Health Care: Right, Privilege or Responsibility

[Dak]

Way to completely go off course. Your arguement just crashed and burned.....................Who the fuck argued for anarchy? Providing for the common defense and establishing good order and justice has NOTHING to do with rewarding non-productivity.

 

[zabu of nΩd]

Then prove me wrong. I used the exact same fucking argument you've been using this whole time. Why are people any more deserving of government defense than they are of other government services? And why isn't it just as fucking lazy and whiny for people to expect Big Nanny government to protect them from attackers?

 

[Mort Divine]

Do you have an explanation behind why you think that?

I'm of the belief that the purpose of a government is to meet the needs of its citizens, and I do mean that quite literally. Things that are needed to live under acceptable living standards (this IS relative though mind you), so I do think things such as health care, post-secondary education, and other programs that go to benefit the people being government paid/sponsored are a necessity for any government who wants to be part of the 21st century.

I find a common issue that people bring up when they mentions socialism is that LOL WE'LL BECOME RUSSIA OR CHINA, when I think the Scandinavian model is much more likely.

 

[Krigloch the Furious]

So move to Sweden.....

 

[Mort Divine]

fuck off.

 

[The Ozzman]

So move to Sweden.....

fuck off.

 

[Krigloch the Furious]

nice

 

[skeptik]

No you didn't say I couldn't, so you have an attitude of "fuck you" for no reason? (attempting to get you to explain yourself)

Fuck you because you're an idiot. I hope that clarifies what I meant.

Agreement by default when there is no other option other than go somewhere else and pay higher taxes is not exactly justification. We are talking about fixing a problem.

It's the only justification that's required. You are obligated to pay your taxes, and you are obligated to assist the government's governing capabilities and responsibilities by paying your taxes. Part of the government's responsibility includes alleviating issues stemming from injustices inherent in the system in which we function. Therefore, you are obligated to contribute to alleviating issues stemming from injustices inherent in the system in which we function. Whether or not you want this to be true makes no difference as to whether or not it is (and it is).

I don't have to address that because you cannot, through any sane logic, explain how having less than someone else (excluding illegal reasons, as in someone being robbed) is an injustice/ being "wronged".

There is no sane logic to explain how having less than someone else is an injustice, obviously. But I didn't say that, and that's not my argument. I'm talking about injustices, not things that are not injustices. I feel as though I have to actually iterate this for your benefit because it doesn't seem to be getting through to you. Obviously having less money does not mean that there is an injustice involved. But there are many injustices in society which do contribute to certain people being unfairly disadvantaged through no fault of their own, and this is what I'm talking about. The fact of the matter is that, contrary to the American ethos, it is legitimately not possible for many people to "pull themselves up by their bootstraps" because they are discriminated against for myriad reasons. Aside from this, there's also the whole "a society is only as strong as its weakest members" thing but obviously that doesn't fly in a capitalistic society.

Your attitude IS as entitlement attitude. If you consider someone calling you on your bullshit a scare tactic I suggest you grow a pair. I did lol at your attempt at defining entitlement as a "buzzword".

Entitlement is a buzzword, as is "legalized theft" and several others that you've thrown out. I apologize for assuming that you were politically savvy and understood the concept of buzzwords. Entitlement in the pejorative sense is not what I mean. What I'm speaking of is righting wrongs, and in the sense that people are entitled to not being wronged unfairly is as far as my attitude reflects what you want to call entitlement. Also, your second sentence makes no sense. I called you out on using scare tactics and buzzwords; how does that somehow imply that I need to "grow a pair?"

 

[zabu of nΩd]

Property rights apply for everyone though. I guess I'm not understanding you somewhat, but I think property rights are essential for people to actually feel the need to contribute to society.

And I haven't said anything about doing away with property rights entirely. I'm saying that people should be able to keep most of their money, but give some of it to public services. That way, people are still motivated to contribute to society, and at the same time extreme injustice is avoided.

 

[V.V.V.V.V.]

To be fair, the money we give to "public services" is hardly ever spent correctly.

