I Totally Support the Occupy Movement...Follow

Yup. So saying you must work super hard or DIE!!! would be a great example.



Equally shocking, you can also provide food and shelter and even medicine to people without them having a right which forces you to do so. You do get that I have not said it's wrong to help other people out at all. My issue is when people label that help a right.



Of course I do. But that kinda doesn't have anything to do with the idea that while it's nice to help those in need, it's a bad idea for a society to adopt a system in which those needs must be provided for by law. It leads to lazy snots running around in parks insisting that they have the right to force other people to pay for whatever they want. Free education is a right too? How far does this train get from the station before you realize it's headed over a cliff?




How about we lay off the assumptions about why they can't work, ok? The issue isn't with whether we can provide for those people who are in need, but with whether they have a "right" to have that help provided. I get that this is a subtle point which might just fly right over some people's heads, but I think *why* we do something is just as important as *what* we do.



Of course it's "fair". That sucks, but that's nature. Is it fair that the slow guy gets eaten by the lion? Is it fair if an entire village starves because of a drought? It's not about fair. The problem is that we've lived in a western world with plenty for so many generations that we have forgotten that the natural world usually sucks. Bad things happen. The fact that we're able to prevent those bad things from happening for most people most of the time is a wonderful thing.


But let's not pretend that anyone has a right to have those things. You earn what you have in life. That's "fair". The fair result would be for the person who doesn't work to starve to death. But fortunately for most people, we don't apply rigid rules of fairness. We give people breaks. We help them out when they are in need. You have this assumption that if we don't do this because it's a right, that we wouldn't do it at all. I challenge that assumption. I believe we can and do help people, but not because they have a right to make us do it, but because it's the right thing to do.


You honestly assume that me saying that no one has a right to force me to provide them free food and shelter means I'm not willing to do it anyway? You have really failed to understand me then.




Again, I suspect you are conflating "fair" with "a good outcome". They aren't the same thing. Fair means that the rules are applied equally for everyone. So if I must earn my food, so must everyone else. It's "unfair" to provide free food for those who are hungry, and housing for those who are homeless and medicine for those who are sick but can't afford it. But that doesn't mean that we can't be unfair to people in this way. And morally, we *should* be. But that's a choice we make. It should never be an expectation of the recipient.

Edited, Nov 17th 2011 6:25pm by gbaji

It's a shame you're not even useful as an idiot, varus2.

lolwut?

'Tard.

and in my capitalist society we provide food shelter clothing medical care to anyone. Every citizen in Canada has a right to free health care, they have a right to affordable housing, they have a right to procurring food. They have a right to basic life necessities. The people of this country pay for all of it via taxes or charity.

Those are all basic rights, at least in my country, and surprisingly most other capitalist nations as well. Including yours.

No. I said that if you cannot earn enough to feed yourself, you cannot demand that others provide food for you by claiming it as a right. That's not the same thing. Whether you die or not depends on your ability to ask people to help you and their willingness to do so. And guess what? We're usually pretty darn willing to help those in need. But, as I said before, not because they have a right to that help, but because it's the right thing to do.

Shocking concept. Too bad it's being lost somewhere along the line with a growing sense of entitlement.




You honestly don't know what a right is? I'll give you a hint: Those aren't rights. They're benefits. They are nice things we agree to provide for people. Sigh...



Without the profit motive generated by allowing people to keep what they earn, we wouldn't be able to afford to end world hunger. Bit of a catch-22, isn't it?



Interesting that you assume that. Wrong, but interesting. You are aware that charitable giving is pretty directly proportional to how capitalistic the society is, right? So it's really more like the opposite of what you say. See, because in societies with social safety nets, you'd walk right past a hungry person because you pay your taxes and they could always get government help if they needed it. The systems you prefer foster a lack of care about our fellow human beings. Those who promote them always claim that they do so with the best intentions to help the poor and the needy, but those systems often just give us an excuse to *not* help others out. We've abrogated our responsibility to our fellow man to the government. We paid our money and are absolved of having to take further action.


You think the OWS folks care a hell of a lot about their fellow man? They're some of the least respectful and caring people I've seen. Selfish twits really. But they're what socialism breeds.




If I'm going to do it anyway, then there's no need for the legislation, isn't there? Why the hard on for big government to do everything for you? Some of us prefer to take responsibility for our own lives, our own decisions, our own actions, and our own outcomes. And yes, that includes the right to choose for ourselves when we help people in need and what form that help takes (and yes, that's a actual right).



You're kidding right? Um... That's not what fair means. I get that you want it to mean that, so that you can use a word which means something else, and which has weight attached to it to support a completely different argument, but that's kinda ridiculous isn't it? Why use the word at all if you know that's not what it means?

You do know that's not what it means, right? And it doesn't make you a good person to misuse a word. It makes you a dishonest person.

If you're going to meme, meme right.

Who is demanding. I'm saying you have a responsibility, not that the other person has the right to demand something. You have the responsibility and quite frankly you should be happy to do it. Which apparently you are. So, if you're going


You not being a surf is a benefit. There's nothing intrinsic in human nature that stops us from dominating one another like other primates do.


