Bill Maher on Obama

Off Topic Politics & World Issues
141

[quote]LIFTICVSMAXIMVS wrote:
quidnunc wrote:
Do you think that all government spending (including, I repeat, free education for the young) is a NET harm to society?

How can something be good for society that is provided by people who are not good at it?
[/quote]
Answer the question: If poor children didn’t get any education at all beyond maybe a year of reading the Catechism (this was the case for most of the world until the late 19th century), would society be better off?

[quote]

And you still haven’t provided any justification for your right to not have your stuff taxed being the one right that trumps all other rights. That’s an extreme position most people reject, so you really need some sort of explanation.

Tell me, if instead of getting paid in money I was paid in a portion of the goods that I helped produce – food, for example, would the government have a right to take that from me? Or is it only justifiable when an income is in terms of money?

If I built my own house with my bare hands does the government have a right to take a piece of that house? Why are the rules different when money is brought into existence and not other goods?

But in short, voluntary society is the only ethical society and since taxes cannot be voluntary they will always be unethical.[/quote]
Yes, being paid in kind is taxable (though often not enforced).

The government would have the right to collect property taxes on your house. In theory, yes, all value-added should be taxed more or less equally, it’s just really impracticable to do this. The fact that the great bulk of transactions are monetary and not barter does indicate that people prefer the convenience of money to the possibility of tax evasion.

Why is a “voluntary society” the only ethical society? Has a voluntary society ever existed? Is achieving a “voluntary society” worth the tremendous rise in human suffering that would result?

If the entirety of human history and society is contrary to your idiosyncratic beliefs, do you maybe think that the problem is with your conceptions of the good, and not with everyone else?

142

[quote]quidnunc wrote:
If the entirety of human history and society is contrary to your idiosyncratic beliefs, do you maybe think that the problem is with your conceptions of the good, and not with everyone else?
[/quote]

I would not call anyone “educated” who is the recipient of “free” schooling – so no, I have to disagree with you that public education is good – you obviously are the recipient of public school and I have to say you are not “educated” in the least.

Education is so much more than being forced to show up to classes being taught by the dregs of society. Public school teachers mostly suck or they would be able to get better paying jobs in the private sector and not require protection in unions.

Just because voluntary society has never totally existed does not mean that it is incapable of existing. It just means there are people like you standing in the way of its existence.

I fail to see how voluntary society would be bad for anyone – especially, those poor souls that would not have the teat of the state from which to suckle. They would be forced to go to work or they would starve – unless they could convince other people (like you) to take care of them. For the most part the poor would disappear and charity would be able to handle the few others who are poor by accident (as opposed to those who are made poor by coercion and government).

143

[quote]orion wrote:
pittbulll wrote:
orion wrote:
pittbulll wrote:
orion wrote:
pittbulll wrote:
Rockscar wrote:
pittbulll wrote:
Aragorn wrote:
pittbulll wrote:
I think we should go full blown socialized medicine

You really aren’t playing with a full deck are you? I really hope your joking and I just missed it.

Let’s leave aside whether it’s even a good idea or not (it’s not). Let’s just talk about money. There is no fucking way on God’s green earth that we can afford that right now or for the foreseeable future. That amount of spending is simply not feasible.

You are allowed to disagree, just my opinion. I believe the Ins. Companies are making too much profit on the whole thing as we know it. You do know where that profit comes from?

Profit drives free market business. It provides jobs. Are you promoting unemployment? Are you promoting spending on credit?

Is profit evil to you?

Profit is the excess of the money spent

The excess of what?

what the costs were

But at the same time they drive costs down in order to stay competitive?

Surely there must come a point in time where that competition more than sets off that initial disadvantage?

no they drive down cost by denying claims

But if they deny too much claims people choose a different insurance company.

Government programs also deny claims.

[/quote]

I think the free market has alot to offer , but in this situation fairness to customers is not one of thegood things.

144

[quote]LIFTICVSMAXIMVS wrote:
quidnunc wrote:

I would not call anyone “educated” who is the recipient of “free” schooling – so no, I have to disagree with you that public education is good – you obviously are the recipient of public school and I have to say you are not “educated” in the least.
[/quote]
This is all very fashionable (incidentally, I went to one or the two or three best public high schools in the country, thought I’m at a private university now) but it’s nonsense. Someone who goes to an average public school will learn how to read and write at a good level, math through maybe trigonometry, and a smattering of history and politics and science. They’re suited for most jobs, especially if they go on to college. Someone with NO EDUCATION AT ALL can do manual labor, and that’s about it. Think - please, think, just for a moment - what the impact would be on the economy if suddenly the majority of the population was completely incapable of even being a cashier. The economy would collapse as these new simpletons filled up the workforce. That’s bad, okay?

