On 10/14/2013 3:43 PM, Shay wrote:
> On 10/13/2013 09:29 PM, Patrick Elliott wrote:
>> On 10/12/2013 8:11 PM, Shay wrote:
>>> On 10/12/2013 11:14 AM, Patrick Elliott wrote:
>>>> On 10/11/2013 11:26 PM, Shay wrote:
>>>
>>> Yes, the world is full of stupidity, and, yes, maybe YOU could improve
>>> some of it if you had infinite, incorruptible power at your disposal.
>>> But this is a fantasy, and no amount of problem-pointing-out makes it
>>> any less of a fantasy.
>>>
>>>   -Shay
>>>
>> And, your solution is to "not" help people that need it, because, well,
>> that would "force" doctors to do something they wouldn't otherwise.
>
> Where did I say I wouldn't help? I told you how I would (and have)
> helped, both the real-life and king-for-a-day versions. I've probably
> given thousands to MS-research over the years.
>
Ah right, the "I give the charity, so.. obviously if everyone else did, 
it would be all OK", argument. Only.. its never been enough, and never 
will be, nor will everyone ever contribute. That was, kind of, the whole 
point of using tax money to do it.

>> There are reason emergency rooms "must", under the law, be forced to
>> provide care to anyone that comes in, and why its that way in every
>> single damn civilized country.
>
> Guess ours is not a "civilized country," because only hospitals who
> accept federal funds are "forced to provide care for anyone that comes in."
>
Funny. But, while, as I said, there are "specific cases", usually driven 
by religious privilege, which allows for certain things to not be done 
(and god forbid you have one of those problems and its the only 
hospital), generally, its not supposed to be possible, save lacking the 
needed equipment, or specialists to do so, to deny such help. Check the law.

>> Unfortunately, it is still legal to take a mother with medical problems,
>> which can kill her, as well as her child, and force her to ride in an
>> ambulance, or other transportation, to some place hundreds of miles
>> away, for ***immediate*** treatment, which the hospital won't give,
>> because they are religious, <snip>
>>
>> So, at least your principle that they shouldn't be "forced" to do things
>> counts, for some shit that ends up killing people (and hell yes, it does
>> kill people).
>
> To some, a human life is a human life. This is not necessarily a
> Christian Belief. Anton LaVey was anti-abortion.
>
> In a majority of US states, killing another person's fetus /is/ murder.
> I cannot agree with *forcing* an institution to perform this act.
>
Not even going to get into you with this one. I personally consider the 
definitions often used to define "human" in such context to be idiotic, 
and entirely religion driven, and all too often only seem to matter if 
its the baby that dies, and stops meaning a damn thing to the same 
people, once its born, but... otherwise.. the passing of such laws, 
based on what some people think should be true, instead of what is 
actually possible to keep alive outside the woman's own body, and 
forcing the choice on her, to keep it, or the choice of letting her die, 
when there is no possible way the baby will survive, at all, just 
because you don't want to kill a fetus.. its all bullshit.

> Besides, there are many, many life-preserving measures we don't even
> consider forcing hospitals to take, from cell-phone provision to arms
> reduction.
>
And, oddly enough, its perfectly fine in a major crisis situation to 
decide that one person can't be saved with the resources we have, but 
someone else can, unless... its a fetus involved.

>> I have heard the same asinine argument made, over and over again, by
>> "libertarians" arguing that laws prohibiting businesses from telling
>> people with the wrong color skin, or political affiliation, or what ever
>> other BS they use, should be a allowed,
>
> It's not that these discriminations should be allowed. It's that no
> Constitutional authority exists to pass laws against them. Libertarians
> assume, and history assures, the majority (government) will capriciously
> exercise any power they are given. Minority rights *require* limitations
> on the power of the majority.
>
Right.. so if there was constitutional authority, then it would be fine? 
Somehow, I think you would still be complaining. And, its precisely this 
sort of BS thinking that resulted in idiocies, during the civil war, of 
having it be "legal" to enslave, or re-enslave, free black people, as 
long as you could manage to get them across the border, to where it was 
legal to own people. Discrimination doesn't disappear just because a lot 
of people really wish they didn't exist. Sometimes, authorities have to 
step in and bloody do something to stop them. The only halfway sane 
claim I have ever seen is that, "At some point, it might make sense to 
eventually do away with such laws, because they are no longer needed.", 
only.. all someone has to do is look at the bunch of bloody idiots that 
where outside the White House the last few days, saying the insane crap 
they have, or look at some of the news in other places, or just, in the 
case of discrimination against women, just see how many rape cases the 
women's life gets turned to crap from, while the guy either gets off 
entirely free, or has a slap on the wrist, never mind the **still 
constant** job discrimination, to see that its not "now".

You, I am sure, imagine that, sort of like people looking for jobs that 
pay them shit all wages, having those laws are unnecessary, because, 
without them, we would have thousands of other options to pick from, 
instead of, as you keep saying, corruption and greed, instead, erasing 
all the options.

That is the one that gets me the most about libertarians. The 
government, is, **of course** going to be corrupt, but.. regular people, 
without someone 'unconstitutionally' making them do something will all 
just magically start acting sane, and not fall into even worse 
corruption than is already there.

People keep saying the government *IS* the problem.. Only, that just 
isn't true, really, it worked much better, before certain business 
interests, and the people they paid huge amounts of money to elect, 
pushed that narrative. Its the special interest money, and the fact that 
even SCOTUS is now in one the game of saying, "The corporations are the 
people, and the government.", that is the problem, but.. more on that in 
a bit.

