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mvassilev
Responsible
Undefeatable Hero
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posted May 20, 2012 04:10 AM |
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If they don't respect the law, then that (and not culture) is the real problem. Then they should be dealt with by the legal system (police, courts, etc.) when infractions occur, and to prevent further infractions, education is necessary. The schools should teach about the positive effects of liberty, equality before the law, respect for property rights, etc (in addition to teaching math, science, and such, which should also be taught better). They can keep their culture as long as they agree to abide by the law.
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Eccentric Opinion
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del_diablo
Legendary Hero
Manifest
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posted May 20, 2012 09:37 AM |
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So then tell me then Mvass, why do your justice system fail to reform the hardened gang criminals? Why do a lot of our European systems fail to do that? There is already enough occurances with black immigrant "gangs" making a mess, and the similar. Even over at your side you are people porn into poverty, which then joins a gang, and then live a life of crime. Why do they not respect the law? Why do not the foreigncultur respect the laws?
And what is a ghetto?
And you know whats fun? Immigration today is far more free than it was a century ago. Why? Because the only immigration back then was back and forth troughout the colonies and their motherland. So a citizen of a French colony could with some luck migrate to France or another colony, from the paperwork side, but most likely not to another country inside Europa. But today that Citizen may be able to still migrate to France due a lot of legacy culture, and from France to anywhere in EU. Immigration today is far more free, and the transport vessels makes it even more possible. A hundred years ago you could migrate to your neighbor country, a countries colony, and their neighbor. Today you can migrate to anywhere in the world, providing the paperwork is not a too big hurdle.
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Baklava
Honorable
Legendary Hero
Mostly harmless
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posted May 21, 2012 02:04 AM |
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Edited by Baklava at 13:44, 21 May 2012.
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MVass, your views on lazy people always were... unique, but as a prime representative of the population I can safely assure you that most of us are none too eager to eat in public kitchens any more than you industrious folks. If we don't feel like cooking, we'll order a pizza. We won't be off to eat a soup for homeless people. Besides, only the impoverished would have access to those meals anyway.
That's not too relevant now, though. About the rest of your post, I can see you've become the main target of most participants here so I'll leave you to tend to those fronts for a while. Got my hands kinda full too, can't continue discussing indefinitely. But I, with utmost sincerity, believe you're often not too realistic about certain things. I noticed that it pisses you off that people sometimes don't quite take your stances seriously, but you simply, from time to time, don't really make it seem possible for those stances to ever get out of the boundaries of sheer theory.
Take a look at this bit, for instance:
Quote:
In a system of charity, no one is forced to do anything. Taxation is dependent on the use of force, but charity is voluntary, so there's no force involved. And I strongly take issue with your assertion that people who don't want to help are "arseholes". They have other priorities. Who are you to tell them your preferences (in particular, your preference for less poverty) are more important than theirs? To them, you're evil - they haven't hurt anyone, and yet you're advocating for the use of force against them (and they're right). The initiation of force is far more evil than any refusal to do something voluntarily.
Of course, I meant the entire bit with the "arseholes" to be taken in a lighter manner. But never mind that. Now, let's put a large "correct me if I'm wrong" before this section, but you discuss the superiority of a system where people voluntarily fund all their needs as individuals and as a community - a system that would work even if everyone only funded what they believed they have a personal interest to fund, and at a rate they considered right - without any outside financial aid. You believe it possible that every community, from upper to lower class, in a society without a minimum wage, would be able and willing to fund their hospitals (and all the various equipment needed, on an acceptable level) and pretty much every other public good they might need or collectively want (on which they would manage to agree - this includes parks and whatnot), and that the non-regulated prices of goods, materials and technology needed for that would fit perfectly with their fiscal wishes and abilities (and leave them room for paying taxes you believe should be paid by everyone, such as the military one), AND, besides all this, they'd end up keeping more of what they earned for themselves than now.
And then you say,
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You're an optimist. An hour-long documentary like that would inspire people to clamor for more government intervention. "We still have poor people?! Why hasn't the government done something about that?!" Kind of like KONY 2012 led people to call for military intervention in Uganda.
I kept the "you're an optimist" part to emphasize the irony.
Without any further discussion about the technicalities of the voluntary system you mentioned, just put it next to what you think about these people and draw a comparison.
