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Forums - Politics - "You didn't build that" - Obama

Aielyn said:
Kasz216 said:
This is one of those things based off your own personal philosphy again isn't it rather then being based off of any sort of actual logical definition of rights?

 

There are two kinds of rights.

Natrual Rights... and Legal Rights.

Healthcare in many countries is a legal right.

It however is NOT  a natural intrinsic right.

Therefore you can not argue Healthcare should be universal by law because it's a right.

Because it's not a right until it becomes a law.

 

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_and_legal_rights

What is a "natural intrinsic right"? You will notice that, in your wikipedia link, it has three major proponents of "natural rights" - Hobbes, Locke, and Paine. All three were religious (Hobbes was called an Atheist by some at the time, but that term at the time meant "non-christian", and he always defended himself from such claims, and Paine was a Deist).

The only way for a "natural right" to exist is for it to be imposed by some higher power. Otherwise, there really is nothing that a person is inherently protected from, and rights are a form of protection. The right to a fair trial is a protection from an unfair trial. The right to life is a protection against murder. And quite simply, at this point in the development of society, healthcare should also be a right, we should protect a person's quality of life.

You do realize such a claim only serves to invalidate your point further... correct?



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richardhutnik said:
It is important to understand Locke's views, and the ideas behind rights-based ethics, because this ethics is at the core of modern western civilization.  Decisions on what laws to pass, and so on, ar argued out of this.  The rights given by society, and laws, flow out of the basic rights seen as being core to humans.  You can have a Libertarian view where every right can be bargained away in exchange for something else though.  And in modern western civilization the rights are found primarily in individuals, and not collectively.  From these individual rights flows out collective rights also.  But in modern western civilization (classic liberal), the rights of the individual override all other rights.

Maybe in America, Locke's views are relevant. Australia doesn't actually have a formal bill of rights in our constitution. We generally use democracy and actual constitutional powers, along with real checks and balances (except Queensland state government... which, annoyingly to me, lacks a senate, for no obvious reason that I can see), to decide validity of laws, and politicians who try to pass laws that infringe on rights generally get thrown out of office pretty quickly.

Personally, I want Australia to have a bill of rights... but I want that to be a last-line-of-defence in case of severe corruption. And that bill of rights needs to be understood to be simply a check, not a listing, as so eloquently put by one of the delegates to the constitutional convention: "If we list a set of rights, some fools in the future are going to claim that people are entitled only to those rights enumerated and no others." So the bill of rights should be understood as being part of a mechanism for making a better society.



Kasz216 said:
Aielyn said:
What is a "natural intrinsic right"? You will notice that, in your wikipedia link, it has three major proponents of "natural rights" - Hobbes, Locke, and Paine. All three were religious (Hobbes was called an Atheist by some at the time, but that term at the time meant "non-christian", and he always defended himself from such claims, and Paine was a Deist).

The only way for a "natural right" to exist is for it to be imposed by some higher power. Otherwise, there really is nothing that a person is inherently protected from, and rights are a form of protection. The right to a fair trial is a protection from an unfair trial. The right to life is a protection against murder. And quite simply, at this point in the development of society, healthcare should also be a right, we should protect a person's quality of life.

You do realize such a claim only serves to invalidate your point further... correct?

I really don't see how.



Aielyn said:
Kasz216 said:

Aielyn said:

 And I'm sorry, but the statistical difference between 5 million and 300 million is miniscule, it makes little difference to the overall behaviour. And I really don't see what ethnicity has to do with the ability for people to get along... unless you're claiming that America is inherently racist. Also, Norway has a significant immigrant population, with the current count working out to over 13% of the population. Also worth noting is that I'm not saying that Norway has it perfect, or that America should imitate Norway in everything... but perhaps America could get off its damn high horse for a few seconds, and look at where other countries are outperforming them? You know, try to improve your country by taking the best and most effective policies from other countries?

I feel like you've never taken a course in statistics.

The differnece between 5 million and 300 million isn't significant when measuring individual behavior of a representative population.

Australia is NOT a represenative population of America.

 

5 million to 300 million IS statistically different in orginizational statistics.... as is the pure size of the US compaired to say... Australia, because it requires far more layers of beuracracy and the larger a workforce gets away from Dunbar's number, the less efficent it becomes.   (and society for that matter.)

I'd suggest readings into Orginzational Psychology and Orginzational Sociology for more information on why it's easier to work systems on a small group, rather then a large one.

I actually do suck at statistics, but my use of "statistical difference" wasn't intended to actually be a statement of statistical comparison. What I was saying was that, while the difference between 5 people and 300 people is a dramatic difference as far as how things are run is concerned, the difference between 5 million and 300 million is negligible - that is, the difficulty in running a country of 5 million and a country of 300 million are comparable. And I'm guessing you've fallen for the same problem as most Americans, thinking Australia is tiny. Australia isn't 5 million, it's much closer to 25 million. And while it's not representative of America, it is comparable because of similar culture (not same, but similar), similar levels of multiculturalism, similar nation size, and similar concerns with regard to indigenous people. Of all of the other countries in the world, Australia is probably the one with the greatest number of similarities with America (likely closely followed by Canada, who are even more similar to Australia).

