I will await ANY evidence you have that supports your position of
I’ve put some facts on the table - you would apparently “have to spend more time than you want” to analyze the facts for yourself.
This speaks volumes.
EP–I’ll respond to your post over the weekend. I’m sure the post I write will either be completely ignored or hounded to death down to the last detail (with a charge that I am ignoring the facts if I don’t respond to every hounding post). But I’ll do it anyway, just for you, EP.
I thought the key tenet of Objectivism is that “Existence exists. A=A”
Fabulous!
Here’s what you need to set out to prove:
Note that I’m not saying that countries with UHC are perfect. You’ll find flaws. But you won’t find that they are doing worse than the US, “right this very minute”. And projections are that countries with UHC will be doing just fine in the future, despite the incredible hardship of paying less per capita for equivalent or superior health care for their population.
This is the part you can’t seem to grasp: WE PAY LESS THAN YOU DO. How can this possibly be bad?
Except when it conflicts with a desired conclusion.
Even Descartes, for all of his wankery, accepted that existence is an irreducible minimum.
You are correct. I disagree with dear sweet Ayn on this point. Also, I’ve never claimed to be an Ojectivist, and this is why.
Right about now is when one or two folks come charging in and bully me about being a “pseudo-Objectivist” or somesuch hogwash.
Darn! Just when I was about to belabor your psuedo-Objectivist stance, you hit with a pre-emptive strike! Curses! Foiled again!
He’s sure het up about something that doesn’t even exist, gotta give him that.
And I bet you’re an übermensch too.
Why is your perspective better than anyone else’s?
Apparently because he is wealthy, which has imparted wisdom upon him from on high.
Why is anyone who disagrees with me’s perspective better than mine?
:rolleyes: Please. You are the one who wants to impart your wisdom from on high. My theory of government has the government doing very little, which allows people to do whatever they hell they want to do. You, on the other hand, have superior wisdom than me, so you want the government to force people to do what you think they should do.
Well, we at least, generally consider there to be an objective reality that our perspective comes closer to than yours. We may be wrong, but at least we’re not hypocritical (in that regard, anyway).
But if there is no objective reality, then anyone’s perspective is as good as anyone else’s. Why should you hold it against someone for having a perspective and acting on it?
How am I hypocritical?
I don’t understand what you are trying to say.
I’ve asked this repeatedly of the board’s conservatives and libertarians. The answers I’ve gotten so far (what few there are) boil down to one of the following: you’re less free, which is somehow bad (presumably because the government now OWNS you); stories about waits and rationing (which are never compared to that of the U.S.); claims that quality of care is better here in the U.S. (addressed by both sides in many threads); and claims that even if the system does work better for you, it would be a complete disaster if implemented here.
Are your views amenable to facts? If we have an array of countries which vary in how they treat certain issues in public policy, and we can learn the results, does that matter at all? Or is it a matter of faith that government can never do anything well?
If it’s a matter of faith that everything handled by government is worse, how do you feel about the public road system? Do you think we should instead switch (or should’ve switched in our past) to a complex network of private toll roads with arbitrary rules and prices set by the various owners? Do you think that would’ve been a net good for society?
If not, then your ideology essentially comes down to “government sux0rs except for a few pet issues I will accept.” You said earlier in the thread that you accept roads as a legitimate form of government because it pretty much benefits everyone equally. I disagree with the assertion. I get to drive around on the roads and that gives me a lot of utility and freedom, but the owner of walmart also gets to drive around those roads the same as me - but in addition he has a huge network of roads to cheaply move his good on so that he can profit off the public’s dime. I have no objection to this, but it would be inaccurate to say that he and I derive the same benefits from the use of the road networks.
UHC has a better claim to benefitting everyone equally, I would say. So I think that particular reasoning that it’s not a valid government function is bullshit. The interesting thing about using that as a justification for your point of view is that it’s not amenable to facts. There is no evidence that will sway you. You can say “UHC is not on my official list of approved government functions, therefore it’s bad” and that’s all of the justification you need for your argument.
There are more practical arguments to take - that it would cost more, that the quaity of medical services would decrease, that we’d have more waiting lists, that it’s a drag on their economy etc. But those views are arguable and amenable to facts. We can compare the results from various companies and actually see whether or not it is indeed more expensive, whether their economies suffered, etc.
But the way you’ve chosen to make your views, they are set in stone. No one could convince you that anything is on your personal “approved government functions” list. The best we can do is point out your inconsistencies as to what’s approved and what isn’t.
It turns out you’re (in my view) right most of the time in terms of your views on government, mostly by coincidence. Government is bad at doing most things and there are dangers to increasing its power. But there are a few things that it’s clearly good at - the public road network is the example I already used. So how do we determine whether or not government would be the best solution to an issue on a certain problem? Well, for one, we can look at the evidence. Which is what you refuse to do - the evidence doesn’t matter to you. So your list of approved government functions is arbitrary and not based on utility.
