That’s rather pathetic, Smartass. Of course that’s my opinion. Whose opinion would it be? Peter Mansbridge’s? This entire section of the SDMB is based entirely on opinion, and if we declare opinions undebatable then we obviate its entire purpose.
If you meant to concede the point, I accept your concession. If you mean to debate, then goddammit, debate.
Hoo, boy. I’d love to know what you consider “rich.” Every single person in my office (15 people) is fully covered, and if any of them is in the top 10% of wage earners in this country, I’ll eat my hat, yours, and a hat of your choice.
pl: That’s ‘rich’ as opposed to ‘too poor to pay for insurance’, not as opposed to ‘non-rich’. I was preoccupied with making the sentence sound pithy. It won’t happen again.
smartass:
My compliments. Your arguments are well-supported and logically sound. I am reminded of a debate I had over dinner with my father on a similar subject. I argued the Libertarian aide as Devil’s Advocate (he assigned the roles) and he defended the USA’s status quo (OK - we’re a nerdy bunch around the table, but at least we can all get good jobs 
).
Anyway, we got to talking. The point I got hung up on is one of a delicate nature. You touched upon it when you said:
The fact of the matter is that one of the many roles of organized society is to care for those that can’t or (unhappily) won’t care for themselves. This includes everyone from noble veterans of war to sleazy, lower-than-puke indigents too short-sighted and chuckle-headed to know when to come in out of the rain.
You said that most liberals assume that people don’t solve problems on their own - unfortunately, most liberals are right, and you are wrong. I mean, look - you posess an understanding of a simple, elegant idea that makes sense, can solve many problems and would work better than the status quo. You lobby for it, educate people about it, send out letter and conduct rallys… to what end?
The plain fact of the matter is that most people’s heads are so far up their asses that they haven’t seen daylight since Milli Vanilli was in Grammy contention.
…I’m not sure what to say at this point. I’ve started this concluding paragraph thrice, aiming in a different direction each time; I don’t know, honestly, how I feel. I don’t want to disagree with you, because I believe your cause to be valid (as I did with my father, as I did before you and I began our debate). Yet, I want to disagree with you because (and maybe I am a Liberal) I believe that a driving reason for society is to protect some citizens from themselves!.. It’s a hell of a conundrum. I just don’t think that a Libertarian Social Democracy of the type you’re describing would ever function, as planned, in an effective way.
Um, what about protecting citizens from bigger, more powerful citizens (or, in the case of big business, incorporated entities with de jure citizen status)? Isn’t that more the liberal ethos? I could care less, honestly, about those schlubs who are too stupid or lazy to provide for themselves (except insofar as their circumstances were shaped by societal mores, such as a lack of commitment to education). Rather, I’m concerned with adequate environmental standards, consumer safety, safe working conditions, fair labor practices, providing education and health care and food and shelter for as many people as possible. Wasn’t it Milton Friedman who said that a corporation’s board of directors has no responsibility except to generate a profit for its shareholders? Without accountability, the effects of that philosophy are demonstrably adverse to most goals of citizenship or community. Forget about protecting citizens from themselves; protect citizens from institutions over which they have little control, but by which their lives are greatly affected.
sdimbert: As a lifelong Liberal, I have to (mostly) disagree with your characterization. There are certainly some people who lack the necessary means to support themselves, and I agree they should be treated with compassion. It is certainly well within our means as a wealthy nation for us to unconditionally allow such people a dignified life. But such compassion is not the basis of the Liberalism I practice.
To my view, most modern political theories base themselves on their definition of and response to the very fuzzy concept of exploitation.
Oppression, using forcible coercion to create a non-reciprocal transaction of value, is pretty well decided. Most serious political philosophies prohibit such behavior.
Liberal political philosophies define exploitation as using an economic advantage to create a non-reciprocal transaction of value. In my thought experiment above, Bill and Ted use the economic advantage of their duopoly to “artificially” inflate the value of water.
Central to conception of all political philosophies is the abstract concept of ownership. The most extreme forms of “left-wing” philosophies (e.g. Communism) deny completely the concept of individual ownership; the most extreme forms of “right-wing” philosophies (e.g. Libertarianism) elevate economic ownership to the sole determination of personal value. Liberals and Conservatives fall somewhere between these extremes, with both supporting the concept of ownership with more or fewer limitations on its acceptable use in determining value.
