>> ^blankfist:

"That's why I wanna" - Every central planning statist's sentence begins that way.

Actually, it's a common way to segue from description of a problem to a proposed solution.

My tummy is grumbling, that's why I wanna go get lunch.

My balls itch, that's why I want you to wiggle your chin.

>> ^blankfist:

As a point of information, I voted for Kerry in 2004 because I was terrified of what four more years of Bush would mean for us. I was told "if you don't vote for Kerry, you'll be throwing your vote away." The truth is, Bush won again, and sure those four years weren't ice cream and puppies, but we lived through it.

So why not stay home, if voting never matters? I'd prefer if you, and everyone who believed as you do followed that advice.

>> ^blankfist:
The point is, at some point or another we have to stop with this chicken little 'sky is falling' attitude and vote our conscience.

Well, here's the thing. Consider a game of football. Every time you take possession of the football, you want to get it into the end zone. Does that mean you should always "vote your principles", and throw passes to the end zone, no matter what? Or do you look at where you are on the field, think about the kind of defense the other team has, and come up with a play that you think will get the ball as far down field as you can?

Most people who play football, and most people who vote, think backing the play that will bring them the best result is the play to back.

I vote based on what I think will help bring about something closer to what I want than where we are. I would love to change things so all I had to do was show up each year and say "I want us to be there", and then let the process calculate the vector sum of our preferences in some more accurate manner, and give us a congress that can implement policies that line up with the result of that vector sum.

Instead it's a series of zero-sum competitions, and that's what's causing a lot of the problem.

>> ^shuac:

So...given the zero sum nature of politics, it would not be unheard of for the powers that be to covertly murmur amongst each other that if we pass marijuana legalization, then we'll ban abortion too, just for balance: if the liberals get something (legal pot) then the conservatives must also get something (more babies because there aren't nearly enough of them).

You're actually a little late on this one. Democrats all but outlawed abortion in order to get health care reform passed.

Once explained, it seems totally plausible. It's also an example of why nobody should be giving "the right" any kind of power with which to sit at a table and negotiate with anyone for anything.

>> ^gwiz665:

Can we make the babies smoke?


Can we smoke dried foetuses?

Alright, I'll explain.

Ever since Roe v. Wade in 1973 (that's the legal case that basically ratified women's right to choose here in the States), the religious right has worked itself into a froth. Each year they get more frothy than the last and now, they have a chance to pass SOME kind of legislation, ANY kind of legislation that pushes their agenda forward.

At the same time, marijuana legalization appears imminent, culminating in a very near-future ballot initiative in California. I believe that occurs this coming November, if I'm not mistaken?

So...given the zero sum nature of politics, it would not be unheard of for the powers that be to covertly murmur amongst each other that if we pass marijuana legalization, then we'll ban abortion too, just for balance: if the liberals get something (legal pot) then the conservatives must also get something (more babies because there aren't nearly enough of them).

What's my justification for such a wild claim? Nothing more than my bitter cynicism about how politics work. What tells me it works this way? All of recorded history tells me.

So this poll is asking you which you value more: legal weed or legal abortions? Because I really do not think we can have both. That simple, really.

You, my boy, are a man's man.
>> ^SlipperyPete:

>> ^gwiz665:
Can we make the babies smoke?

Done

>> ^gwiz665:

Can we make the babies smoke?


Done

There are other kinds of non-zero-sum dynamics besides win-win. For instance, if person A has 1 billion dollars and person B has 0 dollars, then transferring $10 has a very small harm to person A and a very large benefit to person B. The utility of money is basically logarithmic.

WP, you seem to be stuck on the concept that by giving segment A of the populace the same legal privileges of segment B, you are some how damaging damaging segment B. This is not the case.

There is already bumping going on. There was a photographer sued by a gay couple to force them to photograph their ceremony. A church sued so they could refuse to rent property to a lesbian couple. This is not going to go away, and will become more frequent and strident if a national law passes. Church groups are going to oppose any law that fails to spell everything out. They don't want to deal with the legal ramifications of a vauge, generic law. This does not come across as unreasonable to me.

I'm not saying this is a 'zero sum justice' game where giving gay couples the right to marriage in and of itself damages the rights of traditional marriage proponents. I'm saying that current gay legislation is fuzzy about critical issues. These are sloppy laws that leave the barn door wide open. Churches aren't opposing 'gay civil unions' or 'giving gay couples rights' per se. They are opposing the passage of legislation that leaves them extremely vulnerable to massive sue-age.

Well, I went ahead and looked up what this means, and came across this argument:

Why do you need to make it mandatory? That's pretty obvious: so people don't game the system.
Let's say insurance isn't mandatory. Hooray! I'm young, I won't buy it. So I go years without insurance and without paying into the system. I'm young and healthy, so it doesn't matter.

