On Sun, 13 Oct 2013 17:21:24 -0500, Shay wrote:

> I answered your questions, Jim. Both of them. Only after pointing out
> the inferences loaded into them, but I did answer them. You'll do
> anything to avoid actual discussion of this topic. It's transparent.
> 
> I don't know if you spend your days surrounded by children or idiots who
> fall for that kind of crap, or if you just *think* you do. But I've laid
> out my case plainly enough for anyone willing to learn from it.

I'm not going to debate this with you any more, Shay.  Trying to make the 
argument now that "Jim's too stupid to understand what I'm saying" isn't 
making your case any stronger.

I'm more than happy to discuss the topic, but only in a reasonable, 
rational, and respectful manner.

So when you're ready to do that, then let me know.

Jim

Post a reply to this message

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.

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. See... somewhere along the line a few 
realizations happened:

1. Its possible to not have ID, or insurance on you.

2. Its possible to be, while in the prior state, not coherent, 
conscious, or with someone who can pay.

3. Without ID, and more specifically a proven way to pay, its not 
possible to **know** if the person is recently homeless, just had a 
brush with death do to accident, but middle class, or filthy rich. Now.. 
You could always solve that one by loading everyone's picture and 
biometrics in some huge ass database, so we could identify them that 
way... Only-- that would be $%$@$#^ authoritarian and easily corrupted.

4. They might not be even local, or from the same country, and.. somehow 
people get really pissy when you treat their family, or citizens, like 
shit, just because they got injured on "your" soil, instead of their 
own. In fact, I am sure its probably even illegal to let them die, under 
international laws, without at least attempting to treat them.

5. Most people actually give a fuck about other people's lives.

Hence, it is illegal for hospitals to turn away patients who need 
critical care.

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, and therefor don't have to do it, as long as 
the mother is still breathing when loading into transport, to ship her 
someplace else, where she has to **hope** some new asshole hasn't bought 
the place up, and instituted the same, "Kill the mother, even if it 
won't save the child, because otherwise Jesus might cry!", policies. 
And, that is just the most sick and evil of the things they can get by 
with choosing to ***not do*** because they have some exemption, or 
loophole, that lets them fob the job off on someone else.

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).

Decades of what amounted to charnel houses and "special wards", for 
people sent/allowed to die, instead of receiving proper care, and, of 
course, is almost always the case, a lot of big name people, or their 
family members dying do to this crap, led to them passing a law that 
said, "You can't deny people help! - except in the cases listed in sub 
paragraph 14, section 5, where all the damn loopholes to the rule hide."

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, and most of them, while 
completely fucking racist, sexist, or just plain hateful of some 
category of people, never the less DO NOT RISE to being as outright 
evil, and sick, as suggesting that mandatory care, for someone entering 
an emergency room, is "wrong", because it might "force" them someone to 
provide help they wanted to deny someone.

All of which, again, misses the point, entirely, that its only a damn 
problem if half of all healthcare in a country, like the US, ends up in 
the emergency room, because half of the people in the country have no, 
or substandard, insurance, there are no where near enough free clinics 
to help, and nearly all of their funding comes from "charities", who 
just can't provide enough to even keep them open, never mind staffed, 
and with up to date equipment, and finally, a huge chunk of those people 
never set foot in a doctors office, since possible in their entire 
lives, until they got sick, and where forced to go to one (and then, not 
knowing the options, or even perhaps that they had any, they went to the 
worst place they could, for non-critical treatment).

The courts presume that its better to let one guilty person go free, 
than an innocent person to languish in jail. As faulty, and sometimes 
corrupt, as it is, it works (though, far far better in many other 
countries).

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.

