Mega-Thread: Democratic 2020 Primaries

[Elegiac]

You're not owed a life. If you're going to sit there and demand I take care of you, I get a say in that. Just because two people decided to get together and make a bad decision doesn't obligate me to bare that burden for the rest of it's life. Society should have freedom to decide who lives and who dies based on their contributions versus their burden.

Again; you are aware that social darwinism is pseudoscience, yeah?

[BeepBoo]

Again; you are aware that social darwinism is pseudoscience, yeah?

When I say fittest, I mean "fitness" in a holistic sense. I'm pretty sure the child of bill gates could have every non lethal medical condition known to man and still have a better life than 99% of us as far as access to resources. That's fine. Bill Gates earned the right to provide for that kinda child if he sees fit. That's the entire point: freedom of the market (without govt intervention) to decide who it wants to give resources to, which... yes... might sometimes result in someone who needs help not getting as much help as they need because no one cares about them. Sucks to need help.

What's with conservatives not understanding how insurance works?

Auto insurance works how health "insurance" (cost sharing when you include guaranteed medical conditions) should work. You don't get covered for crap that is guaranteed to happen. Health insurance and any other type of PREEMPTIVE risk sharing isn't supposed to be a charity for people who can't otherwise afford their crap to get the funds they need.

[Elegiac]

When I say fittest, I mean "fitness" in a holistic sense.

Cool.

"Fitness" in whatever sense as applied to society is pseudoscience, what part of that are you not getting?

[BeepBoo]

Cool.

"Fitness" in whatever sense as applied to society is pseudoscience, what part of that are you not getting?

Anything that talks about such a subject is an opinion in it's entirety to begin with. What's your point? "Science says the majority of the pathetic people that currently exist would thrive more under <x> system!" You'd have to convince me that everyone thriving is the best goal for humanity in the first place.

Just be happy I'm voting this side of the line this time, regardless of who wins.

[Elegiac]

Auto insurance works how health "insurance" (cost sharing when you include guaranteed medical conditions) should work. You don't get covered for crap that is guaranteed to happen. Health insurance and any other type of PREEMPTIVE risk sharing isn't supposed to be a charity for people who can't otherwise afford their crap to get the funds they need.

And what this results in is a far sicker population that requires far more expensive treatment when regular preventative care would have been cheaper all along.

Congratulations, you played yourself.

- - - Updated - - -

Anything that talks about such a subject is an opinion in it's entirety to begin with. What's your point? "Science says the majority of the pathetic people that currently exist would thrive more under <x> system!" You'd have to convince me that everyone thriving is the best goal for humanity in the first place.

Sociopathy aside, whether or not you thinking everyone thriving is the best goal is irrelevant.

It is a simple fact that "survival of the fittest" as a concept being applied to social settings is based on a fundamentally incorrect understanding of how fitness and evolution actually work; an understanding that is also deliberately incorrect as it is designed to justify existing social strata.

Like, you can argue with the fundamental dignity of human beings but you can't argue with science.

[BeepBoo]

And what this results in is a far sicker population that requires far more expensive treatment when regular preventative care would have been cheaper all along.

Congratulations, you played yourself.

That's only in the short run. Those people would all die out and only the real value would be left that wouldn't need as much. The planet would be greener, even if everyone drove a tank. Robotic automation is coming to replace the need for unskilled bottom barrel people, and it can't come fast enough. Wanna save the planet? You don't do it by taking measures to find ways to shoehorn more pointless people that shouldn't have existed in the first place into it.
[Infraction]

[Edge-]

And what this results in is a far sicker population that requires far more expensive treatment when regular preventative care would have been cheaper all along.

Congratulations, you played yourself.

No, they'll just die off and society will be better! Really better!

Except for the lack of workers to fill many needed positions, both skilled and unskilled.
Except for the lack of consumers to help drive an economy.
Except for the financial ruin it will leave many folks in, meaning they need to use other social safety nets or simply be homeless.
Except for a shrinking population that comes with a whole host of problems.

"Libertarians" largely seem to have a horizon that extends about 10 feet beyond themselves and no further when it comes to society. It's fantastically frustrating.

