One more month to go? - 3 December 2009

[silveradept]

Hi, desirable people of great attractiveness. Leading off with something intended to get your heart rate up to a more exercising pace, the stupidity of homeowner's association contracts - they are threatening a recipient of the Medal of Honor with legal action because the flagpole he has in his front yard is in violation of their covenants after they denied his request to put one up, considering it not asthetically pleasing.

Out in the world, North Korea announced a sudden revaluation of the currency, where 100 of the old unit, the won, is now worth one of the new. This looks to be a move intended to stomp out a significant amount of private enterprise and profits in the nominally socialist state.

An opposition group accuses the Iranian government of poisoning a prominent dissenter with drug-laced salad after exposing that prisoners were tortured in Iranian prisons.

The Australian parliament rejected a bill that would set up a carbon permits exchange. Let the people who believe climate change is an error continue to crow.

Domestically, lacking actions that they can hang their hat on as solid liberal victories, the liberal base may decide they're not all that interested in turning out for the 2010 elections.

New York State could see a shakeup, as while the bill to legalize homosexual marriage in the state failed, it also put the state senators on the record, meaning now advocates and opponents know where to aim and fire.

Senator Boxer is calling for an investigation and criminal charges for the hackers that exposed the e-mails of the East Anglia University climate researchers, pointing out that whatever you believe about climate change, a crime was still committed. This will likely be ignored in the rush to accuse climate scientists of keeping their alarms on to get more money, despite their own results telling them climate change wasn't really happening, we believe. The sane position, as always, has been to say, that climate science is not sealed away one way or another, because some of the data is clearly corrupted. Thus, confident doom prediction and confident conspiracy predictions are both wrong.

So, as part of the President's remarks delivered at West Point outlining his Afghanistan decision, he apparently implied that the previous administration did not fully resource or fulfill troop requests. Former Defense Secretary Rumsfeld denies allegations that military generals were not given adequate funding and people during his tenure, and their requests for more people were denied, while also either stating or implying that there were no denials during the rpevious administration at all. Current Chariman of the Joints Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Michael Mullen, made note of at least one incident in 2008 where requests for additional troops were denied, making some part of the Rumsfeld claim suspect.

With an upcoming summit on employment, the situation in the United States puts additional pressure on President Obama to reverse the dismal numbers currently reflecting the state of employment.

Last out before opinions, resolution to the New Haven Firefighters case - the Supreme Court upheld their suit, and their promotions are scheduled for December 10.

At opinion places, The WSJ talks up how it believes the Senate halth care bill actually drives up costs, claiming the Congressional Budget Office backs their position, and declaring the administration wants to take over health care, yet making no mention at all of the measures intended to control costs that are in the bill, and commenting based on the passage of mandated insurance coverage, but no competition for those insurers. Thus, concluding that prices will go up because there are more people and community rating is not that hard to predict.

Mr. McGurn takes umbrage at a bill introduced by Mr. Specter that Mr. McGurn claims would allow terrorists to sue the government frivolously, because the bill would supposedly reverse the standard of needing to prove you have a case before discovery can proceed in a lawsuit.

Mr. Lowry suggests that President Obama is conflicted because he is really a neoconservative who wants to "win&quo;t Afghanistan, but he has to try and avoid alienating his liberal, anti-war base who want him to get out of both Iraq and Afghanistan, the sooner the better. Mr. Lowry is almost right - the President is more of a centrist than a neocon, but he was further liberal than the conservative candidate, and further liberal than many of the liberals presented. Elsewhere, Mr. Musharraf says that the only way to win in Afghanistan and Pakistan is to leave when the job is done and not according to any arbitrary time frame. If that is the case, though, one could be stuck in a war that surges back and forth, but never resolves, unless one side decides to apply overwhelming force and then let the natives rebuild from there, much like the usage of atomic weaponry.

Investors Business Daily wants us to be afraid of nuclear Iran and take them seriously, in the "glass them before they get going" kind of way.

And last out, earning himself a solid Worst Person In The World, Mr. Scrooge Williams, taking his libertarian beliefs to their proper end - no person should have to have their money taken by the government to assist someone else, and to do so is slavery and theft. Including in those situations where someone has fallen sick and has no insurance - they should suffer and possibly die, adn nobody should be required to lift a finger to help them. I seem to keep thinking of this quote when I get around Scrooge Williams all this time, so once more, from Mr. Dickens:

"Are there no prisons?...And the Union workhouses...Are they still in operation?...I don't make merry myself at Christmas and I can't afford to make idle people merry. I help to support the establishments I have mentioned-they cost enough; and those who are badly off must go there...If they would rather die,...they had better do it, and decrease the surplus population."

In technology, the best reason to enforce a net neutrality position and government regulation - we've already done the unregulated bit before, with the telegraph, and it was villains and monopolies the whole way, a warning from the Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics Department about trusting your forecasting abilities, because even with forecasts, Humes tend to be too optimistic about their chances, commentary from the Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics Department about the low nuimbers of people identifying themselves with either major political party in the United States, which should be a warning sign to both of them that a sufficiently motivated population with the right kind of independent leader might smoke both their hides in an election. Finally, the CEO of Google says that the Internet will not kill print media, but will instead transform it into something new.

That's all for today. Enjoy your football selection shows or other such useful things.

Comments

[sharpsight.livejournal.com]

N) What are the historical examples you have in mind?

Would you object to a policy of providing such economic aid to those who can't pay for themselves with simultaneous sterilisation as a condition?

Note that cases such as receiving free healthcare or free unemployment money can be opted out of (e.g. if one thinks oneself able to survive and reproduce; the known consequences of using such a safety net would hopefully also create a greater incentive for certain individuals to save enough money to be able to pay for emergencies).

[silveradept]

Victorian England, the place Mr. Dickens is writing about, is usually the cited historical example - private police forces available to the rich, debtor's prisons, Poor Laws that required people to take work at any wage that was offered, regardless of the safety conditions (and things like the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory and the lack of child labor laws show what sort of lack of safety we're talking about), no real safety net, and very little for public infrastructure. Sickness or injury were career and possibly life-ending events.