In my senior year of high school I had teachers who were graduates of Princeton, Harvard, Smith (plus a PHD at CUNY grad school), Cooper Union, MIT, Michigan, Oxford (as a Marshall scholar), and Wellesley. Nice try. And again, you’re comparing our imperfect system to NO EDUCATION AT ALL. Laughable.

[quote]
I fail to see how voluntary society would be bad for anyone – especially, those poor souls that would not have the teat of the state from which to suckle. They would be forced to go to work or they would starve – unless they could convince other people (like you) to take care of them. For the most part the poor would disappear and charity would be able to handle the few others who are poor by accident (as opposed to those who are made poor by coercion and government).[/quote]

You’re genocidal. You admit that millions of people would “disappear” and that’s a good thing. You’re garbage.

145

[quote]quidnunc wrote:
In my senior year of high school I had teachers who were graduates of Princeton, Harvard, Smith (plus a PHD at CUNY grad school), Cooper Union, MIT, Michigan, Oxford (as a Marshall scholar), and Wellesley. Nice try. And again, you’re comparing our imperfect system to NO EDUCATION AT ALL. Laughable.
[/quote]

This is laughable. Even if this is true, do you think for a moment that this is representative of most public high schools across the country? Hell fucking no!

Sure there might be a couple like here and there like your school, but for the most part the public schools in the country are a shame and an atrocity, especially in poor and inner city areas. There’s a reason California has been trying for years to allow someone to obtain teaching credentials with only a two-year degree. Quality teachers don’t want to work in shit hole public schools. Hell, sub-par teachers don’t want to teach there, so now places like California want to scrape the bottom of the barrel.

146

[quote]LIFTICVSMAXIMVS wrote:
quidnunc wrote:
LIFTICVSMAXIMVS wrote:
quidnunc wrote:
LIFTICVSMAXIMVS wrote:
quidnunc wrote:
You think Lincoln was a tyrant? You think every government that has ever existed was a tyranny? You’re really hard to take seriously.

Lincoln was most certainly a very bad man. He was a democratically elected tyrant for sure – just like many of them are.

Okay, you’re a crackpot. Thanks for clearing that up.

What do you call a person who murders over half a million people because he does not want them to have their own freedom?

I am afraid I am not the crackpot but rather you are because you, like many others, willingly swallow all the “educational” propaganda you’ve been fed.

There are acceptable reasons to rebel against a lawfully elected government. Defending chattel slavery is not one of them.

You think Lincoln cared about slavery? That was his scapegoat to kill southerners.

Slavery was abolished by the free market and not government all over the world. Why was murder necessary in the US to change something that sound economic reasoning ultimately leads to anyway?[/quote]

  1. The idea that Lincoln launched the Civil War to kill Southerners with emancipation of slaves as a pretext is both bizarre and untrue.

  2. Furthermore it’s disingenuous to even imply that the Civil War was not about slavery.

  3. To portray The Confederates as champions for freedom is to elide what they wanted the freedom to do (namely curtail the freedoms of others).

147

[quote]quidnunc wrote:
dhickey wrote:
quidnunc wrote:

Which direction are we headed? Towards more gov’t control over means of production or less? More freedom (economic or otherwise) or less?

Is the gov’t involved in the birth of our children?
Is the gov’t involved in the raising of our children?
Is the gov’t involved in the education of our children?
Is the gov’t involved in the employment of our children?
Is the gov’t involved in health care?
Is the gov’t involved in what kind of house we can build and live in?
Is the gov’t involved in the food we eat?
Is the gov’t involved in the services we chose to buy or sell?
Does the the gov’t take more of our income than any other expenditure does?
Is the gov’t involved in our retirement?
Is the gov’t involved in our death?

Pretty much every government that has ever existed since the creation of writing has involved itself in all or most of these things. If you think that Hammurabi, Lincoln, Charlemagne, Harding, Tutankhamen, Henry VIII and Cleopatra were all socialists, then the term really becomes kind of meaningless.

[/quote]

Miserable attempt at a dodge.

The conditions above can describe many economic or political models. They are not indicative of a capitalist republic with limited gov’t power.

148

[quote]valiance. wrote:
LIFTICVSMAXIMVS wrote:
quidnunc wrote:
LIFTICVSMAXIMVS wrote:
quidnunc wrote:
LIFTICVSMAXIMVS wrote:
quidnunc wrote:
You think Lincoln was a tyrant? You think every government that has ever existed was a tyranny? You’re really hard to take seriously.

Lincoln was most certainly a very bad man. He was a democratically elected tyrant for sure – just like many of them are.

Okay, you’re a crackpot. Thanks for clearing that up.

What do you call a person who murders over half a million people because he does not want them to have their own freedom?

I am afraid I am not the crackpot but rather you are because you, like many others, willingly swallow all the “educational” propaganda you’ve been fed.