Opinions on these matters have an annoying habit of not being taken seriously if they don't apply to the current state of, well, reality, a fact I learned all too well in my days as a youthful anarchist. The sooner you make peace with that state of affairs, the more blissfully resigned you'll get - resignation eventually causes boredom, and boredom gives birth to ideas. Should the idea turn up to not get along too well with reality, like the previous one, the resignation-boredom-idea cycle repeats until you come up with something ingenious. At which point all that remains is to get it through to the public, and then hope you don't live to see someone getting it wrong and killing several millions of people for it.
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"Let me tell you what the blues
is. When you ain't got no
money,
you got the blues."
Howlin Wolf
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mvassilev
Responsible
Undefeatable Hero
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posted May 21, 2012 10:33 PM |
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del_diablo:
In the US, at least, it's difficult to obtain citizenship (or even permanent residence). You have to be extremely successful already, have a company that's willing to hire you and go through a lot of paperwork, or have relatives who are citizens. A hundred years ago, (with some exceptions such as Chinese coming to the US) immigration was much easier. It wasn't hard to move from, say, Germany to the US, or in the other direction. It took much less paperwork. When coming to the US, immigrants only had to write down their names and pass a basic medical examination. Much easier than now.
As for reforming gang criminals, it's difficult, and it'll take a serious effort in the areas of education. It can't be done instantly, but if schools in the ghetto are improved, and also transmit better values (the ones previously mentioned), we would slowly see an improvement.
Bak:
Only the impoverished would have access to soup kitchens? So if Bill Gates walked into a soup kitchen, they wouldn't serve him? How would they identify whether someone is impoverished? It's not always obvious. One way you could ensure that only poor people use soup kitchens is by purposely making the food terrible - then those who could afford alternatives would be less inclined to use the soup kitchens, but then you're intentionally making it worse for poor people.
As for your other point - hospitals are only partially public goods. If someone has a contagious and unusually harmful disease, they should be treated, at taxpayer expense if necessary. That doesn't mean that, say, people with heart disease should have their surgeries paid for by taxpayers. In general, though, you can't depend on public goods to be sufficiently funded by voluntary means, so the use of force is necessary (when it's impossible to make a public good into a private good) - but there's a fundamental difference between public and private goods. Everyone benefits from sufficiently funded public goods, whereas private goods only benefit those who pay for them. In general, though, a free-market system would result in prices reflecting the desires and preferences of producers and consumers - there would be fewer shortages and surpluses, and people wouldn't have pay for something they don't want. Of course they'd end up keeping more for themselves after taxes if they didn't have to pay for retiree benefits, bailouts of failed banks (and other forms of corporate welfare), farm subsidees, welfare, etc, and if they had to pay much less for the military. This is very realistic - it's obvious people would be better off if they didn't fund things they didn't want (especially things that shouldn't have ever existed).
But perhaps more important is the principle of not forcing people to pay for something they don't want or benefit from. That is the greatest advantage of the system I support. Even if it led to poor people having less access to some things, I would still support what I support because I see no reason as to why others should be forced to help them. Why is someone's need a claim on your money? If someone is starving, does that give them the right to use force against you (or have the government use it on you)?
I don't have much faith in the general public (or in elites, for that matter). The nice thing about a free market is that it gives people what they want, given their beliefs, so I don't have to suffer from the mistakes of others as much as I would under the tyranny of democracy.
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Eccentric Opinion
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Baklava
Honorable
Legendary Hero
Mostly harmless
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posted May 22, 2012 02:49 PM |
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You identify whether someone is impoverished the same way you identify whether someone should get welfare. You take a look at factors such as unemployment, monthly income and similar and grant people access. Voila, now you don't need to put dirty socks in the soup to keep the Rockefellers away.
It strikes me that you can't think of a way to identify the poor but it's fairly obvious to you that people with "unusually harmful" illnesses should be treated. "Excuse me, sir, but your condition isn't unusual enough. That will be $2500." Come on.
You personally wouldn't suffer so much from the mistakes of others, sure. And even that has a question mark above it. But in your system, anyone born to a poor family is pretty much doomed. Economic disparity grows, middle-class people who become impoverished can't get back, their kids can't get any education and thus will be stuck at menial jobs which won't be able to pay for their kids' education and so on and so forth, employers thrive on their employees' paranoia because if they lose their job they're screwed big time, not to mention if they're forced to move to a poorer neighbourhood where people never gathered enough funds to build themselves a hospital, there is no minimum wage so those lucky enough to get a job work twelve or more hours a day for low sums and in bad working conditions that pay off the best for the employer, crime rate grows, dissent grows, riots ensue, Kim Jong Un laughs his butt off. Sure, it's a tad pessimistic outcome, but nonetheless a very, very possible one. The holodomor and gulags were a tad pessimistic outcomes of the shiny new idea of communism too. We need to be more responsible with that shyte.
