Fair enough. All apologies.
I do not believe anything like my social democratic suffering-amelioration plan, with its associated budget, was chosen 4 years ago in the US. All one can do is keep on advocating it until it is.
Were the electorate to choose such a tyranny-of-the-majority government, I’m afraid I’d have to leave and live somewhere else. If there was nowhere else, I’m afraid my only option would be to rebel and seek to bring about a revolution in order to restore a true democracy.
I think this is what is called, in common parlance, a lie.
And if I saw you suffering, and it was within my means, I would provide that help. But if the help you needed was vastly expensive, such as prolonged cancer treatment, it might be outside both our means, even were you to endure the horror of having to sell your house. We could, together, ask yet others for help, and maybe accrue enough means by charity if we were popular and convincing enough.
But then another friend develops cancer, and another, and another. For all our good intentions, we cannot accrue enough, no matter how many friends we ask. Some sufferers haven’t even got any friends - we must solicit total strangers.
And we would fail in some cases. Private charity would, realistically, leave much suffering from cancer unaddressed.Yes, we could watch them suffer and die, regretting the injustice that just over there was a hospital which might have cured our friends, as it cured you, but which we couldn’t pay for.
Or…hey, wait. We could go out and try to convince the electorate to vote for a cancer-relieving budget, paid for by their taxes. We could show them that suffering could be prevented on such a scale. Vote for our proposal, and we might reduce the injustice of suffering and dying from a preventable condition in a land of plenty!
What say you, friend? Shall we watch our friends suffer and die because they are too poor and unpopular, or will you join my attempt to convince the electorate to implement taxation?
Indeed it is all one can do — but that’s only because it is all that one is allowed to do. Unfortunately the weight of advocacy between those with political clout and those without is rather enormous. Look at what Blacks had to do, not just in the US but elsewhere as well, to have their advocacies seriously considered. They had to break laws, march in the streets, risk their lives, and sometimes die to be heard. Note that nothing about the system per se was any different in 1962 than it is today. The same system of advocacy by majority can enslave people, free people, or enslave them again. But if you are free to implement your own plan for yourself and your family, then you don’t even need to advocate — you need merely to implement.
You mean a democracy that does not put sugar on its porridge? 
If the electorate chose the government, then it WAS a “true” democracy.
Agreed. It is indeed a lie. But it is also a lie that Congress may not establish any law abridging freedom of speech, the press, or religion. Congress may establish laws prohibiting you from inciting violent revolution, publishing materials that are deemed “obscene”, and smoking pot as part of your religious ritual.
But how does this differ at all from what we face at the mercy of bureaucratic charity? If we are unable to advocate for ourselves, we must find someone to advocate on our behalf. If we have not been privvy to the establishment and demands of the Ministry of Health, how do we know even where to begin? And if we are fortunate enough to convince the bureaucracy that we need treatment, how much milk can we get from the monopoly teat? What happens if we do not have sufficient political clout to move our case along based on what WE perceive as its urgency, as opposed to what THEY conceive as its urgency? What is to prevent the faceless edificial entity from forcing us to wait for weeks or months? What if there is a paperwork screw-up or snafu such that they lose our case altogether? Why is it that you trust the charity of magistrates more than the charity of neighbors?
Op cit.
You sound as though you don’t even realize that charity hospitals exist. These nonprofit healthcare facilities have a long and storied history in the US, with some of the most significant advances in medicine, owing to their affiliation often with universities. I know this because our daughter needed their care when she was six months old, and we were poor as dirt. There is much greater danger from lawyers than from doctors, as even now class action suits are brewing in Illinois, Minnesota, Ohio, Texas, Georgia, Alabama, Florida and Tennessee against charity hospitals to the tune of $100 million dollars. The trial lawyers will come out wealthier than before, but the hospitals will lose their nonprofit status at best or go out of business at worst.
But you can’t have it both ways. 
You just finished saying that we could conceivably reach a circumstance in which not even all the charity in the land could save us, and now suddenly, there are resources falling out of the sky — vast pools of wealth that, if only we could convince people to pay, would save us all. If you can convince them to send money to their magistrates, why can’t you convince them to send money to their neighbors? Besides, the government is going to take a huge — HUGE — chunk of the money to keep for itself, because those gigantic buildings, staffs of lawyers and clerks to handle the endless reams of paperwork are damned expensive. Only a percentage that remains will dribble its way down to the enties that could have gotten the whole portion of your contribution to begin with.