By extension - "Better to have to treat 5 patients with minor issues, 
than have to autopsy those same 5 people, a month later, when the 
problem became life threatening." And, again, corrupt or not, hundreds 
of thousands of people would be dead, if not for that rule. Its likely 
that tens of thousands are dead anyway, but not **because of** the rule, 
but because they couldn't be treated "locally", because the hospital 
didn't want to waste money of the proper equipment, or they where women, 
with serious, at that moment not life threatening, but lethal, by the 
time they nearly bled to death being transported to some other place, 
because the hospital "doesn't offer those services", or dozens of other 
reasons that stem not from them being "forced" to treat patients, but 
due to corporate greed, combined with being **allowed** to choose not to 
help them.

And, I challenge you to show one single, tiny, scrap of evidence that, 
any time this happens, **ever** its was because it would have cost 
someone less their life, instead, or because the personnel where "tied 
up" with lesser problems, or any other reason other than prejudice, 
dogma, or greed (in the latter case because they don't get refunded 
insane, unreasonable, heavily padded, amounts of money, for doing their 
jobs, where.. someone walking in with an insurance card, will have their 
wallet surgically removed, in many of these supposedly upstanding 
hospitals, along with shrapnel, bone splinters, or what ever else might 
be otherwise threatening their lives).

All one has to do is read the real stories of the real people, who work 
in these places, to know that the law isn't the problem, its the damn 
stock holders, the church that may now own the place, the bosses insane 
ideas about "saving money", or one of a long list of other stupid shit 
that goes on, all of which is on **your side** and saying, "We shouldn't 
have to do this, instead of robbing someone healthier, and with money, 
blind instead." None of them, not one of them, blame it on "being forced 
to treat someone". This isn't a damn restaurant, where the server can 
decide, and avoid being fired, that they don't want to bring someone 
their sandwich. No one dies of the waiter decides they don't like the 
fraking customer. People do, if they misinterpret the supposedly "minor" 
problem, and it turns out to be something lethal, or contagious, or you 
otherwise refuse to treat them, and thus, actually determine if the 
bloody nose, or the sprained ankle, or what ever they came in with, is 
**actually** even the most pressing problem they suffer from.

And, again - the only solution is to get people out of the damned 
emergency room, and into regular clinics, and doctors offices, all of 
whom ***can*** refused to see patients, if they don't have insurance, or 
other means to pay (or, due to recent bullshit laws, even if you can 
pay, but still don't have insurance).

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.

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. Funny thing, really, in one of those super "socialist" 
countries that everyone is worried we will turn into, they have very 
good track of who freeloads. And, supposedly, there is literally **one** 
of them, in the entire country who has refused all jobs, training, or 
anything else, and is just living off the government dime. Most people 
**want** to do something, and only refuse to do so when they can't make 
enough fucking money doing it that they can live off it. Odd how, in the 
US, where like half the country is making close to $8 less than the 
estimated cost of living, per hour, and the social services have been 
intentionally handicapped and disabled, to the point where you can't get 
training, or real help to find a job, or even get the federal government 
to get off its ass and stop trying to push through pet projects, or 
legislation about aborting, to fix infrastructure (along with the jobs 
it would create), that some people actually find that sitting on their 
ass is "more profitable", than being paid to work, and.. just how many 
of them do work, on the side, anyway, because they would be bored off 
their asses, doing nothing.

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...

Post a reply to this message

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.

> 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."

> 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.

Besides, there are many, many life-preserving measures we don't even 
consider forcing hospitals to take, from cell-phone provision to arms 
reduction.

> 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.

"Good laws" and "bad laws" are temporary. Authority, once given, is 
usually "forever" (or until an unfortunate, bloody revolution).

> All of which, again, misses the point, entirely, that its only a damn
> problem if <snip>
>
> 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.

> 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?

>
> 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?

> 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

Post a reply to this message

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.

Post a reply to this message

Patrick Elliott <kag### [at] gmailcom> wrote:

> certain business interests, and the people they paid huge amounts
> of money to elect, pushed that narrative.

> every single person with any connection at all to (corporate
> prisons), including politicians, have pushed for more mandatory
> sentences, less cause or reason to arrest people, the whole
> creation of three strikes laws.

> 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.

You're aaaaaaalllmost there. Just a few more steps!