But everyone was free to do with their money as they pleased, and those with money exerted severe pressure on those without to ensure that they stayed without that money to improve themselves, or to save, or to do anything but live a subsistence life.

As for the aid for sterilization procedure, N, severe objections. TANF starts with the word "Temporary", indicating that most people who need that assistance do not need it in any permanent fashion. To require sterilization for someone who has lost their work and needs temporary assistance until they find new work is swinging a wrecking ball in attempting to kill a dust mite.

Furhtermore, yes, people can save for temporary setbacks - which sometimes turn out to be longer than the average or what they have saved for, and then they're facing sterilization because there isn't work for them anywhere. But the costs of catastrophic events, even when covered by insurance, cannot be financed unless one has miraculously made oneself independently wealthy, and even then, only those who have managed to avoid those events until later in life would be able to make it work out. A minimum wage salary will not allow someone to save one million dollars for their anticipated hospital visit after their insurance policy that should be paying for them cancels their coverage because they have become too expensive a liability. To then add on, "We're sorry, if you want to receive treatment for your disease or injury, you're going to have to be sterilized!" is to punish someone who may not be at any sort of fault for the situation they are in. That's not even within the major metropolitan area of fair.

Which reminds me - the libertarian and American Republican position often makes the assumption that all persons make deliberate actions, for which they then reap the consequences thereof. Young girls who have unprotected sex and get pregnant should be forced to bear the child to term and then raise it as a consequence of their action, regardless of whether they can afford to do so and discounting any sort of psychology that says teenagers are still developing their brains, especially the part that lets them predict consequences. A person let go by their employer has only themselves to blame, because their works was of insufficient quality, or they were the weakest contributor, and not at all because the person at the top decided they really wanted to make $50,000 USD more or the shareholders demanded that the company post $1 million USD more in profits so they could enjoy their bigger dividend payments. Or because they attempted to bring or supported unionization in their workplace, even though it is illegal to fire someone for doing so.

It is simply not true that each person can control their actions and their consequences to the degree that they could avoid any disaster that might happen to them. To insist that each person victimized by those events deserves it, or that the poor are poor because they simply made bad choices is to insist upon a lie. To punish someone based on false premises is unethical.

[sharpsight.livejournal.com]

N?/B?) If there are more people able and willing to do a certain job at a certain wage, then it is not strange for the wage to fall until supply meets demand: until those able and willing to do the job at that wage and in those conditions are roughly equal to the positions available to be filled. If the pool of people shrinks, likewise, then there is pressure in the other direction to widen the number of people willing to work in a certain job (by changing the wage or/and conditions). To impose limits on this which result in an unrealistically large applicant pool for a much smaller number of available positions seems perverse.

'exerted severe pressure on those without to ensure that they stayed without': in what ways?
Again, this seems to be a natural consequence of humans being in low demand and high supply. Arguably the 'improve themselves' aspect for other jobs could be relevant, but one would imagine that if there was a high demand and a low supply for such jobs, there would thence be a strong incentive to provide the training/improvement necessary for those jobs to be filled.

N?) Are there policies in place to ensure that it is in fact temporary, that only a certain set amount will go towards each family and not repeatedly be called on? Are there non-temporary measures in place which could be used to fund reproduction, and would sterilisation be a reasonable condition for them?

N?/B?) By default, such accidents bring death. By technology, death can seemingly-miraculously be avoided. By expensive technology, if someone has amassed enough monetary value in that person's lifetime (taking into account others who have a stake in that person's life et cetera), even certain instances of near-certain death can be avoided. However, this is not something to be taken for granted, or viewed as a right or something which all deserve to have. This is an unusual avoidance of something which otherwise by all rights would have happened. To demand to live after one has been shot, or fallen in front of a car, or contracted a deadly illness is itself absurd, and to be made reality necessarily requires an investment of value proportionate to the expensiveness of the means necessary to change the normal consequences of that person's state.
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That said, I can also see your (presumed) point of enforcing equality, a level playing field in a sense: that if there are enough resources to affordably maintain all at a certain level of healthiness, that it might be seen as desirable to enforce that, and render it the same as the police case of a certain level of security for all.
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However, it still seems preferable to implement such a thing as an opt-in state. As it is, in turns into a separation of 'those who have' and 'those who have not', with those who are self-sufficient and willing to take their chances (and die if mistaken or unlucky) unwilling to give away what is theirs, and those who are not wanting to take the resources of the first group. The first group stands to gain nothing of value from the second group, the second group stands to give nothing of value to the first group.
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The solution: an opt-in approach. Yes, let the many who are weak combine their power to save those of them who come across ill-fortune. Give to those in need, and in return be given to when in need. However, do not give, nor take to those who are unhappy with the arrangement and do not wish to be a part of it. Let them risk dying if they wish to risk dying, and die if they are unfortunate. Let them do what they will with what they have, and succeed if they are fortunate. Do not give, and do not take.
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It's a pleasant ideal to combine the power of many to enforce a set level of healthiness within the group, but it's a broken ideal if it can only be accomplished by leeching off those who want no part in it.
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How does that sound to you? (The idea of making it an opt-in (or alternatively opt-out, the effect hopefully being roughly the same) system.)
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(...I wonder what it would look like with separate groups... those with greater levels of self-sufficiency able to exist a group with a larger rate, able to afford a higher level of baseline healthiness... ah, but that's making the concept unnecessarily complicated at this point.)

[silveradept]

It may seem perverse, but it's the way that one prevents the market from falling into a situation where no job actually provides sufficient wage to live or nor sufficient safety conditions for that work, because there will always be more applicants for a particular job than there will be jobs. Thus, the market really doesn't give a damn about protecting and keeping workers alive, because they can always get someone else. (Similarly for training, because of the way that learners shoulder the burden of most of their training expenses.)

Temporary, oh, yes - some of those assistances have only a set amount, others require a significant amount of paperwork to be filed detailing all the attempts that someone made to find employment, but usually the greatest ensurance of temporary is that the benefit amounts aren't really enough for a safe and secure existence. Enough to keep someone and their children alive, usually with the assistance of minimum wage work, but that's it. And while it may seem that it "funds reproduction" because the benefit amounts change with more children, the change isn't enough to cover all the expenses of the child.