Friend, our friends suffer and die every day because they are too poor and unpopular. The War on Poverty rages on after 40 years, and you yourself have cited statistics to show that it is failing. While you place your trust in the hands of strangers whose aspirations are political in nature — professional liars who break promises for a living — you are stifling the incentive to progress and to innovate. By supporting a system that accords political favor to the wealthy, you are dashing the hopes of people who, were they not under the heels of powerful men with guns, have the mental and emotional wherewithall to escape their poverty and make the world a better place. Goodness is not found in governments; it is found in the hearts of individuals. Calling upon government to care for the poor is like calling upon a fox to guard the hen house.
Of course - my plan is for those who have not the means to implement my plan themselves.
I, and others, respectfully disagree.
If you can afford private care, be my guest. If I have the charity of neighbours, I need not appeal to the charity of magistrates. I speak of those who have not the means nor the charity of neighbours.
Indeed, I have been in one in the US. I am in a position to compare US and UK hospitals from first hand.
Because I live on a planet known as Earth, not a magical world of make-believe.
My statistics show that a social democracy can address the plight of the poorest percentiles in a manner which their electorate finds acceptable.
Calling on private charity to address all suffering is like praying to magical cancer-healing elves.
Yeah, I know that. But that takes us back to the beginning. What if they don’t like your plan? What makes you think you can make plans for other people better than they can for themselves? Maybe you don’t have the means to implement their plan either, but why is that a reason that their plan should be forced upon you?
Yes, but Mills supports my position — what you are advocating is rule by a majority of the majority, that is, the plan among plans from those with enough political clout to offer up plans. “Democracy, thus constituted, does not even attain its ostensible object, that of giving the powers of government in all cases to the numerical majority. It does something very different: it gives them to a majority of the majority; who may be, and often are, but a minority of the whole.” According to you, I, as a minority, have no recourse but to suffer the implementation of your plan even if I oppose it.
But you DO have to appeal to the charity of magistrates. You have given the money to THEM. They are the dispensators.
And your comparison is…?
Oh, Sentient, my wonderful friend. You resort to this? Quoting again the venerable John Stuart Mill: “But it is not such objections as these that are the real difficulty in getting the system accepted; it is the exaggerated notion entertained of its complexity, and the consequent doubt whether it is capable of being carried into effect.” If on the planet known as Earth, you can convince people to send money to magistrates, you should be able to convince them to send money to their neighbors. I cannot imagine why you invoke a “magical world of make-believe”. I’m not imagining that I have neighbors, and I am not imagining that my magistrates do not even know me and couldn’t care less whether I live or die.
Yes, yes of course. I have always allowed that your plan will satisfy those who find the plan acceptable. That’s what Von Mises said. My concern is for the plight of those whom your plan leaves behind.
First of all, no one has said that private charity addresses all suffering. We haven’t even established what suffering IS. I will suffer for things that will not even phase you, and vice-versa. Second, surely you do not presume that government charity addresses all suffering either; otherwise, there must be no suffering at all for us to worry about.
They don’t vote for it.
And the minority of psychopaths must “suffer” democratically agreed laws such as ‘don’t murder’. Vote for your policies, and I will “suffer” them if you win the election. I would not then argue that losing the election constituted false democracy.
No you don’t. You can pay for private care in almost any social democracy (Canada excepted).
Patients were entering the US charity hospital with emergency conditions that would have been treated preventively in Britain. I consider this to be unnecessary and preventable suffering.
You may believe what you wish. If you believe that people will voluntarily hand over as much as they pay in taxes (even subtracting ‘government waste’), you are a paragon of optimism and I salute you.
Which ones, exactly? The ones who pay for cancer treatment they will never need, like myself?
I did not pretend so. Op cit.
The cheat here is that you’ve assumed that the total economic resources available somehow magically increase in the latter scenario. Without that assumption, it becomes a wash – if people can’t afford to give enough to cancer charities, they clearly can’t afford to pay the same amount (to say nothing of an increased amount) in tax hikes.
You set that standard for private charity (“Calling on private charity to address all suffering”). We do you the courtesy of assuming that you are not a hypocrite, and therefore take it for granted that you apply the same standard to the government-program side of the coin.
I contend that government can make near universal provision in addressing the plight of the poorest percentiles, not that it can literally prevent all suffering. I contend that private charity would leave far more suffering unaddressed.
Agreed, but I made no mention of whether or not they could afford to give to charity. I am merely pessimistic that they actually would give as much (or anywhere near enough) if they didn’t have to.
Aye caramba, but they must live with it all the same! You’re making my point for me.
True, but then most red herrings are true. Neither you nor I are talking about any plan to legalize murder. I am talking about allowing peaceful honest people to make plans of their own, and you are talking about how, if they only knew, your plan is better for them than their own.
So, in Britain they give everybody kevlar vests?