This debate is being framed as if libertarianism and social democracy are opposites, which they aren’t. They aren’t two ends of a spectrum (or an end and a middle, with pure socialism being the other end.) Libertarianism is simply a context in which any societal system can be implemented - including social democracy, for those that want it. Some social democracy advocates believe that libertarians would somehow ban social insurance and other charitable programs, which is simply untrue. What they want to ban is forcing people into them against their will. Libertarianism isn’t about property or property rights. It’s about will, choice, and consent. A person who owns nothing but the clothes on his back has these three things; it is these that are the basis of his rights, not any property he owns. Libertarians usually focus so heavily on property because it the most visible extension of a person’s will, choice, and consent, and thus the thing that is most often at risk.
Libertarians don’t deny that people need to eat and find shelter, and that these are best supplied by cooperation and specialization. They recognize that the biggest coercer is nature itself, and that “society” provides the best protection from it. They also recognize that they “owe” something for this (assuming they aren’t deadbeats), to which they contribute their specialized labor. But “society” can manifest itself in a lot of different ways to get this payment – as a market, as a majoritarian government, as an autocratic government, as a communist government, as Robo-gov 2000. Libertarians believe that everyone can get the maximum value for their contribution through the market, because this is the one that has the most choices, even if not every possible choice is always available to everyone at the same time. But the more choices available, the more likely that everyone will find his own best choice, and further, the more people who want a particular choice, the more likely it will be available to them.
The only thing that libertarianism demands is that the participants be free to choose the system they want. Not, let the majority choose the system for everyone – let each individual choose the system he wants to participate in. This is always called “unworkable” by opponents of libertarianism, as if somehow a society only works if every single person in it is operating under the same system. But what constitutes “society”, anyway? Every single person on earth - not likely. There must be some way of dividing people into “this” society or “that” one. Nationhood is the way this is done, but this can be very arbitrary. Consider the “society” of Niagara Falls, which spans New York and Canada. The members of this society speak the same language, have much the same lifestyle, and interact with each other daily. But they have very different degrees of social democracy, because of a national border. Now consider the society that contains Latino farm workers in California, newspaper columnists in Chicago, and urban rap musicians on New York. What makes a consideration that these diverse groups might have different wants and needs in their lives in terms of their participation in society as “unworkable”, but different systems for a homogenous group as “workable” because a river runs through it?
SingleDad – The only point I can see in your Robo-gov example is this – in a libertarian context, a bad situation can arise. Do bad situations not arise in non-libertarian societies? If I came up with a science fiction scenario in which a strict application of your political beliefs fared badly, would you abandon them?
Then it is simply wrong - see my stats on medicare above.
**
This means that the two can not coincide. Social Democracy depends on everyone participating, whether they are really interested or not. Theoretically you can have everyone in a society choose to freely participate in a social democracy, theoretically everyone on the planet could sneeze at the exact same time. Will either happen? NO!
**
Which for all purposes would indeed eliminate those programs. Social democrat’s fears are very well grounded.
**
This also is wrong. Libertarianism is absolutely about property rights. Libertarians do not defend my right to choose not to do a project at work without getting fired. They do not defend the rights of people with no money to have access to food. Libertarianism is focused on defending property and other individual rights of those who can support themselves, while ignoring all others. Libertarianism, in its purest form, supports the tyranny of the minority.
**
Markets and governments are very different things. Comparing them is like comparing rivers and steaks. Both supply food, but in very different ways. Even saying that they both supply food is misleading. Like wise saying that society can manifest itself as a market or a government is very misleading.
**
And if I want to participate in a system where I get to eat children? Libertarianism supports a system where my choice for a system does not cut into anyone else’s rights. But once again you get into the argument of what rights specifically? If someone is living on my land, they are violating my property rights. If I kick them out, I have taken away their right to shelter. Libertarianism always comes back to a very narrow definition of rights, one that is beneficial to large businesses, but not the majority of people in the world.
**
Society only works if everyone is operating under the same system that is true. What people actually say, is that a country or state could not operate under libertarianism, this is a very different thing.
I would like to speak more of society for a moment.