The rest of your point is the Platonic idea of an insurance policy - people pay in to a pool of money with the understanding that it will pay out if they need it to in case of an incident, and those who don't feel they need the protection stay out. With enough people, there may be a need for an administrator to oversee it all. What happened in practice, though, is that the profit motive attacked, and now, many insurance companies are more beholden to their shareholders than their policyholders, and they've learned the easiest way to make a profit is to deny the requests that the company pay, thus breaking the contract that they often cancel right before or after denial, so as to give them better ability to continue to deny, because the person is no longer part of the agreement, despite all the money they've paid into it. The other easy way is to require everyone to pay in more money for the same amount of benefit, so rates skyrocket and people, despite having insurance, are not assured that they will be able to use it when they really need to.

If insurance were exactly as you described, we probably wouldn't have the discussion we are having right now.

[sharpsight.livejournal.com]

N?/B?) If no job provides sufficient wage to live, then people will die until it does. Is this odd for a situation in which more people have been produced than there is useful work to be done?

Are those who fail to obtain an alternate source of income then adequately dealt with?

What prevents a government from implementing this, ostensibly for the benefit of those who enter into it rather than for a profit motive? Granted, the same sorts of problems may seem to arise in different incarnations.
--hmm, my/our knowledge of the current situation is incomplete. Is the current situation that the government in question forcibly takes money for its own insurance policy, or does it select such untrustworthy insurance companies and give them the forcibly-taken money?

[silveradept]

According to pure market capitalism, no, it's not strange, it's market equilibrium. It does concentrate the power of life and death into the hands of those providing work, though. If they decide that they can do without as many positions, they are essentially consigning others to die. That power can then be used by employers to drive down wages and remove benefits because people will come to them for employment, sufficiently desperate to be making any wage at all.

Well, there is the image of the unfriendly bureaucrat looking for an excuse to terminate benefits, but yes, they are adequately dealt with in that their benefit payments will eventually dry up and force them to see alternate income or charity elsewhere.

The situation is currently neither. While there are government-provided health care options that are tax-funded, they are age or profession-restricted. There are currently proposals on the table, one of which wants the first option, a government-run insurance program funded for by taxation that all people are eligible for and automatically enrolled in, and the more likely one, which will do the second - require that all persons pay some of their monies to for-profit insurance companies or pay fines, taking some tax monies and using them to assist those who cannot afford the insurance. The first option is derided as "socialism", "nanny state" or "welfare state" plans, or other items attempting to raise the spectres of millions killed in dictators that called themselves socialists. The second is usually opposed more along the lines bot6h of your argument - why should I pay for someone else's insurances, and mine - why are we forcing people to deal with untrustworthy for-profit companies who will gladly take our money and then find a way of not upholding their end of the bargain?

[sharpsight.livejournal.com]

N?/B?) Until their numbers or offered wages fall to levels at which they aren't satisfied with the positions offered any more. Otherwise, are you referring to a price-fixing arrangement between employers, similar to if employees form unions to reach unrealistically high wages?

That's convenient. *nods*

*nods slightly* The first approach seems more in line with the spirit of the concept, but it seems as though it would be oppressive if participation was involuntary. (The same, regarding oppressiveness, for the second as well.)

[silveradept]

Not necessarily explicit price-fixing and collusion between employers, which would likely be illegal, but that the threat that there are more people willing to do your job for less money can be leveled by an employer to an employee so as to drive down the wages of those employees already there, who will accept some amount of it because they wish to remain employed. Especially in our current system, where employers are the providers of health care benefits, and unemployment means lack of insurance.

Unions are, in some ways, the counterpressure to that instinct, because they want higher wages and better benefits under the threat that there will be no person there who will work for the employer, and thus they can get no business done because no person will work for them.

As for the mandatory insurance, that is one of the arguments, that it is oppressive and contrary to the spirit of America to require a private citizen purchase a service and levy fines if they do not. That said, there are certain services that are required with the purchase of things like houses and automobiles, so the concept could be extended to the idea that since you have your body, you are required to insure it.

The argument for compulsory single-payer insurance of all is that by getting everyone insured, one has such a large pool of people contributing that the cost per person is small enough that even the really sick can afford the insurance, because all the healthy people are also participating. Additionally, no person can then be denied or find the price of their insurance multiply exponentially because they have an expensive sickness.

[sharpsight.livejournal.com]

N?) Is this a true threat or a false bluff? (*ponders possible redundancy*)

Either arguably stands to bring disaster: for the employer cases the cases you've noted arguably apply, whereas for the union cases cases such as pressure applied to keep paying miners to mine mined-out mines (effectively paying them to do nothing productive) can result, either way the market being distorted unrealistically. *ponders the government regulatory methods levied against such such as those preventing employees of one industry from taking part in a different industry's strike ('flying pickets'?)*

The automobile case can be explained regarding the many hurt by them accidentally, but why do houses need to be insured? (Even in places with a lot of tornadoes, one wouldn't think they fall on that many people... [/attempted humour])
Houses and automobiles are opt-in purchases; it's contradictory to say the least to claim such a thing while simultaneously not legalising suicide. Even stepping back from there, one could argue that treating 'life' as a baseline, a body is currently a necessity for life, whereas a house or an automobile is not (and so, either way, it is unfair to legally treat it as something voluntarily purchased). The question of why purchased houses have to be insured would also apply to bodies.
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This isn't relevant to the discussion, but to check: are you aware while holding this discussion that while we have American citizenship (holding dual nationality), we do not and have never for a significant length of time (for instance, never as long as a year, or probably even half a year, or maybe even a quarter of a year) lived in America? *curiosity*

In short, the pool is too small for the desired things to be done with it when only the willing participate, so it is expanded to compulsorily include those who are unwilling to participate. It seems difficult to approve of this.
'Expansion to include those who are not willing for the sake of those who are willing': even if those who are willing are/were in the majority, is this approval-worthy?

[silveradept]

One could argue the practice of outsourcing, especially overseas, is the employer threat made good in a global economy.