>> If not for the lies of people that have, even before social security
>> existed, have been fighting to kill government services, the rule would
>> be, "It is better that one person cheat the system, than that someone
>> else die of starvation." Corrupt or not, hundreds of thousands of people
>> would be dead without it.
>
> Likewise, totalitarianism is only a problem when we start housing 25% of
> the world's prison population and killing literally millions with
> high-tech weaponry and seizing property for economic health and building
> with Predator drones and ...
>
> oh, wait.
>
We have that many people in prison, unlike so much of the rest of the 
western world, because someone took prisons out of the hands of the 
government, and ***handed them*** to private institutions, since then, 
every single person with any connection at all to those businesses, 
including politicians, have pushed for more mandatory sentences, less 
cause or reason to arrest people, the whole creation of three strikes 
laws. All of it presented to the public as a way to "end" criminal 
activity, while, in reality, every single bit of it was about making 
more criminals, to they would put more people in prisons, in order to 
make more profit off of having them in there. By contrast, how about we 
look at one of those, I assume, terribly authoritarian, socialist, 
nations handle this:

http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2013/09/why-scandinavian-prisons-are-superior/279949/

Its almost as though the problem isn't government, but money, a failure 
to regulate, in the interests of said money, and who is f-ing running 
said government, because of that.

>> And, that has got to be the most fucked up thing of all. You could walk
>> in with a suit case full of hundred dollar bills, in need of nothing
>> more than a cast for a sprained ankle, and some of that "corruption" you
>> are so worried about, makes it illegal, in some cases/states, to treat
>> them ***at all***, without also producing an insurance card. Why?
>> Because it cuts out the profits of the insurance companies, and worse,
>> anyone with that kind of money must be, by definition, able to afford
>> it, or, possibly a drug dealer, criminal, terrorist, or some other
>> "unwanted" that doesn't, by the logic of some of the idiots out there
>> (and, often the same ones apposed to universal health care, and other
>> social programs), not **deserving** of help.
>
> Yeah, mandating insurance is pretty fucked up. Isn't it?
>
Yeah, just like mandatory driver's licenses, fishing licenses, demanding 
that parents educate their kids (which is being undermined, again, by 
attacks, of various kinds, on public schools, and the push for 
"corporate", or "religious" run ones, which can thus brainwash them to 
support what ever theory of economics, government, or religion, they 
favor), and so many other "unconstitutional" things we have, at various 
times, decided where necessary for a stable society. What sucks, is 
letting corporations dictate what medical help you can and can't get, 
while the same corporate interests also decide how much you should work, 
or get paid, to line their own pockets, instead of thinking about the 
well being of the country (they are not mutually exclusive, and whole 
swaths of time, with higher taxes, less cheating on them, and, of 
course, great prosperity at the same time, attributes to). But, yeah, it 
was not the option Obama wanted, but it was what he was stuck with, 
after your type insisted that a "government option" would be a horrible 
idea. Kind of like our government, it was the worst of all options, 
except for everything else we had previously been doing. Funny how that 
ends up being the outcome of corporate bought politicians imagining that 
we would somehow "pay" to keep the country healthy, on the backs of.. 
hmm, the vanishing middle class, which they haven't listened to for 40 
years.

>>
>> There is the "corruption" you need to be worrying about, not the
>> mythical "freeloader" that might be using your dime to get a damn
>> bandaid.
>
> Not worried about this. Have you read *any* of my posts. Or, do you
> think I just made up the "millions of dead" thing to keep a few quarters
> in my pocket?
>
No, I just think you are a very distorted, and faulty, understanding of 
why the hell it happens, and, ironically, you support the very things 
that will make it worse, because those things are being driven *by* the 
people that want to see smaller government, deregulation, and have, 
incidentally, been the ones mucking with voter laws, unions, passing 
laws to screw up the countries social programs, undermining the 
education system, and everything else, all with the core cause being to 
engineer the very failures that they then bamboozle everyone into 
thinking it someone else's fault. Or, do you really thing corporate 
money being the #1 source of funding for the campaigns of the people 
doing these things, while unions, and private sources, are the #1 
source, for their opposition, has **no** influence on the sudden rise of 
libertarian ideas among the Tea Party, or so much of all the other laws 
that have been passed in the last 20 years, or so, like "three strikes", 
or "deregulation", or even the decisions that led to people dying 
because some place didn't get proper funding, or was allowed special 
rules, or otherwise given an "out". Do you honestly think that, if some 
critical patient was given antibiotics, instead of surgery, there wasn't 
money, and specifically corporate money, behind it, and someone else 
saying, "Why should someone be allowed to force me to hire more staff, 
or provide that service?". somewhere behind it? Yeah, you probably do.

>> Its almost as though, if we really helped people, instead of shitting
>> all over them, while giving them free money, they might become
>> productive citizens... Nah...
>
> Citizenship is what I want for them, but not citizenship in a Plutocracy.
>
>   -Shay
>
Great, then we agree on something. Only.. in the US, the #1 source of 
plutocrats are the libertarians, who are absolutely for anything that 
makes them a profit, without having to think about consequences to 
anyone else, and against anything that they can pretend isn't their 
problem, because, "Its purely a result of someone else's bad choices 
that they had the problem." As though everyone was f-ing Vulcans, and we 
can, or should, expect everyone to act in their best interests, instead 
of realizing they won't, and trying to do what we can to help them 
anyway... But, yeah, like Jim, I think we are pretty much done here.

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