I ask and post hypothetical situations based on the society in which we live and you respond with "post scarcity, post scarcity, your hypothetical are all fantasy because infinite food." We do not live in a post scarcity society and too paraphrase Muppet, "why should we even discuss situations involving a post scarcity society when we don't live in one."
Yes Muppet, I completely understand your problem with this particular topic. There is no answer that you can give that will not cause you to have to question your belief in the post scarcity society that you want to live in. You are convinced that if you say that there should be limits when people waste that it will lead you down a slippery slope to death panels, racism and classism. Likewise you are also scared that if you say there should never be limits then some real world example will pop up where limits had to be enforced and there goes your utopia.
I started out by pointing out that there are no infinite resources so the wording was changed from infinite to non-scarce. I then specified that I was asking about scarce resources and you kept jumping back to food so I tried to provide examples where the food is scarce. Which was my bad because it just played into your "food for everyone" angle and a general nonacceptance that food could ever be scarce.
I should have just taken your first hint when you harped on the mythical post scarcity society and accepted that you would never respond to anything that might throw a wrench into your Utopian dream. My bad for trying to open a closed mind.
It's not based on the society in which we live. It's based on ideology and propaganda that you have obviously been so suffused with that you literally cannot conceive of the fact that it's been debunked almost entirely.
At least you admit we don't live in a post scarcity society.
I don't think I once claimed that we are currently in an implemented post scarcity culture, so... what?
You were the one who brought up infinite resources, and we just corrected you to "non-scarce".
None of your examples of rigging the system or someone wasting anything has any bearing on the fact that a goal of a post-scarcity society is a good goal.
We live in a (mostly) post-water-scarcity society. Legislating that all cities build clean water infrastructure is a good thing. Having drinking fountains in public is a good thing. Not having to pay for water in public toilets is a good thing. Really.
The same could be achieved for food. Imagine anyone who is hungry being able to just get free food. Do you really think the 0.000000001% of people who would waste that food should stop us working towards that goal? It's a total non issue.
If someone did start wasting food at a rate that meant others couldn't have any, just clearing up the mess would be a bigger problem than not having enough food. It's a tiny implementation detail.
Again, I would rather a small amount of people abuse the system than not have it at all and deal with the problems of not having it. Some people here use food stamps to buy off brand pop and dump it out in the parking lot and return the cans to buy alcohol. That's fucked up and wasteful, but I would rather that than have kids go hungry or have people steal or commit worse crimes to get by. As an aside, we could easily fix that problem by taking bottle deposits off of food stamps.
Yes Muppet, I completely understand your problem with this particular topic. There is no answer that you can give that will not cause you to have to question your belief in the post scarcity society that you want to live in. You are convinced that if you say that there should be limits when people waste that it will lead you down a slippery slope to death panels, racism and classism. Likewise you are also scared that if you say there should never be limits then some real world example will pop up where limits had to be enforced and there goes your utopia.
You're so thoroughly wrong about this and are failing to even begin to grok the counterarguments so hard that there's just no point in continuing, Steve. You are obsessed.
I didn't once say that waste should be allowed. What I said is that WASTE BARELY EXISTS in any currently implemented welfare program currently fighting scarcity (ie, welfare checks; food stamps) and to obsessively harp on waste as some sort of insurmountable impediment is NOT FOUNDED IN REALITY. It's entirely rooted in your Puritanical, fucked up head that humans are fundamentally bad and dirty and you just can't grok that the numbers show precisely the opposite. I'm not dancing around avoiding your incisive commentary. I'm trying to tell you that you're batshit crazy and pitiably brainwashed.
Steve, either you're deliberately misrepresenting what muppet is saying (i.e. a straw man), or you're missing a very basic point. In case it happens to be the latter:
No, we do not live in a post-scarcity society. However, it is still the case that there quite clearly are sufficient economic resources in the world to provide everyone in the world with the most basic of needs, i.e. food, water, shelter, clothing, sanitation, education and healthcare.
The fact that there are people in the world for whom those basic needs are not being met, or are being met to an abysmal level, is a failing of human society at large. There are no good excuses here; it is a moral failure and humans need to get their shit together and fix it. Perhaps an argument could be made that the relevant resources are too scarce to adequately meet those basic needs for everyone in the world, but I seriously doubt it. If you can actually make that argument, go ahead and make it, Steve.
Healthcare and education are the only two of those areas I could see an exception on---it may not currently be feasible to provide all 7 billion people in the world with the basic standards one has come to expect in developed countries (with universal healthcare). However, even in the case of healthcare there are still massive improvements in health that can be made at a fraction of the cost of healthcare in developed nations---things like vaccinations, mosquito nets, deworming, and various other interventions. Similarly, with regards to education, the most basic of resources like access to the Internet and decent teachers are also something that is affordable at a global scale. These are things the world clearly does have sufficient resources to provide, and yet we still fail.
In any case, even if one makes concessions with regards to lesser developed countries, it is nonetheless clear that the more economically developed countries in the world most definitely do have the resources to, at least for their own populations, meet those basic needs. It is nothing short of a colossal failure that there are people in countries like the U.S. and Australia who are deprived of some of those needs.