Yep - both forces can create untenable conditions left unchecked. One would hope they could balance each other through the struggle, but that's not necessarily the case, so we'll need regulations still.

I don't honestly know why houses require insurance, but I'm guessing that because banks make big investments in lending people the money for houses, they want to make sure they can recover losses in the case of those houses falling down on people. Also, someone else's house falling on you has the same possible suit problems as someone else's automobile hitting you.

One could make a somewhat distorted argument that by parents making the decision to have a child, they are in effect "purchasing" a body that they should then be required to insure until the person has sufficient rights so as to make that decision for themselves. It won't affect the problem of sick adults without insurance they cannot afford, but it could at least make for the possibility of healthy children (and perhaps, the indirect effect of having less children because of the new requirement.)

According to a liberal argument, insurance companies deliberately place higher prices on persons who are or have high risk of sickness, because of the logical assumption that the high-risk and the already sick are going to need care and treatment, which costs money and impacts profitability. They will happily price those who need to be most covered out of the market so they don't have to cover them and pay costs, while providing affordable rates to those who have low risk of being unprofitable. An argument for required coverage of all is then presented, in addition to "making costs affordable to all", as a check on the profit motive of an insurance company, to attempt to steer them back toward their ideal, where they cover lots and pay claims, rather than looking for ways to maximize profit through minimized spending.

We were unaware of the lack of America experience, but since the original author is American writing about an American bill, we thought America would be appropriate context.

[sharpsight.livejournal.com]

N?) The term 'comparative advantage' comes to mind, along with the mental image of many people redundantly doing the same jobs as each other in different countries finding that they can waste a lot less resources by using a much smaller number of people to do the jobs for all countries. Even if you assume that the number of people (in all appropriate respects) was exactly aligned with the number of job positions, it's reasonable that with the transition to a global economy (at least in that respect) the number of positions would drastically decrease (as redundant positions are merged) and so the number of people would have to fall, the conditions available for people falling considerably until supply fell to meet demand again.
(This may or may not be irrelevant to what you wished to convey.)

Monopoly-prevention regulations also come to mind (a concept fairly similar to the price-fixing concept).

Isn't that 'using a house as collateral (for a mortgage)', rather than 'buying a house'? It doesn't seem to apply if you bought the house outright with money that you got through means which didn't require using the house itself as collateral for said money.
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Insurance for the event that one's house kills/hurts someone? Curious. Would personal insurance then be insurance for the event that one killed/hurt someone (in a non-automobile or -house related way)? Speaking of which, what decides whether the insurance system or the criminal justice system handles the proceedings when someone in an automobile hurts/kills someone else?

Whatever the means, it seems as though it could easily be made one of the many responsibilities held by guardians while the guarded one is legally judged incapable of responsibility. The case of not allowing to imbibe neurotoxin also comes to mind.
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This also tangentially (?) ties into the question of what should happen when one parent makes one decision and the other makes the other. Even if you argue that initial body-construction is something only directly relevant to one parent, the issue of monetary support until it reaches [legal age of personal responsibility] is one in which both should be equal it seems. *wonders*

Even that can only be extended to 'required coverage for all willing'.

Presumably, yes. In-depth knowledge of the background is lacking, though, and so any discussion will be based on general thought or information about the legal situation in question gleaned from you (or the article in question) during conversation. It may or may not be helpful to be aware of this (e.g. in regards to understanding certain questions or misunderstandings).

[silveradept]

Actually, you grasped the idea exactly, and the elimination of redundancies argument is sound. It is inefficient at the moment because we still have nation-states, instead of working together as one world unit, and I'm not sure how much of it is driven by profit motive now as opposed to simple efficiency of work. If it were equally as expensive to insource as to outsource, I do not know how many companies would take that option.

Well, it's not so odd if you think of insurance as "purchasing protection against catastrophic costs", because usually, the criminal justice system and/or the civil courts are the first option of handling the proceedings in case of injury/death through houses or automobiles. Insurance not only purchases protection from some of those costs (in certain situations. In others, the person with the insurance may still be required to pay significant costs.) In the case of personal insurance, costs for many procedures or hospital visits will bankrupt someone, and thus they wish to purchase protection from those costs.

Most insurance plans offer the ability to expand one's personal coverage to include dependents and spouses at additional cost, but it is not required. As for the parents making opposite decisions, that can be a big problem, and often results in fights or the family court system getting involved. Even more interesting when the parents are not living in the same house and have custody agreements between themselves.

One could argue that all are willing to accept coverage, especially when insurance is argued in the "protection against catastrophic costs" vein - most people don't want to be on the hook for many thousands of dollars/pounds that they don't have and can't afford. If that premise is true, then the question comes down to finding ways of covering all at prices they can afford.

We will try to be better about explaining Americanisms.

[sharpsight.livejournal.com]

N?/B?) *happiness at praise (?)*

'thus they wish': reasonable if it's voluntary.
For house insurance, is it a one-time lump sum added onto the cost of the house, or is it a repeated tax?

Problematic for there not to be a set resolution in place, as it seems as though it would come up fairly often.

If all are willing, then why are some complaining about it in such articles? If nothing else, it seems reasonable to give the option of opting-out, so as to silence them if they wouldn't opt-out and similarly (by letting them opt-out) silencing them if they would.
This reminds me of the 'women are intrinsically unable to become lawyers/etc., thus it should be illegal for them to be': if they were, then making it legal wouldn't change anything. Likewise, if everyone actually was willing then there would be no purpose in making it illegal to not act as though one were willing.

Most concepts can be picked up from context (and/or taken as a 'in this hypothetical setup which may or may not reflect the state of a real country' case).

[silveradept]

Yes, praise.

No, it's a repeated tax for insurance on houses.

One would think so, but no matter what the resolution was, there would be someone who felt they were discriminated against by that procedure, and thus we go back to the courts.

They are complaining because they feel it should be their decision on whether to opt-in, rather than a government decision that all are in. It is a manifestation of the American idea of freedom and liberty, meaning "I can do whatever I want and no person or entity should be able to stop me, with a few exceptions (and sometimes, not even those)." Opting-out would reduce the pool of risk and increase the prices, so that's not really an option - the government would likely ensure that those opting-out would still be financing those opted-in, through fines or penalties.

