BEAR on 28/8/2008 at 02:26
Quote Posted by raevol
The way I see it, there's water laying about everywhere, free for the drinking, but people still insist on being pandered to and reassured that they're doing nothing wrong. Keep reading for more details.
The experience I call on is watching upper middle class white high-school graduates waste their lives away on drugs, living 9-10 people in a 2 bedroom apartment full of dirty dishes and unwashed clothes, and feeling that this is completely acceptable.
Also, have you tried to get healthcare in Britain? How was your experience?
Heres a quick hint to know whether you are full of shit: if your opinion can be boiled down to a simple analogy. If you
really think that whole welfare situation can be boiled down to a simple leading-horses-to-water analogy, you are beyond help from me. I also tend to lean more towards a cause-effect world; the older I get and the more I learn, the more I lean away from the whole "free will" thing where you can blame people for who they are and take credit for who you are. It gets a little existential for what we're talking about but it still applies.
Think of it this way: everything happens because of specific reasons. And something as varied as the divide between the rich and poor, addicts and non-addicts over an entire population that varies greatly in every possible human dynamic cannot POSSIBLY be as simple as your position suggests it is. Nobody and nothing is the way it is for a simple reason of someone being lazy or being not lazy, the world just doesn't work that way. Completely ignoring the physical and biological representation of being "lazy" and its comparison to how we perceive it. Its like saying terrorists hate America because of our freedom. Its so overly simplistic and totally ignores the nuance and history that affects who people are and how they work, but its so incideously simple that a lot of people will believe it just because its so much easier than trying to figure out what is really going on.
Its a hard way to think really, it makes it hard to be pissed off at people who are dicks and it makes it hard to strawman something that you don't like, but for me its a lot more fulfilling in the end. I know I fail to live up to my own standard a lot of times but eventually I usually come back around. If you are the type of person actually capable of changing their opinions (and I'm not insulting you when I say that, I honestly think that some change their opinions simply because they are capable of it being who they are, which they have very little control over). If you give a shit, I suggest taking a more scientific approach.
Don't look at it in a human, emotional way. Look at it like you would be studying any system and trying to predict its actions. Nothing is going to happen just because, there will be a chain of events and causes for ever effect and humans are no exception, even if we think we are somehow beyond the laws of nature and physics. Its kind of a scary way to think sometimes and I imagine that's why more people don't think that way (I know that sounds pompous but I don't mean it that way, I realize we so often think that we feel a given way because of reasons when it really is because it benefits us. Take for example our ability to believe anything that helps us to feel good about ourselves, probably similar to my thought I might have a way of seeing things that is any way unique or interesting whatsoever)
I know this is a fucking rant and I wouldn't normally bother going this deep on something but I'm kind of in a strange mood tonight for some reason, and it just bugs the shit out of me to see someone with such a simple viewpoint on such a complex issue. I can see why though, I cant fucking think of anything anymore without getting lost in intricacies, everything seems so complex its hardly worth the effort to really understand it.
37637598 on 28/8/2008 at 03:31
This year, I'm writing 'BEAR (from ttlg)' on my ballot!!!
raevol on 28/8/2008 at 05:29
Quote Posted by BEAR
WALL OF TEXT
Quote Posted by 37637598
This year, I'm writing 'BEAR (from ttlg)' on my ballot!!!
Yea, me too, Jesus Christ. I totally realize that the issue is more nuanced, and if you go back and read what I was originally replying to, you will see that I was actually trying to point that out:
Quote Posted by raevol
Quote Posted by SD
How about we do more to help unproductive people be productive? First class education and healthcare for all. Two birds killed with one stone there.
You can lead a horse to water... Apparently you've never seen a drug addict live blissfully in squalor?
Tossing money to the masses doesn't solve this issue. If you give drug addicts money, guess what, they spend it on drugs. If you give hungry people food, however, or poor people jobs, this does solve problems. That doesn't seem to be the direction America likes to take though. Giving out education is a good thing, but only if the kids bother to pay attention in class, and their parents let them study and grow at home. And healthcare isn't something I know enough about to debate.
----------
Quote Posted by Matthew
Pretty damn good every time, thanks.
Quote Posted by D'Juhn Keep
Yeah, personally I can't complain about healthcare in the UK. If I want to see a doctor it's free and I don't have to wait (though this probably varies a lot with different practices) and the few times I've been to hospital it's been good treatment.
Good to know. I've heard it's pretty awful, but I don't know if that was just because it was an American comparing their experience there to their experience in America.
Fafhrd on 28/8/2008 at 06:00
Quote Posted by raevol
Giving out education is a good thing, but only if the kids bother to pay attention in class,
We're talking about GIVING out education, not forcing mandatory college level school attendance. Obviously the people who don't want an education aren't going to be forced to attend classes (past a certain age, anyway), the idea is to make it free for the people who have the desire to better themselves. 'Leading a horse to water' doesn't apply in any way shape or form.