There are acceptable reasons to rebel against a lawfully elected government. Defending chattel slavery is not one of them.

You think Lincoln cared about slavery? That was his scapegoat to kill southerners.

Slavery was abolished by the free market and not government all over the world. Why was murder necessary in the US to change something that sound economic reasoning ultimately leads to anyway?

  1. The idea that Lincoln launched the Civil War to kill Southerners with emancipation of slaves as a pretext is both bizarre and untrue.

  2. Furthermore it’s disingenuous to even imply that the Civil War was not about slavery.

  3. To portray The Confederates as champions for freedom is to elide what they wanted the freedom to do (namely curtail the freedoms of others).[/quote]

You are arguing with a man who believes that child labor is not only good, but necessary.

Keep that in mind when you try to make sense of his absolute horshit.

149

[quote]quidnunc wrote:
LIFTICVSMAXIMVS wrote:
quidnunc wrote:
LIFTICVSMAXIMVS wrote:
quidnunc wrote:
You think Lincoln was a tyrant? You think every government that has ever existed was a tyranny? You’re really hard to take seriously.

Lincoln was most certainly a very bad man. He was a democratically elected tyrant for sure – just like many of them are.

Okay, you’re a crackpot. Thanks for clearing that up.

What do you call a person who murders over half a million people because he does not want them to have their own freedom?

I am afraid I am not the crackpot but rather you are because you, like many others, willingly swallow all the “educational” propaganda you’ve been fed.

There are acceptable reasons to rebel against a lawfully elected government. Defending chattel slavery is not one of them.

[/quote]

This just about sums up you knowledge of the republic, lincoln, and civil war. Why don’t you stick to things you know something about? Maybe the SAMA board?

150

[quote]quidnunc wrote:
orion wrote:
quidnunc wrote:
LIFTICVSMAXIMVS wrote:
quidnunc wrote:
LIFTICVSMAXIMVS wrote:
quidnunc wrote:
You think Lincoln was a tyrant? You think every government that has ever existed was a tyranny? You’re really hard to take seriously.

Lincoln was most certainly a very bad man. He was a democratically elected tyrant for sure – just like many of them are.

Okay, you’re a crackpot. Thanks for clearing that up.

What do you call a person who murders over half a million people because he does not want them to have their own freedom?

I am afraid I am not the crackpot but rather you are because you, like many others, willingly swallow all the “educational” propaganda you’ve been fed.

There are acceptable reasons to rebel against a lawfully elected government. Defending chattel slavery is not one of them.

Oh, so why did Lincoln promise them to make slavery permanent if they just stayed with the union?

Could it be that it wasn�?�´t about slavery after all?

Lincoln wanted to both end slavery, which he viewed as a great evil, and to save the country he loved. Like many of the more moderate Republicans (how times have changed!), he was willing to contemplate allowing slavery to continue to exist where it was, provided that the growth of the poison was stopped. But this was too much for the madmen of the South who had convinced themselves that slavery was a “positive good,” and instead they started a war. The changing political realities of the war made it possible to Lincoln to end slavery once and for all, and so he did.

[/quote]

yeah. hundreds of thousands of southern soldiers died defending an institution an extreme majority did not participate in, they did not agree with, an was coming to an end anyway. You know absolutly nothing about this era. Quit commenting on it until you read something other than a school text book or wiki.

151

[quote]malonetd wrote:
quidnunc wrote:
In my senior year of high school I had teachers who were graduates of Princeton, Harvard, Smith (plus a PHD at CUNY grad school), Cooper Union, MIT, Michigan, Oxford (as a Marshall scholar), and Wellesley. Nice try. And again, you’re comparing our imperfect system to NO EDUCATION AT ALL. Laughable.

This is laughable. Even if this is true, do you think for a moment that this is representative of most public high schools across the country? Hell fucking no!

Sure there might be a couple like here and there like your school, but for the most part the public schools in the country are a shame and an atrocity, especially in poor and inner city areas. There’s a reason California has been trying for years to allow someone to obtain teaching credentials with only a two-year degree. Quality teachers don’t want to work in shit hole public schools. Hell, sub-par teachers don’t want to teach there, so now places like California want to scrape the bottom of the barrel.[/quote]

I’m arguing with a guy who literally thinks that receiving an average public education is worse, for various mystical libertarian reasons, than getting no education at all. He also insulted me for going to public school, and I felt like I had a pretty good rejoinder.

152

[quote]dhickey wrote:
quidnunc wrote:
LIFTICVSMAXIMVS wrote:
quidnunc wrote:
LIFTICVSMAXIMVS wrote:
quidnunc wrote:
You think Lincoln was a tyrant? You think every government that has ever existed was a tyranny? You’re really hard to take seriously.

Lincoln was most certainly a very bad man. He was a democratically elected tyrant for sure – just like many of them are.