[sharpsight.livejournal.com]

N?/B?) *happiness*

Ah.
*gathers thoughts* One would probably argue that there may be a case for enforced insurance-buying when unrelated third parties are commonly at great risk (as in the automobile case), but that this largely disappears once (as in the house case) the people at risk are almost exclusively only those who live in/use the house: as the risks are accepted as part of the voluntary decision to obtain the house, to take those risks or mitigate them through insurance is a reasonable decision to leave to the decision-maker in that circumstance.
In the case of automobiles, it seems relatively reasonable that a person responsible for harming an unrelated third-party should provide the cost of treatment for that third-paty, and problematic if whether this could take place depended on a voluntary choice of the person responsible. There are other possible ways of dealing with the situation (just worse punishment if not able to pay for treatment of another?), but enforcing insurance-usage in such situations seems as though it could be an effective way of somewhat-protecting those who get involved in such situations (mostly) outside of their control. A house, by contrast, does not seem to bear the same sort of risks to unrelated parties.

If it were a completely symmetrical arrangement which treated those involved as though they were boxes labelled 'Person A' and 'Person 1' (for instance) with no other identifying features, how could it be claimed to be discriminatory?
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Besides that, aren't there procedures in place to stop the same issues coming up before the courts time and time again[ in other areas of law]? If nothing else, being thrown out of court on basis of precedent...? (Though I can see that that might hypothetically also give rise to problems.)

Thus we return to the early position. Effectively, then, they are not all willing. Likewise, if it's a policy which will by nature fail once all those in it are willing, scrapping it altogether seems preferable.
*is aware that there may be flawed logic in the above paragraph*
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*rereads earlier paragraphs* 'Expansion to include the non-willing for the sake of the willing'. The question of resource-seizing may also have been addressed in the lower half-thread.
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On the one side are those who can complement each other's strengths with their comparative advantages, and on the other side are those who want that side's strength without offering anything worthwhile in return.
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The liberty-related concept is also indeed significant. The government is not there to oppress the minority for the sake of the government. The government is not there to oppress the majority for the sake of the government. The government, if anything, is there to prevent the oppression of either. Not charitably giving someone your money is not oppression of that person. Using force to coerce another to give you that person's money is oppression (repression, e.g. 'Help, help, I'm being repressed'?) of that person. Usage of a government to do such things is likewise something which merits calling in a government to put them in their place. Something of a Catch-22 there, unless there are hierarchies of government. Another option might be if there were some sure-fire way of preventing a government from violating its precepts.

[sharpsight.livejournal.com]

N?/B?)

[split for length; one main point above, one main point below]

If an employer views an employee as unnecessary, it would be odd for the employee to be retained. If the employee views the employer as unnecessary, it would be odd for the employee to not leave the job.
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Ignoring the brain-related part, the 'forced to bear and raise' is blink-inducing. If termination can be afforded, there's no reason not to do so follow that route; if adoptive parents (?) or other groups have some use for such a child, there's no reason not to entrust it to them; in the scenario of a protohuman or a human existing with no value at all to anyone, as the default is nonexistence, it will on its own run out of stored resources and cease existing (early termination being a way of avoiding a great waste of resources in the construction of the structure of such a thing in the first place).
It's a very strange proponent of 'liberty' who advocates restricting someone's liberty in such a way/forcing someone to follow certain optional routes against their will.

There is a significant ethical difference between 'punishing' and 'not rewarding'. One punishes for things which harm one, one rewards for things which benefit one. One does not punish for not doing things which benefit one, nor does one reward for not harming one.
If a person stabs you, punish (e.g.) with prison. If a person gives you something of value, give something of value in return. If a person does not give you something of value, do not imprison that person for not doing so. If a person does not stab you, do not give that person a gift for not stabbing you.
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Actions... as the ends do not certainly result from the means attempted to aim at them, we cannot use means to justify ends, and can only apply questions of ethicality to the means used. Killing innocent people in the name of peace, for instance, is still unethical. Better to die as a saint than live as a monster... or something along those lines. If one steals from others who are unwilling, and speaks as though one has the moral high ground, to be viewed with contempt is a natural consequence. If one steals from others and at least acknowledges that what one is doing is unethical, done out of egocentricity/selfishness, one can at least be respected for one's honesty and self-awareness.
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Misfortune is not an adequate justification to take deliberate harming action against others. No one is to blame for harm which happens to you as an accident, but when you turn someone into a sacrifice to save yourself you are clearly to blame for the harm which happens to that person. That is unequivocally unethical> and it is appropriate to treat it as such.

(...といいたいところが、/...is what I would like to say, but/'...Though even if I say the above,' all morality is relative and so all this is inherently meaningless in the first place. Or rather, the only meaning it has is between humans, so when humans are alien enough from each other one could argue that there can be no common point of meeting between them... though I could hope that that isn't the case. Hm.)

What are your thoughts at this point?

(Thinking back on the above comment, there were roughly two main points made that I view as significant. *considers*)

[silveradept]

It is, indeed strange, assuming that you look at without the shadings of "sin" - if it is a transgression to have extramarital sex, lacking the ability to place a scarlet A on the person, pregnancy is the next best thing - it cannot be hidden, and so one's transgression is on display for social shame. To terminate that pregnancy removes the punishment for the transgression, so it too has become a transgression with similar attempts at social shaming in the name of God, and dire warnings that the country will engage in all sorts of extramarital sex and terminations, which will displease God and he will visit vengeance upon the people because they are behaving so far outside his moral bounds, which are higher than any ethical or governmental authority.

I'm not sure I follow your train of thought through the rest, but if the general idea is that it is wrong to visit social shame and punishment on persons who have had misfortune happen to them out of their control, then yes, I agree, but I point out that a significant number of people do not, and many of them wield the ability to make law to enshrine their point of view. If not, please clarify, as I do not understand.

[sharpsight.livejournal.com]

N) Such can hopefully be safely ignored.