Any idea on the raw amount of food which is wasted every year because it's not paid for by consumers? Here's a hint: More than enough to feed everyone in the world. So no, not a catch-22 at all.


Interesting you assume that. Would you care to provide a citation for an economic study which shows any of this? Fact is I know for a fact I've done more to help my fellow countrymen than you will ever do in your life. And you've got a good 15 year head start on me, if I remember right.


Your corporate shill is showing. I had figured this thread had since derailed and moved on somewhat. As far as OWS goes, I agree with a lot of what their ideals are, yes. I don't really care what they're like on a personal level. Neither do you, really. At least, you don't care that a lot of racists are republicans, because that doesn't stop you supporting the party's ideals, right?



You've got every right to take responsibility for your own life, gbaji. Like I said above, it's not always possible for 100% for a population to work. There need to be safety net programmes in place to help those who can't work. As I also said above but you refused to address apparently, is the fact that other legislation can be put in place to prevent abuse of these systems. I also said they don't always work, but if you can point to any system that always works I'll be surprised.

And no, once again, "free market enterprise" does not always work. As is evident from the current global crisis. I suppose you refuse to accept that point too, eh?




Maybe your definition, but I remember one of the rules about how you debate is we're allowed to make up definitions. Besides, I like mine better.

If they'd rather die, then they had better do it and decrease the surplus population. Good night, gentlemen.

It's a wordplay trap though. If we accept the use of rights as mere social construct (ie: whatever things we think people should have at a given point in time), then it should be perfectly acceptable for someone to argue that they want to infringe the "right" to free food, or housing, or medical care. But if one were to do that, you can damn well bet that the response would be shock at how someone would not care about rights (this time using the word in the liberty context).

I will go a step further and argue that this is exactly why people label sets of benefits "rights" in the first place. It's done so that anyone who disagrees can be attacked on the "you want to strip us of our rights" counter. But that argument requires that one shift from one meaning to another and is innately fallacious.

When you call something a right, you are demanding it. Because in our society, rights are things which we're not supposed to infringe. When you defend social spending on the grounds that people have a right to food, shelter, and health care, you are demanding that others pay for it. Aren't you?



First off, it's "serf" (I'm assuming you mean "peasant" and not "waves near a shoreline"). I was like "whut?" when I read that sentence. And I think you don't understand what I'm talking about. The outcome isn't about rights or benefits. How you get there is. You are correct that if someone is dominating you and preventing you from succeeding, then that's a violation of rights and we should act to prevent that. But when you move past that and start requiring that others improve your lot in life, that act is not about protecting a right, but providing a benefit.

If someone's actions prevent you from doing something, then your rights are being infringed. It's really that simple. Taking away obstacles which prevent people from earning success themselves is a protection of rights. Giving someone some measure of success is not. It's frankly amazing to me how many people in modern western societies actually don't understand this.



Yes, it is. That food wouldn't exist without a profit motive. It certainly wouldn't magically transport itself around the world to hungry people. I think you really don't understand the issue at all.




While I suppose we could argue about the relationship between capitalism and giving, it's certainly true that the US population gives more to charity than any other nation:

here, here, and here's a longer explanation.

Remember, I was speaking about people giving money in the absence of government funded programs. My assumption is that people will give less if they believe that their taxes are already paying for food, housing, medicine, etc for those in need. So maybe it's more like an indirect relationship between social spending and private giving? At least among western nations anyway. Point being that there is a clear and massive difference between giving in the US and giving in other countries.


Why would you think otherwise? I didn't bother to provide a source for this because I honestly didn't believe anyone wasn't aware of this or would bother trying to contest it.



You're really going to try to pull that? How about we compare the condemnation of racism at Tea Party events to condemnation of violence and antisemitism at OWS events? You're tossing out an unfair stereotype that is not true about conservatives while ignoring very real and blatant violence and hate speech going on by the liberal activists. But that really doesn't surprise me.





Which is a benefit for those people, not a right. The moment you say those people have a right to those programs, you are requiring that the rest of us pay for them instead of asking us to do so out of the goodness of our hearts. That's the distinction I really think you don't understand.



I didn't address this because it doesn't address my issue. I'm not saying we *can't* provide for those in need. I disagree with arguments saying that we should do so because those in need have a "right" to the assistance. It's the rhetoric used to argue for it that is wrong.



Of course. The current global crisis did not result from a free market. While I freely admit that this is more complex than simplistic labels like "free market", it's a pretty easy argument to make that if the US government hadn't been involved in bundling subprime loans on the market at ever increasing rates in order to fulfill the very sort of social assistance goals that you praise, and had not in fact created significant leverage on banks to buy those securities on the back end, and then acted to shield the entities involved in doing this (fanny and freddie) from investigation, we would not have had a housing bubble (or at least it would not have been nearly as severe). You really could not have picked a worse example.





Not make up definitions, but that if there are multiple meanings for a word, you get to pick which one you're using (as long as you are consistent). But you're just making up a meaning entirely.

I don't think Gbaji sees it happening like that, though. He seems strangely idealistic in his belief that private donations will cover those.

ya I <3 my socialist country.