And if you go back and read your reply to Stronts, you'll see that you replied with a near total non sequitour.
Stronts: Free Education and Healthcare for All!
raevol: Yeah, well, drug addicts live happily in squalor!
Me: WTF?!
Quote:
Good to know. I've heard it's pretty awful, but I don't know if that was just because it was an American comparing their experience there to their experience in America.
"British healthcare sucks!" and "Canadian doctors are fleeing Canada in droves because Canadian healthcare sucks!" are two pretty common and thoroughly nonsensical myths/talking points about socialized healthcare designed to keep the American public believing that private healthcare is the only system that can really work.
raevol on 28/8/2008 at 06:23
Makes sense. Sorry for the nonsensicalness.
heretic on 28/8/2008 at 06:26
Quote Posted by theBlackman
Both want to lead us into a socialistic situation where no one is responsible for themselves and the expanded programs of the government, funded by higher taxes and a extreme loss of personal freedom and privacy, will provide for everyone. Free nearly everything at the expense of all.
"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. Those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience."
C.S. Lewis
Thirith on 28/8/2008 at 06:52
Quote Posted by heretic
Quote:
Originally Posted by theBlackman
Both want to lead us into a socialistic situation where no one is responsible for themselves and the expanded programs of the government, funded by higher taxes and a extreme loss of personal freedom and privacy, will provide for everyone. Free nearly everything at the expense of all.
"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. Those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience."
C.S. Lewis
I don't think I'll ever see this view by many Republicans and others on the right wing of the political spectrum as anything else than hysteria and willful blindness. In theory there may be a point to it - in practice, though, it's not as if most western European countries have much less personal freedom or privacy than the States. It's not as if personal responsibility is dead over here while in the US it's alive and well.
Any society will have a balance of individual freedom and restrictions for the good of the group. This isn't any different in the States than it is in western Europe. And the balance doesn't lean considerably more towards restrictions in Europe.
theBlackman on 28/8/2008 at 08:12
I had no intent to add more to this. But in the post above, mention is made of Europe and the US on a comparitive basis. None of that is the issue, nor was it hinted at in my post.
You can't read between the lines if there is nothing there.
In the main, many good points have been raised by the respondents. Nothing is pure Black and White. But, then again, as the saying goes: "If you give a man a fish, you feed him for a day. If you teach him how to fish, you feed him for a lifetime."
Few "human beings" are against assisting those in need. But a system that "Gives" without the means to do so, and punishes those who do provide some means, is the incorrect way to deal with the problems of social inequities.
The main point of my rant was, and is. Both candidates are promising pie in the sky with no means to deliver. Both want the country to basically become a "welfare state", without limit to those who might be part of the receivers, and with no realization of how the bulk of the population need/must live.
An income of 300,000 to a million a year, with government subsidies for transportation, etc., no possible loss of income through job loss (unless voted out of office), no day to day, and sometimes hand to mouth existance, does not give either one knowledge of the "real world".
At one time, they may have had contact with the "man on the street" and his problems, but have not been faced with it for a loooonnng time. The economic disaster to the "common" man that they are proposing is something they really have no concept of.
Neither has any idea of addressing the size of government with plans to reduce it to a controllable level, and in fact, are proposing gross enlargement of it with every "Program for the public good" they offer.
My initial assessment stands. Both are a bad choice. It's like pick what you think is the lesser of two evils, based on your life experience, but realize that both choices are potentially dangerous to YOUR life and well-being.
In this case "you pays your money and makes your choice", but you'll have to live with whatever you choose for a minimum of four years and hope you thought it through enough to make the "right" choice. And are not blind-sided by the hyperbole and "Spin" of the campaign BS they are dishing out.
As for the tactics, both candidates are bad-mouthing each other like two kids in a kindergarten class instead of addressing issues of real value.
WAREAGLE on 28/8/2008 at 09:02
Either one, we're fucked.
Morte on 28/8/2008 at 09:09
Quote:
As for the tactics, both candidates are bad-mouthing each other like two kids in a kindergarten class instead of addressing issues of real value.
That's ignoring a substantive qualitative difference in the nature of the attacks. You can't dismiss both as being just as bad when only one candidate is running ads insinuating that the other is the antichrist.
And I really don't understand how people can dismiss healthcare as a BS issue when it seems so fundamentally broken. By all reasonable indicators, healthcare in the US is lower quality, while eating up a lot more of the budget than in all the various Commiestans that provide universal healthcare. Getting up to speed with the rest of the world would actually be *good* for the budget.