As for Dunbar's number, you've again proven my point, really. Dunbar's number is around 150. Compared to 150, 5 million and 300 million are very similar numbers. The best way to demonstrate this is using a logarithmic scale. Let's use base 10.

log(150) = 2.18
log(5000000) = 6.7
log(300000000) = 8.48

There's a much bigger difference between 150 and the others than there is between 5 million and 300 million. And in fact, I'd argue that Dunbar's number is a good way to get a sense of how the heirarchy of democracy should work - each scale should be of the order of 150, with roughly three layers in a country of 5 million and roughly four layers in a country of 300 million.

Look into how Dunbar's number works, and why a log doesn't really work with it.  Dunbar's number is really more like going over a credit limit. 

And no... the US and Australia aren't similar in nearly anything you wrote there.


Though most specifically.... similar in Multiculturism?  

90% of Austrlia's Population is from Europeon descent,  not sure how familiar you are with your countries history, but up until about 1970 there was an unpleasent little group called the "White Australia" party that more or less kept out non europeons.   Australia's big population boom coming after WW2 when Europeons left Europe because well... Europe sucked after WW2 for a while.

 For the US Non hispanic white people are about 62% of the US population.

That's not even getting into the fact that the two major minority groups of either country (If you can call the minority groups in austrlia "major" ) are at the low end on the other side of the pond.

The US and Austrla are about as far apart as can be multiculturism wise, due to the fact that their former racist policies were largely different due to the need in the US for cheap agricultural work.

There are very few countries that can match the US in multiculutralism, and the few that can don't have remotely the same kind of race dynamic due to their multiculturalism happening recently.

 

Only country I can really think of is I think Luxembourg.



Aielyn said:
stuff

1. Libertarians and anarchists are worlds apart. Leaving aside the fact that most "anarchists" are in reality just thinly veiled communists, true anarchism is inherently opposed to the very existence of government and libertarianism is decidedly not. That's a pretty huge sticking point.

It seems fundamentally dangerous to believe that there is no such thing as a natural right and that rights are only granted by society, because you're then conceding that everyone's rights are subject to being revoked by the collective at any time. Therefore if a society says that it's okay to kill heretics or rape women, those people's rights are not being violated. They simply don't have the right not to be killed or raped. Maybe it's sad and terrible that they don't have that right, and maybe they should be given that right, but as it stands they just don't have it. That's a seriously fucked up point of view, and it's especially strange to me when you're so fixated on the idea that people can possibly be entitled to a thing that other people have to provide for them.

As for the the UN, just like the Catholic church, they can't even manage to take a zero tolerance approach to child molestation in their own ranks, so they have zero moral authority to talk about anything. Fuck them and and all their worthless declarations and everything that they have ever said about any issue under the sun.

2. Yes, yes, Americans are sooooo stupid and insular, and that's why we refer to it as "European instability". Not because it's, you know, the Eurozone or anything. No, it's just Greek and Italy... and Spain... and Portugal... and Ireland. "European" certainly isn't a reasonable shorthand for that, not when the rest of Europe is doing just dandy. I mean, as you say, look at Germany. The vaunted economic powerhouse of the EU may have just been downgraded, but I'm sure it can keep bailing everyone out and still bounce back. It's not like it has one of the lowest birthrates in the world or anything. And it's not like we were warned just this past week that the contagion is spreading even to Scandinavia now... definitely not a European crisis, nope.

Newsflash: non-American companies can make money in America. Crazy, I know. I'm painfully aware that you can't pass up a chance to rant about hurrr durrr stupid americunts, but not one single thing you said addressed the fact that pharmaceutical companies make up the difference on the backs of Americans. For fuck's sake, Canada's price controls are directly based on the price of drugs in the US (and a basket of European countries, each one of which is known as "Europe" to us seppos).

3. It's all very well and good to say that race doesn't matter because it doesn't really exist, but while the second point is arguable, the first isn't: race does matter precisely because people believe it exists. Racial divisions aren't necessarily predicated on racism (that is, the belief in a race's superiority or inferiority), and despite all the carping about it, I don't think racism is even all that prevalent anymore. What we tend to see is more properly called tribalism.

The idea that a huge, top-down national government is more reactive than a multitude of smaller local governments is only true if you're talking about reacting to what the government wants to react to. When it comes to  being reactive to the concerns of the citizenry, smaller and more local is far better. That's probably why Estonia (the most libertarian country in the world last I checked) is doing so well, and is the only country in the Eurozone that's running a budget surplus: it's a pretty good disincentive to be a tyrannical spendthrift when you don't live in a veritable fortress on the other side of the continent from the people who might want to bump you off. Why, in a country of 1 million people, the head cheese may even be one of the people instead of a new age artistocrat.

I'm not sure which country you think is the most libertarian, but I swear to god, if you say Somalia I am gonna come through your monitor.



