On a serious note, can the politics thread happen?

I have to think I am in the majority of people who check into this thread for interesting/funny/break-the-flow-of-the-day type entertainment and seeing these giant debates about the issues of the day are the opposite of what i am looking for.

I'm not trying to say these issues are not important, they are probably the most important things. In off-topic internet communities with people who consider themselves intellectuals, it is impossible for these topics to be avoided.

FACK UNCHAINED

Tone arguments itt

Thayer, I can't agree with your second paragraph because it's wrong and I never have.

I don't think I've ever agreed that there would be a lot less mass/murders terrorism if minorities were deported, because (1) I've never thought that and (2) that's factually wrong.

First of all, there is not "a lot" of terrorism in America. There is very, very little. I won't call it trivial, because it is not trivial, but it is a tiny number in comparison to basically any other cause of death you can think of in America. It would appear that over the last decade, deportations could have prevented a maximum of ~ 30 deaths per year from terrorism, and I say maximum because I'm not currently going to take the time to figure out how many acts of terrorism on American soil were done by white Americans or were done by non-citizens on visas.

Second of all, I don't think it's even true that mass murders in America are disproportionately carried out by "minorities." They are largely carried out by white dudes. Not sure what sort of deportation would even affect that.

Third, given that I believe deportation of minorities would probably INCREASE radicalization and cause MORE unwanted activities -- that tends to be what happens when you victimize entire ethnicities / beliefs with unsupportable bigoted policies like mass deportation - I would regard the "solution" you ascribe to the Republican Party as an absolute disaster.

Fourth, regarding gun control, I made a huge long post about that some time ago and I'm looking for it. It will speak for itself, probably.

The reason why politic discussions are so good here is usually because they're so short and doesn't devolve into 90k post semantic arguments with ikes. That's all a politics thread would be.

Lets take, as fact, that Medicare is completely neutered because it's not allowed to negotiate drug prices (it's not obviously, health care spending is a lot more than just drugs. Medicare also has huge bargaining clout and costs less per person because of it. It's the largest influence on the cost of things too because private insurers often use their rules as guidelines).

Is that a market failure or a government failure? Because it sure sounds like it's the failure of the government to properly acquire their supplies.

Seriously, these arguments have always been really good in the FACK except when ikes got involved.

Meb your larger point is that the free market has made the health care system kind of ****ty in the USA. I feel like that's a super fair assessment of your position.

Why, then, are you using an example of a poor government intervention to make that point? It is evidence against your position, not the other way around.

well, considering that all 3 of the guns were bought legally (per cnbc) it seems like laws that make it impossible to purchase these legally could have potentially had an impact.

When politics are discussed in the FACK we're having a conversation or exchange of ideas in short form. We are not writing academic papers to be held up to peer review to have every word choice critiqued.

There's also usually mutual respect, intellectual honesty and good faith arguing for the most part. Ikes completely tanks that vibe and forces everyone into argue everything one point at a time and have to specify things 30 times. It prohibits an easy exchange of ideas that a lot of people like and can benefit from even if they're not making perfect arguments.

There's also the issue that 99% of the time he's wrong or outright lying, has less overall intelligence than a large majority of the people he's interacting with, and finally that he also just really sucks. You suck bro.

pretty sure its the post i quoted on the last page?

I don't think I was being disingenuous. I'm not suggesting there's no thread that runs from Christianity through to modern society today. I'm fully aware that many of the foundational thinkers of the western ethos considered themselves devout Christians.

But I don't think the modern ethos has much in common with Christianity, aside from some basic ethical principles that are more or less found in all religion, and which predate religion, and which honestly predate H. Sapiens altogether in their most basic tit-for-tat, social cohesion manifestations.

Again, you originally said:

I would argue that the "moral foundations for open and progressive societies" are precisely the notions that things are good which make us feel good, that we should do as we please without hurting others, that what we work for should be considered our own, that we should create societies that tolerate and accept others, and so forth. These are all ideas that came to dominate the zeitgeist from 1600+, and were generally pushing back against Christianity (and other religions).