Oh, but wait a minute! Now your plan has changedI You never said that you would kill anybody who resisted. I submit that now your plan is prima facie bad for me. If it is a plan that you impose on a majority of the majority who like it, that’s one thing. But if you intend to do what’s good for people even if it makes them suffer, that’s quite another. At least in my plan, if you don’t like it, you don’t have to live with it.
But they only have to because you will kill them if they don’t. Now, don’t say I’m exaggerating. If I resist your plan, you will send armed men to arrest me, and if I resist them, they will use whatever force is necessary, including deadly force, to take me to your prison.
But clearly, history does not bear you out. Governments have committed so much mass murder and put so many people into such hopeless poverty that it almost defies quantification. It still astounds me that you place more faith in a magistrate whom you do not know than in your own neighbors and friends.
Well, we seem to have moved on to a discussion questioning whether democratic elections are justified. Note that I said many posts ago:
Propose your reforms to democracy, Lib, and I might well agree. Heck, I might even join you in attempting to convince the electorate to have them enacted - a joint Libertarian Utilitarian Campaign to Reform Elections, say. (“Whose mouths must be stopped, who subvert whole houses, teaching things which they ought not, for filthy LUCRE’s sake” - Titus 1:11) 
But, flawed as they are, democratic elections are how policy is decided in our two nations. I will advocate taxation and social democracy, you advocate…well, whatever it is you advocate, and let us either accept the results of those elections or go and live elsewhere.
And now we come to the tired old canard of appealling to the worst governments in history, when it is perfectly clear that social deomcracy is what I advocate, and what some electorates clearly find acceptable.
I did not say all patients had such conditions.
And I could make the same objection to any law of the land I did not feel like obeying. Perhaps democracy is not for you, Lib.
One man’s taxation is another man’s slavery. One man’s social democracy is another man’s tyranny of the majority. Unfortunately, the love-it-or-leave-it option is pretty much moot inasmuch as there is no spot on earth that is not under the heel of one windbag governor or another.
Nevertheless, you do not mind raising the tired old canard of appealing to the worst neighbors imaginable to make your own claims. Your neighbors are a quite remarkable lot — as voters, they are capable of near godlike enlightenment, putting into power only the most generous and thoughtful servants of the people, but as stewards of their own lives, they are wholly incompetent and even mean-spirited, unable to care for themselves and untrustworthy in dealing with others.
Not under your plan. If the law says that I must rape my sister, what recourse do you offer me but to wait for four years and vote?
If that were indeed your plan, then we would be standing together. If your plan said, “Okay, guys, here’s the deal, and if you don’t like it, we’ll leave you alone,” I’d give you a hearty hurrah and wish you well. Unfortunately, what you say is, “If you don’t like it, then abandon your home and go elsewhere.” Whatever it is you have in store for me, if I am on the losing end of a vote, I am screwed.
You could always try downtown Mogadishu.
I am an anarchist at heart, friend. Wishing these people away is akin to praying to those magical elves.
You could always try and emigrate to a non-sister-raping country. I wouldn’t try Mogadishu in that case.
Oh woe, to disagree with the electorate’s decision! The toddler is indeed also ‘screwed’ despite his foot-stamping “it’s not fair” tantrum. I am ‘screwed’ in your Libertaria if I wish to ignore people’s property-rights-uber-alles philosophy and steal stuff.
I assume, if complying with democratically decided policies is so distasteful, that you won’t be taking part in such slavery-advocating tyranny in November?
No. I won’t do this with you. I love you too much. I would rather concede the argument than continue down this path. All the best to you, my friend, and know that, if I had to settle for someone’s plan besides my own, you are among the few whom I would trust to draw one up.
Oh barf.
Quiet, Loopy.
Love in return, Lib. I, too, would place much trust in your particular formulation of democracy, no matter how similar I thought it to Henry Ford’s car colour options.
I suspect we both see a similar ideal world far in the future (maybe with minor differences in what we each consider “theft”). Perhaps it is only to be expected that we disagree on how we might realistically get there from the here-and-now.
If the tone of my discourse has in any way upset or disappointed you, my friend, I can only offer my sincere apologies.
No problem, Sentient, and no apology necessary. You were being piled-on a bit, and I know how that is. I look forward to a new round of discussions once you’ve had the opportunity, without feeling attacked, to read the treatise I recommended. The reason I think you will enjoy it is that it is the first (major) deductive treatment of human interactions. You can see Von Mises develop inferences from plainly stated premises. If, in the end, you still disagree, your own argument will have a much richer and more compelling sway because you will have developed it against the best possible opposition. On the other hand, if you can find no flaw in his logic, you will have wonderful new insights on age old socio-political issues. It is win win.
That begs the question of how you get them to vote for politicians who will give their money to [GOODCAUSE] if they don’t want their money going to [GOODCAUSE] in the first place.