Attempted clarification by example: a person is born into one of many families too poor to afford a coat or umbrella. This poorness, lack of bought coat/umbrella et cetera is to all intents and purposes (for this example) out of that person's control. One day when travelling along a necessary road, there is a downpour and the person begins to become drenched by cold rain. This is arguably a tragedy.

Said person (say, 'Person D') passes another person 'Person E' when travelling along this road as the downpour begins. Person E has a coat and umbrella; Person D has neither.

Person E was born into a family able to afford a coat and umbrella. This is likewise to all intents and purposes out of Person E's control.

Person E sees that Person D has no coat or umbrella. However, Person E does not wish to and does not choose to give Person D coat nor umbrella. There are a variety of possible reasons for this.
There are many people that Person E has seen and knows exist in the world without coats or umbrellas and Person E cannot hope to make a significant difference even if stripped naked, for instance. Having bought a coat and umbrella with money given by parents for Person E's benefit, it would be negligent and unfair to those parents to give them away and have to ask for replacements (particularly several/many times), for instance. Person E straightforwardly likes the umbrella and coat, as well as the warmth and dryness they provide, and doesn't want to lose them to a stranger for instance.

Person E does not give Person E's belongings to Person D. This is not Person E 'punishing' Person D for being born into a poor family. Person E is not doing anything to hurt Person D. If Person E were not there, Person D would be suffering exactly as much. Person E's retention of Person E's belongings is not unethical.

Person D suddenly runs at Person E and snatches Person E's umbrella, then runs off. If anything, here you could argue that Person D is 'punishing' Person E. Person D is doing something to hurt Person E. If Person D were not there, Person E would not have been hurt. Person D's theft of Person E's belonging is unethical.

'To be hurt is a sadness. To hurt is a sin.' (Hearkening back slightly to the religious-toned concepts mentioned earlier.) Ethicality is action-based: when one is hurt because of something under no one's control no one is at fault, no one is to blame, no one is in the wrong, no one has done anything unethical, but when one deliberately hurts another completely with oneself under one's own control, one IS to blame for that other person's hurt, one is at fault, one is in the wrong. One has done something unethical.

Does that clarify the point somewhat?

[silveradept]

It does, and most people will agree with you that it is a sound ethical position, one that most of us find ourselves in. What seems to be missing, though, is any sort of impulse to rectify the problems that left Person D in their situation. Person E may be a charitable person, which is fantastic and commendable. Most people believe that poverty is systemic, though, and requires the action of greater organizations than individuals to rectify. At that point, they start turning to government as the natural actor to provide ways of making up for misfortune and getting people up to the level where they have the opportunity and means to purchase their own raincoat and umbrella. Government, though, is limited in the ways it can raise revenue. Thus, taxation, which then leads to the complaint we had originally about taking from those who have the means to support those who do not, with or without the additional rider that the poor deserve to be that way because of choice instead of misfortune.

Did that help?

[sharpsight.livejournal.com]

N) '90% of everything is crud.' The world as it is is and will continue to be filled with suffering, with very little perceptible change resulting from throwing money at the problem[/at other people's problems].

Lines of thought regarding permanent solutions tend to go along the lines of considering original causes. Why are there so many suffering people? Huge numbers of people, small amounts of resources. Why are there so many people for so little resources? Because people keep breeding despite the low resource amounts available. Why do people do so? Because they are uneducated and/or stupid. How can we prevent this?

We can try to educate everyone, but that would require vast amounts of resources, and any section of the population we failed to educate would correspondingly swell and largely negate the efforts that made a second try impossible. Otherwise, we can try to make many smaller efforts which each educate only small numbers of people and make very little even-temporary difference, which has the same long-term effect. Otherwise, we can do nothing at all, which has the same long-term result.

We can try to forcibly lower reproductive rates by sterilisation, but that for similar reasons is unethical and sufficiently difficult to do on a large enough scale to be infeasible.

We can try to optimise human intelligence/wisdom at the genetic level, linking together all human minds to allow all awareness of the entirety of human knowledge. This is not yet technologically possible, but apart from anything else would arguably be unethical to do to people against their will.

Even for the last case, there will definitely be people who will refuse. There will definitely be a large proportion of people who continue to live in a manner which horrifies others.

If we cannot help them, then we cannot prevent this. If we can help them and they do not wish to be helped, we can only help them against their will.

If we cannot help them, then all that remains is to leave them alone.

How do you end poverty? You end the people who are poor. Either you change something broken about them so that they become less poor over time through their own actions, or you thin their numbers (e.g. by lowering reproductive rate) so that there are enough resources per person that they aren't poor any more.

As long as there is not enough resources to give to the poor all at once to render them all non-poor permanently, whenever one turns around there will be poor there. If they've been given resources in the past, they may be asking for or demanding resources. It will not stop.

There will always be a Person D, as long as one does not rectify all problems which tend to result in Person D-like people. Mental ability, education, reproductive rates, absolute ratio of resources to person in terms of food, liquid, shelter, employer positions... either all must be fixed at once, or left as an abyss of natural selection for the outliers to crawl their way out of.

Which has been most feasible so far has seemed fairly clear.

(Apologies for any sleepiness-related incoherency above.)

[silveradept]

And thus we arrive at the two opposite poles of the argument - on one end, the world cannot be fixed, excepting at once, and thus no effort beyond what people are willing to do should be expended. On the other end, the world can be fixed with concerted efforts of large enough actors such that everyone can be brought up to the desired minimum level (at least) and sustained there. There is often an assumption that by doing so, one is able to tap into the collective brainpower of a group that would otherwise be wasting resources on survival and unable to contribute to the betterment of Humes as a whole.

I do not think we can reconcile those differences, but it is the push-pull of those poles that move us in one direction or another toward optimism or cynicism. There may always be Person D, but a lot of optimists believe that even if we can shift the place where Person D is more toward equality and sustainability than they are now, we should. They may not be completely equal with the rest of the world, but they will be further along than they were before, and then another brilliant mind can move them more toward equality later on.