First let us talk of artificial and real aggregates. If we combine certain parts to form an aggregate it is artificial. If I speak of all men name Bob, or of all the paper in Chicago, or all of the male infants born in a year, this is artificial. There is nothing joining these items together other than my mind. IF you speak of a society, or a forest, or a class, you are speaking of a real aggregate. The items in the forest are joined together whether my mind sticks them together or not. Society is a system, in which thousands of little things are joined together and have an effect on each other.
**
That is true. And that society can be broken up in to smaller and smaller ones, and can be ended into larger and larger societies. All of which have an effect on one another. Every single person on earth makes up one big society with many small variations.
**
These are artificial aggregates. They don’t usually exist as a system.
**
I hope I wasn’t too confusing earlier. What I was trying to point out, is that you are creating artificial aggregates of people. All of these artificial groups you have created exist in one large society. The Niagara Falls group consist of people in a “Libertarian society” in a “Socialist Workers Party Society” in a “NRA society” those are all heterogeneous groups in an artificial group you created. Of course they all have different wants and needs, so do every other person. What unites societies is what they have in common. Whetehr it be socialism, their class, their country, their continent. I can create an artificial aggregate of viagra users and complain about their different wants and needs too. I hope that helps explain why your argument doesn’t work. You are talking about applying libertarianism to an every specific society, that of the nation. In that context in can not work.
Humorous side note. I find it funny that libertarians are some of the most opposed to socialism. They’re main argument is it doesn’t work. This from a group that has never even tried to implement their philosophy, who are even more in the minority than socialist right now, and who don’t have any historical evidence that their system works. 
Smartass:
Nice to see another libertarian around here. Especially one who is good at presenting his arguments. Watch out for SingleDad, he’s pretty good at finding any fallacies you may fall into, as well as arguing against libertarianism.
SingleDad:
There are a number of ways the residents could break out of the tyranny of Bill and Ted. They presumably control some resources that Bill and Ted need to run the water works. They can always leave. If a mass exodus occurs, Bill and Ted’s profits would shrink immensely. They can obtain a stock of water that will last long enough to dig a well. They can purify the water in the local stream or lake.
As a matter of fact, the incentives for anyone to provide water to these people would be very high. Thus even at it’s most oppressive, libertarian policies encourage people to specialize in new fields. Meanwhile in a social democracy, the government would demand reasonable prices from Bill and Ted, and a hundred years later, when the wells dry up, the society is woefully underequipped with desalination plants.
Of course by stipulating the town to be as isolated as it is your society becomes a somewhat unrealistic model. One of the main things that make libertarianism feasible is that it is not imposed on a small, isolated, uncooperative group of people. In the real world there are much more plentiful resources, with those that are necessary for survival being widely available. Millions of people might conspire to hold the world hostage by its water supply, but if you can gets millions of greedy people to cooperate that closely, when they can make a shitload of money by not cooperating, you must be quite good at those Jedi mind tricks.
Also, as long as people actually do pay the price Bill and Ted charge, however high it may be, it is not artificially inflated. Water being a necessity for life would have a high value if it were scarce. In this scenario it is. The value of something is what other people are willing to pay for it.
matt_mcl:
Statistics can be very misleading, especially when unaccompanied with any justification as to why those particular statistics are better than others. For example, are the citizens of the US getting sick more or less often than those in Canada? If so, what part of it is due to the quality of the health care system, and what part is caused by environmental factors? Plus you have to compare what you get for the price. By itself, all that the statistic you provided actually proves is that Canadians spend less as a percentage of GDP for their health care system than Americans.
oldscratch:
A group of people in a libertarian context could get together and form a social democracy. To make it all nice and libertarian-y, they would probably have to sign various contracts at the outset obliging them to obey the dictates of that group. Hell, if we suddenly had freedom to choose worldwide, and Canada (we all agree that Canada is a social democracy, right?) had to go around and distribute these contracts to continue operation (which would continue exactly as before), they would probably get a large number of them signed right away. People who signed the contracts would get the Canadian health care system, and have to pay Canadian taxes and all that, while those who don’t would have to figure out some other way to protect their rights.
I see no reason that charity would be eliminated if it were not instituted by the government. People who currently are forced to help support government charity programs also support private charities. Are all of these people suddenly going to stop giving to charity? Not everyone contributes to charity for the tax benefits. And private charities generally seem less bureaucratic than government ones, providing a better return on the investment (I’ll try to find some statistics about this).
