Let's get rid of all the doctors, since people are still sick.

[SPOOFE]

Man oh man oh man… another thread that got battered to pieces because of an analogy.

For crying out loud, Johnny, no analogy is perfect. However, if this thread were an actual comparison of medical practices vs. welfare/etc., you’d have a point. But it isn’t, so I don’t see what you’re continuing on about, bro.

ANYway, I like the idea that Gadarene brings up… don’t scrap a system just because it doesn’t create a utopia in a year or two. However, it also brings up the converse… what should we do with programs that doesn’t have much effect, or worse, have a detrimental effect? Affirmative Action, brought up in the OP, was an excellent idea in theory, but, in the incarnation it took, didn’t work nearly as well as hoped in practice.

That’s what these programs are about, you see… making a theory, and putting them into practice to see if they’d work. If they don’t work, it should be augmented, or, failing that, scrapped. After all, if a medicine isn’t having any effect, you don’t prescribe more of it, do you?

[Johnny_Angel]

Gadrene wrote:

You’re telling xenophon s/he’s quibbling about definitions while announcing to me that I’m saying something other than what I’m really saying. Seems like semantics to me.

It’s not. Semantics is a technical term, and does not apply to just any quibbling. Furthermore, I didn’t tell xenophon anything about definitions – I objected on a point of grammar – and I have not put any words in your mouth, and even if I had it would not be semantics, it would be a case of implicature.

But of course insistence on the correct use of semantics always breaks down to semantics.

Your point-by-point refutation was, frankly, incoherent.

Do you mean that it was logically incoherent, in the sense that it involves a contradiction, or that you didn’t understand it?

And your objection was to the relation of the thread title to the OP–my main point was a hell of a lot more involved than, “Hey, medicine is like welfare and public education!”

And that is why I said in my initial post that you should abandon the analogy and concentrate on the less dicey arguments you were presumably prepared to give.

I’ve taken pains to show you–as has DoctorJ, and hansel, and xenophon–why your objections to the validity of my argument were themselves invalid. Not to mention irrelevant.

Since I have not rejected your conclusion, only your specious analogy, and your only substantial response to me has either been to repeat your specious analogy and to defend your conclusion outside of that analogy, you have not reponded to what I have said at all. DoctorJ has responded to what I’ve actually said, though that debate is not over, and I have been neglecting hansel’s post which deserves an answer. You have not done anything like demonstrating that my objections are invalid. And all xenophon41 did was object to an apparent incoherency which I then pointed was merely an objection to my grammar, not to my argument.

If you want to debate whether we’d be better off with something other than social welfare or affirmative action or OSHA or public education, please do–that would be a valid objection to the OP.

I don’t, thank you. I was merely pointing out that the analogy you used to launch the discussion wouldn’t work, and encouraging you to pursue other angles.

Then forget the freaking medical analogy

Exactly what I suggested in my first post. We have achieved agreement.

You don’t like the core values behind something–using my tax dollars to feed poor people is bad, for example–so you point to how it hasn’t worked and propose, as ibertarians do, that we abandon government assistance for the private charity of peaceful, honest people.

I have given no opinion about any of this, though I did refer to a common position taken in order that you are aware that there is a possible objection to be raised on a particular point. You have made a lot of assumptions about what I believe and am trying to prove. All I’m arguing about is whether your argument from analogy is valid.

I believe I have reiterated this point enough, but if you need me to say it again I will. Now I’ll take a moment to point out that the rest of your post commits the fallacy of absence of refutation – treating lack of disproof as proof.

SPOOFE Bo Diddly wrote:

For crying out loud, Johnny, no analogy is perfect. However, if this thread were an actual comparison of medical practices vs. welfare/etc., you’d have a point. But it isn’t, so I don’t see what you’re continuing on about, bro.

Any time an argument is presented, its validity is open to scrutiny. If it isn’t, it shouldn’t be stated at all. All discourse breaks down to mere chest-thumping if we treat arguments as relevant, but refutations irrelevant. Gadrene meant for the analogy to be persuasive, so it is relevant and intelectually honest to point out where the analogy is false and irrelevant.

[xenophon41]

I’ll answer you, Johnny Angel, since I like you so much.

You said to me:

This is merely a point of grammar. You think that whatever comes after the with' must be the indirect object of the verb, whereas with’ also introduces phrases concerning the purpose or manner in which the action of the verb takes place. When someone says, “He talks with great pride” they don’t mean there’s a guy named Great Pride talking back. For with' phrases introducing purpose, try looking for key words that express intention, like: intention,’ purpose,' hope,’ `idea.’ e.g.: “He drove to the house with the notion that she might be home.”