Things are inherently not fair. The system of inheritance, for example, is by no means a fair thing; it grants people different starting positions and gives birth to new aristocratic dynasties, as well as families that have a hard time getting out of the mud. But we can't ban it. It's a matter of everyone's right to leave what they have to their children or whoever. In order to protect that right, we agree to give kids - who are in no way responsible for their parents' successes - different lives, and we don't see a problem with that (you will argue that an incompetent inheritor will lose those assets, which would then go to those that "earned" them but that doesn't solve the issue; the rich kid has the chance, the poor kid doesn't, especially in your system). It's somehow both unfair and right at the same time. There's also everyone's right to live; widely interpreted in today's world as the right to not starve or die from illnesses and similar. In order to protect that right, a portion of wealth is redistributed - we learned from the commies that it's wrong, senseless and, above all, inefficient to redistribute too much of it, sure, but we've also learned from the state of affairs that led to the red revolutions that a part of it needs to be. The idea is that these things are regarded, in today's world, as more right than they are unfair. This may change. In a system of tomorrow, you might not have to pay for anyone not to starve, because everyone's responsible for their losses. Or your kid might be banned from using your assets, because everyone must earn what they have. I wouldn't like any of that to happen (partly because my lazy ass would probably be out in the gutter right now) but who knows.
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"Let me tell you what the blues
is. When you ain't got no
money,
you got the blues."
Howlin Wolf
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mvassilev
Responsible
Undefeatable Hero
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posted May 22, 2012 10:49 PM |
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So you'd check income tax returns for everyone who comes into a soup kitchen? Sounds bureaucratic. I suppose you could have a card that formally identifies someone as "impoverished", but illegal immigrants and such (those for whom access to the legal system is difficult) wouldn't have one, so they'd starve if it came to that.
Identifying dangerous and contagious illnesses isn't that difficult. "You have the plague? Okay, we'll treat you for free. Heart disease? Pay for yourself." There would be a list of diseases that would be treated for free (or reduced cost), and for the rest, you'd have to pay for yourself. Also, vaccines would also be provided.
You're also ignoring the part where I keep saying that the government should fund education and be proactive in providing it (especially in poor areas). Also, the minimum wage makes it illegal for the less productive to work, so it makes the poor worse off. If your labor is worth less than $8 an hour, you might still be able to do something useful - but, thanks to minimum wage laws, the government won't let you. Anyway, people born to poor families would not be doomed (they'd be less doomed than they are now, anyway). Social mobility would increase with fewer barriers to entry, and they'd certainly benefit from the lower cost of goods and services - when something becomes cheaper, the poor benefit the most.
Things are currently not fair, but that doesn't mean they can't become fair. It's a simple rule: "Thou shalt not initiate force or fraud." If wealth is acquired without it being stolen or forcibly taken from someone, it must have either been given to you voluntarily or made by you. Neither is unfair. Inequality is not the same as unfairness. There is nothing inherently wrong about inequality - people are not equal (though of course they must be equal before the law). If rich people owned several planets and poor people owned several mansions, people would still be complaining about inequality. You assert that there is some connection between inequality and unfairness, but I don't see it. No one has been wronged, so how can it be unfair? Also, the reason many of those revolutions happened was because the nobles/oligarchs kept the poor down and redistributed their wealth upward. There were legal (and/or semi-legal) barriers to the poor ascending. I do not advocate those. Also, you make redistribution sound like bribing poor people not to attack the rich - as I suggested earlier elsewhere, "with enough brutal force the thieving rabble can be kept in line". And it's better to change attitudes instead of resorting to bribery - if you're raising a child, you don't bribe them to do what's right, you teach them and hopefully they'll want to do it of their own free will.
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Eccentric Opinion
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Minion
Legendary Hero
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posted May 22, 2012 11:48 PM |
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I can't help about getting the feeling that your arguments are solid for free market, but we simply can't have one. Not unless you close your borders and do a social experiment... don't see that happening in the globalized world we live in.