Rights are those things that incur an obligation on others to act in a certain way. By giving you a right, an obligation is incurred upon me to act in a certain way. Libertarianism is based on distributing the same rights to each person, and not violating any person’s rights by incurring an obligation upon that person that would violate them. Basically, this works out to a system where each person has the right to be free of violence and fraud be initiated on them.
There are no rights to not do projects at work, because that would incur upon your employer an obligation to provide you with a job that you do not deserve. In effect, society would be stealing money from your employer and giving it to you. Since you cannot have any more rights than your employer, this would mean that you and all of society would no longer have the right to be free from theft. This same logic can be used for any of these other “rights” that you mention.
I will grant you that libertarianism is a system in which only the haves are protected, but the haves are all people who actually posses anything, which is far from the minority. Nothing anyone has can be taken from them by force or fraud, regardless of how much they have. If, however, you and a few of your pinko friends living under a libertarian context decide to form a socialist-oriented commune, and you all agreed (in a legally binding way) that you would all pool the money that you earned at your jobs and divide it equally, and that none of you could kick any of the others off of your property, then you would all be bound to those rules.
Actually, I believe that in the United States at least, libertarians outnumber socialists. I mean I can actually register as a Libertarian in Massachusetts, and if our great state isn’t leftist enough to get the Socialist Party recognized, I doubt that Iowa is (though the policy the US government has adopted towards farmers is pretty, well, socialist). Besides, seeing the worldwide carnage wrought by socialism, I think not existing rates relatively high in comparison.
I submit that paying 9% of our GDP for a system in which everyone is covered is better than paying 16% of your GDP for a system in which the poorest people - who are the most likely to get sick anyway - are not covered. Besides, considering that Canadian medicare was the envy of the world and our main bragging point until the neoliberals got their scissorhands on it, I think my point is pretty well made.
waterj2:
Thank you. It was getting very lonely and complicated in here. Your clarity of expression is extremely helpful.
Everyone:
You may look at at waterj2’s post and assume that I agree with his points to you–save’s me from trying to say again what I believe him to have expressed quite clearly.
Additional Notes:
SingleDad:
As I think that you are interested in your thought experiment for its own sake, I will offer some comments:
-Specialization is not something that people agree to do as a group. As with many Libertarian results, it is sort of a “natural” outcome of allowing people freedom. In other words, for the experiment to be valid, you must point out that no one is required to specialize and that there may be members who never, from the beginning, rely on Bill and Ted for water. I know that you could change it so that there is no way for anyone else to get water, but that would change other aspects of the experiment.
-If you say that they decided, as a group, to specialize, then you have assumed a majority rule from this point forward. When the robot arrives, it is not the introduction of government, it is a change of government.
-I can accept the robot for the purposes of the experiment, but want to highlight the phrase, “will enforce it thoroughly and without exception”. One of the problems with systems like social democracy is the effort and resources wasted because of all the “enforcement” and the fact that “without exception” can’t be achieved. The more things that the government is doing inefficiently, the more total inefficiency.
-The bad guys:
They sound a little like politicians. I noted you said they “want” to do these things. I take it you are assuming they are able to (I’ll come back to this).
-The Dilemma:
Your story here ends as if this situation continues in perpetuity (it’s because of that damn robot!). Let’s not assume that. You chose water for your example. Bill and Ted are supplying water–that is their specialty. You did not say how they are doing this. Ordinarily, water is not produced; it is sucked out of the ground or out of streams, lakes, or rivers; then it is filtered, treated, etc.; then it is delivered with some amount of pumping. Saying that they specialize in this is not the same as saying they are the only people who are able to obtain potable water–it is only saying that they are better at it. You say that they will punish people for trying to obtain they’re own water. I say that they will not succeed, unless they can somehow deny access to all water in the world:
Now, you could alter it so that Bill and Ted are actually “producing” water, but I think that would be an entirely different thought experiment. For one thing, if you’re living somewhere that water has to be produced, then it’s probably worth whatever they’re charging. As an aside, what if the farmers refuse to give them food until they lower they’re prices? People cannot live without water, but neither can Bill and Ted live off of only water.
For the record, it does seem in this experiment that you understand the tenets of Libertarianism pretty well.
And interestingly, when you ask them how they base where they draw their lines, instead of being able to explain a coherent philosophy behind it, they more often resort to horror stories and imagined worst-case scenarios of your philosophy.
