Don't you talk ugly to me, Go Mavs. I'll send you to the moon with my magic
shirt!
Post by Go MavsPost by Daniel SeriffWhich they can't afford to pay BECAUSE THEY'RE FUCKING POOR. How exactly does
billing someone for medical services they can't afford, but can be neither
legally nor ethically denied, solve the problem?
If you cannot afford to do something then why would you do it?
When the alternative to the thing you can't afford to do is death? You appeal
to society at large. Because that's the whole fucking point of banding
together in social groups in the first place.
Post by Go MavsYou see the
ethical dilemma here? If you cannot afford to bring a child into this world,
then you need to have the good sense not to grow a family of 6 to 10
members. If you do not have that good sense then you need to be stuck with
the debt.
You didn't answer my question. How does sticking someone with a debt that
they'll never be able to repay accomplish anything even remotely useful?
Post by Go MavsPost by Daniel SeriffBasically, what it boils down to is that you have two choices when it
comes
Post by Daniel Seriffto people who can't afford medical care, whether or not they're here
illegally. Subsidize it or deny it. One of those choices makes you a decent
human being, the other one makes you a sociopath.
I am no eyes wide shut conservative. I recognize damn well that the
insurance companies and hospitals are their own worst enemies. We will be in
a national healthcare service soon enough.
With that said, even in a NHC there have to be rules and regulations. In the
UK, right now, they are trying to cut benefits for habitual smokers and
drinkers and eaters.
Which is exactly why you can't consistently underfund a nationalized health
service. You'll eventually have to start making ethically bankrupt choices
like denying health care to smokers, alcoholics and the obese, as if they're
somehow less deserving of life because of what they do (to themselves!) with
it. Denying neonatal care to anchor babies or their mothers is no different.
Post by Go MavsWhat do you do about a person who cannot afford to have
children, but turns around and has 3 to 6 children? Just put the tab on
someone elses table?
When the only remotely viable alternative is to forcibly remove the children
from the home? What the fuck do you *think* we're supposed to do?
Post by Go MavsI cannot afford to eat at Smith and Wollensky. How about you and I go out to
eat next week? I will get a steak, some of their wonderful mashed potatoes,
and we will leave the bill on someone elses table. They can afford to pay
for it correct?
Having children is a massive responsibility.
So is running an international energy and communications conglomerate. Or an
industrialized nation, for that matter.
Most people aren't particularly responsible. This is a given. But access to
basic social services like health care should not be contingent on how
responsible you are or aren't, especially not when said responsibility is to
be judged exclusively from the perspective of the most socially powerful
class (i.e., rich heterosexual white Christian men).
Post by Go MavsPost by Daniel SeriffNot racist. Classist.
Maybe! But classism is a fact of life. No one will ever be equal.
*That's* your argument for denying poor people medical care? "No one will
ever be equal"? Seriously? You might as well just go full-on libertarialoon
and declare that it's their own damn fault they're poor, the lazy sons of
bitches.
I mean, really. Did you seriously just use "no one will ever be equal" as a
justification for making certain classes of people *EVEN* *LESS* equal than
they already are?
That way lies fascism.
Post by Go MavsI say it
is no better for the ultra poor to have 6 children, than it is for the ultra
rich to not be philathropist.
Well, I say it's no better to put mayonnaise on a sandwich than it is to bury
yourself up to the neck in monkey shit.
In other words, it doesn't matter if the poor having kids is better or worse
than whatever arbitrary (and completely irrelevant) benchmark you'd like to
set. It *is*.
And anyway, that's the risk you run in establishing a free society: that the
poor might have lots of children and the rich might bury all their money in a
coffee can in the backyard. Saying "no, you can't do that," in either case,
utterly defeats the intent and purpose behind the whole "freedom" thing.
Post by Go MavsPost by Daniel SeriffLots of overlap, of course, since race and class are so inextricably linked
in the public eye, but I'm sure you can take just a little bit of solace
in the fact that racism is at least not your *primary* flaw in this
discussion.
Race is not an issue when it comes to responsibility. Race will often be
brought up by people who don't agree. It is a means of accusing someone of
something sick and simplifying the conversation because they cannot
articulate their opinion on the subject.
There is no flaw in arguing responsibility.
I hate to break it to you, but it's categorically impossible to separate the
issue of race from the issue of illegal immigration. I realize that an
accusation of racism hurts, because nobody outside of the white hood brigade
likes to think that they've personally benefited from our racist, classist,
sexist, homophobic, Christian-dominated social system their entire life. And
yet all the same, you (I'm assuming you're a white guy, because it's
vanishingly rare that anyone else expresses the opinions you have) have
personally benefitted throughout your life from our racist, classist, sexist,
homophobic, Christian-dominated social structure.
"Responsibility" is just a dog-whistle term. It's pure rhetoric, underneath
which is a naked and unsubtle appeal to fear and hate. Even at the absolute
best, it's a claim that "we" are so much better (so much more "responsible")
than "them," those people who just sit around fucking and shooting little
babies everywhere all day.
So I'm going to assume that your befuddlement is genuine and that you just
don't realize it, but your "responsibility" argument is based fundamentally
on the nativist (and therefore necessarily and undeniably racist) anxieties
of the Base.
Hell, the layer of rhetoric isn't even all that thick, anymore. You don't
really have to try that hard to see through it.
Post by Go MavsThe facts are that if you cannot
afford to have 5 kids then you do not go and have 5 kids. If you cannot
afford to eat at Smith and Wollensky, then you do not go eat at Smith and
Wollensky.
Because having children is *JUST* *LIKE* eating at a fancy steakhouse, right?
Children aren't autonomous individuals with human rights at all, really,
they're just ambulatory porterhouse-and-Chianti dinners.
Post by Go MavsWe hear the argument all of the time that the ultra-rich have a moral
obligation to be philanthropist to society,
Really? I've never heard that, and I come from money. It's a *fact* that the
ultra-rich philanthropize, yes, but that's because for the most part, they
think it's the right thing, not the obligatory thing, to do. Almost no one
uses the phrase "noblesse oblige" unironically.
A relevant quote for you:
"Indeed you can usually tell when the concepts of democracy and citizenship
are weakening. There is an increase in the role of charity and in the worship
of volunteerism. These represent the elite citizen's imitation of noblesse
oblige; that is, of pretending to be aristocrats or oligarchs, as opposed to
being citizens."
��John Ralston Saul
I'm sure you'll agree that feudal societies are, if history is any guide,
neither free nor equitable.
You might want to read some Saul, actually. He's one of the better social
thinkers out there today. I think that "Voltaire's Bastards" and "On
Equilibrium" would be particularly enlightening for you.
Post by Go Mavsbut the min you question a lower
classes ethics, then dammed if you do. That's the media age we live in.
The problem isn't that you're questioning lower-class ethics. The problem is
that you're not in a position to question their ethics in the first place,
since you clearly don't have the first goddamn clue about what their lives
are actually like.
We'll have to pick this up on Monday, as I probably won't have usenet access
in Dallas.
--
Daniel Seriff
Debating creationists on the topic of evolution is rather like trying to play
chess with a pigeon - it knocks the pieces over, craps on the board, and
flies back to its flock to claim victory.