Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Jason Edwin DeLeo on November 4, 2011 at 12:49pm

Please relist your points. as I seem to have missed them. And I'm not a libertarian . I am an indivualist who is for liberty and against government control of our lives. Beyond the minimum required by the police ,the court system using objectively interpreted laws , and the military to defend us from outside invasion. Any thing else is simply an intrusion into our lives and against the very nature of each individual man or woman and a rational view of mankind's nature and requirements. This is how I see things . So if we continue from that starting point fine .

 

I really didn't care about the Cain thing . Actually I think it would be funny to have a President named Cain . But so far of all the Republican candidates he is the least offensive.

 

As to there being more than one solution to any given problem . You are right in that . Please keep in mind that for any given problem there will be an optimal solution that fits the best given the information available . As to premises . Any premise not based on a real world view of things is doomed to failure as time will tell . Please refute any of this as you see fit . If you can.

Permalink Reply by Joseph P on November 4, 2011 at 12:51pm

http://www.atheistnexus.org/group/originsuniverselifehumankindandda...

 

I went point-by-point.

Permalink Reply by Jason Edwin DeLeo on November 4, 2011 at 1:20pm

My objection was not to your refutation of my points but to the labeling of them and the use of vulgarity when it is unnecessary . As to socialist societies having a better standard of "societal health " well consider Sweden a socialist constitutional monarchy with the highest rape statistics per ca-pita of any European country . They even beat the good old U.S.A in this . And if health care is so awesome in England , a socialist county , then why are all the doctors and scientists moving here as soon as the ink is dry on their doctorates ? As to income disparity why is this so important a slogan to every socialist I have ever talked to under a socialist society there is no income disparity this is true . Because everyone is equally broke . What incentive is there for some person to increase his or her own productivity when the harder he or she works the more money he/she loses? The incredibly high tax brackets in England to pay for the welfare state and the graduated taxes in this country give good evidence of exactly this. Also true socialism is government ownership of all the property and all the businesses and therefor even England isn't a true socialism but like the U.S.A. a mixed economy .

 

Permalink Reply by Joseph P on November 4, 2011 at 2:02pm

My objection was not to your refutation of my points but to the labeling of them and the use of vulgarity when it is unnecessary .

I pulled out the specific ending line that I was directly addressing, in each case.  It clarifies exactly what I was commenting on.  You can consider the sentences prior to that to be part of what I was responding to.

Vulgarity and profanity (more the latter, in my usage here) are useful exclamation points.  If you follow what I say in other groups and other threads, you'll see that I use them sparingly and almost always for effect.

 

As to socialist societies having a better standard of "societal health " well consider Sweden a socialist constitutional monarchy with the highest rape statistics per ca-pita of any European country . They even beat the good old U.S.A in this .

Pat Condell (you'd like him; he's conservative) addressed this directly:

 

It's not the natives who are raping women.  It's the ultra-conservative, Muslim immigrants who are doing it.  Yes, Sweden has a bit of a mess to clean up right now, but the root cause of it is them being a prosperous and socially-healthy society, which is attractive to immigrants ... then not sufficiently controlling immigration.

 

They even beat the good old U.S.A in this . And if health care is so awesome in England , a socialist county , then why are all the doctors and scientists moving here as soon as the ink is dry on their doctorates ?

And yet, England has better average healthcare outcomes, despite the US bleeding off their doctors and scientists.  What does this tell us about the two systems?

America is better for the doctors.  England is better for the patients.  Which system would you rather live within?

 

to every socialist I have ever talked to under a socialist society there is no income disparity this is true .

That's not even vaguely true.  Again, you're confusing Communism with Socialism.  There's a huge difference.  Communism is at best a discrete subset of Socialism, and even that is stretching it a bit.

There is less income disparity within a socialist society though, yes.  Just look at Europe.  They're doing better than we are, right now, even taking Greece and a few others into account.

 

What incentive is there for some person to increase his or her own productivity when the harder he or she works the more money he/she loses?

That plateaus off when you hit the highest tax bracket.  Once you hit a couple hundred thousand a year, you don't pay a higher percentage on additional income you make.

You know how the tiered tax system work, right?  Warren Buffet pays the same percentage on the first $50,000 he makes that I do.  He only pays a higher percentage on the money he makes above the next tier level.

Why don't you ask Warren Buffet why he continues to work so hard, when he pays so much in taxes?  Last time I checked, he was begging the government to raise his taxes, because he wasn't paying what he felt was his fair share.

 

Also true socialism is government ownership of all the property and all the businesses and therefor even England isn't a true socialism but like the U.S.A. a mixed economy .

Which is why, elsewhere in this thread, I said that I don't support pure Socialism, either.  The best system is usually somewhere in the middle, well away from any absolute.

Additionally ... no, socialism is not the government ownership of all property.  Even at its most extreme, Socialism is only the government ownership of vital means of production (surely you remember that from the slogans that Communists like to throw around), not all property.

Permalink Reply by Andrew Wiggin on November 4, 2011 at 2:50pm

Hyperbole!  You always do that!

> why are all the doctors and scientists moving here as soon as the ink is dry on their doctorates?

Per http://www.biomedcentral.com/1472-6963/7/201:

The United Kingdom has more foreign doctors than all other European countries for which figures are available (Ireland, France, Germany, Norway, Portugal, Italy, Austria and Poland)...European countries with the highest percentage of doctors working abroad are Ireland (47.5%, or 10,065 doctors) and Malta (23.1%, 376 doctors). 

There is a lot of wiggle room in there, but I think if all English doctors came here, England would beat Ireland in the second statistic.  And if England were so bad, the "foreign doctors" would come here instead, so the UK would not be winning in the first statistic.

I should really be working instead of doing this stuff.

Permalink Reply by Joseph P on November 5, 2011 at 4:19am

Yup, I've heard that comparison, as well.  There are many meta-attributes of healthier, more successful societies which are quite telling.

Permalink Reply by Andrew Wiggin on November 5, 2011 at 6:38am

A fun Google search is "usa founders against religion".  Contrary to Evangelical mythology, few of our Founders were practicing Christians, and more than a few had very bad things to say about theocracy.  They were a little before Robespierre, but still closer historically to high points of Western culture like John Calvin burning political enemies at the stake in Geneva.  Not to mention the Salem witch trials.  I wonder if the Adams boys were embarrassed about that one.

> it argues that secular societies are more successful than religious ones.

It's an indication of how thoroughly the nuts are winning that we even find such a claim notable,

Permalink Reply by Joseph P on November 5, 2011 at 6:48am

Yeah, no kidding.  I think the writers of the Constitution were majority deist/atheist ... although admittedly most of those were deists.  In a modern, scientific age, though, most of those deists would be atheists.

 

And those who were Christian were mostly against theocracy, after seeing what it was like in Europe.

Permalink Reply by Andrew Wiggin on November 5, 2011 at 6:51am

I should be ashamed replying to my own message, but this quote is irresistible:

http://freethought.mbdojo.com/foundingfathers.html

> Episcopal minister Bird Wilson of Albany, New York, protested in October 1831: "Among all our presidents from Washington downward, not one was a professor of religion, at least not of more than Unitarianism."

The Unitarian comment makes it funny.

Permalink Reply by Joseph P on November 5, 2011 at 8:49am

Heh, nice.

Permalink Reply by Susan Stanko on November 4, 2011 at 1:09pm

Heh.  Okay, let's flip a coin.  Which of us was being oblivious?  :-D

 

You know me so well. :D

Permalink Reply by Joseph P on November 4, 2011 at 1:11pm

I call edge.

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