Socialised Medicine Yaaaaaaaayyyy

[MrJonno]

It's not coercion. You're obliged to follow the laws of the country you choose to live in. If those laws offend you so much, depart for somewhere that suits your beliefs. You're a self sufficient adult so whats complicated about that.

Yeah but living in a country is 'free', its natural law but paying taxes to that country for living there is theft and not natural law

[SnowLeopard]

like every single socialist I've ever encountered you know damned well you can't morally and ethically justify redistributive socialist theft.

Well, we can. You just don't like the answers.

It's almost as though people have different opinions from you, isn't it.

Weird.

[MrJonno]

Natural law says its ethnically justified to redistributive wealth


Of course natural law doesn't exist but if Seth can make shit up so can I. Maybe my natural law is different to his natural law. You have libertarian natural law and socialist marxist law or mixed economy natural law. In fact why not just drop the natural law bit and call it politics

[SnowLeopard]

Wrong. The basis of my ownership is my ability to reduce the object to my possession and defend that possession against intrusion by others.

No, you're wrong. That's you protecting your object. There's a difference. You can attempt to protect your object without government help, but you can't own it without the government enabling/allowing you.

A squirrel doesn't own a nut he collects, there is no squirrel council that enforces possession laws.

Without the squirrel government he can attempt to protect his gatherings from aggressors to the best of his abilities, but in no sense does he own it or have any rights to it.

It doesn't give you permission to own something

However it enables you to own something.

[FBM]

Tip to all interested: The "moral and ethical justification" line is a red herring to distract you from holding his feet to the fire over his self-contradiction with regards to thinking it's legit to refer to the Constitution when the issue is the legitimacy of gun ownership, but somehow fallacious to do the same thing when the issue is the legitimacy of taxation. If you let him drag you into the quagmire of morals and ethics, he's won, because that can be argued endlessly as it has been for centuries. My advice is to keep it real and current. Namely, his self-contradiction.

[mistermack]

Seth, the point that you're still missing is that all the ''morally'' and ''ethically'' principles are inside your head. There is no independent source of morals.
We all have ideas about what's right and wrong. Yours are no more important than anyone else's.

I find it a moral outrage, that one person can cut off body parts from another, without their consent, or even an anaesthetic. Compared to that, tax is a tiny infringement of personal liberties.
But males in your US are seventy to eighty percent circumcised.
If you have no moral rights of ownership of your foreskin, you certainly have no moral property rights to anything else.
You just have legal rights, that people have agreed to put in force, over the years.

You don't even own your own body. It wasn't long ago, that Americans were called up for national service. They can make you run, jump, eat what they tell you to eat, sleep where they tell you to sleep.
They could bring that back, legally.
Your ''rights'' are nothing to do with ethics. They are just legal constructs.

We all have preferences, and regard some things as immoral. So long as you realise that that's just inside your head, and not absolute, it's not a problem.

[MrJonno]

We all have preferences, and regard some things as immoral. So long as you realise that that's just inside your head, and not absolute, it's not a problem.

No no natural laws are universal and definite morality absolutely, sure I may have them in my head but if you can't find it in yours then you arent trying hard enough

[JimC]

Anyway, we who live in countries with some form of national health care don't give a flying continental fuck what selfish arseholes from less fortunate countries might "think" about how we run our affairs...

[Rum]

Quite so Jim. The proof of the pudding and all that. My family has benefited enormously from the NHS here - and at times we could have afforded private treatment too. When I was diagnosed with penile cancer nine years ago I was so alarmed (as you might expect!) that I had an initial consultation with a BUPA Consultant (Bupa is our biggest private health care organisation). I asked the guy I saw if I should go with BUPA. He said I shouldn't waste my money and that in any case I would be seeing him if I went NHS! Which I did. The treatment all round was superb.

[pErvinalia]

You're clearly a Marxist, Rum.

[JimC]

You're clearly a Marxist, Rum.

Rumour has it that his underpants have a hammer and sickle pattern!

In red!

[Audley Strange]

Yeah the moral and ethical argument brings into play subjective opinion as to what is right. For example one could easily make the case that it is moral to enforce those who wish to reap the benefits of living in a society informed by government to contribute towards the maintenance of that government and society at large. One could claim that it is immoral to put ones own greed before the needs of others

You just claim whatever you like as being right. That's all you need for a moral argument. You can disagree but then one gets into personal argument, emotive argument.

[MrJonno]

Yeah by the natural laws that are in my head are better than anyone else morals, the voices in my head tell me so, I've also found a couple of libertarians with AK47's who also hear the same voices!

[mistermack]

The phrase ''natural law'' is a weird one anyway.
There is hardly any sign of property being respected in the animal world.
If you can take it, it's yours. It's only when you get to the most intelligent social animals, that there is even a hint of ''property'' and then, only the slightest hint.

Chimpanzees might allow a smaller chimp to keep a desired object, but it's really only because of the social upset that taking it by force would cause. If they can take something by subterfuge, they will.
Some monkeys will take the food out of the mouth of a lower ranking monkey, they don't even own it if it's inside them.

So there is no moral or ethical right to property for any animal. You have to be religious to think that it's different for humans.
We just take social living further than other animals, and write the rules down.

[pErvinalia]

Speaking of monkeys, the little fuckers in India didn't respect my private property when they burst into my room and stole my bananas while I was ill in bed!