Workforce can be local, also if the borders are closed. But minimum wage is good if you don't want people to end up working as slaves. We never had that here but are sure to make sure the social discrepency never get THAT out of proportion. Essentially there is no difference if you work and only get enough money to buy food OR if you get food in exchange for your labour. It is just semantics to claim otherwise.
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"These friends probably started using condoms after having produced the most optimum amount of offsprings. Kudos to them for showing at least some restraint" - Tsar-ivor
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mvassilev
Responsible
Undefeatable Hero
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posted May 22, 2012 11:59 PM |
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Why would a free market require closed borders?
Also, the minimum wage literally doesn't make workers better off. It's simple - according to the preferences of employers and employees, an employee's labor is worth a certain wage. If that wage is greater than a certain amount, the worker is hired, and mutually beneficial voluntary exchange occurs. If that wage is below the minimum wage, then both employer and employee are denied the benefits of free exchange. The minimum wage hurts poor people.
Also, there's a real difference between slaves and minimum wage workers - slaves are involuntarily owned by their masters, who can beat them and do whatever they want. Workers are sovereign individuals who are engaging in mutually beneficial voluntary exchange. Any slave would jump at the chance to be a minimum wage worker, and no minimum wage worker would want to become a slave. Do you really think a worker at McDonalds is in an equivalent position to a slave on a plantation? I hope not.
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Eccentric Opinion
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Seraphim
Supreme Hero
Knowledge Reaper
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posted May 24, 2012 04:57 AM |
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Quote:
Also it is impossible to separate today arab from Islam, because in 99% of cases it goes together
And what makes you think that 1% is insignificant?
Again,what your problem is not immigration but the people who cause unrest,violence,vandalism and murder.
You should rather blame your government for allowing such people to enter your country and your police forces for not being able to prevent crime.
You can say that most immigrants are,because of preceding events, violent, criminal and anti social, and ergo BAD. Point is, most but not all. See,its an issue of semantics.
Quote:
I find rather significant that the people making moral tirades over this thread are mostly those living in areas where there is 0% immigration, as the Balkans.
Really? Those village people who came from their villages dont know what a toilet is....and they are many.
Those corrupt EU officials invading my country are getting cumbersome. Nobody likes people from the EU unless they are tourists. Quite frankly,we hate people from europe.
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When a country feeds already 10 million of immigrants, is it fair to accuse it of racism if it refuses more because can't handle? I think not.
When a country feeds 10 million immigrants(Nice import), of who 80% are act in anti social behavior, and refuses to accept more immigrants is because that country screwed up big time...yeah.
Why should somebody,with a criminal record ,get a chance to live in better standards? Hey,thats is why you guys have visas.
A management issue indeed.
The idea that immigrants cause the most violence and problems is a valid criticism though. I know that from first hand experience.
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Salamandre
Admirable
Omnipresent Hero
Wog refugee
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posted May 24, 2012 06:52 AM |
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And what makes you think that 1% is insignificant?
The 99% remaining?
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You should rather blame your government for allowing such people to enter your country and your police forces for not being able to prevent crime.
I don't care who enters if the right decisions follow. If the government wants to put pressure on assimilation, it has several tools, as selective welfare, rewards and honors. If it can't succeed in doing so, then must close the door. All is about how brilliant ideas it has and how straight can apply them. So far it has no ideas and door remains full open.
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Nobody likes people from the EU unless they are tourists. Quite frankly,we hate people from europe.
And what's about? Your comments on youtube from which Xerox created his holy thread?
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that country screwed up big time...yeah.
We know already that. Many people think that only far right can solve this issue because it isn't dawdling around with political gibberish. Not gonna happen soon still.
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Doomforge
Admirable
Undefeatable Hero
Retired Hero
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posted May 24, 2012 11:29 AM |
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Quote:
I don't care who enters if the right decisions follow. If the government wants to put pressure on assimilation, it has several tools, as selective welfare, rewards and honors. If it can't succeed in doing so, then must close the door. All is about how brilliant ideas it has and how straight can apply them. So far it has no ideas and door remains full open.
There are actually two options:
1. Consider all immigrants potential scum and close the door (your option)
2. Dump the ridiculous welfare and let people move freely without slapping them any titles on their foreheads before they get a chance to act (my solution).