> I think we are pretty much done here.

Yes, I've taken you as far as I can. You'll have to finish this journey on your
own. I'll see you on the other side, Patrick. Go forth!

 -Shay

Post a reply to this message

Patrick Elliott <kag### [at] gmailcom> wrote:

> certain business interests, and the people they paid huge amounts
> of money to elect, pushed that narrative.

> every single person with any connection at all to (corporate
> prisons), (>>>)including politicians(<<<) , have pushed for more
> mandatory sentences, less cause or reason to arrest people, the
> whole creation of three strikes laws.

> 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.

You're aaaalllllmost there. Just a few more steps!!!

> I think we are pretty much done here.

Yes, I have taken you as far as I can. You must finish this journey on your own.
I'll meet you on the other side, Patrick. Release your neighbor's shackles and
free yourself.

Post a reply to this message

On 10/16/2013 5:54 AM, Shay wrote:
> Patrick Elliott <kag### [at] gmailcom> wrote:
>
>> certain business interests, and the people they paid huge amounts
>> of money to elect, pushed that narrative.
>
>> every single person with any connection at all to (corporate
>> prisons), including politicians, have pushed for more mandatory
>> sentences, less cause or reason to arrest people, the whole
>> creation of three strikes laws.
>
>> 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.
>
> You're aaaaaaalllmost there. Just a few more steps!
>
Oh, no, I think I have gone well beyond you. You, and so many others, 
seem to think that a thing needs to be "labelled" government to be 
corruptible, but that charity, or businesses, or collections of people 
who think they are better "enlightened", somehow are not. All any of 
those are is less controllable, when they grow corrupt. Its a "who 
watches the watchmen?", problem. You can have one big watchman, which, 
if you are careful, have some sort of control over, or can regain 
control over, or you can have hundreds of little watchmen, all with 
their own personal corruptions, a tendency to band together, when they 
see a common goal, and no capacity of the public to either know what 
they are doing, or actually do anything about it, if they do know. 
Corporations "are" governments, with their own mix is dictatorships, 
armed guards to keep the populous in line, in some cases, etc. So can 
charities. The idea that people are better equipped to work out which of 
these thousands of groups are corrupt, when, according to you, its 
dangerous to have one of them, which everyone is watching, and which, in 
turn watches all the mini-governments under it... is the single most 
naive things anyone ever came up with.

But, that is exactly what the idea of normal, everyday people, without 
anyone to help them, being able to control, guide, or otherwise direct 
the market of ideas, products, or even social services, etc., by picking 
and choosing which ones to support, that **is** at the core of 
libertarianism. If even libertarians can't manage it, how the hell are 
300 million people supposed to? This is the role of a government, to be 
the watchman, which everyone else watches. The problem, of course, is 
that those thousands of "mini-governments" have managed to undermine 
this principle. And, ironically, all I ever hear from some people is, 
"Its not fixable, so lets gut it, in the hopes that, once it no longer 
has the means *to* watch anyone, it can do its job better. That it is 
now watching the wrong people, is because of people arguing that it 
should spend less time watching who, and what, its supposed to, and more 
and more time watching everyone else, while letting the "market" do damn 
near what ever the fuck it can get by with, or bribe someone to allow. 
So much for the watchman...

Post a reply to this message

Patrick Elliott <kag### [at] gmailcom> wrote:

> Its a "who watches the watchmen?", problem.

Oh, that one's simple. *We* are the watchmen and *we* watch the watchmen.

I regret to say, Patrick, that you've been a very poor watchman indeed. Instead
of watching over the rise of unfettered power, you've fallen in love with the
idea of controlling it.

In a previous post, you said:

> I personally consider the definitions often used to define "human"
> in such context (healthcare) to be idiotic

With the power of governemnt, Patrick Elliott would decide who is and is not
human.

Should government compel the sacrifice of one of your unborn subjects to save
one of your adult subjects?

Should government compel the sacrifice of one of your infertile subjects to save
one of your fertile subjects?

