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[Smithy]

Wall of text

You see what I mean, though, right? About government?

The government is at least supposed to be "the people." Saying you're against government interference is saying you're against the ability of the public to interfere for the good of everyone. Whether in practice that's how it works out doesn't diminish the fact that the capability should be there.

If the people don't govern themselves, someone else is going to do it, and you're going to get a sprawling oligarchy, which is, not coincidentally, exactly what the U.S. has.


(and so you don't think I'm being crazy or exaggerating, the former head of the World Bank did, in fact, describe the U.S. governmental system as an oligarchy when discussing the financial crisis).

Exactly!

[undertech]

Nice wall, indeed.

Also:
The idea that the right to property trumps the right to health and life. It's just ridiculous.

All rights are there to make people's lives better. The right to health is primary, it is basic, without it everything else is useless. Having lots of property can make your life better, but it's not necessary.

health > wealth.

While I agree with this, good luck convincing the rest of us Americans of this after having been convinced of the opposite for the last 50 years.

[moi]

I think all americans know that government intervention can be good to regulate markets, it's just that there is this mythological view of the american entrepreneur, and this selfish idea that everybody can one day cheat the law, steal indian lands, spoliate old people from their mine concessions, destroy agricultural land to enable the passage of your huge bovine flock, and all that is justified because ultimately this will make you a billionnaire and somehow you'll make up for your bad deeds when you have become rich.
Billionnaires are the true american heroes. Not a big deal if you make a bit of evil in the process.

[J. R. Hill]

I just wonder how much longer conservative spokespeople will claim to be Christians while hating the poor.  I wanna see Jesus bust into a Tea Party rally, flip some tables over and call them a brood of vipers.

They wouldn't recognize him though, since he doesn't have blond hair and blue eyes.

[Valter]

So can we switch the thread title to "Bash on America", or should we let the vitriol fester for a few more pages first?

I would defend my country, but I'm in West Virginia right now so I can't muster any earnest nationalism at the moment.

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

this topic has left the issue of this particular health care bill, it seems.

one point on rights, a third perspective: i don't believe that they are universal or that we make them up. the idea is more that rights are empirical. if you look at history, there are all kinds of civilizations. some thrived, some festered, some collapsed, there's a whole zoo of them. using all that data, we can determine which freedoms are important in order to maintain a civil society and which aren't. those things are rights. it's not an exact science to discover what those are, but it is a science. this is a difficult concept, but there is something between objective and subjective, and that's where rights lay.

regarding government and corporations and which are more evil, both are obviously evil. however, governments start and carry out wars and have killed billions of civilians (if you add them all up). corporations haven't even killed millions. of course part of that is because corporations are newer inventions and have had less time. but it's still a significant difference even in this century. all the corporations in the world never killed as many people as, say, america did when it firebombed tokyo. from this evidence we can at least say that governments are capable of and have a record of much greater evils than corporations do. this doesn't excuse the evils corporations do of course, or make the people corporations have killed feel any better, but it's just a matter of perspective. maybe once corporations become as big and powerful as governments they'll start to do as much evil as governments have done. that's fairly likely, even. but until then, i still fear armies more than bill gates.

[Mipe]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bhopal_disaster

To be frank, I fear such cases more than any war. You never know when the corporate greed is going to cost your health or life, while in case of war you at least know what is coming for you so you keep your head down and run to the hills.

Corporations, they're everywhere around us.

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

yep, i know of that one and was counting it when i estimated that it hadn't yet reached a million this century; 4000-15000 deaths is comparable to, for example, the (unofficial, but likely) number of people killed by police brutality every year. the police are everywhere around you, too.

[gunmaggot]

one point on rights, a third perspective: i don't believe that they are universal or that we make them up. the idea is more that rights are empirical. if you look at history, there are all kinds of civilizations. some thrived, some festered, some collapsed, there's a whole zoo of them. using all that data, we can determine which freedoms are important in order to maintain a civil society and which aren't. those things are rights. it's not an exact science to discover what those are, but it is a science. this is a difficult concept, but there is something between objective and subjective, and that's where rights lay.

That's not really a third perspective - that's just restating the idea that we make them up, and adding on an explanation of why we make them up.

[gunmaggot]

Also:  Cobra is a private army.  I don't think they ever killed anybody though.

[gunmaggot]

Also also:

There's a lotta crossover.  Mussolini effectively converted Italy's political system into a corporation - same with Stalinism.

Plus, you know, that India business http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Company_rule_in_India.