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We reached to the stars and everything is now ours
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Baklava
Honorable
Legendary Hero
Mostly harmless
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posted May 24, 2012 01:38 PM |
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Edited by Baklava at 14:47, 24 May 2012.
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@MVass
It's not just a soup kitchen pass. It's the poor man's pass for everything ranging from soup to healthcare.
You're right about illegals not having access. We'd need to think it through but perhaps that'd be for the best. They hardly have access to welfare, either, and they're still immigrating illegally, working illegally and not starving. No need to encourage the practice. That problem needs to be tackled differently.
Funding education is certainly a step forward (I honestly wasn't aware you support it, maybe I didn't read closely enough or something), but then again, why would you force people to pay for others' education but not for healthcare? Besides, not even basic education is free - there are all kinds of books and whatnot to get that people usually have to pay for themselves, at least here. How are they supposed to do it if they can barely put food on the table? And you certainly can't get out of hard poverty in your preferred system without at least a Bachelor's. If you support funding poor people's Bachelors, but leaving them to die if they get a heart disease... I don't know, it doesn't make sense to me. It certainly wouldn't go well with the public, that's for sure. And God forbid your publicly financed poor student goes ill.
An important bit about cutting minimum wage is that it applies to low-skilled workforce, and there is a surplus of it. Logically, the wage would fall down drastically. Today, large corporations such as Nike and whatnot use sweatshops in Vietnam and Laos, where people toil for a few dollars. You're pretty much hoping that abolishing minimum wage would bring the blessing of sweatshops to the USA (I can't imagine how the mostly unaware American public would react upon seeing those but there'd probably be ways to still hide them from them), but people can't get food for that kind of money in the States so it'll still pay off more to keep the sweatshops in the Asian jungle. The only thing all that would bring would be lowering wages for already employed low-skilled workers. Don't like it? Tough luck, have fun starving in the MVassocracy, next.
The "Thou shalt not initiate force or fraud" bit is a lovely thing. But since we both agree that a certain level of force is necessary, it's pretty much irrelevant to this discussion; we're just disagreeing on how exactly that force should be used.
I'm shocked that you can't see how heavy wealth disparity brings to heavier wealth disparity and how what you're proposing is basically, with the system of inheritance and lowering the poor man's chance to get out of the gutter, exactly a kind of wealth distribution towards the oligarchy. Just because poor people lived in worse conditions in the middle ages than today isn't an argument.
It's not about "bribing" poor people not to attack the rich and other chosen excerpts from the Bullshyte Dictionary of Elitism (of course, you know me enough to understand I'm not calling you a bullshyte elitist, and certainly not a dictionary, considering you have arms and legs and all sorts of things that dictionaries generally lack. I simply imagine those people would interpret things that way). It's about not giving them a reason to. It's my belief that, at a certain point, they'd be all but forced to act against such a system by any available means anyway. Using brute force, yeah, it works. For a while. And then it usually comes crashing down on your arse unless you start managing a nation like a nation should be managed.
Russia with its tzarist system was far from the only place where revolutions took place, or threatened to. And countries that evaded them did so by changing themselves to the better of the discontent folk. 19th century capitalism and that of today are very different. Sure there was force involved. But force is not enough.
____________
"Let me tell you what the blues
is. When you ain't got no
money,
you got the blues."
Howlin Wolf
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JollyJoker
Honorable
Undefeatable Hero
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posted May 24, 2012 01:55 PM |
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Ah, come on, Bak, you must see the advantages of the market system - I mean, after all the poor have their bodies; they can sell a kidney and donate blood and sperm, which will give them the starting money needed to found their own enterprise - say, a medical messenger service for the fast transport of kidneys.
It's so easy, you just have to be prepared to make a few sacrifices where it counts.
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xerox
Promising
Undefeatable Hero
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posted May 24, 2012 05:48 PM |
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I don't think american immigration can be compared to european. Our immigration is composed of entirely different people than those who came and come to the US. I mean Sweden takes more Iraqi refugees than all of the US yet the US was responsible for the war.
Also I think cutting wellfare and condeming people to poverty, starvation and criminalty (we don't want to become a fascist state to counter that) is a lot nastier than reducing the immigration flows from a few, select countries for a while.
____________
Over himself, over his own
body and
mind, the individual is
sovereign.