I wonder if that backwards yahoo considered for more than two seconds the inane amount of money he'd make by not only allowing tesla in his state, but then being the first to sell them.
I wonder if that backwards yahoo considered for more than two seconds the inane amount of money he'd make by not only allowing tesla in his state, but then being the first to sell them.
He didn't vote (which I suppose can be just as bad as voting to ban Tesla in this case), but apparently he WAS annoyed more Teslas were using his (Nissan) dealership's charging station than Nissans were,
I know some people are hoping everything will get better when the old farts die off, but I see an emerging meme with conservatives that white men (and Christians) are "under attack." If even a small percentage of white males fall for this, and switch parties, things will stay the same for quite awhile.
You also hear this in the GG movement, albeit a more derpy version of it. Thoughts?
Won't most Republicans lose the ability to vote as a result?
Not if you design the civics test around only things they'd be expected to know, or you just did what we used to do and don't give tests to the white people.
Comments
Yes Muppet, I completely understand your problem with this particular topic. There is no answer that you can give that will not cause you to have to question your belief in the post scarcity society that you want to live in. You are convinced that if you say that there should be limits when people waste that it will lead you down a slippery slope to death panels, racism and classism. Likewise you are also scared that if you say there should never be limits then some real world example will pop up where limits had to be enforced and there goes your utopia.
I started out by pointing out that there are no infinite resources so the wording was changed from infinite to non-scarce. I then specified that I was asking about scarce resources and you kept jumping back to food so I tried to provide examples where the food is scarce. Which was my bad because it just played into your "food for everyone" angle and a general nonacceptance that food could ever be scarce.
I should have just taken your first hint when you harped on the mythical post scarcity society and accepted that you would never respond to anything that might throw a wrench into your Utopian dream. My bad for trying to open a closed mind.
None of your examples of rigging the system or someone wasting anything has any bearing on the fact that a goal of a post-scarcity society is a good goal.
We live in a (mostly) post-water-scarcity society. Legislating that all cities build clean water infrastructure is a good thing. Having drinking fountains in public is a good thing. Not having to pay for water in public toilets is a good thing. Really.
The same could be achieved for food. Imagine anyone who is hungry being able to just get free food. Do you really think the 0.000000001% of people who would waste that food should stop us working towards that goal? It's a total non issue.
If someone did start wasting food at a rate that meant others couldn't have any, just clearing up the mess would be a bigger problem than not having enough food. It's a tiny implementation detail.
I didn't once say that waste should be allowed. What I said is that WASTE BARELY EXISTS in any currently implemented welfare program currently fighting scarcity (ie, welfare checks; food stamps) and to obsessively harp on waste as some sort of insurmountable impediment is NOT FOUNDED IN REALITY. It's entirely rooted in your Puritanical, fucked up head that humans are fundamentally bad and dirty and you just can't grok that the numbers show precisely the opposite. I'm not dancing around avoiding your incisive commentary. I'm trying to tell you that you're batshit crazy and pitiably brainwashed.
No, we do not live in a post-scarcity society. However, it is still the case that there quite clearly are sufficient economic resources in the world to provide everyone in the world with the most basic of needs, i.e. food, water, shelter, clothing, sanitation, education and healthcare.
The fact that there are people in the world for whom those basic needs are not being met, or are being met to an abysmal level, is a failing of human society at large. There are no good excuses here; it is a moral failure and humans need to get their shit together and fix it. Perhaps an argument could be made that the relevant resources are too scarce to adequately meet those basic needs for everyone in the world, but I seriously doubt it. If you can actually make that argument, go ahead and make it, Steve.
Healthcare and education are the only two of those areas I could see an exception on---it may not currently be feasible to provide all 7 billion people in the world with the basic standards one has come to expect in developed countries (with universal healthcare). However, even in the case of healthcare there are still massive improvements in health that can be made at a fraction of the cost of healthcare in developed nations---things like vaccinations, mosquito nets, deworming, and various other interventions. Similarly, with regards to education, the most basic of resources like access to the Internet and decent teachers are also something that is affordable at a global scale. These are things the world clearly does have sufficient resources to provide, and yet we still fail.
In any case, even if one makes concessions with regards to lesser developed countries, it is nonetheless clear that the more economically developed countries in the world most definitely do have the resources to, at least for their own populations, meet those basic needs. It is nothing short of a colossal failure that there are people in countries like the U.S. and Australia who are deprived of some of those needs.
Come on, I thought Republicans were all about bumping up the little guy.
At what point can we say we've devolved back to Tammany Hall politics?
Residents want to make them better.
Tiny tax increase proposed to make them better.
NO NO NO NO!
http://www.stltoday.com/news/local/webster-groves-school-district-tax-proposals-rejected/article_f332b077-e45e-5f88-94f2-02e3fe84adb9.html
You also hear this in the GG movement, albeit a more derpy version of it. Thoughts?
Democrats:
Tax and Spend!
Republicans:
Don't Tax but still spend
It's okay if the answer is no party, because I see that as an opportunity.
http://www.pinknews.co.uk/2015/04/28/randy-boehning-voted-against-gay-rights-outed-via-grindr/