And to Gadarene:

Semantics is a technical term, and does not apply to just any quibbling. Furthermore, I didn’t tell xenophon anything about definitions – I objected on a point of grammar – and I have not put any words in your mouth, and even if I had it would not be semantics, it would be a case of implicature.

Thanks, but I understand the rules of English grammar. My remark was not in any way directed at the syntax of your statement, but rather at the content. You proposed dismantling an established institution before establishing a substitute for it. I pointed out that, contrary to your original statement, this is indeed eliminating something with nothing to take it’s place. “The hope” of a better way is meaningless in the context of restructuring social systems, which is what the topic is about.

If you wish to propose specific changes then do so and present an argument showing why your change would make sense. Otherwise, start your own damn thread about semantics, grammar and definitions of words.
To everyone else, I’ll just add: Yeah. What Gadarene and hansel said…

[Smartass]

Gadarene:

I hear you, but I only have a limited amount of time for this stuff, and am heavily involved in two other threads at this time. Sorry. I’ll make a few small, easy points, though:

We believe, as a society, that the world would be a better place without disease and poverty and dangerous workplaces and rampant illiteracy and injustice.

Agreed. We believe, as libertarians, that government approaches to achieving this are generally ineffective and needlessly oppressive. Equating “society” with “government” makes things difficult.

But you have to understand that most people want health and education and safety to be accessible to the poorest among us…

You must understand that markets are better at meeting people’s wants than governments are. If this were not so, then socialist societies would be the most successful. If most people want these things as you claim, they will work to achieve them. Markets are very precise tools for achieving the aims of people. Governments are blunt, inaccurate weapons for controlling the behavior of people. We recommend approaching these problems with precise tools, rather than flailing about with dangerous weapons.
Johnny Angel is clearly and coherently calling you guys on the problems with your arguments, and you are dismissing his statements out of hand. You are arguing based on sweeping generalizations. Governments tend to approach problem solving based on sweeping generalizations and all-encompassing programs.

If this is the way this thread is going to go, it’s probably just as well that I don’t have time to dive in full force.

-VM

[hansel]

**You are arguing based on sweeping generalizations. Governments tend to approach problem solving based on sweeping generalizations and all-encompassing programs.
**

Is this irony or parody?

[Sterra]

irony

and to be consistent with what people are arguing i will quote shakespear “Poor Horatio”

Seriously, has this turned into a grammar debate? Becuz all of youz r incoherent

[Johnny_Angel]

xenophon41 wrote:

Thanks, but I understand the rules of English grammar. My remark was not in any way directed at the syntax of your statement, but rather at the content. You proposed dismantling an established institution before establishing a substitute for it. I pointed out that, contrary to your original statement, this is indeed eliminating something with nothing to take it’s place. “The hope” of a better way is meaningless in the context of restructuring social systems, which is what the topic is about.

But you can only claim that this is what my statement meant if you mistake an adverbial clause for an indirect object. `Hope’ describes the purpose for which the replacement was made, and is not in itself the replacement, as I’ve already explained. The error was on of inference, not of implication.

hansel wrote:

If the New Democrats had followed ideological lines, they would have radically increased the welfare budget (they decreased it slightly), jacked up payments to recipients (increased only to the extent that the reduced budget permitted), thrown money at training programs good or bad (no changes except that case workers were better able to direct recipients to appropriate programs), and given up on controlling welfare fraud as a byproduct of capitalism (the increase in case worker’s directly reduced fraud).

There’s no reason to assume that idealogy would have driven only one solution, though the scenario you give may well be an accurate description of what a strict adherence to idealogy would have been. But surely you don’t want to make strict adherence to idealogy a necessary condition for being idealogical at all. Otherwise, the conservative side of the debate was also not acting on an idealogical basis, unless you mean to suggest that conservatives believe, as part of their idealogy, in mismanagement and malign neglect as a solution to a problem. Strict adherence to their idealogy would presumably have been to eliminate the program altogether, but they didn’t for probably the same reason the liberals didn’t just throw money at the problem – politics didn’t permit it.

You’re right that the solution itself – restructuring the program and eliminating mismanagement – is idealogically neutral (although, it is the sort of solution that conservatives claim as part of their idealogy). But the drive to implement the solution, which couldn’t have been easy to do, was idealogical. The neutrality of the solution was political.

Do you disagree with my claim that “non-rabid conservatives [wouldn’t] have any problem with a well-run welfare or medicare system… [and] non-bleeding-heart liberals [wouldn’t] have a problem with widespread gun ownership in the absence of widespread gun violence”?

If you mean that these people would have no problem with these issues if most of their objections were moot, then I agree with you, provided that somehow these people could be made to understand that their objections are moot.