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@Greyparrot
I believe our present predicament exists because we have gradually developed governmental institutions in which the people effectively have no voice.
100% THIS.
Government wants to control your life?
Posts
Total:
231
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@3RU7AL
MAKE ALL BRIBES LEGAL !!!!
Bribery is only feasible when the people vote to give the government power.
Nobody rationally bribes a government official that has no power to regulate.
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@3RU7AL
Okay.
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@Greyparrot
MAKE ALL BRIBES LEGAL !!!!Bribery is only feasible when the people vote to give the government power.Nobody rationally bribes a government official that has no power to regulate.
BRIBE CORPORATE EXECUTIVES !!!!
“the government” just wants to control our lives.
The government does want to control our lives; that's its purpose.
Is the idea here the democratic politicians pass, say a mask mandate, not because they believe masks will help slow the spread of the virus but because they get a hard-on being able to make people do something they otherwise wouldn’t have done?
Is there no utility in controlling others without the immediate allusion to sexual gratification?
Do they walk into a grocery store and see everyone with their masks on and boast to their wives saying “see, I did that”?
I don't know; you'd have to ask them.
Is there anyone on this site who can explain the rationale here?
A controlled populace = a compliant populace.
And BTW, people are often too stupid to make their own decisions. That’s just a fact.
Making one's own decisions is absolutely in no way contingent with DoubleR's standards of stupid.
Whether government should step in is another question, and it’s situational. This though has little to do with the narrative that government just wants to control your life, unless by that you mean government wants you to stay alive, which is a pretty terrible argument against government.
Your rationale is flawed. There's no empirical evidence that a COVID-19 vaccine has saved a life. *It's a method of inoculation* There is evidence that COVID-19 vaccines immediately after administration have led to death. So in accordance with your rationale's logic, the government wants you to die.
Fauci was saying that the points he is making are consistent with science, so to disagree with one is to necessarily disagree with the other.I’m not surprised however that such a statement would get twisted and then turned into a right wing talking point against Fauci. Because health experts are the enemy now, that’s how ridiculous the right has become.
Science is not synonymous with Truth.
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@Athias
The government does want to control our lives; that's its purpose.
Well stated.
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@3RU7AL
BRIBE CORPORATE EXECUTIVES !!!!
Executives have no power outside of monopolies.
Try again fuzzball.
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@Double_R
A) No government action, 3,000 automobile accident deathsB) Law mandating seatbelts, 2,000 automobile accident deaths?
Currently seatbelt mandatorization is a 10th amendment issue with 49 states mandating seatbelts and New Hampshire not. I personally think the government should encourage but not mandate seatbelts as people should be free to decide their own risk tolterance.
The government should encourage good things but unless those good things directly harm someone else, they should not be mandatory.
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@Greyparrot
Executives have no power outside of monopolies.
Pursuing personal enrichment does not equal "public good".
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@3RU7AL
Pursuing personal enrichment does not equal "public good".
It absolutely does if you are dependent on selling something the public wants.
Perhaps you wish to take the Marxist approach and declare the public just too stupid to know what is good for them or what they want in a free market environment. In that case, people can get whatever the oligarchy provides. The Oligarchy dictates the public good.
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@Greyparrot
Pursuing personal enrichment does not equal "public good".It absolutely does if you are dependent on selling something the public wants.
Are you familiar with the triangle-shirtwaist fire ?
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@Double_R
Almost no one on the left is pushing for socialism.
"Almost no one?" That begs the question: who are these "almost no ones"?
We’re pushing for expanding social programs to combat the fact that our country is growing ever more monopolized by the top one percent every year, a perfectly appropriate and rational response.
A socialist/left-wing talking point.
Or, do you see the fact that 3 individual Americans own more wealth than the bottom half of the country to not be an issue?
For argument's sake, how would this be an issue? Are you arguing that these three individual Americans have come across this distribution of wealth illegitimately/immoral/unethically? And if so, how?
Perhaps they just work 50 million times harder than everyone else.
Wealth is not a function of hard work; wealth is function of commerce generated. Hard work can lead to more commerce, but not necessarily.
But what does that even mean? "Trying to" is as phrase that points to motivation. Please help me understand how you make sense out of claiming that their motivation is to control you're life. What does any politician, who mind you will likely end up a private citizen themselves in the near future subject to the same"government control" you are asserting, get out of it?
Money, given that it's a universal metric for exchanged resources. Each individual is a resource. Controlling you, controls you as a resource.
"I'm not going to let the government tell me what to do"? Because that's what I hear everytime I hear someone talk about government control. We live in a society and societies have rules.
And why do the rules government impose as it concerns my life hold more weight than my own rules? Because it has 2.8 million armed stooges who wear the government's coat of arms?
Everyone wants to be able to take the car to 100 when they're in a hurry, but no one wants to drive on a road where other people are doing 100. That's the cost of living around other people.
