Senate The US Politics discussion

"Rights" are just things which are guaranteed by one party to another and are enforceable under law. Bernie is talking about access to health care as a legal right. You can have contractual rights, common law rights and statutory rights. Constitutional rights are just a form of statutory right. A right to health care would just be another statutory right which would be created by legislation. It would be no different really from your statutory right not to be fired from your job because you are black or are a woman or gay.

Rights are normally distinguished from privileges and rights are not normally given the force of law unless the subject matter of the "right" is deemed to be absolutely necessary for the functioning of an ordered society. Health care is such a matter.

 

Perhaps someone should tell that to the World Bank. They've forced many developing nations to adopt privatized water services in debt restructuring agreements. In Bolivia, the cost for water and sewage service ending up exceeded half a year wages at minimum wage, and water service alone ended up costing 20% of their clients' $100 per month salaries, more than what they spent for food monthly, and if they couldn't pay, they got their water turned off. Yay neoliberalism!

 

The fact that any of those are even debatable is a massive moral failure and a disgrace.

 

Are you guys familiar with Ayn Rand and Objectivism? I know it's definitely a republican/libertarian way of thinking, but that way of thinking is an explanation for why these rights are debatable. The idea that we should have to earn what we take, and not be given everything we need freely. This idea promotes people to produce and add to the system rather than be a drain on it.

I don't think that is a moral failure and a disgrace, it is just a pro-capitalist way of thinking. In theory it is really efficient, but in the real world of course it creates its victims.

 

Capitalism as a model for human relations is a moral disgrace.

 

You aren't going to find much support for that particular ideology around here. Ayn Rand's ideas are a distortion of Darwin's theories taken to the Nth degree, and he at least was working for the betterment of science.

"Objectivism" is a great way for a species to drive itself to extinction. And the human race is setting out to prove it, with America under Trump leading the charge.

To say it another way: if I were a Time Lord, I would happily steal a TARDIS just so I could go back in time and prevent Ayn Rand's birth. Her views have been used to justify some of the worst legislation that has been passed in the United States (and is still on the minds of people like Paul Ryan).

 

Objectivism is pathological insofar as it provides pseudo-intellectual justification for sociopathy. It's not really the bedrock upon which you want to rest a justification for letting citizens of the wealthiest country in the world die from preventable health conditions.

 

Yes I agree objectivism takes it way too far and it is very naive, but what is on the flip side? Total distribution of wealth?

I'd take Paul Ryan over Lenin.

And anakinfansince1983, your friend was wrong. She literally has a book called 'The Virtue of Selfishness"

I don't like her either guys, don't shoot me

 

Well universal health care is not a Rand/Lenin dichotomy. The US has the wealth to reorganise itself so that it can provide health care for all. This does not mean that the wealthy will have their assets confiscated and they will be thrown out on the street. In countries that have universal health care there are still rich people and poor people, it's just that poor people are not dying or bankrupting themselves for medical treatment. The money is there already. It's just how you as a society choose to spend it.

 

As Chris Matthews once commented about the Chilean miners: "If they subscribed to Ayn Rand, they all would have murdered one another in a cannibalistic frenzy."

 

But what are you arguing? That universal healthcare involves throwing your hands up and letting the commies win?

Universal healthcare and free education are both going to get you a better workforce. These aren't just feel good handouts--they're investments that produce actual economic benefits. There's no rational argument against universal healthcare except the absolute primacy of the individual and purely negative liberty.

 

What a nightmare that would be.

 

Even if you're taking an amoral dollars and cents POV, our healthcare doesn't work. The US spends 18% of our GDP on healthcare, while Canada, European nations, and Japan spend between 9 to 12%, and they get better health outcomes across the board -- better outcomes for cancer, diabetes, stroke, heart disease, maternal death, etc -- and that's true even when you only compare those in the US with insurance to people in those other countries with universal health insurance. Of course, those without health insurance fare even worse. In every way, our health system falls short. It has worse outcomes, it's more expensive, and on top of that, it's morally indefensible. Health care is one area where the free market does not win out.

 

Why do we have to choose one extreme or another? Can't we balance capitalism and socialism to make an economically viable society?

 

Which was kind of the idea - she was trying to redefine the word selfishness to mean only rational self-interest, and argue that abusing and exploiting people is not in ones self-interest - it's in fact self-destructive in the long term. Her biggest bugbear was altruism in its original concept - the idea that the more self-sacrificing an act is, the better that act is, all other things being equal.

Certainly her ideas were flawed - but a case could be made that Trump is closer to Rand's villainous businessmen than Rand's heroic businessmen.

 

Her ideas are monstrous and it is a better world that does not propagate them.

 

As summed up here:

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/UsefulNotes/Objectivism

it's simply a variant of Classical Liberalism. It's a long way from fascism (far right) or communism (far left) and some way from anarchism (no government at all).

 

Alright jeez, I wish I hadn't brought her ideas up. Nobody is trying to say objectivism is the way to go. I mentioned her because of this.

Really? It is a moral failure to say public transit should be paid for rather than free?

This is what I've been trying to say, but I haven't gotten around to it because everybody jumped down my throat when I brought up Ayn Rand. Right now we have health care based on capiltalism and it isn't working, I truly believe we can find a solution with social policies, or possibly with the single-payer system.

But to say that it is a moral failure to believe 'people should have to pay for things' is shutting down the discussion. If it is unthinkable to make people pay for public transit, then why are people paying for anything at all. That line of thought goes straight to total distribution of wealth. Communism, which is cool in theory, but is truly just as impossible as Ayn Rand's vision.

I don't want to propagate objectivism, but let's not let the echo-chamber here get out of control.

 

I tend to agree that Rand has been demonized some. From what I've read, she could be a jerk, but she was no more of a monster, than, say, Marx was.

 

lol wow. Have you read Marx and Rand? Like, anything?

 

I actually love her books. I think she is an excellent writer. The only problem is the over-dose of didactic language. We get it already!

DISCLAIMER: I'm no John Gault worshiper. Not a fan of objectivism, I'm a man of faith, and I love my family, unlike Ayn Rand. Still though, I like her stories.

 

I've read 3 or 4 of her fiction books, + The Virtue of Selfishness. I've not read Marx - but I've read books about Marx.

I think the point where I soured on Rand's ideas a bit was when they were presented (with the author's own spin) in the awful Sword of Truth series.

The criticism of "sacrifice-based morality", however, still has some resonance.

 

Things like health care, public transport, public schools, public libraries etc etc are things that should be funded or at least heavily subsidised by taxes, for the benefit of the community as a whole. The taxpayers as a collective should pay for this stuff. This seems to be the fundamental flaw in US culture - nobody wants to pay for stuff that others may use. Nobody wants to pay higher taxes to fund access to health care or welfare or decent roads or decent education or public transport. The countries that have all of this tax the absolute **** out of their citizens. People are still incentivised to work hard and be successful, they just pay close to 50 cents in the dollar in taxes to have universal health care, free education, good pensions and a happy society.

This seems to be the major issue in the US. Small government and low taxes and bootstraps versus big government, high taxes and socialism. That seems to be how the two sides are framed.