If I were an absolute ruler, I would not mandate any of these things.

These examples do nothing to convince me of the rightness of your opinion. Certain principles should be absolute or inviolable, or nearly so. "An individual should never be compelled or incentivized by the government to do something for the benefit of collective public health" is not one of those principles imo.

Put another way, it is entirely logical for me to both disfavor the mandates you describe above while also rejecting your brand of absolutism. If you think that you have walked me into a logical gotcha, you are mistaken.

Not really.

quite literally, federalist n.14

the absolute rule is needed if you feel the same moral horror I do about mandating at least one of the 3.

why? because quite simply the 51% shouldn't have the power to mandate that.

it isn't about a gotcha, it's about why you deny it would be proper to secure against the possibility of those things, and similar, be mandated, with a clear provision prohibiting that in the constitution?

which absurd problem for society do you think could happen, that would require denying my principle (of no mandate to sacrifice for the statistical benefit of third parties ever being legal) as necessary to save society, in order to incur the risk of any of the above or many other analogous moral horrors be mandated ever?

even in the scenario you described, how do you convince half of the population to do something they aren't willing to do to save their lives with 60% probability? it's quite literally people willing to die to not comply, why do you think it would be possible to mandate that to them?

it can only work when it's small minorities. and if it's small minorities, what can they ever be up to that society collapses if we can't mandate their sacrifice, and it's proper to risk any devious or evil party with 51% momentarily to violate such an important principle?

Are you seriously arguing that rhetorical flourishes in the Federalist Papers are evidence that the United States was the product of utopian fantasies?

I was hoping that things like the moral horror of the Vietnam war draft (quite possibly thenmost glaring example of a violation of my principle, before vaccine mandates excluding you from society) would have been enough to convince reasonable people the state shouldn't have the power to mandate you to sacrifice for the theoretical benefit of others.

What do you think was so much worse about that than about any other draft by any country for any war?

i am seriously arguing that what you call "utopian fantasy" is just a novel interpretation of very classic ideas repackaged through the lessons of history, as was the case for those guys in the 18th century.

unclear why you consider "utopian" a list of things that patchwork exist right now in various countries

it's approx as bad as any draft to wage a war of aggression toward a country that you aren't a neighbor of, which is something that happens rarely.

but the fact the war had absolutely no rationale at that scale, and even if won wouldn't have materially helped the lives of Americans, make a draft to fight it particularly atrocious.

draft for self defense is far less morally bankrupt; still wrong because a violation of the principle described , but far less than for aggression, and far far far less than for useless, particularly stupid, aggression at scale (bombing them a lot could have made sense, boots on the ground wtf)

There is no country in the world with an advanced economy that has a government that remotely resembles your ideal government. Somalia from 1991 to 2006 was relatively close to your ideal, but that's hardly a mark in favor of your system.

patchwork I said.

There are countries with flat income taxes.

Countries with no property tax on owner occupied housing.

Countries/states with no VAT/sales taxes.

Countries where the draft is unconstitutional.

Countries with no vaccine mandates

Countries with strong "stand your ground" (castle doctrine) rules

Countries where almost all substances are legal to consume

Countries with purely proportional representative systems

Countries with no taxes on capital gain

and so on and on.

it's very very few of my ideas that have no present-day application anywhere

In this case I think this is closer than may be being made out. In the UK, lockdowns, vaccine mandates etc were as close to unthinkable as it gets while restrictions on someone diagnosed with a contagous disease are easily accepted. We need imo to take limited action with those who break lockdown etc. I was and remain totally in the lockdown camp but understand why people disagree. Unless he is claiming some utopia than I hate that argument against any system. A utopian standard is not close to a a fair comparison for any system.

I thing edge cases is a red herring. Maybe luciom doens't get this (fair enough becaue most dont) but any serious system of absolute principles has edge cases because the individual principles conflict at times (or as I like to put it, you cannot comb a hairy ball)

Noem doubling down on killing a puppy she couldn’t train and using that as a selling point to buy her book probably makes her the perfect trump running mate

That bimbo clownass is really arguing ‘if I can’t train you I’ll just kill you. SEE HOW I MAKE THE HARD CHOICE?!’

This, in her mind, makes her relatable and popular and somehow people wonder why the MAGA crowd are assumed to be subhuman garbage

This is your champion, guys. Prove me wrong

Lol, yeah surely Trump being American president would clear up those minor differences between Israelis and Palestinians. Weren't they all holding hands and singing Kumbaya while he was in office before?

It’s kinda funny to read Jared Kushner’s victory lap over the Abraham Accords now. It was obviously nonsense even at the time but he genuinely said the Israel Palestine conflict was a minor real estate dispute not really important for Israel going forward. It’s just crazy he got someone to write up that stuff for him.

I don't know why he didn't eradicate COVID when he had POTUS superpowers.

This is the type of behavior that Losen, bahbah and Blowie find so appealing about him.

When I consider who to vote for as President the only thing I really care about is who do I think the majority of Americans would do better under. So I guess the opposite of what you claim I do.

Just curious, which of Trump's claims in that clip do you think are accurate.

Genuinely interested, what policies is he suggesting that benefit the majority of Americans?

All the ones I seem to have seen only really help the very rich, big corporations, and of course himself...

He is very pro tariffs which he thinks help working people as well as domestic companies (i strongly disagree, but many people on the left actually agree; technocrats liberal tend to disagree though)

He is very pro deregulation in all sectors, especially (but not exclusively) environmental ones, red tape in general, and he thinks removing many of them simply improves the quality of life of everyone, poor and rich (i 100% agree and most people on the right do as well), given the current amount of regulations is absolutely insane and most of them are written for nefarious purposes.

He proved both stances in his first term, both introducing tariffs and deregulating , powers that potus has directly, without congressional checks and balances.

He is less interventionist that most potus candidates have ever been , in the sense of having a lower propensity to use american power outside the border (and this is something that cuts across party lines, with many people both on the right and on the left agreeing with him, and viceversa).

He is very much less keen toward illegal immigration than democrats (and in his first term, also created a lot of problems to legal immigration), again something that depending on your opinion, can be good or bad for americans.

So you do or do not believe the majority of Americans would do better because
every world problem would not exist if Trump were President right now?

If I had to pick one I do not think Putin invades Ukraine . If that doesn't happen I do not see gas prices and oil rising as they did

I still think Hamas goes into Israel .

The country would still be as angry as it is now and that isn't going to change with Biden or Trump.