had read Aesop's Fables, Xenophon's Anabasis,and the whole of Herodotus,and was acquainted with Lucian, Diogenes Laërtius, Isocrates and six dialogues of Plato.He had also read a great deal of history in English and had been taught arithmetic.
At the age of eight he began studying Latin, the works of Euclid, and algebra, and was appointed schoolmaster to the younger children of the family. His main reading was still history, but he went through all the commonly taught Latin and Greek authors and by the age of ten could read Plato and Demosthenes with ease. His father also thought that it was important for Mill to study and compose poetry. One of Mill's earliest poetry compositions was a continuation of the Iliad. In his spare time, he also enjoyed reading about natural sciences and popular novels, such as Don Quixote and Robinson Crusoe.
His father's work, The History of British India was published in 1818; immediately thereafter, about the age of twelve, Mill began a thorough study of the scholastic logic, at the same time reading Aristotle's logical treatises in the original language. In the following year he was introduced to political economy and studied Adam Smith and David Ricardo with his father, ultimately completing their classical economic view of factors of production. Mill's comptes rendus of his daily economy lessons helped his father in writing Elements of Political Economy in 1821, a textbook to promote the ideas of Ricardian economics; however, the book lacked popular support. Ricardo, who was a close friend of his father, used to invite the young Mill to his house for a walk in order to talk about political economy.
At age fourteen, Mill stayed a year in France with the family of Sir Samuel Bentham, brother of Jeremy Bentham. The mountain scenery he saw led to a lifelong taste for mountain landscapes. The lively and friendly way of life of the French also left a deep impression on him. In Montpellier, he attended the winter courses on chemistry, zoology, logic of the Faculté des Sciences, as well as taking a course of the higher mathematics. While coming and going from France, he stayed in Paris for a few days in the house of the renowned economist Jean-Baptiste Say, a friend of Mill's father. There he met many leaders of the Liberal party, as well as other notable Parisians, including Henri Saint-Simon.
This intensive study however had injurious effects on Mill's mental health, and state of mind. At the age of twenty he suffered a nervous breakdown.
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