Eventually, though, I get sick. Now I want insurance! Since insurance companies can't discriminate based on pre-existing conditions, they have to give me a plan to cover my disease. But now the premiums I pay won't cover my expensive disease, OR the premiums I have are too high so I don't even bother. In the first case, the insurance company goes out of business. In the second case, we are back where we started before this whole reform thing!

Remember, insurance is a completely zero-sum game. Healthy people subsidize sick people. If the insurance pool doesn't have healthy people, the sick people won't get covered or their premiums will skyrocket. It's called Adverse Selection.

That's why it has to be mandatory. Not for nefarious purposes, but because otherwise insurance doesn't work.

More posts and discussions on the reddit thread: http://www.reddit.com/r/politics/comments/a2hau/why_do_you_have_to_criminalize_people_to_coax/

Ultimately, we as Americans should seriously ask what we have to gain, by staying in Afhganistan.

Agreed.

Quantumushroom,

1) I seem to recall those responsible for 9/11, were from Afghanistan, and NOT, Iraq.

That's why we went after the talibarfs in Afghanistan there first.

Yet, we plunge a HUGE investment in to Iraq and not more then a few dimes towards the fight in Afghanistan.

And you would've been happy if those investments were reversed? No liberal ever "sees the need" for war. That's why no one trusts them with national defense.

Bush took his eye off the ball to pursue a vendette with Saddam. So, as such, we should have focus our attention on Afghanistan, and did the job right. But, we can't ask republicans to do their job correctly. If they did, Mr. McCain would be President McCain. Oh, and Palin would be CP (shudder). Its an unusual world we live in.

You will get your chance to demand the world of Republicans, starting in 2010.


2) The contract, Mr. Moyer refers to, is how we Americans treat our own citizenry.

It doesn't exist. It's not enumerated in the Constitution. We can argue over years whether FDR's socialist hijacking of the intent and meaning of the Constitution was worth it. We do know we can't afford it.

So, Quantum, buddy, pal, could you point out where all those nuclear weapons of mass destruction, we were suppose to have found in Iraq?

Ask Bill Clinton. He believed they were there as did most of the world's intelligence agencies. Saddam's top-ranked Air Force general claims they were smuggled into Syria. And what did Saddam gas his own people with years before? Soap bubbles? It would've been better not to have given the prck 12 years of toothless UN threats and then warn him when we were actually coming.

3) Fox News isn't bias. To be bias in journalism, one has to be creditible first. Fox New, blew all its credibility during the Bush/Cheney Administration. All us liberals get to sit back and listen to conservatives look like idiots for fun

Well, your biased MSM is dying the ratings death it richly deserves, and the state-controlled media fools will cheerlead for Obama like he was the cap'n of the Titanic.


4)I already pointed out my thoughts on the Draft, above.

Liberal beliefs are skewered towards believing life is a lottery, and the winners must be punished by a huge and fair government. Also, liberals believe economics is a zero-sum game: for someone to win, someone else must lose. Wrong and wrong.


5) Yeah, $3 Trillion for a war that had no WMD, did not restore the country to viability (I'm sure Iraq will have a civil war sooner or later), and it WAS, for the oil. Yes, if Mr. Bush had been accountable with tax payer money, we wouldn't have the HUGE deficit we have now. He thought, by giving three seperate 'tax breaks', that would applease people. He just didn't tell anyone that he increased our debt to a size, LARGER, then any President before him. In fact, the last four presidents to have entered and left, the White House, except one, increased the US deficit by an alarming rate. That one guy, was Mr. Clinton....a Democrat. Now, we have another Democrat, that will have to figure a way to reduce the deficit, in time, for a republican to spend like crazy.

There's no point retreading the same arguments. The Iraqis are in charge of their own destiny now, and weren't libs the original "hope he fails" crew towards Bush & Iraq? If you cynically believe that Republicans are always out for big business and the bottom line while Taxocrats are generous wealth-redistributors obsessed with "justice" and the little guy, that's your bag. The facts are there for all to see. Life is unfair. Tax cuts work. Small government works. Distrusting and therefore keeping an eye on government works.

Obama's plans are not working, and they wouldn't work if there were no Republicans at all. And Moyers should get his own show on a network that has competitive ratings. He's the Air America of TV!

Add the time you spend setting it up, and the money for the extra gasoline.

Coupons are a heck of a time sink but ultimately a zero-sum game. I'd rather go to a store that had low prices without rebates or coupons. Coupons are the most common system of charging different prices to different people for the exact same thing (and one of the few legal ways to do it).

>> ^HollywoodBob:
Factory farming is a necessary evil, there's too many people for us all to raise our own livestock.

Everything's a necessary evil until you decide to change your priorities. Slavery was a necessary evil, unless you were willing to let cotton prices rise. Owning a car is a necessary evil, unless you decide to move to a city with good public transit. Factory farming is a necessary evil, unless you decide that you don't want to eat these products, or at least are willing to pay more for ones that were treated differently.

