No mate. This is an issue that really does exist. Who is going to walk into town to find a pharmacy where they need even more paperwork when there's one right in front of them that they don't have to pay for?!
It's called being competetive. In your case the more expensive one has the advantage of being closer. in the end it's the choice of the person, and if their insurance rate goes up (if they have insurance at all) then it's their problem.
Who said I was against taxes? You're assuming much more than you should here. I invalidated nothing. Again, I didn't. You can choose not to pay taxes (in some countries - in the UK they're taken from you before you get paid), but you get physically punished for doing so (eventually) by jailtime, or if you resist jail, death. Of course you can choose to avoid taxes, but in a system of taxation one party can say "I do not consent to giving my money to you" and that is ignored. It is non-consenual, and therefore immoral. No different than the state saying that 1 in 10 women being forced prostitutes would benefit the nation overall, therefore it must happen and they must do it whether they like it or not. I take article three of the HRC to be written in a negative liberty perspective. You have a right to not be killed. You do not have a right to force others to maintain your life, otherwise article three contradicts itself because it would be saying that one person has the right to make another give up part of their life in order to maintain your own life, it would also be contradicting the liberty part of itself because if the maintanence of life in all humans is a right then liberty is impossible. Article three simply states that you have a right not to have your life taken from you, not to have your libertry removed, and not to have your security impinged upon. It does not say that you have a right to be kept alive, a right to every choice that exists, and a right to have a private army protecting you at all times.
BWHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAH!!! Don't like being told how to live?!? All your voting for the past eight years has been pure psychological reactance. QFT. Don't buy into the cliche myth of a strong, self-sufficient America that pulled itself up by its bootstraps by dint of honest, hard work. Freddy Mack and Fanny Mae are the biggest welfare queens. If someone holds a gun to your head, do you 'choose' to do what they tell you? Don't delude yourself. Coercion and exploitation are not moral.
Yes, you do choose to do what they tell you. People need to stop pussying about and realise that in life you often get dealt a crappy hand and you've just got to deal with that. Coercion is not moral you say, are you aware that that is pretty much what I've been saying? Taxation is coercion by force. Exploitation on the other hand, is how life works.
That's your opinion, not a fact. The point of socializing things is to help people who get dealt a crappy hand; a lack of social mobility is rubbish for the people at the bottom. Yes, too much social mobility is bad for people at the top, but they should work hard to keep their place, rather than relying on what their parents got for them.
Coercion is how life works too. Ask the Iraqi for instance. But that doesn't make either moral, dude. The idea of meritocracy appeals to most anti-socialists --as long as they are the ones being the "deserving". Unfortunately in practice that is too much like hard work, so protectionism ensues to keep more dilligent competitors at bay. Can't have those immigrants taking the jobs that we can't be arsed to do because ironically we'd rather enjoy some socialist benefits.
What you're describing by working hard is not socialism. Why do only the lower classes get the benefits? Why do you assume anyone successful got it from their parents rather than being a good businessman? Is a man not entitled to the sweat of his brow?
Is a poor man not entitled to some help from his more fortunate brothers? This is humanity after all. As with capitalism, the problem with socialism is not the principle, but the execution. It is in our nature to be opportunistic. Capitalism tends to accomodate that human flaw better.
No. God damnit. No. A thousand times no. You are entitled to nothing that belongs to others. It is theirs, not yours. The minute you start taking what is mine off me just because of utilitarian principles, you abandon liberty, justice, and respect for individiuality.
Oh, +1 on the ssemantics scale -1 on the logics scale. Ofcourse you never said you are against taxes. You agrue that taxes are immoral in a discussion about socialism. And now you say you are not against taxes. Are you actually trying to grind this discussion to a halt, or just taking a piss? Gimme a break. Allow me to assume some more: you are against taxing when it comes to funding socialist schemes. "Robin Hood"-taxes as it were. Better? geez Meanwhile you try to use this linguistical pedantery to cover up your mistake from before. You introduce the morality of taxes as an issue for this discussion, while claiming to be free of these moral concerns. Either tell us why socialism (the real topic) strikes a bad chord with you, or hush. Dont sabotage a good question by these fuzzy paradoxes that apparently don't even concern you. uh-huh, indeed. consequences. unacceptable ones. Or as Marlon Brando would call it: "an offer he couldn't refuse". [/quote] The government forcing you to pay taxes this way is exactly the same as the broken anti-social system forcing people who "have been dealt a rotten hand" to work dead-end jobs till their lungs fall out for 2 bucks an hour. I'm not even getting into those false comparisonss you throw in. they wont save you. Ah. I'll inform the UN then, so they can edit it. The idea of socialism is not to make one person give up his life so two others can live, it's to make one person give up his umpteenth Mercedes SLR with golden brakedisks so sixtyfive babies can get coughmedicine and live. Socialism doesn't say we should all drive identical Ladas, it just protects us from falling off the scale on the bottom by taxing those that fall off the top. Even after taxes, they still are at the top.