If a person's driving 100 miles per hour puts people at risk, then that person will face the consequences of their actions independent of government.
Neither of those is what I did. You made a claim (Fauci said he was science), so I explained why your claim is nonsense (what Fauci actually said was that what he was relaying were the actual findings of science). And I did all that to get to the point... How absurd is it when the right makes health experts to be the bad guy, such that you invent attacks on them having nothing to do with anything they actually did or said?
Fauci appealed to his own authority, and you sought to substantiate it by claiming that he "meant" that his prescriptions were consistent with rigorous scientific standards. If that's what he "meant" then he could have said that himself. But he didn't. Because he was, once again, appealing to his own authority.
And I didn't say anything about democratic choices, you made that up.
Does this distinction really matter? Wouldn't "democratic choices" fall within one's own choices? If they're allegedly "too stupid" to make their own choices, why would they be any "less stupid" when making democratic choices?
The idea behind democracy is that we have our own lives to live.
Democracy is de facto elimination of dissent through majoritarian consensus.
I've got my own profession to study and worry about, so I don't have time to sit around learning about the latest study on the effects of mask wearing on COVID
And yet your ignorance has not stopped you from calling others stupid.
This is why our communities come together to select someone we trust to do the work for us and represent us in that decision making process.
Then your standards of trust leave a lot to be desired. You know what? Let me get your credit card number. I just want to make sure your credit score is where it should be.
Dr. Fauci has been the nation's leading infectious disease expert for decades and has served in both Republican and Democratic administrations.
All irrelevant in verification and the determination of truth.
There is nothing partisan about him,
You don't know that.
you just don't like what he has to say so you take a page out of the Trump playbook and demonize him.
Mentioning Trump's name out of nowhere doesn't help the case that you're not partisan. Though, that doesn't matter much either. All that matters is that you're informed. And to your own admission, you're not.
Following the recommendations of science is not.
Science has no recommendations. It's not a person, despite Fauci's delusions of grandeur.
I’m not making that claim, and neither are the vast majority of people pushing for things like higher taxes on the wealthy. Attacking the system and attacking the people benefiting that system are not the same thing.
And which system is that? Capitalism?
Recessions demonstrate this best. When the economy takes a downturn, the best thing is for everyone to go out and spend. So what does everyone do? Stop spending, thereby causing the economy to crash. Each individual doing what’s best for them individually results in everyone getting screwed.
Modern recessions are not a product of Capitalism. Said recessions are the children of Central Banks and monetary policy. And no, spending to boost aggregate demand is a Keynesian delusion. Even in times of recession, there's some growth. The issue is that the commerce generated in periods of overproduction is not backed by any real capital, leading to rapid deflation. Let me illustrate this with an analogy: say, for example, my cousin comes to me and leaves a set of antiques with me that are worth 500 (note that I have yet to ascribe this number a unit.) My other family members catch wind of this and start leaving their precious items with me. They trust me to secure these items. Now as time goes by, my family spreads out, thereby creating some distance between them and me. Some of my family members would like to part with their precious items in trades, but there's too much distance between us. Rather than carry the bulk of their items, I create certificates which represents the value of their items, and mail it to them. In the advent of these certificates, my family members realized that their trades didn't have to be limited to just their precious items. As long as they can redeem the value of their items through these certificates, they can basically trade anything. This works well until I decide to print certificates regardless of the precious items I've secured. I even boast that I'm able to insure up to 250,000 (note again, that I've yet to ascribe a unit) in value of the precious items secured with me. Now my family members start engaging rampantly in spending and the initiation of contracts. Word gets out that I'm issuing certificates without the sufficient amount of precious items with which I previously secured them. Everyone panics and attempts to redeem the value of these certificates as best they can, even receiving less rather than nothing. Out of fear of losing the value of all of their items, they suspend all spending and initiations of contracts.
Now I ask you: in this analogy, did the problem arise because my family members had the capacity to trade and initiate contracts--even rampantly (Capitalism)? Or did it arise when I decided to issue certificates in spite of my stock of precious items (Expansionary Monetary Policy)? Would you encourage my family members to "spend more" or would you encourage me to re-index my certificates to accurately reflect my stock of precious items? You didn't get screwed over because "individuals were doing what's best for them individually." You got screwed over when the 14th amendment was ratified in 1868 and Franklin Delano Roosevelt eliminated the gold standard in 1933. Why you ask? Because that essentially made the U.S. populace debt-slaves. Instead of the money being redeemable with stocks of Gold, they are now redeemable with taxable human beings. This is the reason you're being encourage to "spend more."