[Elegiac]

That's only in the short run. Those people would all die out and only the real value would be left that wouldn't need as much. The planet would be greener, even if everyone drove a tank. Robotic automation is coming to replace the need for unskilled bottom barrel people, and it can't come fast enough. Wanna save the planet? You don't do it by taking measures to find ways to shoehorn more pointless people that shouldn't have existed in the first place into it.

No, they'll just die off and society will be better! Really better!

Except for the lack of workers to fill many needed positions, both skilled and unskilled.
Except for the lack of consumers to help drive an economy.
Except for the financial ruin it will leave many folks in, meaning they need to use other social safety nets or simply be homeless.
Except for a shrinking population that comes with a whole host of problems.

"Libertarians" largely seem to have a horizon that extends about 10 feet beyond themselves and no further when it comes to society. It's fantastically frustrating.

@Edge I like how you intended this as a joke but they ended up saying the exact same thing but like...serious.

My sides are in orbit.

[BeepBoo]

No, they'll just die off and society will be better! Really better!

Except for the lack of workers to fill many needed positions, both skilled and unskilled.
Except for the lack of consumers to help drive an economy.
Except for the financial ruin it will leave many folks in, meaning they need to use other social safety nets or simply be homeless.
Except for a shrinking population that comes with a whole host of problems.

"Libertarians" largely seem to have a horizon that extends about 10 feet beyond themselves and no further when it comes to society. It's fantastically frustrating.

You have zero proof all of those things would come to pass. Shrinking population? Maybe until it stabilized around the natural order it would have.

"Lack of workers"

Yeah, no. Not how proportions work. Say you need 1 in 1000 people who is a doctor. Doesn't matter if you have 100,000 or 1000 people. The ratio would still be 1:1000.

"financial ruin"
Yeah, maybe. Again, only temporary.

"Except for the lack of consumers to help drive an economy."

Why does the economy NEED to be driven a particular way? Can't just have natural growth or fluctuation? Always have to have increases? That's unrealistic. We can't just keep expanding quickly indefinitely, nor should that be the goal. Stable, slow rate growth is best IMO.

Besides all of this, you automatically assume my position prescribes a lot of things it does not innately do. Under my type of system, it's entirely possible we exceed our current population numbers as well. We don't know, and I'm not concerned about that stuff. All I want is for the number of people that exist to equal the number of people society demands. Humans are a resource just like anything else. They need to be allowed to grow and shrink in number with the typical ebb and flow.

[tyrlaan]

That's only in the short run. Those people would all die out and only the real value would be left that wouldn't need as much. The planet would be greener, even if everyone drove a tank. Robotic automation is coming to replace the need for unskilled bottom barrel people, and it can't come fast enough. Wanna save the planet? You don't do it by taking measures to find ways to shoehorn more pointless people that shouldn't have existed in the first place into it.

So you're a wannabe Thanos?

I'm sure plenty of ill folks would love being called pointless. You should go to some hospitals and test it out to their faces.

[Endus]

That's only in the short run. Those people would all die out and only the real value would be left that wouldn't need as much.

This is really unbelievable fiction, not reality.

The reality is that you're arguing for a massive die-off in the consumer class that sustains the economy, which would tank as a result, putting currently middle-class and wealthy people into the poorhouse, where they would die off, until society collapses under its hubris or decent people say "fuck this bullshit" and fix it.

That's what was happening during the Great Depression, y'know. That's the outcome of what you propose. What fixed it, and prevented it ever recurring, was the implementation of the very social support systems you decry.

You're completely wrong about very basic concepts.

[tyrlaan]

Besides all of this, you automatically assume my position prescribes a lot of things it does not innately do. Under my type of system, it's entirely possible we exceed our current population numbers as well. We don't know, and I'm not concerned about that stuff. All I want is for the number of people that exist to equal the number of people society demands. Humans are a resource just like anything else. They need to be allowed to grow and shrink in number with the typical ebb and flow.

So when automation takes off, the only people that society will "demand" are the rich.