I seem to recall the coal miners and the company owned towns they had to live in in order to be employed. They had a choice. Walk out with no food and have only the clothes on their backs, or stay to owe the company most of their wages on food, housing and clothing at company set prices. As many of these miners were immigrants, with poor language skills who'd previously been miners, they saw little other choice or opportunity. Most had to take out credit at the company store to make ends meet, so they never could afford to leave even if they wanted to. Work conditions were poor as far as safety was concerned. Black lung disease was prevalent. No health benefits were given. Miners had to revolt with insurrections to try and establish unions. When these occurred, either law enforcement or the US Army was brought in to subdue them. It wasn't until social reform that many of these issues began to be addressed. Social reform has also stopped the delivery of milk diluted with white paint ala lead pigment, or meat ground with sawdust, and the occasional human hand, finger or arm which was brought to light in a book called "The Jungle." Railroad monopolies were pointed out in "The Octopus." Muckrakers are a good way for people to be informed, but today most people phase out as soon as the next distraction comes along. Fortunately, there are remedies through government. They are called laws. There is also something called law enforcement. However imperfect, manufacturers of lets say medicinal cures will no longer sell dietary weight loss drugs that consist of tape worm eggs. Legal systems are a form of socialized governance. When the law fails to cover the situation thoroughly enough, government and their judicial systems undergo reform. What makes this possible is that they can take place in a democratic country through elections instead of tearing the country apart, with a revolution, and rebuilding it from scratch.
Whereas you are an enlightened individual who can see beyond mere human foibles and comprehend The Truth? What I meant is, I prefer to be able to choose which doctor I go to, how I save for retirement, where I send my kids to school, etc. So I'll support the system that allows that. Yup, exactly. No theory plays out well in real life in its purest form - unregulated markets got us the great depression and monopolies. There has to be some regulation. I also maintain that a high quality public school system is critical to our ideals, as it's what makes social mobility possible, even though it's more a socialist idea than a capitalist one. If humans were less greedy and less self-centered, socialism would work better. But they're not. Socialism is a nice ideal, but it just doesn't fit with human nature as we know it. And unlike you, I don't think we're going to change.
Yes, I argue that taxation is immoral. Therefore socialism, which requires high taxation, is immoral to a great degree. I didn't say I oppose taxes, taxes are required for the state to exist and I do want some form of state to exist, I just said that taxation is immoral. I'm not trying to grind the discussion to a halt, but feel free to skip over my arguments if you're unable to comprehend them, or PM me and I can explain them to a greater extent out of the thread. And once again, I never said I was agianst taxation. What mistake from before? Please show me my mistake, since I can't find it. I told you why socialism strikes a bad chord with me, it's immoral. I presented no paradoxes, and I haven't sabotaged anything. If you don't like the rules of the game, go play a different one, don't throw a hissy fit and demand no-one else play. It doesn't force them to work dead-end jobs for 2 bucks an hour. They choose to. My comparisons were not false - defeat them if you can, otherwise they stand as valid and sound. It requires no editing, it's perfectly acceptable so long as one understands that it applies in terms of stopping others depriving you of your rights, not in terms of you having valid demands on others. The idea of socialism is precisely to make one man give up his life, or much more commonly parts of his life, so that another may live. Making one man a slave for his whole life so that another may live is wrong. Making one man a slave for 10 minutes so that another may live is wrong. Someone needing something is not a valid reason for me to have part of my life (time is money, money is time) taken from me. Sure, it's desirable that a very rich man will give to a very poor man (religion helped out with that in victorian times), but if you force the rich man to give to the poor man, that is immoral.
Strangely, agreed. No indiviual is entitled to take from the rich and give to himself. I do believe that rich individuals have a moral obligation to allow some others of his own choosing to enjoy a leg-up. For instance, a father paying for his newborn son's food. Or should the infant earn that himself too? On a community level this means that theft is made illegal and punished. And a government should look out for all his citizens, not just those at the top. And it is there that we need to leave our macho "i wipe my own hole, you wipe yours" bullpoo.
1) And you said you are not a moral persson, thereby making this point completely irrelevant 2) see (1) 3) what game? These people dont exactly have the means to emigrate to Monaco, do they? And starting your own community seems, well, illegal? 4) see (3) 5) Wow, just wow. First you say people dont have the right to exist, then you lecture us all on how to interpret the UNIVERSAL DECLARATION OF HUMAN RIGHTS, and when answered with sarcasm, you act as if i was serious? Hell of a way to take the flight forward dude 6) This guy is a slave because of semantics? N*igga please...
They don't. Higher earning people get more money, even after tax. I didn't. No. Nobody is entitled to help, but I happily pay taxes into the NHS with the knowledge that I can use the NHS whenever I want/need to, and other people can use it too. OK spec, how about the fact that you voted for the people that are taking your money (by force, through tax)? You had the opportunity and choice to vote for a party that would give you a choice in the matter. Alternatively, if such a party doesn't exist, you could start one yourself. You live in a country that would let you do that.
Umm, not in the slightest. The question was what is wrong with socialism, I gave the answer. Just because one system is immoral to an extent, doesn't mean that people will want an even more immoral system to be put in place. That is the situation many Americans are in. You still haven't shown me a flaw in my argument. Indeed, that's a problem. This is why a moral country would always give it's citizens not just the right to emigrate and give up their citizenry, but also the means to do it once (a flight anywhere in the world which will accept the person). People don't have a right to exist. People have a right to not have their existance stopped. There is a very important difference that I'm not sure you're understanding. If you want to just say "that's semantics" as your counter-argument to everything I say then I suggest we just start saying "no ur wrong" - because that's pretty much as intelligent as what you're doing. Prove me wrong by actual argument or give up, but don't just write stuff off as "semantics". edit: Nope, didn't vote for them. Wasn't allowed to vote last general election. But, so what? I'm not complaining, I'm explaining. So few people seem able to understand the difference....
I didn't mean "you" personally, I meant any person. Your argument that people are free to choose which employer is going to exploit them is exactly the same as the argument that people are free to choose which party is going to tax them. You're saying that because people have the choice, it's not immoral, and I'm saying the same thing.