The problem is the system. Especially as technology progresses and continues to interconnect us, capitalism doesn’t cultivate an environment where people are compensated for their contributions, it cultivates monopolization. Bezos didn’t invent the Internet, didn’t invent or make the products he sells, he didn’t pave the roads his products are delivered on. What he did was win the competition of delivery services, and for that he gets all the marbles. And while he takes him his prize, those who collectively contributed every bit as much as he has get scraps. That is what people like myself take issue with.
You soundin' really jelly, my ninja. Tell me something: did Bezos coerce the inventor of the internet, the engineers of the products he sells, road pavers, etc. to help facilitate the commerce his business generates? No? So what more do these people who collectively contributed deserve beyond what was stipulated in the contracts in which they willfully engaged?
We can for example disagree on whether mask mandates are beneficial, but to argue that this is just a power grab or that it will lead to oppression is absurd and it’s ignoring the entire issue at hand.
You're right--the oppression is already here. And it has been for centuries.
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@3RU7AL
Are you familiar with the triangle-shirtwaist fire ?
A one-off incident from a now dead company? Please go on with your outliers and shoehorn them into mainstream. There's actually a lot of people that refuse to buy Nike shoes due to slave labor. People actually pay double price for a fucking useless label "organic" that means absolutely NOTHING.
Are you familiar with:
A) We have to import desperate people to do risky jobs.
B) Employers fight with competing employers to offer benefit packages to retain a workforce.
C) The USA can't even fully staff a McDonald's due to Covid checks.
There's no room for triangles today in a competitive free market.
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@3RU7AL
EVERY SINGLE THING YOU DO IMPACTS OTHER PEOPLE.
Even masturbation?
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@Athias
EVERY SINGLE THING YOU DO IMPACTS OTHER PEOPLE.Even masturbation?
DOES HUMAN ACTION HAVE A CAUSE AND DOES THAT CAUSE ALSO HAVE A CAUSE ?
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@Greyparrot
There's no room for triangles today in a competitive free market.
ONLY BECAUSE OF HEALTH AND SAFETY REGULATIONS
Did you know that it was considered routine for coal miners, railroad workers, and steel mill employees to drop dead from exhaustion on a daily basis?
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@3RU7AL
DOES HUMAN ACTION HAVE A CAUSE AND DOES THAT CAUSE ALSO HAVE A CAUSE ?
Yes, but how does this tie to masturbation?
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@3RU7AL
ONLY BECAUSE OF HEALTH AND SAFETY REGULATIONS
Are you familiar with:
A) We have to import desperate people to do risky jobs.
B) Employers fight with competing employers to offer benefit packages to retain a workforce.
C) The USA can't even fully staff a McDonald's due to Covid checks.
Nothing to do with "Safety" regulations Spanky.
Triangle couldn't even get a SINGLE worker today in unregulated George Floyd square or Chaz.
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@Athias
DOES HUMAN ACTION HAVE A CAUSE AND DOES THAT CAUSE ALSO HAVE A CAUSE ?Yes, but how does this tie to masturbation?
IS MASURBATION A HUMAN ACTION ?
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@Greyparrot
A) We have to import desperate people to do risky jobs.
BECAUSE THE MARKET REFUSES TO COMPENSATE RELATIVE TO RISK
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@3RU7AL
Nothing to do with "Safety" regulations Spanky.
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@Greyparrot
B) Employers fight with competing employers to offer benefit packages to retain a workforce.
BECAUSE THEY JUST FURLOUGHED NEARLY EVERYONE OUT OF PANIC
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@3RU7AL
IS MASURBATION A HUMAN ACTION ?
Yes. So, how does this impact other people?
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@Greyparrot
C) The USA can't even fully staff a McDonald's due to Covid checks.
BECAUSE THE MARKET REFUSES TO COMPENSATE RELATIVE TO LABOR SUPPLY
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@3RU7AL
Nothing to do with "Safety" regulations Spanky.
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@Greyparrot
Nothing to do with "Safety" regulations Spanky.
HEALTH AND SAFETY REGULATIONS CRIPPLE EMPLOYERS ABILITY TO HIRE DESPERATE PEOPLE FOR CHEAP
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@3RU7AL
BECAUSE THE MARKET REFUSES TO COMPENSATE RELATIVE TO RISK
Not true at all. The market typically compensates very well relative to risk. The issue is a substitution effect in the labor market. Wages are being bid down in order to compete with alternative and cheaper methods.
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@3RU7AL
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@Athias
IS MASURBATION A HUMAN ACTION ?Yes. So, how does this impact other people?
YOUR ACTIVITY AND PSYCHOLOGICAL STATE IS SHAPED BY YOUR PREVIOUS INTERACTIONS WITH OTHER HUMANS AND ALSO SHAPES YOUR FUTURE INTERACTIONS WITH OTHER HUMANS (IN BOTH "POSITIVE" AND "NEGATIVE" AND BOTH "NEUTRAL" AND "UNKNOWN" WAYS)