Today, I understood the OP’s rant. I took BART home and some homeless person had shat on the stairs. :eek:Took a giant fricken shit right there in the middle. :mad:
As an ex-libertarian (hey, everyone goes through phases when they’re young), this strikes me as extremely strange. One of the things we used to rant about was the illegality of ‘victimless’ crimes. If you couldn’t identify a specific victim to an action, it shouldn’t be illegal, period. Claiming that society as a whole was victimized counted as a cop-out since society was a fiction - there are only individuals, and if none of them are harmed, there’s no crime.
When I was a libertarian, I would have been aghast to hear someone advocating the outlawing of all panhandling.
Again, the standard principle is that an individual’s body is his own property, to use as he sees fit. So the sale of a body part, as long as it wasn’t stolen, would be legit.
If you want to differ from libertarian dogma, more power to you. It’s the first step after all. The problem is that part of the libertarian belief system is that it is superior because it starts from solid principles of inviolate property rules and freedom of contracts and builds a legal structure from there. As opposed to the rest of us, who start from some wishy-washy, unprincipled desire to build the best society we can. If you want to outlaw panhandling and selling body parts, even though they violate the basic libertarian principles because you don’t like the society that exists when those things are legal, then you lose the ability to argue anything from principle. All you can do is attempt to argue that your little libertopia is a better society than the one of well-managed capitalism and safety nets that most of the rest of us have in mind. Which, frankly, isn’t an argument that you or any other libertarian will ever win.
pay doorways
I have libertarian leanings and the unregulated sale of human body parts is bad, bad idea. Maybe if you’re one of those people born with 4 kidneys and you want to sell 2 of them, fine. But if some third party shows up in a hospital hawking a fresh, anonymous human heart in an ice chest, fuck no. I can’t say for sure but I would think most libertarians would be smart enough to agree with that.
19 year old in Florida just got a life sentence for killing homeless with baseball bats. He killed one and maimed others. One of his pals got 15 years. He hated the homeless too.
Because you are either incredibly stupid, or a liar. And I don’t like to think of people as incredibly stupid people. I could be wrong though.
You’ve got issues buddy.
What is it about Libertarians and thread hijacks?
Hey gonzomax, have you discussed your proposed solution ib this thread? All I’ve seen is this sniping at people for not blubbering all over themselves at the sight of one opf god’s creatures who finds himself without a home.
Blubbering all over. I believe that language makes reasonable discourse impossible. Do you always talk that offensively. Is that your lame attempt to say you recognize we have a problem with the homeless and we should productively discuss the problem? Or are you just being a jerk again?
I guess the question boils down to:
- should people who are unwilling (or unable) to behave within the rules of civilized society be free to destroy our environment?
- should mentally incompetent people be forceable detained in institutions?
As has been said: defecating in public, injecting illegal drugs in public (and leaving needles around) is NOT behavior which ought to be tolerated. Why should any group of people be allowed to destroy a public park?
One homeless person is a tragedy-100 is a disaster for the neighborhood.
I think its clear that we need to confine gravely mentally ill persons, for their (and our own) good.
I guess I’ll take that as a no on the proposed solution.
Look, everyone agrees it is a problem. I’m not sure h who you think you are fighting with with all of these sniping posts.
Didn’t the Swiss give them their own park to play in? That’s what you call civilised!
I believe you’re right. But we’re not willing to pay the price. It’s that simple. People are bitching a blue streak over a 3% tax increase on 5% of the population during an economic disaster. Who will pick up the tab to feed, house and treat the millions of addicted or mentally ill homeless people out there?
Faith Based Initiatives baby!
I have no faith in your proposition.
We can use RandRover’s libertarian wunder-fines on those who voluntarily give money to people who are begging to pay for the imprisonment of those with the temerity to beg. Problem solved in a revenue neutral way!
We need to thing much much bigger here. So, here’s what we do. We round up all of the homeless, addicts, alcoholics, misfits, fuck-ups and anyone that we just don’t like. We take them to a location outside of our shining municipalities (or “back yards” if you will). At this location we have hectares of treadmills that we hook up to turbines and use that to power the city. Any of them that die get rendered and made into soap, makeup, candles and pet food! Efficient and green!
I was with you until “pet food”–I wouldn’t feed filthy homeless people to my cats. Well, I guess it would be OK if it were certified to contain only fuck-ups and people we just don’t like.
Now you’re talkin’…I got my eye on you, Binarydrone! You’re goin’ straight to the top!