| Mr Khan said: The key is that economic liberties need to be balanced with economic rights: we have a human right to the health care we need, to at least a secondary education, to food and shelter, and to a healthy living environment, and that's where we need certain restrictions on economic liberties which impugn those rights Just like how we enter into the social contract for mutual protection (e.g. you have reasonable assurance that i am disincentivized from shooting you in the head, so long as you forfeit your right to shoot me in the head if you so chose), we enter a social contract for a certain degree of mutual prosperity I draw the line further in than Communism, simply because Central Planning clearly cannot work (largely because it would be the same business analysts who don't know dick about where consumer tastes are going in the private sector that would be planning this for the public sector), but i do say that our goals should be primarily utilitarian, as in what is best for the many, rather than driven by self-interest |
I fundamentally disagree with the idea that your being unable to shoot people in the head at will is the same as your being able to demand food, health care, or a house that you didn't earn, but leaving that aside... all of this would be a lot easier to accept if statists/progressives/whatever they're calling themselves this week ever got seriously exercised over failing programs and wasteful spending. I mean, I'm the kind of heartless fuck who is opposed to all this shit to begin with, and I would raze it all to the ground and let people starve to death in the streets if they were that dead set against working, but even I'm outraged over just what a bad job the government does. So if I really believed that, not only is it the best way forward to have the state providing this stuff and doing this kind of social engineering, but it's a moral imperative for it to do so, I would be furious beyond belief to see Obama going on and on and on and fucking on about an accelerated depreciation program for private jets that (1) was created by his own stimulus bill to begin with, and (2) isn't a drop in the bucket towards solving our woes even if it were to be repealed tomorrow, instead of offering a real solution to save said morally imperative programs.