Should government compel the sacrifice of one of your violent subjects to save
one of your less-disruptive subjects?

Patrick Elliott would decide!

Your corruption is the seed of every army that has ever walked the Earth. Don't
believe? Tell us who would impose your definition of humanity on unwilling
subjects. Who would drag these subjects into your prisons?

_____________________

However, even given that, I accept you, along with your 300+million fellow
Americans, as the least-worst candidates for watchmen, not because we are
incorruptible, but because we are, as individuals, relatively powerless over
each other.

You _may_ succeed in building a majority to coerce the country towards your
vision of authoritarian utopia, but your fellow watchment will cast you off the
throne. Maybe not immediately, or even soon, but it will happen. We "humans"
always re-learn to fear authoritarianism.

And some time after that, your evil will crawl back out from under a rock and
rebuild the armies and the arsenals. And the cycle will repeat itself.

 -Shay

Post a reply to this message

On 10/17/2013 5:42 AM, Shay wrote:
> Patrick Elliott <kag### [at] gmailcom> wrote:
>
>> Its a "who watches the watchmen?", problem.
>
> Oh, that one's simple. *We* are the watchmen and *we* watch the watchmen.
>
> I regret to say, Patrick, that you've been a very poor watchman indeed. Instead
> of watching over the rise of unfettered power, you've fallen in love with the
> idea of controlling it.
>
No, you just keep insisting I have, while failing to understand anything 
either of us that have been discussing this have been saying.

Its not about "unfettered power". How the hell does hundreds, if not 
thousands, of unrelated, uncontrolled, groups, every one of them just as 
corruptable, none of which the general public has the slightest hope of 
knowing enough about to make rational choices, replacing a single 
entity, which we *have* some level of control over, help anything?

You imagine that the whole thing, to use a batman analogy, is filled 
with Max Ekharts. Some of us recognize that, while more corruption has 
gotten in, as all of those other entities have pushed their own ideas 
into the mess, there was a time that James Gordon was the norm. What we 
have, because everyone recognizes its broken, but some thing that there 
are too many of the former to fight, and others can't find more of the 
latter to elect, is a government full of bloody Harvey Dents (many, 
many, of them going in with some distorted, over zealous idea of 
justice, then getting burned and turning into someone that can't stick 
to any concept of right and wrong, randomly jumping back and forth, as 
the wind changes). The solution, we are told, is to give the watchman a 
desk job, lock the door, so he can't get out and muck things up, and 
hand the key over to some fictitious "league of enlightened self 
interest", which like an absurd scene out of Pratchett's book, "Guards! 
Guards!", is in direct competition with the "club of enlightened self 
interest", the "society of greater enlightened self interest", and an 
endless number of other, supposedly incorruptible, groups, at least one 
of which you imagine yourself a member of, even while denying it, who 
can be "trusted with the key, to let the watchman out, when he needs to 
actually do his job, as per what which ever one of those "enlightened" 
groups happens to have it at the moment thinks that actually f-ing means 
exactly.

Because, that is what you get when you forget both why all the shit 
people think its doing too much of landing in its lap in the first 
place, and it should stop, and well as the only way you will *ever* keep 
it from over stepping the line, even assuming you can manage to somehow, 
magically, fix it, without doing the hard work of bloody working out 
what is really broken, how, and why, and fixing it, instead of 
bulldozing the whole thing, and imagining that you actually have a clue 
how it got there in the first place.

And, this is part of it:

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/jensenko/the-brainwashing-of-my-dad-documentary

Certain groups figured out, quite well, that people are lazy, and if you 
pretty much totally take over talk radio, where people listen alone, and 
can't fact check, then you get some part of the TV news repeating it, 
then.. you can control public perception, one of the biggest lies told, 
at the start of this, at a point when the government still **was** 
working, and didn't have the massive polarization we see now, and it was 
possible to get deals across the line, etc., was, "The government is the 
problem, not the solution." Well, it certainly fucking is now, after 
decades of making it that way, and pushing the idea, to everyone that 
listens, that all the problems where caused *by* government, and not, 
instead, by people intentionally breaking it.