[sharpsight.livejournal.com]

N) This is perhaps dealable with by separating the two poles in practice. Those who think that such a group is unable to fix itself to one group, in which they're allowed to do what they wish, and those who think that such a group is able to fix itself to another group, in which they voluntarily subject themselves to the measures thought to be able to fix the group. Stand back, see if the group is fixed. If it's fixed, people from the first group will leave to join the second. If it's not, people from the second group will leave to join the first. Either way, the appropriate standpoint will clearly be arrived at.
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A problem with this might be that those who want resources to be taken may largely be those without (significant) resources, and those who don't be those with (significant) resources.
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If the first group has a greater resource density than the second, and the second claims that the inclusion of that greater density of the first is required for the desired 'fixing', one reaches the (earlier?) question of whether it is ethical to take the resources of the few for the benefit of the many, and whether a sustainable result will realistically come about even if that path is taken. The Labour party first coming into power, levying huge taxes on the very rich and almost all of said rich as a result leaving the country and so overall impoverishment (?) comes to mind. (I may or may not be recalling the details of that occurrence correctly.)
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If you can definitely 'fix' the standard of living for a large group by seizing the resources of a subgroup, is it ethical not to?
The base state: the supergroup (?) is the same size of the subgroup, only encompassing those with resources. They have the resources, they use them for their own benefit, and so they are already 'fixed'.
N people in that group. Assume that all in the subgroup have a certain resource density, and all outside have practically none at all.
Group of 2N: by 'fixing' the situation you can reduce all to a lifestyle of half that which the subgroup were living at. Group of 3N: a third. However large the group is, you can add more people, making the large fixed group the new subgroup.
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Extreme example: one hundred happy, content people, living fulfilling lives and making great progress (e.g. scientific, cultural, et cetera). One hundred billion people living at the lowest possible level of resource density, that just sufficient for continued life. 'Fix' the situation by seizing the resources of the hundred-person group and enforcing a minimum level incrementally higher than that lowest possible level of resource density. 'Is it possible to approve of this?/Is this ethical? Why not?' is a slightly-tempting line of questioning.
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The minimum level itself is arbitrary: to enforce it on those who wouldn't choose it is unwanted, and to demand its costs from those who wouldn't choose it is unfair. If a minimum level is enforcable amongst those who care about such a thing, then they can be wished happiness. To make someone who desires a lower minimum level pay for someone who desires a higher one, though, seems unworthy of approval. (Note to self/selves: find more synonym-equivalents for that concept.)

(That issue of what the 'desired minimum level' is is significant, as it varies depending on the person. If you're at the desired minimum level, but then have to sacrifice your resources to undesiredly raise the minimum level, you've suffered overall. ...subsidies from taxes which effectively decrease the choice available to consumers come to mind, taking money which someone might have used to buy carrots one day and potatoes the next and subsidising potatoes so that the person with the taxes taken and the potatoes subsidised can only afford to eat potatoes both days... hm.)

Where do you draw the line? How do you decide how much of Person E's resources 'should' be diverted to raise Person D's minimum lifestyle level? How much should be left for brilliant minds and future equality-movements? The extreme is that of taking all resources and spreading them equally, so that there isn't enough left over to educate a brilliant mind to the level where it would be able to make any further significant changes.

[silveradept]

Deciding what the minimum level is to satisfy the condition is a matter of much debate, and every side waves evidence that their way is best and most fulfilling, we agree. If food, shelter, and clean drinking water are your minimum standard, it would not appear to require much for resources. Add education and there's more, and so forth. Where you set the minimum line often affects whether or not the people with the greater resource density are willing to share/give up/have taken their resources, discounting any beliefs they may have about the deservedness of the people receiving their largesse/taxation, we both know. This is another potential stopping point in a theoretical debate, because once the numbers become concrete, often the argument shifts as to whether the numbers are right, instead of the concept.

To address the ethical yes/no on seizing the greater resource pool to benefit everyone, it depends on your philosophy. Socialist and Communist thinking consider it a crucial part of the ethics that resources are to be seized and then divided in a more equitable manner for everyone's benefit, and that in dividing those resources, all standards of living are raised to happiness. Techno-singularity types may insist that computing and robotic resources be divided appropriately such that Humes are freed from drudgery and can accelerate their work in the sciences and the arts to find fulfillment and advance the standard of living for all. A capitalist trusts that markets (regulated and unregulated) are the most efficient manner of distributing resources, even if those markets create inequalities.

There are also matters of scale to be discussed - some of those philosophies claim that they must be implemented planet-wide before anyone can judge their successes or failures.

[sharpsight.livejournal.com]

N) To think in absolutes, taking concepts to extremes to judge their merit, conveniently simplifies such cases.

In practice, resource-seizing tends to lead to observed collapse of all standards of living, particularly over time. Ayn Rand's 'consuming more than you produce' problem somewhat comes to mind (though it's acknowledged that there are likely various flaws in that camp of objectivism (?)).
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Humans are currently unequal in many respects; technology (used voluntarily) could hypothetically remedy a lot of these. Especially with a small cooperating group, too, robots et cetera could be used to maintain a high standard of living for all.
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The capitalist equivalent might be to use robots when cheaper than humans (currently tricky, if one assumes that there are many who will work for a pittance, largely due to overwhelming numbers--in short, many who place a lower value on their own lives than on that of a robot), eventually resulting in a similar state of menial tasks being handled automatically and non-menial matters being handled intelligently. Humans could thus be freed to turn their full potential to where it would have the greatest effect, where the greatest (hopefully generally positive) difference could be made. In doing so, for those able, monetary value would be accumulated in exchange (through the normal routes). Those who have nothing of value to sell to society to money will as usual necessarily have no money to buy objects of value from society with.
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In regards to human potential, assuming that human potential varies, a meritocracy is the ideal: the most resources go to those who can do the most with them. Those few who can comprehend and bring about more than all the rest of humanity are elevated to the top, at which they bring about more dramatic (again, hopefully positive) changes than any others had those others been elevated to the same positions and given the same resources.
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How, though, to approach this ideal meritocratic existence? Directed legislation to comb for, identify and groom those of high potential may speed the process, but currently capitalism is one of the more efficient methods seen to accomplish the allocation of scarce resources to those who can do the most with them. Those who can accomplish more rise above those who can't, gathering more resources in the process, and using them to rise to greater heights of accomplishment. The end result is those with greater potential ending up at the top and those with little to none ending up at the bottom. There are deviations from this, such as accidents et cetera interfering, but the general principle over time seems sound.
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Glancing over the paragraph again and returning to the first sentence, in ethical terms the clash between those who try to seize another's property and those who try to defend against it being seized tends to resemble a fairly black-and-white portrayal of ethical and unethical behaviour. Granted, to someone sympathising on the other side the ethicality/unethicality associations would be reversed, which is a little disturbing to contemplate. Hm. It's tempting to try to create a more-emotionally-charged mental image to try to sway the perceptions of such people, but they could do roughly the same thing in the other direction, and so doing so might be meaningless. Hrm.