There's a reason that when we study Locke in any history / philosophy / poli sci course, you're going to be studying his theory of natural appropriation, social justice, and so forth.

And to get back to this book, I think the title alone supports my claim. It seems to tacitly recognize that things which are not Reasonable are not Good. It is not called "The Christianity of Reason," and that's no accident.

(I've only just now read a basic cursory overview of the book, and it seems the book itself doesn't follow that line of argumentation exactly, but I just thought the title is an interesting insight into the times. Also, the book does appear to argue in favor of broad inclusion / acceptance within Christianity, which is rather contrary to it's more zealous origins as an institution).

The only thing I'd change about that gun post Mr. loldolphins quoted is that I'd soften my position on the hopelessness of regulation. I still think it's a multi-generational project, and as I said even then I of course 100% support aggressively pursuing gun control and gun regulation no matter how fatalistic I am about the productivity of the project, but there may be room for a little more optimism than I expressed there.

Yes, thank you!

I'm not critiquing your word choice. You made a big point using evidence A. I told you that evidence directly contradicted that point, and, quite frankly, it absolutely does. If Medicare is neutered due to poor rules the government set, that is not a market failure.

The core of my argument was not that public control is better than private control, it actually was that public vs private control doesn't matter, but it is the market inequities that need to be fixed. My point was that a correctly implemented single payer system fixes these inequities. The current form of Medicare is not able to fix these because it is poor government intervention (see we do agree on something).

Lol I've shown you guys nothing but respect, and you specifically have given none while contributing nothing to the discussion. But yeah, I'm the problem.

LOL

Yeah I mean . . . yeah. Whatever, I responded.

lol. No one likes you in politics, and people don't want you here, either. Wonder who the problem is. I know, it's everyone else.

Thayer,

Yikes man. Yikes.

I too enjoy watching middle-aged white millionaires tell minorities that social justice is stupid and gay

If the "agenda" is "putting a stop to mass murders in America", call me "agenda-driven" all day.

More South Park logic. "Uhh, well, that might be the right thing to do, but you're so smug about it, so **** you."

Mmm, so, if you just flip what the mass media ACTUALLY DOES after a mass shooting, and assume people on the other side think the exact same but in reverse, you have your false equivalence! And you can stay right there in your snorting-and-eyerolling caring-is-stupid Smug Middle.

I love how the South Park Libertarians always accuse everyone else of being smug, when they're worse about it than anyone. Taking false middles because every side is stupid and they're so above it. I'm convinced Matt and Trey would actively sabotage projects that benefit humanity just so they could laugh at the people who cared about them. Remember their climate-change denial?

Make a politics thread. Make Ikes and Schu mods. Watch the world burn.

it seems to me that the mass shooting angle that always brings out the most strident gun control cries is less compelling than just the fact that more strict gun control would almost certainly be beneficial for society for the sole reason that there would most likely be a very palpable decrease in suicides- which are the leading cause of death by guns

if you argue with people about like gun control in australia they point to spikes in armed robbery or whatever and there are so many confounding factors at play that anyone who wants to plug their ears and say "gun control wouldn't do anything to reduce homicides or violent crime" (and it might even be true) but it just makes logical sense to me that the biggest problem with guns being everywhere right now is how easy it is to make a final attempt to end your own life in the wrong state of mind

If this was the argument you meant to make you've gone about it very poorly and have basically left it as a simple assertion given the way you've gotten here. The problem you're worrying about is most definitely a problem, but like I said before, people demand the absolute newest and best for their medical treatment. They don't go to the doctor and say fix me in the cheapest way doc. What you've done is identify is a simple economic concept and sophomoricaly try to expand that to THE PROBLEM.

Eta: Doctor and device pay is basically set once a patient walks into their office these days. They don't sit back and say how much do you value your life. What does happen however is that people demand the newest hip implant and best mri and to rule out everything. Basically no one takes the economy model when it comes to their own health.