 

[zabu of nΩd]

Yeah it's somewhat inevitable, but since the alternative is abandoning people to a shitty quality of life through no fault of their own, it's still important.

 

[Cythraul]

It's pretty absurd to consider these rights absolutely inviolable.

Really? They're not even rights at all if they're not inviolable. Non-negotiability is constitutive of rights. That's precisely why we assert our rights so strongly in cases where it would be convenient for somebody to violate them.

In light of this, can you explain to me why we should not then weigh these rights according to utility?

Because if I take rights seriously at all then I can't regard them as capable of being weighted like this. What I said above should make that clear.

If we're not doing everything in our capacity to maximise utility in the world, then what are our efforts for?

I certainly do not regard it as the state's obligation to maximize utility. I certainly don't regard it as my obligation either. There are a lot of ends to which one might devote their energies. Why in the world should I be beholden to the herd in the sense of being obligated to maximize utility? Why should the state? And how is the state in any position to not only tell me to what ends I need to devote myself, but to use threat of force to make me pursue those ends? You and I must be living on two completely different moral planets, because I find your ideology degrading.

Maybe maximization of utility is what some people's efforts are for. Maybe certain people have had these sorts of ideas pounded into their heads so much that they simply can't conceive of what else our institutions could be for. For the moment I do not really know what else to say about this.

 

[Cythraul]

Of the presumed rights we've been discussing - life, freedom, safety, and property - the right to property is the only one which is not in the best interest of society as a whole.

All of those rights are established by the same considerations, namely that their violation is a violation of autonomy and self-ownership. The best way to show that something is not a right is to show that its violation is not a violation of autonomy and self-ownership. On this sort of view, the fact that acting in accordance with a certain right is not in everybody's best interest, ex hypothesi, doesn't matter. Look, property rights are, on a basic level, in everybody's interest. They're the sorts of things that proscribe actions such as my taking a hobo's sweater without his consent.

A world in which everyone's life, freedom and safety are protected is a world which virtually everyone finds desirable. A world in which everyone's right to property is protected is only desirable for people who have enough property to live comfortably.

That's a weird thing to say. I thought it was obvious that protecting everybody's property rights is desirable for everybody in a very real sense. It's just that some people don't have as much, and so the state of affairs is not maximally desirable. And so this entails that we're allowed to be cavalier about property rights when it suits our ends?

We've already established that having property does not correspond to deserving it, so I see no basis for serving the interest of only this fraction of society.

You're confused. An individual, A, not being deserving of x does not entail that it's right to take x away from A without A's consent. Some guy may have decided to give me $5 for no reason at all other than to get rid of it, and thus I in a certain sense didn't deserve the $5, but that does not entail that it's ok for some other guy to come over and take it from me without my consent. It's only entailed if I had violated the first guy's rights in order to acquire the $5, in which case the other guy is justified (provided that it's to correct the injustice). I really do not see how the fact that the amount of money somebody has is in a certain sense arbitrary from a moral point of view entails that property rights are arbitrary from a moral point of view.

 

[The Ozzman]

I want to buy Cythraul a beer. He articulates my views much better than I ever could.

 

[zabu of nΩd]

I certainly do not regard it as the state's obligation to maximize utility. I certainly don't regard it as my obligation either. There are a lot of ends to which one might devote their energies. Why in the world should I be beholden to the herd in the sense of being obligated to maximize utility? Why should the state? And how is the state in any position to not only tell me to what ends I need to devote myself, but to use threat of force to make me pursue those ends? You and I must be living on two completely different moral planets, because I find your ideology degrading.

Maybe maximization of utility is what some people's efforts are for. Maybe certain people have had these sorts of ideas pounded into their heads so much that they simply can't conceive of what else our institutions could be for. For the moment I do not really know what else to say about this.

I'm going to hand-pick this part of your responses for rebuttal for now, as I really don't have much time these days to devote too much attention to this debate.