I hope you're rich. Otherwise, you're twisted philosophy is sealing your own fate.

[Endus]

You have zero proof all of those things would come to pass. Shrinking population? Maybe until it stabilized around the natural order it would have.

There is no "natural order".

And populations don't necessarily stabilize. Plenty of populations crash and die out completely.

Again; you're arguing ridiculous pseudoscience.

"Lack of workers"

Yeah, no. Not how proportions work. Say you need 1 in 1000 people who is a doctor. Doesn't matter if you have 100,000 or 1000 people. The ratio would still be 1:1000.

And when millions of people die off, you have a bunch of doctors who used to serve that population, and now can't get jobs, because society still employs enough doctors for the remaining population.

This creates a new "poor" class of unemployed workers, and the population spiral continues downward.

"financial ruin"
Yeah, maybe. Again, only temporary.

In that a complete economic collapse renders an economy to a zero-point, from which any change has to be positive. That "temporary" issue could last centuries, however. Assuming anyone's left to rebuild at all.

All I want is for the number of people that exist to equal the number of people society demands. Humans are a resource just like anything else. They need to be allowed to grow and shrink in number with the typical ebb and flow.

This is Goebbels-level misanthropy. Not libertarianism.

[BeepBoo]

So you're a wannabe Thanos?

I'm not targeting anyone in particular. I'm not even mandating half of people die. I don't care who lives and dies regardless. I just want society to be able to make that choice for the people that require it's support. Why shouldn't the people taking care of something be able to decide *if they want to or not*?

I'm sure plenty of ill folks would love being called pointless. You should go to some hospitals and test it out to their faces.

Sick people aren't pointless (to society). Sick people who can't afford to pay and will never be able to pay back the cost of their treatments are.

[Orbitus]

I'm not targeting anyone in particular. I'm not even mandating half of people die. I don't care who lives and dies regardless. I just want society to be able to make that choice for the people that require it's support. Why shouldn't the people taking care of something be able to decide *if they want to or not*?


Sick people aren't pointless (to society). Sick people who can't afford to pay and will never be able to pay back the cost of their treatments are.

And you know what would happen if they instituted what you wanted? You would probably be taken out in the eventual uprising and civil war to kill the rich people because the poor people would be dying in the streets thanks to your plan.

[downnola]

I'm not targeting anyone in particular. I'm not even mandating half of people die. I don't care who lives and dies regardless. I just want society to be able to make that choice for the people that require it's support. Why shouldn't the people taking care of something be able to decide *if they want to or not*?


Sick people aren't pointless (to society). Sick people who can't afford to pay and will never be able to pay back the cost of their treatments are.

This post is seriously lacking moral intelligence. I'm not flaming you and calling you dumb, but this way of thinking is what causes unneeded misery in an already miserable world.

[tyrlaan]

This post is seriously lacking moral intelligence. I'm not flaming you and calling you dumb, but this way of thinking is what causes unneeded misery in an already miserable world.

This is the most generous response I could possibly imagine to that post. I applaud you because my response would probably have been infraction-worthy.

[JohnBrown1917]

And you know what would happen if they instituted what you wanted? You would probably be taken out in the eventual uprising and civil war to kill the rich people because the poor people would be dying in the streets thanks to your plan.

People with these idealogies will never consider the, huge, posibility that they'll end up as the losers(99%+ will).

[Muzjhath]

So when automation takes off, the only people that society will "demand" are the rich.

I hope you're rich. Otherwise, you're twisted philosophy is sealing your own fate.

The funny thing is that management is far cheaper to automate than say. A janitor.
Management can be fairly specialized scripting in a neural network (hypothetically). A janitor? Far more generalized and needs a very generalized robot (or set of robots).
One is a few hundred thousand dollars (assumed) of work. The other is tens of millions of dollars.

[kaelleria]

Warren's M4A funding plan is out... and it's kind of a joke.

https://www-m.cnn.com/2019/11/01/pol...com%2Fpolitics

20.4 Trillion over 10 years with 2.3 trillion coming from increased tax fraud and evasion enforcement.

It's a freaking pipedream to think this is a feasible funding plan.