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richardhutnik said:

One of the fallouts of not having a universal safety net and welfare system, with a lot of answering for consequences, is that tort reform gets taken out of the equation.  Because you run an adversarial system, where if you lose, you suffer, people will use the courts as justice.  The courts act as a bounty system and exert fines on individuals to deter bad behavior.  And individuals are rewarded by getting these paydays, because it encouraged them to hunt down corruption, and if harmed by it, make the evil doers pay.  Unless there is a system by which individuals can be taken care of, if they are harmed by bad consequences, you will be running this bounty system.

In regards to Obamacare, it isn't what Obama ran on.  The original idea was to have a government run insurance program that people could be part of.  Well, out came opposition from the Republican side, and the insurance industry, so Obama adopted the GOP alternative, proposed by the Heritage Foundation, and others (heck even Romney ran it), to end up regulating the insurance industry with tighter requirements, and also mandating people pay for insurance, or have coverage some way.  

It doesn't have to get taken out of the equation, and Democrats certainly could have included it when they were overhauling the entire system (overhauling it to make it the status quo on steroids, that is). Only the Democrats didn't include it in the "Affordable" Care Act because, as Howard Dean said, they were scared of pissing off lawyers.

Obamacare isn't just not what Obama ran on, it's what Hillary Clinton was running on and he was running against. Yet he went with it anyway. It was stupid then, it was stupid when the Heritage Foundation came up with it, and it remains stupid.



Kasz216 said:

There are very few countries that can match the US in multiculutralism, and the few that can don't have remotely the same kind of race dynamic due to their multiculturalism happening recently.

I always enjoy being lectured on my yankee parochialism by someone who thinks our ocean can and should be governed like his pond.



badgenome said:
Aielyn said:
stuff

I'm not sure which country you think is the most libertarian, but I swear to god, if you say Somalia I am gonna come through your monitor.

Economic Index of freedom works pretty well... economics wise.  (Not socially though.)

Though I don't think he'd like number 3.

http://www.heritage.org/index/default

Overall, i dunno... Liechtenstein I suppose.



Aielyn said:
richardhutnik said:
It is important to understand Locke's views, and the ideas behind rights-based ethics, because this ethics is at the core of modern western civilization.  Decisions on what laws to pass, and so on, ar argued out of this.  The rights given by society, and laws, flow out of the basic rights seen as being core to humans.  You can have a Libertarian view where every right can be bargained away in exchange for something else though.  And in modern western civilization the rights are found primarily in individuals, and not collectively.  From these individual rights flows out collective rights also.  But in modern western civilization (classic liberal), the rights of the individual override all other rights.

Maybe in America, Locke's views are relevant. Australia doesn't actually have a formal bill of rights in our constitution. We generally use democracy and actual constitutional powers, along with real checks and balances (except Queensland state government... which, annoyingly to me, lacks a senate, for no obvious reason that I can see), to decide validity of laws, and politicians who try to pass laws that infringe on rights generally get thrown out of office pretty quickly.

Personally, I want Australia to have a bill of rights... but I want that to be a last-line-of-defence in case of severe corruption. And that bill of rights needs to be understood to be simply a check, not a listing, as so eloquently put by one of the delegates to the constitutional convention: "If we list a set of rights, some fools in the future are going to claim that people are entitled only to those rights enumerated and no others." So the bill of rights should be understood as being part of a mechanism for making a better society.

America definitely has very strong ties to the ideals of classic liberalism, and strongly put an emphasis on individual rights and freedoms.  The entire system is based around the idea of a Bill of Rights, and individuals having rights.  This is part of the tradition of western civilization, with America more strongly than other nations reflecting this.  



richardhutnik said:
Aielyn said:
richardhutnik said:
It is important to understand Locke's views, and the ideas behind rights-based ethics, because this ethics is at the core of modern western civilization.  Decisions on what laws to pass, and so on, ar argued out of this.  The rights given by society, and laws, flow out of the basic rights seen as being core to humans.  You can have a Libertarian view where every right can be bargained away in exchange for something else though.  And in modern western civilization the rights are found primarily in individuals, and not collectively.  From these individual rights flows out collective rights also.  But in modern western civilization (classic liberal), the rights of the individual override all other rights.

Maybe in America, Locke's views are relevant. Australia doesn't actually have a formal bill of rights in our constitution. We generally use democracy and actual constitutional powers, along with real checks and balances (except Queensland state government... which, annoyingly to me, lacks a senate, for no obvious reason that I can see), to decide validity of laws, and politicians who try to pass laws that infringe on rights generally get thrown out of office pretty quickly.

Personally, I want Australia to have a bill of rights... but I want that to be a last-line-of-defence in case of severe corruption. And that bill of rights needs to be understood to be simply a check, not a listing, as so eloquently put by one of the delegates to the constitutional convention: "If we list a set of rights, some fools in the future are going to claim that people are entitled only to those rights enumerated and no others." So the bill of rights should be understood as being part of a mechanism for making a better society.

America definitely has very strong ties to the ideals of classic liberalism, and strongly put an emphasis on individual rights and freedoms.  The entire system is based around the idea of a Bill of Rights, and individuals having rights.  This is part of the tradition of western civilization, with America more strongly than other nations reflecting this.  

Funny enough, the most well known contemporary scholar on natural rights happens to be an Australian.

Also a bit of a homophobe, but that's neither here nor their in regards to this conversation.