Must concede to gbajiFollow

Your repeated attempts to compare your village to actual cities notwithstanding, I'm sure.

That's more his thing, isn't it?

My former high school had nifty auto simulators for Driver's Ed. Which only strikes me as noteworthy because my older son's high school has no such things which I found surprising (since we had 'em, after all). They still have the usual one day a week "car time" as well so it's not as though they don't need simulators because they all have real cars.

Literally every developed nation is a mixed economy with significant 'socialist' interference in the market - even somewhere like Singapore (for example, enormous interference in the housing market). Your little libertarian daydream is the joke. Let's compare the wealth of the average stateless person with that of the average Norwegian, shall we? ****, it's not looking so good for Ron Paul.

You mean the 3 or 4 nations that have higher HDI or quality of life ratings? Kinda forgetting the rest of the worlds nations that rank much much lower than the US, aren't you? Or how about we look at per capita GDP? Not much correlation to socialism (or democracy for that matter) on that one.

Great, I'm glad we agree that socialism doesn't negatively impact GDP. Good to get that out of the way. Can you now explain why you would prefer a system that leads to abject suffering and often times, actual death, instead of one that provides more basic services? Keep in mind you've neatly eliminated any economic argument. There must be a moral reason that poor people need to suffer, no?

Sorry. I wasn't clear. I was saying that Socialism is *not* correlated with high GDP (nations with higher per capita GDP than the US). That does not mean that it doesn't negatively impact GDP. In fact, it kinda suggests that it does. Of course, to determine this, we'd first have to decide which nations qualify as "socialist", and perhaps even rank them based on the degree of socialism (and we'd have to establish a standard for this), then we'd have to determine other criteria unrelated to the economic system in use (like resources available to the nation), and then we could compare the rankings and see if there's a pattern.

Or, of course, we can just shout "you're wrong" at each other across the interwebs.



Uh... Yeah.



Well, ignoring the fact that you haven't established at all that socialism acts to reduce suffering and death, I'd ask you in return why people think we should preserve natural habitats for animals rather than just putting them all in zoos. I mean, think about how much less suffering and death animals in a zoo have to deal with. Right? Socialism is like a zoo, for people!



Interesting argument from someone who just a few posts back was deriding people who didn't live in a rich neighborhood with nice schools that could afford 1500 seat stadium seating theaters on campus. Moral reasons indeed!

I'll also point out that you haven't established that poor people suffer less as socialism increases. You claim this is true, but looking around the world, or even just the western developed world, we still see ghettos and crime and poverty and pain and suffering. What socialism seems to do best is keep those dirty poor people away from the rich people and to make sure that they can't ever rise out of their poverty. They may suffer a bit less, but you've made their condition more or less permanent by creating ghettos for them to live their lives in. And when those ghettos fill with crime and drugs and suffering, you scratch your heads wondering why these people aren't using all that free food and free housing and free health care to live wonderful and happy lives.

People are most happy when they have the greatest freedom to live their own lives. This means allowing them to take their own choices, and reap their own reward if they make good choices, and yes, suffer when they make poor ones. People in cages, no matter how well fed and housed and cared for medically, are not happy. We can debate the degree to which socialism may reduce direct physical suffering, and therefore the moral implications of that choice, but you have to balance that very questionable assumption against the well established moral harm of reducing the liberty of the people you govern.

IMO, that far outweighs any benefit socialism might produce.

A person working for slave wages is not free. Their cage is at least as real as if they were subsisting on the dole.

If the wage is based on the value of their labor (ie: an actual free market valuation of the labor), then it's not "slave wages". There is no cage involved. They are free to pursue actions that will increase the value of their labor and thus improve their condition. Not only that, but this form of valuation creates a strong incentive to do just that, resulting in higher odds that the person will improve their condition out of poverty over time. The dole creates a slave like state because by providing an outcome out of proportion to the value of one's labor, it significantly reduces the incentive to increase the value of labor, which increases the odds that the person will remain poor.

Poverty in a free market is almost always temporary. Poverty in a socialism is often a lifestyle. That's the true cage.

As opposed to the philosophy that assumes that poor people are stupid and can't succeed if given the chance, so we should just subsidize their poverty to make them more comfortable? When a wealthy liberal supports welfare they are saying that they don't think those people are as skilled or intelligent or capable as they are, and thus can't succeed as they did. Right? What makes you different from them? Yet you are willing to pay higher taxes to provide benefit to them on the assumption that they "can't succeed". But you did. So you must think they are inferior to you.

You've got it completely backwards.

Funny enough, we had this same conversation almost exactly a year ago with you making the same strawman that I thought people couldn't raise themselves without government help because they were dumb. This was also the same thread where you hilariously suggested that the reason I didn't go on welfare was "inertia".

More things change...

As long as they're making the choices you decide are good choices people can have all the freedom they want!

Yes, "opposed to". We're talking about a choice. A or B. The correct way to make that choice is to compare the two side by side. The motivation to just look at one by itself usually means that your choice doesn't do well when compared to the other.




It speaks volumes about how weak your position is that you are actually arguing that it's somehow 'unfair' to have it compared directly to mine. Wow. Why not just admit you're wrong and move on?



See above for the motivation behind that.



Interesting that instead of arguing that I was wrong about my assessment of your position and the philosophy behind it, you've just attacked me for daring to state a criticism of said position. That's funny as hell. Super telling.

Why are you so afraid to defend your position?