I'm with Silk here.

If you were talking to me, I meant about Ron Paul.

SilkWizard wrote:

Do you see the road that your beliefs take you down?

And your beliefs don't take you down any road, because no one is willing to pay for them when everyone else uses them more.

DarkView wrote:

And your beliefs don't take you down any road, because no one is willing to pay for them when everyone else uses them more.

Actually, you bring up a good example: roads.

Let's say I own a factory and I need to ship my goods via semi-truck accross the country. Therefore, it's in my best interest to put money into developing and maintaining interstate highways. Lots of factories and businesses use semi-trucks to transport their goods, so there are other industrialists who do the same.

It just so happens that a lower-income family who needs to commute from city-to-city now has a well maintained highway to travel on without having to put a dime towards it. My wealth, my success, and my selfish interests are benefitting them.

A coffee shop off the highway has a vested interest in making sure the side roads that lead to their shop are well maintained. Because of this, people can now travel on the side roads, and customers can get to the coffee shop.

So what if they can't afford medical care. And because of their illness, they can't afford to work? I don't know how your welfare organisations work, but I'm fairly sure that a person in that situation can still be declined financial aid.

How are they expected to survive without the aid of others?

Tiberath wrote:

So what if they can't afford medical care. And because of their illness, they can't afford to work?

Private charity. There are plenty of charitable organizations that help people in emergencies... and the people who provide the funding for such organizations do so by choice, not by force.

How are they expected to survive without the aid of others?

Do you count on others to ensure your survival? Isn't your personal survival your personal responsibility? Is it my obligation to make sure you stay alive and healthy?

F34R wrote:

silk you're being an idiot tbh, i agree with the ron paul thing, but you're going to get taxed no matter what. everybody will get taxed. everybody will have health care

Oh yeah? So who is going to provide that health care for you? How are they going to afford it?

"Oh, somebody else will! They'll figure out a way to do it... somehow."

Funnily enough, Silk, 'socialised' healthcare and education (Hereby referred to as 'normal') do provide you with benefits. Many benefits.

Normal medical care dramatically reduces the impact of epidemics and other such things - because the people who would normally carry the disease everywhere because they couldn't get treated for it and couldn't afford to be vaccinated are now capable of getting proper medical care. And epidemics are a damn serious concern in the modern world, considering the massively increased density of living.

Normal medical systems increase the quality of medical care nation-wide - you'd be far, far, far better off getting a nasty disease in any non-American first-world country. Yes, even considering the British problem with queues. Yes, even after John Howard gutted the Australian medical system as much as he could. If you'd prefer hospitals that are trying to get the largest profit possible, rather then hospitals operating for the public good, be my guest. I'm sure you'll appreciate their new cost-cutting exercises.

Decent public education systems dramatically reduce the rate of crime. It's also good for the economy, for the progress of science, and general societal health.

There's a very simple way of seeing this: Look at every other first-world country in the world, then look at America. American public hospitals do not exist. American public education is crap (What you call 'college', we call 'The last two years of high-school'. That's right - almost every Australian is a college graduate!)

The result? You are the only first-world country with third-world rates of preventable diseases, third-world rates of scientific literacy, third-world religious fundamentalism, and a third-world gap between rich and poor.

The cause is very simple: The complete disregard of the human rights of others.

The vast majority of the poor in America (Oh, that's another one - third-world rates of poverty) are poor because of poor circumstances. If you were born to a family that has been unemployed for three generations, went to a public school for all of your life, and couldn't afford even the joke that cheap American tertiary education is, what hope could you have for a better life? Sure, you could do well, theoretically - but it'd be damned unlikely. You do hear about the odd obscenely rich man or woman who was once an obscenely poor man or woman - but you also hear about their ambition and determination to succeed. The bar is so much higher for the poor. You can't save up for a rainy day if you can barely survive day-to-day.

Morgan Spurlock (The guy who did Supersize Me) did something like this - he tried to survive for thirty days on minimum wage. They did everything they could to cut costs, Morgan was working two jobs and his wife was working one, and they still came out roughly $500 in debt - because his wife got sick thanks to the conditions they were being forced to live in due to the lack of money.

Basically, if America had normal healthcare and education systems - just like every first-world nation on Earth - they wouldn't be the second-world nation they are today - first world economy, third world underclass.

EDIT:

Heck, you even get punished for making more money, as you pay an increased percentage.

Oh, hell yeah. Instead, we should have an inverse sliding tax scheme, in which the poor are taxed more, to encourage them to get rich!

Jp: I already addressed most of what you talked about, but I'll hit a few points.

First off, you are clearly biased against the United States... and I'm assuming that you haven't spent much time here (if any), which would account for you lack of understanding about how things actually are over here.

Have you ever asked yourself why the United States is the most successful country in the world? Because it is the most moral country.

The United States was founded upon the premise that a man has a right to his own life, which entails the right to the pursuit of happiness. It is a country founded upon rational self-interest and personal achievement; a country where every man is able to write his own destiny, to create his own success, and where he doesn't have to pay alms to the kings or mystics.

Of course it was the United States that changed the world with the industrial revolution. Of course it is the United States that has led an era of achievement and technological advancement unlike anything the world has ever seen. Of course we are now the richest and most powerful nation in the world.

If you are looking for problems in the United States, you'll find plenty of them-- and the root of these problems is socialism.

Quite frankly, a lot of public education here is amazing... but much of it isn't. Why? Because teachers have no incentive to do well... and the most capable of teachers are paid on exactly the same scale as the least capable. Schools don't receive proper funding... and many times don't deserve to.

Private education in which schools actually competed for students and were able to pay teachers what they were worth would be a whole different story. The best schools would attract the best teachers, and best students. Schools that weren't succeeding would go out of business; just like any company that was failing.

Health care in the United States is excellent... but again, the problems with the system are all rooted in socialism. A doctor of little ability is paid the same amount as a talented doctor for treating a patient on medicare. Insurance rates for doctors are so high that some are beginning to change their profession. Those rates are caused by lawsuits that are either unjust pleas for free money, or legitimate claims levied against worthless doctors who would normally be forced out of business by their incompetence.



You, who feels that others should be obligated to provide for you, hate the United States. You hate the concept of a nation built upon hard work and ability. You hate the fact that it exists; which is why you take pleasure in stories of poverty here, of poor education and healthcare. It's why you put on an act like the United States is a "second-world" nation, with absolutely no facts or evidence to back it up.

It's also why you are trying to belittle my argument by acting like your standards are "normal" like it's the most obvious thing in the world... again, with nothing solid to back up what you say.

You point out that the rationalization for socialism is to prevent disasters such as epidemics and raging crime. Your tactic is to scare people into believing you... not to convince them with reason.


And for the record, the day that I walk into a hospital whose main goal is profit, I'll go in fully confident that I'm receiving the best health care available to man.

Worldweaver wrote:

Before this I supported public health care. But now I have switched sides.

Here is a great article that talks about why public/socialized health care is wrong... and is much more succinct and eloquent than anything I've written here.

I don't think that providing scholarships and stuff is bad though, because that puts more smart people into our workforce so we can kick more ass.

I should correct myself: in the system as it stands, I really don't have any *major* objections to this... because at least my tax dollars are going towards supporting someone trying to achieve something. That said, I still think that being compelled to give my money to any cause is wrong.

In my ideal society it would be left up to me to decide who to provide scholarships for.