AHCA
- Thread starter 57Brave
- Start date
goldfly
<B>if my thought dreams could be seen</B>
Jesse FergusonVerified account @JesseFFerguson 2h2 hours ago
WOW.
WH promises they can pass health care repeal b/c they can "bribe" Senators to vote yes
nothing to see here
what a joke
bravesnumberone
Well-known member
That's about how the majority of big bills like this get passed. Practically bribes. Trump was right that the system needs to be blown up; he's just not even close to the right person to do it.
Whose the right person to do it?
bravesnumberone
Well-known member
Have yet to see them emerge.
jpx7
Very Flirtatious, but Doubts What Love Is.
And I reject the notion that we can trust the private-sector and the market's magical hand to take care of it.
So we see who can persuade and energize the most folks that our rejection is the right rejection, and that's politics (in the broad, Aristotelian sense).
sturg33
I
Oh, I fully recognize that liberty has lost in the battle of the minds of the people.
jpx7
Very Flirtatious, but Doubts What Love Is.
I'm no enemy of liberty; I just think absolute and universal liberty is pretty meaningless if it coincides with near-absolute and near-universal suffering.
As I've said plenty, I don't want a society where everyone's material conditions must be absolute and universally equal. I just want a society that universally guarantees a basic degree of decent living and dignity—room and board, health, education, and some measure of regular leisure. But, personally, I still want a society where people can also pursue reasonable luxuries if they so choose; it's the unreasonable luxuries, at the real and material cost to fellow citizens and the common weal, that I want to see curtailed. (Tax reform, by the way, is one way towards this end—but for me "tax reform" is not automatically commensurate with blanket reduction or abrogation of taxation.)
sturg33
I
You can't have this without a mechanism of wealth creating - which requires free market capitalism. A government has nothing. It must take from others.
I genuinely respect you as a person, but can't disagree with you more on such a topic.
I am certain that society would be better off if we simply insured the liberty of all. Have you ever read the essay, "I, Pencil" ?
Oklahomahawk
Boras' Client
If we had started down your road, or something similar say 40 or 50 years ago when the nation's wealth was spread out a little more then who knows, it might have worked, but now with the overwhelming majority of wealth in the hands of such small number of people I just can't see things getting anything but worse, no matter how we draw it up on the chalkboard in here.
I know its anti-capitalist but if it were my country I would make it so that no chain could have more than 5 locations in any state. The big box store concept has destroyed the American dream. That goes for banks/food companies as well.
jpx7
Very Flirtatious, but Doubts What Love Is.
We're always arriving at and agreeing upon definitions for things, and those definitions are always changing. If that's where this exercise fails, then the human exercise will fail as well.
Oklahomahawk
Boras' Client
You see, you and I can agree on stuff sometimes.
And as much as certain people on this board like to claim to their dying breath that things got this way by practicing any sort of capitalism, other than cronie capitalism that just isn't the truth. It started way back in the wonderful Reagan 80's when the uber wealthy (those who look down on the rich aholes on sharktank level of wealthy) when Ronnie told our "captains of industry" that if they helped him defeat communism he's give them the keys to Fort Knox, the Federal Reserve, and anywhere else they wanted. That's why I said what I said, when the top 10% of the population (most of it in the top 5%) own literally 90% of the wealth you just can't fix that without taking some drastic measures, and I mean drastic with a capital D and considering how much the top 1% bitch and moan about how mistreated they, can you imagine what they'd say about that?
Ever hear of the Liberty League from 1934?
sturg33
I
I assure you that the wealth consolidation is the result of government intervention and welfare.
jpx7
Very Flirtatious, but Doubts What Love Is.
You can't have what without "a mechanism of wealth creating"? If you mean you can't have "a society that universally guarantees a basic degree of decent living and dignity" without "a mechanism of wealth creating", then I totally disagree. If you mean you can't "a society where people can also pursue reasonable luxuries if they so choose", then I only partially disagree; in the latter, you need a market, but you don't necessarily need pure and unrestricted "free market capitalism".
A government has what we give it; if we give it the means of production, that's not "taking from others"—in fact, I'd argue, democratically electing a socialist government would be much less an act of confiscation than the daily theft of surplus labor by the holders of capital from the worker.
Same; same.
I have no such certainty, nor—given human history—none of the faith that I, Pencil implores. I have a very different takeaway from the human marvel—the complex, industrial division of labor—that the essay takes as its shining central premise. For me, at each step, I'm thinking that those workers (especially the miners in Ceylon) should have received a much more substantial cut of the pencil-sales pie than the men and women who simply own the equipment, and contribute little else to the creative process. The essay even inadvertently makes this claim for me: "There isn't a single person in all these millions, including the president of the pencil company, who contributes more than a tiny, infinitesimal bit of know-how." So then why is that individual so vastly overcompensated relative to all the other millions?
That's because a more equitable relationship between labor and the possessors (usually hoarders) of capital is the opposite of how late-stage global capitalism works, and indeed the opposite of what unrestrained capitalism encourages. The quote from Smith is telling: I do have faith that most "free men" will act in such a way that "intends only [their] own gain", and thus see no logical cause to be further faithful that these men will "naturally and miraculously form and cooperate to satisfy" and ensure the common necessities of everyone are met. They will, instead, pursue gain at others' loss; and the less collective will and infrastructure there exists to restrain that impulse, the more dramatic the inequities we will see (as domestic and global wealth statistics reflect), while the few holders of capital collude to reduce even more wealth into their numbers.
Conflating the natural and the miraculous—as the essay does—is quite the leap of faith, indeed: while it is natural for men to intend their own gain, it would be a miracle for all that self-interest to spontaneously, sans direction, combine into material security for everyone—and I don't believe in miracles, frankly. I also don't believe that doubling-down on the "free market capitalist" system is the answer to resolving these inequities, to remedying the fact that the material conditions of so many are miserable while a select few revel in obscene luxury. And finally, as I've said many times prior, I don't believe it's problematic to restrict slightly the economic liberty of folks—say, to limit the freedom of people to revel in obscene luxury—if it means ensuring the existential security of everyone; for me, freedom from material desperation and want is another form of economic liberty (and one I prioritize over freedom to do whatever one wants, as long as it doesn't infringe upon personal and/or private property).
See, you can't actually assure that—and the essay you cite is illustrative here. You have faith "that the wealth consolidation is the result of government intervention and welfare", but you can't assure it. Meanwhile, I see no evidence that "government intervention and welfare" have any more to do with "wealth consolidation" than Smith's supposition that free men intend their own gain—especially as I believe capitalism inherently cleaves to and glorifies this central tenet of self-interest above all else. Which is why I believe the problem isn't government as such, but a capitalist ordering of the world that tends to promote faulty, overly-self-interested governors.
cajunrevenge
Well-known member
Someone pointed out a good point to me. If seniors are going to die sooner because of no health care or too expensive health care is that really a bad thing? Old people are the main people who want to vote away other people's rights. These old farts who grew up on reefer madness propaganda vote to put me in a cage so I say **** them, vote away my rights I vote away your health care.