It's very possible to decide what impact you'll have on the world. But the path of least resistance in America is a pretty destructive one: strewn with slave labor, oil-fueled war casualties, tortured animals, and toxic emissions. You're free to decide that you don't care about some of those things, but you can't call them necessities. You're free to be angrier about unjust wars or farm subsidies than mangled chicks, but it's not a zero sum game. You can go to war protests and call your congressman about the new farm bill and still have plenty of time left over to not buy chicken and eggs on your way home from work.

The problem isn't that it's too hard to change your diet. The problem is that it's too easy not to think about it at all.

>> ^rougy:

Capitalism is the absolute best at one thing: making rich people richer at the expense of everybody else.

Hi rougy,

I suspect you're either mistakenly criticizing capitalism or basing that assumption ("rich get richer at the expense of others") on the very popular socialist misconception of surplus value. That theory has long been debunked in economics by understanding the subjectivity of value, even though many people still unknowingly refer to it.

Truly unregulated markets are the best representation of capitalism as a social order, as opposed to the more common case of markets which are distorted and stifled by excessive govt regulation. Healthcare, food, education, etc. are usually heavily regulated services, because govts in many countries take upon themselves the responsability of providing these services.

In a free market, rich people strictly in the private sector usually get richer by providing services to thousands or millions of other people, so they have to be very productive. So, "rich get richer by receiving money from many other people in exchange for their services" makes a bit more sense to me.

It's not a zero-sum game, people are not productive at the expense of others.

When you say, "at the expense of everybody else", I always imagine something like theft or fraud happening. Rich people can't steal or fool others into giving them money and get away with it, unless they work for or in collusion with govt. If that happens, it can hardly be attributed to capitalism.

And it is far from being the most efficient.

Well, I'd honestly like to know what social system is more efficient than free market capitalism in terms of productivity and resource allocation.
>> ^spoco2:

Huh? No, really, here you're just saying 'I don't want to pay for other people... cause... well... I'm selfish.'

Why am I being called selfish for not agreeing to force productive people to help the poor out of their condition? Are taxpayers responsible for the poverty they have to save poor people from? Why is a poor man's welfare more important than a taxpayer's? Didn't the guy on the video just say that failure can have any number of causes unrelated to merit?

You should be careful not to buy into fallacies that distort your perception of capitalism. the free market is not perfect and "all solving", and it's not supposed to be. What matters is that, compared to every other social system out there, it has the best incentives in place for productivity and problem solving. That includes solving the issue of less opportunity for the least fortunate, without even resorting to the use of force.

>> ^Winstonfield_Pennypacker:
Well, that really is the crux of the issue isn't it. I'm convinced that neolibs want socialized medicine for one reason and ONE reason only... Misplaced guilt over the utterly false perception that life is a zero-sum equation. It is all a big shell game played by small-minded, petty, lazy, self-righteous twits with other people's money and freedoms.
There is no evidence that a socialized medical system improves health care. There is also no evidence that it supplies more people with more care than a private system. When you boil away the rhetoric and start actually drilling down into the facts, socialized systems accomplish very little in terms of medical care output.
But neolibs are dominated by their personal guilt. To them it is unfair that 42 million people are 'uninsured'. Therefore to assuage their misplaced guilt, they vote for a social system that allows them to say everyone is 'covered'. It doesn't matter that in actual truth the poor guy is getting slow, substandard care. It doesn't matter that everyone has less freedom and everyone is equally miserable. All that matters is that the priggish, smarmy little git can ignore poor people in the street while telling himself, "I'm doing something..."


wow..just WOW..
that has to be the most inane,ill-thought comment i have ever seen you post.
you just stated the intentions and emotional motivation for an entire group of people.
based ON?
your own prejudices.
where are your statistics to back up your premise?
who are these people who want a public option to assuage their guilt of success?
or have you been taking game plays from rush limbaugh and glenn beck again?
you are SO cute when you get all neoconservative../pinches WP's cheeks

Well, that really is the crux of the issue isn't it. I'm convinced that neolibs want socialized medicine for one reason and ONE reason only... Misplaced guilt over the utterly false perception that life is a zero-sum equation. It is all a big shell game played by small-minded, petty, lazy, self-righteous twits with other people's money and freedoms.

There is no evidence that a socialized medical system improves health care. There is also no evidence that it supplies more people with more care than a private system. When you boil away the rhetoric and start actually drilling down into the facts, socialized systems accomplish very little in terms of medical care output.

But neolibs are dominated by their personal guilt. To them it is unfair that 42 million people are 'uninsured'. Therefore to assuage their misplaced guilt, they vote for a social system that allows them to say everyone is 'covered'. It doesn't matter that in actual truth the poor guy is getting slow, substandard care. It doesn't matter that everyone has less freedom and everyone is equally miserable. All that matters is that the priggish, smarmy little git can ignore poor people in the street while telling himself, "I'm doing something..."