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Forums - Politics Discussion - Romney doesn't care about 47% of americans

richardhutnik on 28 September 2012
badgenome said:
richardhutnik said:

There is a portion of Republicans, and conservatives, who take issue with the concept that the free market will magically end up taking care of everything.  Individuals like Mike Huckabee, who have been governors, had to deal with issues and support having a welfare system of some sort, but making it work.  It isn't just gut the safety net and hope for the best.  

As for there being more poor people now, DUH!  When an economy tanks, there are more poor people.  That happens.  It doesn't mean, however, that a society that consists of a free market and the only values it has is that of the market, is going to end up teaching anyone to fish.  And a market driven by people who end up believing you fire bad customers (this is a business principle by the way), is going to end up having more people fishing sufficiently.  It just doesn't happen.  Cutting welfare benefits merely cuts the budget.  It doesn't make the people on it suddenly get benefits.

And if you want to ask me my views, I don't have issue with government welfare, per-se, if that is how a society decides to help the disadvantaged.  I also don't have issues with it sufficiently doing things on a private level.  What I do have issue is with individuals who don't even bother to think these matter, and just claim  some sort of neglect as being a magic solution to resolve things, or who end up making the helping the poor as some sort of mark of moral superiority and focused on the giver. 

I'm quite tired of having this conversation with you over and over again. The fact that I continue to engage you in it makes me question my own sanity because every single time we have it, you refuse to accept the fact that the government is not society. Just because a government doesn't make charity and economic interventionism its mission, doesn't mean that society's only value is the free market. It just means that that society believes that there is a limit to what a government can and should do. This idea was at the very foundation of the United States, and yet - quite amazingly - the generation of the founders somehow managed to have other values than sheer, unfettered capitalism for its own sake. Yet time and time and time again you conflate society with its government. They are not the same thing, or at least they are not in a healthy society, and when they do become one and the same, that's when you have a serious problem because the people who drive society and decide what its values shall be do so not by reason and argument but by force and graft.

I NEVER said government is society.  I don't accept that.  What I do accept is government of a society is a reflection of its collective values, what it does, and what it fails to do.  In a democratic society, the government will be a measure of what that society is.  And you will see government grow in areas where there are problems, where the public has concern, but fails to act.  So, if you see a growing welfare state, you will end up having a society with more poor people in it, and a society that wants there to be a semblance of a safety net.  You don't just dismantle the safety net, and expect the underlying causes of the safety net, to go away.

I also believe there is such a thing as a social contract in societies, and a set of collective values where rights are met with responsibilities, and there are degrees of expected outcomes people have when they meet these responsibilities.  And when these break down, you have problems.

If you want to understand the core of my concern, it is that I am NOT a destructionist.  I do not believe in revolutions.  I believe in more gradual change with things, and I hate to see people harmed from people just tearing stuff down.  In this sense I am pretty conservative.  And with this, I have issues with just getting rid of things and replacing it with nothing.  I found the rabble in Occupy wanting this to be inane, and I also find the GOP side wanting to slash and burn the safety net equally inane.



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badgenome on 28 September 2012
richardhutnik said:

I NEVER said government is society.  I don't accept that.  What I do accept is government of a society is a reflection of its collective values, what it does, and what it fails to do.  In a democratic society, the government will be a measure of what that society is.  And you will see government grow in areas where there are problems, where the public has concern, but fails to act.  So, if you see a growing welfare state, you will end up having a society with more poor people in it, and a society that wants there to be a semblance of a safety net.  You don't just dismantle the safety net, and expect the underlying causes of the safety net, to go away.

I also believe there is such a thing as a social contract in societies, and a set of collective values where rights are met with responsibilities, and there are degrees of expected outcomes people have when they meet these responsibilities.  And when these break down, you have problems.

If you want to understand the core of my concern, it is that I am NOT a destructionist.  I do not believe in revolutions.  I believe in more gradual change with things, and I hate to see people harmed from people just tearing stuff down.  In this sense I am pretty conservative.  And with this, I have issues with just getting rid of things and replacing it with nothing.  I found the rabble in Occupy wanting this to be inane, and I also find the GOP side wanting to slash and burn the safety net equally inane.

So why, then, do you constantly hammer on this point that if the government doesn't do something it means we will live in a society that doesn't value that thing? My belief that the government should be involved in welfare, according to you, isn't the result of my belief that welfare is morally corrosive and corrupts the system, that government interventionism creates a moribund economy, or that tremendous harm - ranging from accidentally created shortages all the way to the most monstrous of mankind's evils - has been done by political regimes in the name of caring; it's because I simply hate poor people.

I'd wager that nearly everyone believes in social contract theory complete with rights and responsibilities, so that isn't really saying much at all. The devil is in the details.

When the GOP candidates want to save Medicare and means test Social Security and turn Medicare and food stamps into block grants, this is hardly a party that wants to get rid of the safety net.