- John Stuart Mill
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Corribus
Hero of Order
The Abyss Staring Back at You
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posted May 24, 2012 06:10 PM |
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@Xerox
Quote:
I mean Sweden takes more Iraqi refugees than all of the US yet the US was responsible for the war.
Really, are you ever going to learn to actually research facts before you spew them out off the top of your head? You want to be an ambassador or diplomat? With your attention to detail, you'll be lucky to be fetching coffee for an ambassador or diplomat.
Let's check your facts.
Here are my sources:
US Customs and Immigration Iraqi Refugees Page
Swedish Immigration Statistics
Here's a quick rundown of the numbers
Year US Sweden
2007 1608 13048
2008 13823 9203
2009 18838 6346
2010 18016 3637
2011 9388 3675
Total 61678 35909
You see that the only year in the last 5 years the number of iraqi refugees into sweden exceded the number in the US was 2007. All other years the US has far more.
Admittedly this is not quite an apples to apples comparison, but the error is actually in Sweden's favor. The Swedish numbers are for all Iraqi immigrants (all immigrants from Iraq as a point of origin, not necessarily citizens or people who were born there). The US numbers are for Iraqi war refugees only and does not include people who immigrated to the US from Iraq but did not go through the refugee program. In addition, the US page shows the number who were also interviewed as well - and many of these may be in the country also, either illegally or legally.
I hope one day you will learn to check your facts, but it's also just a matter of common sense. How could you really think the number of immigrants in any category to a smallish country like Sweden could compare to the amount that come to the US, which is so much bigger? True, if you used a statistic like ratio of # of Iraqi immigrants to total popultion, Sweden would probably have a much larger number. Even then, you should check on statistics before you use them, because you just end up looking like a fool.
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I'm sick of following my dreams. I'm just going to ask them where they're goin', and hook up with them later. -Mitch Hedberg
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xerox
Promising
Undefeatable Hero
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posted May 24, 2012 06:21 PM |
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Edited by xerox at 18:24, 24 May 2012.
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its a good thing you learn something every day then? 
The point was that Sweden (and other european countries) receive a different kind of immigration than the US, such as Iraqis (the number of Iraqis the US receives is NOTHING compared to your population)
but yeah, I got the numbers from 2007 because that year it was a pretty big deal in our media that our small town of Södertälje with 100 000 inhabitants took care of more Iraqi refugees than all of the US and Canada together
____________
Over himself, over his own
body and
mind, the individual is
sovereign.
- John Stuart Mill
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mvassilev
Responsible
Undefeatable Hero
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posted May 24, 2012 10:47 PM |
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Bak:
Regarding education - there's a very simple reason as to why it should be funded and health care (outside of contagious diseases) shouldn't be: it has positive externalities. If someone becomes educated, they're more capable of functioning in society - because they can read, do math, reason, etc - and they're not the only ones who benefit, I benefit too (so I should pay for it). If some stranger gets heart surgery, how I do I benefit? There is no spillover to me.
Also, you assume that if welfare were abolished, only charity would be left to replace it, which is not historically true. Before government social safety nets existed, there were mutual aid societies that took care of people.
Regarding the minimum wage - in theory, you're correct that (all other things being equal) if the workforce increases, wages fall. Even so, the minimum wage is preventing some workers from earning any wage at all - if they can't earn $8 an hour, they earn nothing. How does that help them, those who are the poorest of the poor? And anyway, there's empirical evidence that shows that immigration does not decrease wages for native-born workers, even though it's an example of an expansion of the labor supply. Also, lower wages mean lower costs, meaning lower prices - so even though wages would be lower, the same wage could buy more. Something else to consider is that immigrants to the US are more productive here than they were in their home countries, and are thus paid more and enjoy a better quality of life (why else would they come here?) - even illegals who work for below minimum wage (and they do manage to feed themselves).
"Thou shalt not initiate force or fraud" was in reference to fairness. If that principle was not violated, how can there be unfairness?
My system would increase social mobility by decreasing barriers to entry. I remember a few years ago there was a homeless man in San Francisco who opened a shoeshine store and was making money. When the government found out, they shut it down because he didn't have a permit. Regardless, absolute quality of life is what matters, so if the quality of life for poor people is increasing by 1% a year and the quality of life for rich people is increasing 10% a year, both are better off, and it doesn't matter how they're doing relative to each other. If I have a car (or access to public transportation), computer, refrigerator, air conditioner, cell phone, etc., why would I care if my neighbor had a mansion and a Mercedes? It wouldn't affect me. It seems envy is the problem, not inequality.