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

no, i don't believe we made rights up. i believe they are real, discoverable 'conditions' which lead to human civilization prospering. rights are those things without which long-term human societies become impossible to sustain. those aren't things humans make up, they're real characteristics of human society, in the same way that particular things pertaining to the structure of the society of ants or wolves are real things.

[Hangedman]

Rights are often just rules that happen to work the best over time.

[moi]

For the record I am not criticizing american people. I'd never do that.

[Mar]

For the record I am not criticizing american people. I'd never do that.

that's alright the american people do it to themselves. i mean jees everyday we're mocking our government for one reason or another.

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

the american government isn't the same thing as the american people, note

[Mipe]

It is the American people that set the American government up, however. If they fail to act against the government's agenda, that is considered the same as supporting it. Apathy is the downfall of democracy.

[Smithy]

WAR. from this evidence we can at least say that governments are capable of and have a record of much greater evils than corporations do. this doesn't excuse the evils corporations do of course, or make the people corporations have killed feel any better, but it's just a matter of perspective. maybe once corporations become as big and powerful as governments they'll start to do as much evil as governments have done.

But what is a government? It's the people who control society, right? So that could mean the voters, or it could mean the people the voters elect, or it could mean the wealthy top percent who use their money to buy the politician after the election, or to buy the elections themselves.

I mean, it's kind of a simplification to separate things into groups like that. If good ol' Uncle Sam Walton is controlling the lives of people, he is a part of the governance and you can't really separate him into the Corporate box. If you set up a venn diagram, the majority of it would be overlapped.

This makes the assumption that there never was a fascist state. It makes the assumption that corporate interests have never influenced things in government. German and Italian corporate powers called the shots under Benito and Adolf. It was the merge between state and corporate interests. Every time there is a war, there will be a certain type of wealthy personality trying to prolong it for monetary gain. Ever hear about Haliburton?

Hell. I won't get into that.

If we're going to talk about Agriculture and the big, evil FDA you keep talking about: Monsanto has its fingers in governmental seats, and it influences the FDA not to have any sort of label or regulation on genetically altered foodstuffs, (which can be harmful.)

If we're going to talk about Corporations valuing the of people at the bottom which support them: Ford had Actuary tables to justify the pinto.

Human lives take a backseat to the certain personality when there is money to be made. Doesn't matter whether that's the official government, or people with wealth who use it to govern (or influence the governing.)

In America we see electioneering. We've seen CEO's of massive corporations create false organizations with sappy names during election seasons dump out political adds. "This message brought to you by 'families for a safer America.'" Whatever. They don't have to anymore now that they have individual rights.

Anyway, the way this applies to this thread was that there is a certain group of people in this country making arguments against governmental action in any form. And the health care bill is a part of that.

It applies because people were against any form of official governmental regulation set down by people who are elected, in favor of what is essentially governance by corporations. It's the assumption that the only the government you set up can screw you, and that the health insurance companies (which GOVERN) cannot. The right wing propaganda machine and little radio Goebbels we have all over this country convince people that the aspects of society that the majority can control through the vote are bad, whereas the aspects of society that are set by rich individuals, exploiting the majority or not, are always good. It's the heart of the issue. Chickens rootiong for Colonel Sanders.

There are people against an expansion of the Pell grant system, in favor of being in debt for the rest of their lives to a bank, being gauged on a student loan. There are people in favor of paying their whole lives for insurance and then dying of cancer when they're dropped, against any rules against that kind of thing.

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

i already made that point earlier, that government is often corrupted by corporations and vice versa. i do think, though, that people accept when government kills people far more when than they accept when corporations do. if 8000 people die this year of police brutality, that's considered okay and ignored, but if 8000 people die in an industrial disaster, everyone notices.

and government is not made up of people, it's a system, and a principle. i wouldn't place the blame on government's murders on any particular people, but on the system of nationhood itself. the people are merely replaceable parts of that system.

[Smithy]

So you're saying that people pay more attention to lives lost by industrial disasters than lives lost by police brutality and war?

That's a derail, but... Are you kidding?

edit: I think people pay more attention to celebrity garbagenews than disasters of any kind--those who are apathetic about injustices are apathetic of category of injustices, and those who care about lives lost care about lives lost. Police brutality is huge when a story breaks out. So is war. So is the mercury released into water sources by industry. But for most people all of those situations take a backseat to celebrity news?

I don't know. This is a weird discussion to get into.


Er.. Anyway, sure, governance is a system, but the people that are part  of it (everyone) also have ways of changing it. But maybe the wealthiest have the most say in the way things are run, and that's why things tend to stay the way they are and there is adamant anger against anything that wouldn't be "supporting the wealth/status quo."