I can't help but notice that you do not give any reason for why government should exist. I know you may have acknowledged this, but for something that's so central to this debate (i.e. how can we decide what a government's policies should be if we don't know why the government exists), I think this is something we're going to have to reach a conclusion on.

It seems fundamentally intuitive to me that a government's duty is to serve the common interests of its people. If the government is only there to serve the interests of some of its subjects, then there's no reason for the rest of its subjects to obey that government.

That said, one thing that virtually everyone is interested in is having an opportunity to succeed if they make a reasonable effort to. If you had the ability to choose the country you're born in, why would you pick one where you could be born into a poor family and live a miserable life while having almost no opportunity for social advancement? Even if the odds were slightly in favor of you not being born into that situation, the disadvantage of being born poor would far outweigh the benefit of being born well-off and having maybe 5% more money because there were no public services.*

That kind of situation seems like a no-brainer to me, and I daresay that given how ubiquitous public services are in developed countries, anyone who would favor a country without public services in the situation I described above is surely in a minority.

So if I may assume that most people would prefer living in a world with public services if they had the choice (which appears to be a safe assumption), then that's a pretty strong case for public services being a common interest for most people, and therefore the government is justified in providing public services.

As I've said, I fully understand the need to reward people of extraordinary talent, but you can certainly accomplish that without having a system that is hostile toward the disadvantaged. If anything, public services most likely result in more overall achievements for a society because it almost certainly does more to enable talented people from poor families than it does to hinder talented people from well-off families.

* Note: I use "public services" throughout the post in a sense that includes things like education and health care.

 

[Cythraul]

I'm going to hand-pick this part of your responses for rebuttal for now, as I really don't have much time these days to devote too much attention to this debate.

I can't help but notice that you do not give any reason for why government should exist. I know you may have acknowledged this, but for something that's so central to this debate (i.e. how can we decide what a government's policies should be if we don't know why the government exists), I think this is something we're going to have to reach a conclusion on.

It seems fundamentally intuitive to me that a government's duty is to serve the common interests of its people. If the government is only there to serve the interests of some of its subjects, then there's no reason for the rest of its subjects to obey that government.

That said, one thing that virtually everyone is interested in is having an opportunity to succeed if they make a reasonable effort to. If you had the ability to choose the country you're born in, why would you pick one where you could be born into a poor family and live a miserable life while having almost no opportunity for social advancement? Even if the odds were slightly in favor of you not being born into that situation, the disadvantage of being born poor would far outweigh the benefit of being born well-off and having maybe 5% more money because there were no public services.*

That kind of situation seems like a no-brainer to me, and I daresay that given how ubiquitous public services are in developed countries, anyone who would favor a country without public services in the situation I described above is surely in a minority.

So if I may assume that most people would prefer living in a world with public services if they had the choice (which appears to be a safe assumption), then that's a pretty strong case for public services being a common interest for most people, and therefore the government is justified in providing public services.

As I've said, I fully understand the need to reward people of extraordinary talent, but you can certainly accomplish that without having a system that is hostile toward the disadvantaged. If anything, public services most likely result in more overall achievements for a society because it almost certainly does more to enable talented people from poor families than it does to hinder talented people from well-off families.

* Note: I use "public services" throughout the post in a sense that includes things like education and health care.

Those are good points. My view is that the only state that's justified is a minimal state. That is, I think government should only exist to protect the rights of its citizens, and nothing more. I don't think we also need a fucking welfare state on top of all that. I'm not trying to brush difficulties under the rug here; I'm well aware that if I want to be consistent, it might be difficult to justify anything resembling a government ordinarily conceived. As far as the point about nearly everybody desiring something like at least a minimal welfare state, well I'll just say that the fact that most people want some certain thing does not justify the state's doing something that is, ordinarily conceived, morally illegitimate to some other people in the name of it; I mean, I know there's at least some of us out there who don't care for the idea of a welfare state. But hey, that's why Jesus invented the concept of separatism for the rest of us folks.

 

[zabu of nΩd]

Not sure if you still want to continue with this Cythraul, but I'm curious to know how you define "right", and what rights you think people have.