Okay, you’re a crackpot. Thanks for clearing that up.

What do you call a person who murders over half a million people because he does not want them to have their own freedom?

I am afraid I am not the crackpot but rather you are because you, like many others, willingly swallow all the “educational” propaganda you’ve been fed.

There are acceptable reasons to rebel against a lawfully elected government. Defending chattel slavery is not one of them.

This just about sums up you knowledge of the republic, lincoln, and civil war. Why don’t you stick to things you know something about? Maybe the SAMA board?[/quote]

What sources do you rely on, and do the people writing them have any qualifications? There’s a canard that’s worth repeating here: “People who don’t know anything about the Civil War know it was caused by slavery. People who know about the Civil War know it wasn’t caused by slavery. People who REALLY know about the Civil War know that it was caused by slavery.”

153

[quote]quidnunc wrote:
You admit that millions of people would “disappear” and that’s a good thing.
[/quote]

Do play dumb…or are you not playing.

People are poor by one or a combination of these three options only:

  1. They voluntarily live a life of poverty; such as the religious and students, etc. These people usually live off of charity (or their parents).

  2. They end up poor because of their own dumb actions; such as gamblers, addicts, and “spendoholics”, etc.

  3. They end up poor because of coercion and destruction of property. These are typically the victims of government intervention; such as every person who ever lived under socialism, except the ruling class.

I think you are garbage because you advocate violence as a means to redistribute wealth – see how effective of an argument that is.

154

[quote]FightinIrish26 wrote:

You are arguing with a man who believes that child labor is not only good, but necessary.

Keep that in mind when you try to make sense of his absolute horshit.[/quote]

I have never made such an argument. I merely suggest there are those whom would benefit more from earning an income than using up scarce resources in a class room – this means pretty much every person who will never learn to even read in those fabulous government run schools, for example.

155

[quote]LIFTICVSMAXIMVS wrote:
quidnunc wrote:
You admit that millions of people would “disappear” and that’s a good thing.

Do play dumb…or are you not playing.

People are poor by one or a combination of these three options only:

  1. They voluntarily live a life of poverty; such as the religious and students, etc. These people usually live off of charity (or their parents).

  2. They end up poor because of their own dumb actions; such as gamblers, addicts, and “spendoholics”, etc.

  3. They end up poor because of coercion and destruction of property. These are typically the victims of government intervention; such as every person who ever lived under socialism, except the ruling class.

I think you are garbage because you advocate violence as a means to redistribute wealth – see how effective of an argument that is.[/quote]

If you never educate people, they will lack the skills to get a decent job, so they will never escape poverty. You are advocating doing just that.

And you STILL haven’t explained why you think that taxes are unjust. You have a fetishistic devotion to the the idea that a legitimate state collecting uniform taxes to provide public goods is a bad thing, but you don’t seem to realize that you can’t just assert this forever in lieu of an argument.

And “violence redistributing wealth” - police empowered by a democratically elected government fighting tax evasion - is perfectly just and effective. This is why Americans are better off than Andamese Islanders, and why modern mixed economies have far less poverty, far longer life expectancies and far more educated populations than (say) 1840s England.

156

[quote]LIFTICVSMAXIMVS wrote:
FightinIrish26 wrote:

You are arguing with a man who believes that child labor is not only good, but necessary.

Keep that in mind when you try to make sense of his absolute horshit.

I have never made such an argument. I merely suggest there are those whom would benefit more from earning an income than using up scarce resources in a class room – this means pretty much every person who will never learn to even read in those fabulous government run schools, for example.[/quote]

What is the literacy rate in the United States?

157

Honestly I think our current income tax system in the US is not just but taxes are necessary to run a viable country.

158

[quote]limitatinfinity wrote:Have you read Marx?

If not, I suggest you do before commenting further on the vehicle he enumerated.

lim@infinity
[/quote]

Yes I’ve read Marx you fucking dolt, that’s why I’m telling you you’re wrong. Socialism is the collective ownership of the means of production (this is the defining characteristic, and the rest of the criteria which you pulled from the Manifesto that everybody shrieks about are of secondary importance) and , and communism is the theoretical final stage after the disappearance of classes and the state. Simply because two things have characteristics in common does not make them the same thing.

Now, it wouldn’t matter that much if not for the constant cries of socialism on here, when in reality, socialism is the last thing that a ruling class wants.

159

[quote]quidnunc wrote:
Ryan seems to be the only person here who actually knows what socialism is. Maybe this whole debate is just the result of people not knowing terminology?[/quote]

No, it’s just that they like to have a Bad Guy to blame things on, and since the US government spent decades in a (successful) propaganda campaign against “communists” and “socialists,” the knee-jerk anti-socialist programming is still hard-wired in the US population.

160

Read much labor history?