Do you think that human beings have any rights, any worth, any value, other than as puppets for your preferences?

Somebody should have asked up front — I'd have saved everyone a lot of time.

I am, in fact, a communist — i theory. I am willing to admit that there is zero evidence that it can be made to work.

Yes, else I wouldn't even care about the questions. It is the value of hiuman beings that makes the whole thing — everything in life — worth considering. And where that comes from, I don't know... but I choose to believe that people matter, that all life matters.

I don't think I have the right to impose any of these things on anyone. I was just stating my preferences.

My recollection was that that was very different, but whatever. I don't think any of what I said about my political views is really fundamental to who I am, I'm just including it for background, if you will.

(Actually, my extreme views on the value of nature are pretty fundamental; the rest, I'm willing to yield to a strong argument on. But I'd really rather not have those arguments here, in too much detail.)

There's no anger in the question, I'm genuinely curious if someone who believes that people have no right to their money, their guns, or their freedom, can at the same time value people intrisically.

I'd say you aren't a communist at all, you're a fascist.

concur

still atak


my exgirlfriend was a fascist too

of course

"Taxes should be higher. Very high, on rich people. Not only because it works, but also because I believe large disparities in wealth are bad in and of themselves."

What is your definition of rich? What tax brackets we talking about here? How much higher should taxes be on wealthier people, and lastly, do you think taxing people who earn higher income will hurt their incentive to work hard.

Where is the incentive to work hard if the government is going to take it away and give it to the less fortunate?

I think I can be both.

I think that people are inherently valuable, but that there is no inherent right to anything, so if what is good for one person is considerably more harmful to others, it should not be allowed.

Who decides what this applies to? **** if I know. I wouldn't trust myself to do it (which is why I wouldn't push the button unless I were depressed — and I'll acknowledge that my judgment is poor when I'm depressed). Unfortunately, I don't know any other person, people, or system I'd trust it to either, so in practice we'll get our terrible status quo. But I can dream.

I think the difference between your typical communist and me is that i admit it may not work at all, I just want to try. And the difference between your typical fascist and me is that i recognize that I'm not qualified to decide what's right (in part because I'm emotionally unbalanced).

didn't you earlier state that you are ok with people smoking in public places like restaurants?

second hand smoke is considerably harmful to people

I don't know where the brackets should be. If we know what revenue needs to be, we an try to set them, but I need data that I don't have.

My gut feel is that it should be very hard to get more than ten times more wealthy than average. Maybe that works as a cutoff.

As for incentivization of work: That's overrated. If things are arranged so that the marginal rate is fairly low on earned income through a reasonably high number (which is possible), then most people have at least the incentive they do now (I think it can be done with low brackets, on earned income only, that aren't much higher, or maybe not at all higher, than the US uses now — I'm not sure this is right, it's a guess.) Meanwhile, taking away most of the financial incentive to make big numbers — say above a few hundred thousand a year, perhaps — would result in very little loss of productivity, because such people constitute a tiny part of the useful labor market. In fact, in most cases they do no useful work at all, they just transfer wealth.

The bigger change would be on taxation of unearned income, which could be made uniformly high without hurting production much, and oin the passing on of wealth to children, which could be made impossible in most cases (Family businesses being the exception, with limits) without hurting things at all.

Couple that with the fact that i don't think a loss of productivity would necessarily be bad, and that's how I conclude this could work.

I'm OK with that only if the people can choose, reasonably, not to go to those restaurants (or work at those companies, or whatever). For this reason, smoking in places where everyone needs to be able to go — public buildings, parks, and so on — should not be allowed. There's also the problem of second hand smoke harming children, so it may be that any place where children can reasonably be expected to go should not permit smoking. the details are a pain to work out, but that's the basic principle.

we'll have to agree to disagree on the incentive thing

we wouldn't have the innovations we do with such a system

I too struggle with unwieldy brain chemistry and I also dream.

Probably not as many. And wouldn't life be awful without nuclear power and Agent Orange and Facebook.

Technological progress is good more often than not, I admit, but yes, we're going to have to disagree on how important it is.

Damn it. You're out too — and that's why I was inviting you to dinner, as a job interview.

Most of it is love of nature — but the desire to do things that are frightening or dangerous, that's bipolar talking. Thinking that one experience that I really ought to have is being bitten by a venomous snake is one such thing. (Note I haven't done anything about it.)

On the other hand, other behaviors, like walking toward a bear that was hanging out in our back yard, trying to get it to leave (and being charged by it, a considerably intimidating experience) arise not so much out of risk loving as out of not caring about risk. that wasn't thrill seeking, nor a desire for self flagellation or experiencing the world or anything, it's just that i wanted the bear to leave and I didn't really think through nor care much about what it did — I knew tat the odds were strongly in favor of it being safe to do (black bears very rarely attack people), so the small risk didn't affect my actions — but again I think that's bipolar disorder, because a normal person would have been (irrationally) afraid.

Why do you feel Americans shouldn't be able to own a firearm? Do you think all firearms, even a home defense shot gun, should be banned?

I didn't say that would get them out of it. I also didn't say it had to tale place at a particular age.

This is one of my favorite political ideas. Teaching people self-sacrifice and disciplie while serving society — how bad can that be? For one thing, think of how many leaders (governmental and otherwise) have never really experienced sacrifice — don't you think they could do their jobs better if they'd had to?

well is interesting

atak,

I don't have anything to add. I just wanted to let you know that I've enjoyed reading your well thus far.

sick x-post

Me too!!

Ideally, yes, because I think it all becomes part of a culture that condones, a and ultimately glorifies, violence — but also, as I said, I don't think this one's as big a deal as gun control advocates typically say it is. Taking away the rifles people use to hunt deer and the shotguns they use on ducks really isn't going to change society for the better in any significant way except over the course of generations, and they make people happy, so I don't think this is worth wasting a tenth as much energy on as happens.

Guns whose main purpose is killing people, I think are far worse, but again I'm not sure it's one of the biggest issues facing us. Yes, they increase crime (because if guns were totally banned, eventually there's be very little in the way of a pol for criminals to use) and suicides and accidental deaths, so it's worth considering, but I think it's a lot more important to get some other things right.

btw, my son is not allowed to play first person shooter video games, or anything else that is graphically violet, because I think they are essentially murder simulators — and I think the possession of guns in a sense has the same effect, causing us to believe that firing those guns is OK, and therefore it's OK to fire them at [FONT=verdana,geneva,lucida,'lucida grande',arial,helvetica,sans-serif]people[/FONT] under some circumstances.

you should post in the politics forum they would love you!

to what extent would you agree with the following statements:

intelligence should affect your quality of life
work ethic should affect your quality of life
everyone's quality of life should be approximately the same
people are happier when their quality of life is the same as others
equality is more important than freedom (using the term freedom broadly)