It did work. A lot of it still does, and would work better, if other 
elements didn't hate anything that actually tries to help people, 
sabotaging it. Everything from the damn post office (which is mandated 
in the constitution), to medicare and social security, to, now, any 
attempt to fix the mess they forced through with healthcare reform, 
after making damned sure what passed **was** broken to begin with, has 
been fought, lied about, distorted, derided, demonized, sabotaged, 
and/or defunded, when ever possible, since at least Reagan, with the 
efforts to do so only getting worse and worse.

And, people *are* waking up to it. Only.. your position isn't the one 
that they are looking at for answers. It is, rather, one of the 
ideologies **driving** all of the sabotage. Strange how similar the 
wackos in the Tea Party are to libertarians, if you just get rid of the 
religious fanaticism, and barely hidden racism, from so many of them, 
and only look at their theory of "government", "social services", 
"spending", and anything else that doesn't just happen to help them, and 
no one else. A party line pushed, even by fools that have their own 
kids, in the case of one of them, getting medical care, via medicaid, 
saying that, "Its the only logical option", while, simultaneously 
claiming it should be ended, for being socialist, dysfunctional, and 
"not proper capitalism".

You can't get corporate money and plutocracy out of government, but 
killing, or defunding, or undermining, the government. All you do is 
replace their services with ones more directly run by the plutocracy, 
and, in the process, you can watch it all you damn want, but.. then, 
there also isn't anyone left to arrest, fine, or otherwise force them, 
to stop screwing you. You just, basically, fired all the cops, corrupt 
and non-corrupt both, without fixing the problem, and locked the rest of 
them in a room, for 'everyone's safety", so they can't do anything 
"untoward", unless... someone, not you, me, or anyone else with no 
power, but.. just more of the same people that will lie to us, claim 
they are doing the right thing, then taking bribe money to decide when 
the cop gets to come out and actually do something, still in charge. 
Nay.. **more** in charge.

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Oh, and as an example of the bullshit that could be fixed, with the 
simple passage of a law that half the damn libertarians out there argue 
we should have never created - Just McDonalds alone, by itself, by 
refusing to pay a living wage, or give people hours, and without the Fed 
being willing to increase the minimum wage to something even "vaguely 
better", costs us $7 billion dollars a year, in government assistance. 
But, of course, the fact that like 80% of the companies out there, 
including some of our biggest retailers are pulling the same shit, has 
**nothing** according to any libertarian I have even seen discuss the 
issue, to do with it. People are, according to them, just too lazy to 
find better jobs.

At one time, the Republicans thought unions where the answer, of course, 
until certain elements cherry picked bad ones out of the mix, then lied 
about all of them being corrupt, or "ruining business". Just more of the 
same "the people are the problem, oh, wait.. I mean 'government', so 
lets give corporati... err, I mean the ric.. err, no.. 'individual 
entrepreneurs'.. That's it! free reign." Now, most of the the current 
generation of Republicans actually think "labor day" is about 
"capitalism, and business", and from the idiocy I saw last labor day 
from the public, even the ones old enough to know better seem to think 
its true, not "unions". When you can manage to lie so effectively that 
even your holidays, and history, gets changed to accommodate the lies...

Its not the governments side of this mess that has become lopsided, and 
the single most effective means to "cut entitlements", and the one 
single one that not one of these fucking idiots want to do, is "actually 
fucking pay people a sane wage, for their work." Hell, based on 
inflation, my own job, at the moment, and its unlikely I will find jack 
shit otherwise in this city, or can afford to move to look, especially 
right now, will *eventually* in some far future date, pay me $5 less 
than what most of the financial experts say "should be" the minimum, 
which, of course, of $8 higher than what it is now. They can all kiss my 
ass, including the people that say we shouldn't have the law that makes 
them pay me the shitty wage I already get.

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