Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Ashar Kor-Azor]

Edited.

Libertarians would be wise to consider the human propensity for positing that someone is always forcing people to make false choices.

agreeance

Don't.

Oh and on the topic of social programs, I support them as long as we get the 50% of US citizens who get back in refunds more than they pay actually have to pay taxes.

I am one of those people, and it is frustrating as fuck that I do not contribute. Which is one of the reasons that I refuse 100% of the social programs that I am eligible for.

Do your kids go to school? Will they ever?

The benefits aren't for you, guy. They're for the rest of us so you don't stand as strong a chance of becoming a disease carrier or raising unstable kids, which households under the poverty line and with less capacity to access essential services, maintain amenities, and enjoy a better quality of life are known to do more often; being unable to afford these things financially isn't the only way to get them, and definitely isn't the flagship indicator of responsibility. Anyone at a level of income below the poverty line has a goddamn duty to their country to try to use the available resources to contribute, and not carrying tuberculosis is a contribution. So is raising new citizens less likely to.

Claiming you wish to contribute to society and recognizing that you can do so in non-economic ways on the one hand (for example, by participating in a dialectic that aims to improve society) while maintaining that the only thing worth mentioning as a contribution that earns you a benefit proffered by that society to you on moral grounds on the other hand is a double standard, a categorical error, a cake both had and eaten. The coast guard goes out in a hurricane to rescue idiots that don't follow evacuation orders not just because they have a moral obligation to save the lives of citizens (or human beings for that matter) - they go out for the arguably weightier and quite humanitarian reason of preventing your bloated corpse from poisoning whatever well it gets lodged in and your kids from being a burden on the foster care system. We have social programs to protect not only the tax base a modern nation is built on, but also the people that government serves.

Think more dynastically. You'll help society plenty if you do it while maintaining a moral core.

[Valdezi]

This post still suffers from previously mentioned issues.

[Ashar Kor-Azor]

And...what? You're free to reply to whatever you feel it addresses that isn't troubling for you and ignore the rest - or ignore all of it.

[Valdezi]

As far as I'm concerned there's nothing to respond to. You're not making an argument.

To me, anyway. The response to Boma I didn't read.

/shrugs.

[Dex_Kivuli]

Libertarians would be wise to consider the human propensity for positing that someone is always forcing people to make false choices.

I might just be stupid, but I'm not sure I follow the point here. Could we have a tldr in plain English? The "libertarians would be wise to consider..." seems a bit passive aggressive to me. And a random link to some person's ".com" website isn't a persuasive argument.

I'm libertarian. The basis of my libertarian political stance (to bring it back to topic) is that I believe in utility maximisation - maximising the aggregate utility of everyone in society. Sure, there are some winners and some losers,  but I prefer lots of winners and a few losers to a few winners and lots of losers.

But that's not to say that I oppose all sorts of policies that can be imposed on people. If the net benefits of a policy exceed the expected costs, then it's a utility maximiser, and a Good Thing^TM.

[Vikarion]

I have to laugh at "technocratic-liberal". In American politics, that phrase is an oxymoron.

[Ashar Kor-Azor]

The tl;dr reads like this: I was talking mainly to orange with that first bit, who does not rhyme. I find his views have a certain slant to them that requires some bashing in of the sorts of barriers that enable groupthink.

[Ashar Kor-Azor]

Incidentally.

[Akrasjel Lanate]

Hehehe... saw this political compass on many forums.

[Invelious]

I have had the pleasure of sitting down and listening to Ashar's politalks, and myself not being very politically saavy, I still enjoyed the entire discussion.


This message is brought to you by the Ashar Kor-Azor promo camp.