And I wasn't only referring to Tsarist Russia when I was talking about barriers to entry and revolutions. Do you think that a peasant woman could legally move from the countryside to urban Paris and open a restaurant in 1789?
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Eccentric Opinion
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Baklava
Honorable
Legendary Hero
Mostly harmless
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posted May 25, 2012 05:05 PM |
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So you believe that an educated working guy, on average, brings the society more than it would cost society to educate him, but if you add in the cost of taking care of him if he gets ill (and thus drastically lower the risk of what we invested in him going to waste), it doesn't pay off anymore? Also, bear in mind that in order for education to pay off, it needs to make him an educated worker, and elementary school is no longer enough for that, like I mentioned before. You yourself said about a year ago, if I remember correctly, that it's alright that you need at least a Bachelor's in order to get a decent paying job.
We're entering the realm of numbers and statistics here, and none of us looks too eager to start digging for those, which is why I don't think we'll manage to figure out anything deeper than we already said when it comes to this discussion.
Of course, the "thou shalt not initiate force or fraud" motto is, when it comes to practical use, as useful as the "from everyone according to his abilities, to everyone according to his needs" one. That is to say, it doesn't really mean too much other than sounding good. I personally believe it stopped meaning jack shyte when any kind of force on any level became a necessity, that is to say since the dawn of... well, physics. Of course, you can change it to "thou shalt not initiate force or fraud unless you're the IRS", or "thou shalt not initiate force or fraud unless things wouldn't function otherwise" but... you get the point.
Finally, I wasn't talking about 18th century anti-aristocratic revolutions. There was no official serfdom in Yugoslavia, Cuba and a bunch of other places where the reds got to power, nor in the USA, Italy, Spain and dozens of nations where communist, socialist or anarchist movements, or simply general unrest and dissent, flourished.
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"Let me tell you what the blues
is. When you ain't got no
money,
you got the blues."
Howlin Wolf
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mvassilev
Responsible
Undefeatable Hero
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posted May 26, 2012 12:07 AM |
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I don't support paying for everyone's education up to a bachelor's degree, because after high school the spillover benefits of education drop significantly (and university education is much more expensive). You need a bachelor's degree in the right field to get a clean well-paying job working with intelligent colleagues (but even then, you don't always need the degree, depending on your field), but a janitor married to a maid will still make over $40,000 a year, which is enough to support them - and that doesn't even require a high school diploma. High school graduates (and many dropouts) can also get an inexpensive technical education (welder, nurse, chef) and make a good amount of money. Good education need not be expensive, but health care treatments can be very costly.
As for "thou shalt not initiate force or fraud", I mean "thou shalt not initiate force or fraud if you are a private entity". It's clear that there are benefits to not binding government to the non-aggression principle - but the meaning is still simple. If you're a company or a private individual, you can't morally kill someone (except in self-defense), take their property, lie about what you're selling, etc.
In many countries, the legal system is heavily biased in favor of the politically well-connected. Even if the country calls itself capitalist, it doesn't mean anything if it's seizing private property to give it to someone else, letting companies pollute it, etc. Not all government interventions are left-wing, and free markets depend on some government interventions that are frequently absent. For example, in the US in the 19th century, the government was quite active in breaking up unions. (You may be surprised to see me defending unions, but my problem with them is not with them as such but with them having government protection.) Some governments are authoritarian and deprive their citizens of due process of law. All of that contributes to discontent. If the government is not left-wing, then the opposition to it frequently is - not since the 19th century can I think of a case in which right-wing authoritarianism was replaced by free-market liberalism. Also, many of those Communist movements were supported by the Soviet Union (and in the case of Yugoslavia, by the UK).
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Eccentric Opinion
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xerox
Promising
Undefeatable Hero
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posted May 26, 2012 12:12 AM |
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Edited by xerox at 00:16, 26 May 2012.
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I think education is less important in the US than in many european countries now.
Atleast here it is 110% nescessary to go to college if you don't want to work at McDonalds for the rest of your life. If you like me study a theoretical programme in high school, then there's zero chance for you to get a decent job without going to the university.
(also university is much less free than college here, the books are really expensive and it can be hard to find a residence)
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Over himself, over his own
body and
mind, the individual is
sovereign.
- John Stuart Mill
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