Final-Fan on 28 September 2012
badgenome said:
Final-Fan said:
badgenome, 80% of what you do is create a caricature of whoever you're debating and mock it. That's funny when you're being funny, but when you're not joking it stops working.

I don't agree. I think partisanship has driven people to actually become caricatures of their ideologies. The primary driving force in partisan politics seems to be spite, and as partisans increasingly define themselves more by what they are not rather than by what they are, they come to resemble what the other side thinks them to be rather than whatever it is they originally were.

When someone accuses me of arguing in bad faith because everything I say is a smokescreen for the fact that I really just want people to starve to death, I'm at a loss as to why you think he doesn't deserve to be mocked.

RH gave a pretty good answer to this, but another answer would be that the accusation you claim others have made of you is no more ridiculous than your own smears of others. 



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badgenome on 28 September 2012
Final-Fan said:

RH gave a pretty good answer to this, but another answer would be that the accusation you claim others have made of you is no more ridiculous than your own smears of others. 

"I claim"? It was right in his fucking post. He said it repeatedly.

And yeah, I actually do think it's more ridiculous. I don't think that lefties have bad intentions. I think they're just incredibly foolish. But if you truly believe that someone is arguing in bad faith because they actually want bad things to happen then no conversation can be had.



Final-Fan on 28 September 2012
badgenome said:
Final-Fan said:

RH gave a pretty good answer to this, but another answer would be that the accusation you claim others have made of you is no more ridiculous than your own smears of others. 

"I claim"? It was right in his fucking post. He said it repeatedly.

And yeah, I actually do think it's more ridiculous. I don't think that lefties have bad intentions. I think they're just incredibly foolish. But if you truly believe that someone is arguing in bad faith because they actually want bad things to happen then no conversation can be had.

I think he didn't mean that you WANT people to starve -- but that you want policy that would, in fact, result in starvation, whether or not you realize it.  That does not necessarily mean he thinks you are arguing in bad faith.  "You claim" he does. 



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My advice to fanboys: Brag about stuff that's true, not about stuff that's false. Predict stuff that's likely, not stuff that's unlikely. You will be happier, and we will be happier.

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badgenome on 28 September 2012
Final-Fan said:

I think he didn't mean that you WANT people to starve -- but that you want policy that would, in fact, result in starvation, whether or not you realize it.  That does not necessarily mean he thinks you are arguing in bad faith.  "You claim" he does. 

I suppose he can speak for himself, but I don't think it was all that ambiguous: if I think the government spends too much money (which I do) and I don't have a plan to assign people to vocational training (we're not even in a dystopian novel for adults anymore, this is the fucking Giver territory here) then it's because I want them to starve.



Final-Fan on 28 September 2012

See, when you look at "government vocational training" and think "that's just like the Giver", you're being ridiculous.



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My advice to fanboys: Brag about stuff that's true, not about stuff that's false. Predict stuff that's likely, not stuff that's unlikely. You will be happier, and we will be happier.

"Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts." - Sen. Pat Moynihan
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badgenome on 28 September 2012
Final-Fan said:
See, when you look at "government vocational training" and think "that's just like the Giver", you're being ridiculous.

According to Richard, I'm supposed to tell people what fields to train in before I go advocating any spending cuts. That sounds incredibly Giver like.



Final-Fan on 28 September 2012
badgenome said:
Final-Fan said:
See, when you look at "government vocational training" and think "that's just like the Giver", you're being ridiculous.

According to Richard, I'm supposed to tell people what fields to train in before I go advocating any spending cuts. That sounds incredibly Giver like.

Either you are failing to read what he is writing or deliberately misinterpreting it.  Would you advocate government sponsored or conducted vocational training to help people such as the woman who couldn't get a straight answer from Paul Ryan?  Because that's more of an answer than he was able to give for how he could help her become not dependent on the government.  Which, logically, is what he had to have been getting at with the fish parable.  Only he was unable to give any specifics whatsoever to ground that fable in actual proposed policy. 



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My advice to fanboys: Brag about stuff that's true, not about stuff that's false. Predict stuff that's likely, not stuff that's unlikely. You will be happier, and we will be happier.

"Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts." - Sen. Pat Moynihan
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The old smileys: ; - ) : - ) : - ( : - P : - D : - # ( c ) ( k ) ( y ) If anyone knows the shortcut for , let me know!
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Final-Fan on 28 September 2012

And fucksake, the government-mandated career paths was the LEAST horrifying thing about Giver's society by far. So it's still like a Nazi analogy.



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My advice to fanboys: Brag about stuff that's true, not about stuff that's false. Predict stuff that's likely, not stuff that's unlikely. You will be happier, and we will be happier.

"Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts." - Sen. Pat Moynihan
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The old smileys: ; - ) : - ) : - ( : - P : - D : - # ( c ) ( k ) ( y ) If anyone knows the shortcut for , let me know!
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