So it is essentially slavish devotion to an ideology, a faith. What use is it then? Surely it can’t be a view that leads to producing the best results - if the actual evidence doesn’t matter, you won’t get to the best solution. Libertarians kookier than you insist that we go to a hodgepodge network of private roads - it’s just that their list of arbitrary approved government functions has one less item on it than yours. Why is your view superior to theirs? Why is your view that public roads are okay better than their view which is even more restrictive on the use of government? I don’t mean this rhetorically - what’s your answer to this question?
This is quite correct. One can hold certain conclusions on this issue without being selfish and evil. However, one can also be motivated to come to certain conclusions on the issue due to selfishness and evil. These are distinct but overlapping groups. I’m only saying that my best guess based on your posting history is that you fall in the overlap.
I want to take a moment to commend all the Dopers who have firmly resisted this opportunity for a cheap and vulgar joke.
Yes?
Yes?
No?
Fine? No? No?
Why?
Lots of people benefit from Walmart being able to distribute goods using the roads–not just the CEO of Walmart.
There is more to my theory of what is a legitimate government function than that it have an equal benefit. I think something is a legitimate government function where there is a more-or-less equal benefit to everyone and it’s something where the lack of government action would create a collective action problem–i.e., where someone would do it anyway so others would be free riders. So, if there were no military, someone with the means to do so would pay for a private security force, which would benefit others, so the others should be forced to pay for it. I don’t think the same claim can be made for UHC. First, it benefits those without the reasources to buy health insurance much more than others. Second, it is not the case that someone would pay for everyone’s health care so we all should be forced to pay for it anyway.
Well, that’s pretty much true. But I have laid out my argument. Pro-UHC people (and general pro-“whatever the democrats are doing this week under the banner of health care reform” people) are also for the position they are for based on their personal philosophies, which are equally not amenable to facts, so there’s no difference.
And I have made those arguments. Some of those exact arguments, as a matter of fact.
Yes they could. You yourself made me think for a while about public education when you asked whether that was on my list or not (answer: not quite sure yet but leaning towards no).
But no one’s even done that yet. They’ve just said I’m selfish and evil.
See above for my answer.
You are wrong, as I’ve demonstrated.
First, I think you are wrong. I do look at the evidence. I’m just looking at it on a more long-term basis than you. I use the evidence to inform my theory of government, then use my theory of government to inform what activities the government should do. Second, people who disagree with me have an ideology that the government should do whatever they think would be a good thing for it to do at a particular time. They don’t examine the facts I lay out about the long-term effects of big government. Why aren’t you attacking them for their ideology?
Other people are perfectly free to disagree with me.
I think I have a more refiined and practical view of what legitimate government activities are than these people. Some people oppose the government’s use of force so much that they oppose the existence of a government. Others oppose it so much that they think it should only be used to stop the use of force by someone else. I take a different view, as outlined above.
Interesting that above you excoriate me for having an ideology that is divorced from the facts, yet here you announce your belief that I am selfish and evil but offer no facts for that conclusion. You don’t even seem to base this belief of yours on any facts. Why is that?
Facts? What facts? What repeatable experiments can you point to, that say “big government” has a certain and predictable effect. You insist that this paradigm “big government” exists and that it was clear and inevitable effects. Based on what? Sez who?
But OK, you believe it, its the Gospel According to St. Rand. Not one of the “good news” gospels, more like the “I got mine, Jack” gospel. But OK, it surpasseth understanding, you are witnessing. The long term effects of “big government” will destroy whatever good a progressive social program may accomplish.
See, thing is, you could be wrong. Conservatives have been spectacularly wrong on any number of occasions in my life. Got their way, made the disastrous decisions, when I and mine were screaming “Don’t do it! Don’t go there, don’t go up those stairs, DO NOT open that FUCKING door!” And they did and they did and they did and disaster ensued.
So there we’d be, maybe thirty years down the road, and it becomes clear that we could have helped those people, we could have behaved like the civilized people we think we are, but we didn’t because we were sure that the long term effects of “big government” would fuck it all up.
And all the other governments who went ahead and progressed have thirty years of healthy citizens advantage on us, smarter, stronger, faster because! healthier! We piss away a golden opportunity because you got some theory about the nature of “big government”, whatever the hell that is.
That’s pure theory, Rand, it may as well be metaphysics, it may as well be theology. Marx had a similar delusion to yours, he believed that you could study and extract certain immutable principles in History. The industrial proletariat will always do this, the industrial bourgeoisie will always do that, badda boom badda bing, the communist state dissolves into perfect anarchy.
I am of the opinion that is mostly nonsense, philosophy, metaphysics, theology for atheists. But why should I believe your theory of the inevitable nature of “big government” has any more basis in fact that his belief in dialectical materialism as the engine of history? And why would I refuse to help my fellow citizens because your theory insists that I must?
No you haven’t. You’ve offered opinions on this topic. Opinions are not arguments, especially when they are devoid of factual information. Objective evidence from countries with UHC shows that it does not cost more, and the quality of medical service does not decrease. It shows that there are more waiting lists for non-emergent care (however EVERYONE is eligible for these procedures, not just a privileged few).
You have not shown that UHC is a drag on the economy pf countries that have it. This is simply your opinion.
Luci, you think that there won’t be any negative effects to government action that outweigh the positive effects. If my belief is an article of faith, then yours is as well.