I note that you are able to pick apart each aspect of Libertarianism in this way because it is complete and provides a systematic way of answering the questions. I haven’t noticed you offering a similarly complete system to compare to. In other words, how exactly would you program your robot to implement “social democracy”?
Gilligan:
One small point:
There is a definite difference between people signing contracts to participate in a system and having it implemented governmentally. If you have a social democratic government, you cannot have a Libertarian context. If you have a Libertarian government, you can create a social democratic “enclave” based on contracts. One notable difference: Your kids aren’t automatically contracted at birth.
Other than that, I agree with what you’re saying.
matt_mcl:
Very soon, I am going to quit responding to your posts at all. I am not refusing to debate you; you are not offering any material to debate. You cannot refute my points with statistics or with quotes–the only thing that does is clarify your opinions, which are already clear. For us to have a debate, you have to analyze my arguments and refute the points. For me to debate your opinions, you have to be able to explain what they are based on. If you have an argument that you think proves the existence of God, but all you post is, “God exists and you can’t deny it,” I can disagree with you, but there’s nothing to debate.
In other words, if you want a substantive reply, you have to post more than your conclusions: You have to explain how you arrived at them. To say that a statistic measures the “niceness” of a nation and have me agree with you, you have to convince me that you are right about what things make a nation “nice”.
What you are posting so far just appear to be the whinings of a petulant child, and you can’t expect Gadarene to try to finish your thoughts for you.
oldscratch:
Gave up on the Communism thread, huh? It sucks to feel outnumbered.
Or would not. I believe your conclusion is wrong. How did you arrive at it?
Libertarianism is focused on defending the legitimate rights of everyone equally, including those in the minority–that’s why we refer to “individual liberty”. You cannot refute this by referencing “rights” than no Libertarian, Socialist, or Communist would likely recognize. The fact that you don’t understand the basis of defining rights does not invalidate the concept–see waterj2’ comments.
Libertarianism seeks to avoid all types of tyranny, including that of the majority, the minority, and the workers.
Markets do not supply food. Individuals do. Markets provide a way for me to trade my bananas for your apples. Governments should not try to supply food, as they are no good at producing it. Economic systems and governments certainly cannot be the whole of a society, but they can certainly affect what life is like in it.
I’ll reference waterj2 again. I didn’t notice any mention of large businesses. If you want to make this assertion and have us believe it, you’re going to have to justify it.
While I don’t assume that there is no point in all this that relates to the discussion, I confess that I have no idea what it might be.
Okay, I admit it. I didn’t inhale. What the hell are you talking about?
Maybe you should share your definition of “system” and how it must apply to the example for the example to be valid.
No, the people tend to group together on there own, with no artificial creation necessary. Noticing ways in which they are more related to each other than to Australians is not an act of creation, it is an act of observation.
Not really, but it does give me a headache.
Your dissertation on “artificial aggregation” does not establish this fact.
Please do not confuse political speech with Libertarian philosophy, or I’ll be forced to start throwing around Stalin quotes. Depending on how you define the term, socialism works, just very inefficiently. Democracy works better, but has major shortcomings. Libertarianism works better than all of these, and I challenge you to present a system that works better (and back it up with something besides dizzying forays into semantics).
I hate to continually dispute you…should I call the Libertarian Party headquarters and tell them to stop their efforts so that they don’t inadvertently tread on your assertions?
If you don’t watch out, we may all vote to assign you the task of programming your ideas into SingleDad’s robot.
-VM
matt_mcl:
If we are to assume equal quality of care and, I suppose, “general health” in both systems, then I agree with your statement. As it turns out, this discussion has left the current US system and is now focused on a more Libertarian approach. Since we are having such difficulty convincing Americans to try the Libertarian approach, I have no statistics to offer you for comparison. I wonder, though, how good the Canadian system is at producing medical advances compared to other systems, and how many treatment choices the Canadian patients have, and what they do when they have a bad doctor, and so on, and so on…
It has never been the envy of me. The only way you win a debate of this sort is if you convince me that I am wrong and you are right. That means you have to argue on my terms or explain your reasoning well enough that I can argue on yours.