A planet seems like a rather arbitrary measurement of group size. It might be relevant for such things as ozone layer maintenance which are a factor of planets, granted. In any case, especially given the dangers of committing all eggs t one basket, it seems as though an isolated system would be sufficient for most hypotheses--especially taking into account hypothetical encounters with aliens, et cetera. Any system which cannot handle interactions with entities outside it is prone to collapse upon encountering entities outside it. Thus, such philosophies I'm inclined to treat with great scepticism.

[silveradept]

The meritocracy is the ideal, but it requires a shared idea of what is meritorious and proper, and it requires checks against the possibility of corruption or malice by those who have greater resources, something that Humes have not yet been able to solve for successfully. Pure capitalism tries corrects for this through the market, but in popular perception, especially in the wake of financial scandals, the perception is now that those at the top are rigging the system so as to continually provide for their own achievement and not in attempting to increase the wealth of humanity, or even of their community. Some believe, instead, they are operating on a reverse effect, draining the community of resources to enrich themselves.

As for dealing with outsiders, one suspects either that those philosophers believed the outsiders would be converted and join the collective, or that there was a minimum size requirement for a stable operation, and in many cases, that stable size was the entirety of the planet, so that all the resources, natural and human, would be available to be distributed properly. No shortages due to incompatible systems or hoarding of resources to attempt to extract higher prices or the like. Once achieving that stable size, they could trade with outsiders as normal, without necessarily impacting the stability of the system on the planet. It may turn out to be that it's unsustainable or continually requires new planets to join the system so that new resources are available. On a less-than-planetary scale, the system collapsed. Who knows whether it will do the same at the planetary level?

[sharpsight.livejournal.com]

N?/B?) (*makes a mental note to think about the meritocracy/capitalism case at the end of the comment (?)*)
--
'conversion and join the collective': treating the rest of humanity as outsiders, if this reasoning held then all the rest of humanity would join the group which held to it without significant problems.

'minimum size for stability, that size estimated at the whole planet': deeply questionable. (Given the arbitrariness of planet-size.) If so large that 'the whole planet' is the closest estimate that could be made for it, then likely it's in fact significantly larger, in which case it couldn't be accomplished no matter how much of the planet were converted. More plausibly, there perhaps is no stable size, and trying to postulate ever-larger sizes at which it would work is just grasping at straws out of blind faith in their ideals, much like Midas stockmarket programs throwing more and more money at a crashing market to try to reach the amount of money thrown at which it would bounce back.
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Also take into account the problems of human overreproduction in response to abundant resources, in that even if one hypothetically provided a certain high minimum level of lifestyle for all, many would likely respond by having many children and significantly lowering the minimum level attainable.
This argument may be weak, given that those with higher lifestyle quality tend to have fewer children in practice.
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Whether a 'planet' or a 'continent' or a 'country' or a 'town' or a 'solar system' or a 'galaxy arm', the same policies can be put into practice regarding all the resources inside and the rest of the universe outside.
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That it collapsed in the first place throws significant doubt on it, to the point where entrusting the entire planet to it (especially without concrete data predicting a precise threshold of stability, born out of maths rather than hope) seems foolhardy.
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An unsustainable/pyramid-scheme-like arrangement would be an example of disastrousness in that collapse, once it finally came, would have far worse consequences than the collapse of a less-than-planetary test case.

[cut for length; first paragraph response below]

[sharpsight.livejournal.com]

N?/B?) [cut for length; second paragraph response above]

'and proper': seemingly irrelevant, or otherwise already being addressed in laws against homicide et cetera. Likewise with corruption/malice/et cetera, that already being a significant government-related problem regardless of meritocracies.
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A shared idea of what counts as 'merit': indeed problematic, given the many different (and here the phrase comes up again) comparative advantages which different people may hold. In practice, trying to manually identify and promote individual cases is crude and likely to lead to severe problems down the line if that's the only approach taken.
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The concept of capitalism bypasses this easily by ensuring (?) a result-based positive (and negative?) feedback system, those able to accomplish something of value to others able to obtain resources in return for their accomplishments. Thus, without having to manually select which qualities are desirable, those with those qualities will by using them be able to accumulate the resources needed to make best use of them.

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.v

The 'reverse effect' possibility is of significant concern in this regard. Money as power... distortions... black holes...

One might argue that this is consistent with the underlying concept. Those of greatest ability are able to make greatest use of resources and are greatest able to accumulated resources. Part of this is also the use of resources to accumulate more resources, the ultimate case being one person naturally selected as 'fitter' than all others (warning: as claimed that natural selection only applies to groups rather than individuals for evolutionary purposes, whether true or not this may be a warped case) ending up in control of all resources, standing in the position of a god-king/god-emperor/god-[gender-neutral ruler term] perhaps, with all the rest of humanity his/her/its vassals for instance.

It could be understood how this concept could prompt opposition.

Another argument could be that forceful draining, disadvantaging others rather than more efficiently making use of their skills, would only result from using money as power to forcefully warp the structure of the economy itself, for instance by enforcing monopolies, using money as power to crush enemies, bribing politicians et cetera.

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Both these mental images, as well as any third or other relevant images, may warrant further thought/discussion.

What are your thoughts on the appropriateness or inappropriateness or likelihood or otherwise of the Gilgamesh possibility?

What are your thoughts on the methods and/or deciding factors of such 'reverse effect, draining' methods?

What are your thoughts on any other issues of significance regarding this manner which have not yet been directly addressed?