You are still mainly providing conclusions and interpretations, without explaining where they came from. However, I do like the use of the phrase, “I submit…”
-VM
I’m at work, so I can’t post for long, but:
Whaaat? The same thing as they do in the US, I suppose - go to another one, like I did when I tired of my therapist.
matt_mcl:
You also can’t pick out one example, argue, and consider the point refuted. In fact, you missed the point: There are as many ways of deciding what constitutes a “good” healthcare system as there are people. Your “job” in a debate is not to convince me that you believe what you say. It is to convince me–and whoever else might be listening–to believe the same things.
Since this argument, at this point, is primarily focused on underlying theories, individual examples aren’t particularly helpful. If I had time to do the research, I could come up with one “bad” statistic for every one of your “good” ones, at least from my point of view. One of the issues we are debating is how you can have a productive society when all its members don’t necessarily agree on every question of “good” and “bad”.
-VM
I see your point, Smartass; I shouldn’t have used the term “social democracy” here, since it is generally used for governments. What I meant is that in libertarianism, people would be free to participate in the social insurance programs that they find the most desirable, whether they desire them for altruistic or selfish reasons. I don’t know many details of Canada’s social insurance programs, but matt_mcl says it is a very good system. Fine; it’s a very good system. I think it would be a good thing if everyone were able to choose the social insurance system they believe to be very good. Libertarianism offers you that choice. Non-libertarianism doesn’t; under non-libertarianism, you participate in the social insurance system that your government tells you to.
If you had bothered to read what I wrote, you would have seen that I was posting quickly and wanted to respond only to that one point, saving a more complete response for later. Be that as it may.
My beliefs about the form of government derive from the simple ethical conviction I maintain that the freedom to be a citizen is more important than the freedom to become a tyrant. For systems which permit people the freedom to become tyrants, I have no use.
The freedom to be a citizen means having one’s rights as a human and a citizen maintained by the government, regardless of what other people are doing. Amassing large amounts of money unmolested is not a right; not starving is. The government of, by, and from the people is justified in infringing rich citizens’ property in order to guarantee the survival of poor citizens.
It is wrong to argue that governments should not interfere in such inevitabilities as people starving or amassing great wealth. It is the job - the only job - of the government’s public power to serve the public good, and if citizens are starving in the streets or dying in hospital corridors, it’s safe to say that the public power is not doing its job, to say the least.
Libertarianism as I understand it, on the other hand, means that everyone has an equal right to inequality. Sigh…
Moving right along:
I often note a curious adversarial tendency between the American public and the American government. The people talk about the government as though it were a separate entity against which they must fight. I submit that if this is true, then democracy - the identity between the people and the government - has ceased to function. This is the case whether the fiscal policies advocated by that dictatorship are socialist or (in the case of the US and, increasingly, Canada) neoliberal.
You can’t have social democracy without democracy, and if a socialist system exists which does not spring from on-going public dialogue, it is socialism but not a social democracy.
Medicare in Canada, for example, is social-democratic because Canadian citizens - from Tommy Douglas on - worked damned hard to bring it about. The current medicare policies championed by Jean Chretien and Lucien Bouchard (cutbacks) and by Ralph Klein (two-tiered system), since they are in disagreement with the repeated, stated will of the people, are neither socialist nor democratic.
Matt, the statistics I recall from when the liberals in our country were trying to foist a health care system like Canada’s onto us were that over 80% of the people in the country were happy with the current system, which would explain why as much as the media ogled over it, nothing happened. Anyways, the point here is that among the people in our country, Canada’s system was probably not being seriously envied.
On the matter of rights, you cannot claim that rights exist just because you want them to. There cannot be both a right not to starve and a right to be free from theft to feed the starving. Therefore, at least some people must lose some of their rights when you give everyone more. If you want, you can list out the rights you believe we all have, and we’ll see what others are obligated to do to provide those, then maybe I can do a SingleDad style thought experiment, where increasing numbers of people are lazy and must have the necessities for life stolen from an ever dwindling supply of rich people.
Gilligan:
Yes, it seems obvious to me that we are on the same side.
waterj2:
An admirable post. Maybe your approach will open the dialog some with Matt. I’ve been trying, but I may just not be a good enough person to achieve it.
-VM
The problem with thought experiments was demonstrated when two philosophers (if I am not mistaken, one of them was Hobbes) performed the same thought experiment on how humans would evolve in a state of nature. They arrived at opposite conclusions.
Be that as it may, the basis of my philosophy is that your right to survive is more important than my right to hoard huge amounts of money.