[Eran]

It costs money to live in these industrialised societies, it costs money to actually remain integrated with the rest of society. Fostering a level of income distribution where people can actually at least participate a little, is a way to prevent social exclusion, and prevent the rise of anti-social behaviour and criminal cliques.

How do you explain Indian slums then? Here you have people with (by western standards) very little money. They have formed their own societies, integrated into the rest of Indian (and global) societies. Whether they are socially excluded from middle-class Indian society is beside the point - they have formed their own organic society.

And guess what? Slum dwellers are not particularly criminal. Neither, by the way, were many ethnic communities in early 20th century America, despite being much poorer (in absolute but also relative terms) than today's poor.

Because they are not really 'single mothers', marriage is not sacrosanct, and they are part of one nation.

This is just semantic. I don't care about marriage - it is a personal choice. They important point is that while husbands or unmarried partners support their children voluntarily within a single household (making the traditional family a voluntary and self-sufficient unit), the same doesn't hold with respect to many unmarried mothers. Expanding the relevant support group to the entire nation is silly - it is no longer an organic and voluntary group.

Secondly, to address the underlying principle of social welfare now, to me those red bars on the British union flag symbolise the blood of a people. You only think that I am being 'cuckolded' because you - as an individualist - don't see the people of the UK as being related to me. I do see them as relations however.

And that is your right. You are welcome to donate money to British-national goals (or any other legitimate goals). You haven't here, nor anywhere else that I have seen, justified the claim right to force other co-nationalists to comply with your preferences.

Let's also suppose that b is a positive integer because correctly crafted programmes at least must have some positive effect on the recipient's well-being.

You can treat that as a definition of "correctly crafted", but then you would have to explain what makes you think that politically-realistic programmes are likely to be correctly crafted.

The logic of my resource-sharing - which is really ethno-racial programming - starts from the premise that I generally favour helping a particular people ahead of any other arbitrary group in my policy preferences provided that rb - c > 0, where r is the average level of genetic closeness between my family and the people in question, b is the fitness benefit to those receiving the help, and c is the fitness cost to me or my family.

Are you looking at only immediate fitness benefit, or also at long-term fitness benefit? If it is the latter, you need to take into account policy impact on incentives. Do you?

Indeed, but once we get to weighing up what policy options work best (rather than questioning the need for a policy at all) then we have moved to a point where we are accepting that rb - c > 0, just we are trying to decide which sort of subsidies and/or credits and/or programmes cause the most efficient outcomes in society, rather than calling for the state to actually go away.

What is your goal? It seems to be to mimic evolution by aiming at having the largest number of people within your ethnic group. Am I correct? If so, subsidising children is precisely the way to go, with additional policies such as outlawing birth control (except for foreigners), and much greater child support payments. Further, payments would be conditioned of ethnic origin (regardless of citizenship or residence).

[Rei Murasame]

I'm in motion at the moment, so I can't answer it all, but I just want to quickly say:

What is your goal? It seems to be to mimic evolution by aiming at having the largest number of people within your ethnic group. Am I correct? If so, subsidising children is precisely the way to go, with additional policies such as outlawing birth control (except for foreigners), and much greater child support payments. Further, payments would be conditioned of ethnic origin (regardless of citizenship or residence).

No, definitely not. That would be a really blind and short-term thinking policy. Birth control and abortion are actually good and should be subsidised at every opportunity.

I'll answer the rest and explain why when I get back, but I just needed to point that out in case anyone else was going to take that and run with it, since it contains disasters that I would of course be all about avoiding.

[Joe Liberty]

Strange how you always jump from 'something is good' to 'this thing must be realized using taxation or regulation'.

Sadly I don't find that attitude strange, but the norm. Democrats and Republicans both employ it, although they tend to come at it from different angles. For instance: Most Democrats seem to believe the above ("it's good, so it should be forcibly subsidized and everyone forced to follow it") and Republicans, using gay marriage as an example, are on the 'negative' side of it ("It's bad so if it's legal that means we endorse and encourage it").

Neither "side" seems capable of saying, "It's good (or it's bad) but that's just my opinion and I don't need the power of the State to validate it."

[Eran]

Correct, although the differences between the parties are smaller than you think.

Both politicians and the media tend to emphasize differences. But if you consider the full body of views, you will see that both parties agree on the vast majority of issues, from Social Security and Medicare to farm and ethanol subsidies, foreign interventionism and the drug war.

[nucklepunche]

I hate to say it but Eran is right. Both parties are rhetorically much different but very much the same when in office. Forget the social issues. People on both sides (social liberals and social conservatives) vote on them in the hopes that their chosen side will do something but no matter how many Democrats are in Guantanamo remains open and no matter how many Republicans get in abortion is still legal.

[Eran]

And those (Guantanamo and abortion) are the issues which are supposed to be controversial.

Just compare the range of views within mainstream American politics with the range expressed on these forums, from Marxists to ancaps, from democrats to fascists.

[Joe Liberty]

Correct, although the differences between the parties are smaller than you think.

Well, they're not smaller than I think. I have been routinely vilified for years on different forums for saying that they're essentially the same. Fixating on nonsensical and insignificant differences is one of the ways they manage to maintain a monopoly on the political process.

[Kman]

Well, they're not smaller than I think. I have been routinely vilified for years on different forums for saying that they're essentially the same. Fixating on nonsensical and insignificant differences is one of the ways they manage to maintain a monopoly on the political process.

I agree completely, I watch the Daily Show and check out drudgereport so I have a decent feel for what is going on in the US and I really find it silly how so many people over there fixate on gay marriage, it is such an irrelevant issue, it is a slight legal modification that provides small legal benefits and yet it seems to be the main topic of conversation among the media.
You have an economy going down the tubes and a federal government with huge deficits and this is the issue of the day? Fiddling while Rome burns....

[nucklepunche]

I agree completely, I watch the Daily Show and check out drudgereport so I have a decent feel for what is going on in the US and I really find it silly how so many people over there fixate on gay marriage, it is such an irrelevant issue, it is a slight legal modification that provides small legal benefits and yet it seems to be the main topic of conversation among the media.

The reason gay marriage is so fixated upon in the USA is mainly because of its opponents. Here in America there is a strong Christian right. They get very up in arms about this stuff and in turn the gay rights activists also get very up in arms. It is an issue of what came first the chicken or the egg, but I doubt it would be such a major issue if the Christian right were not so prominent.

[Eran]

I agree - in part. To get a fuller picture, one has to include the opportunistic nature of politicians and their campaigns.

Elevating and retaining the issue in the public eye takes place through a symbiotic relation between political candidates, community leaders and their respective communities.

Candidates use inflammatory issues to motivate their support base, with community leaders helping in a process that elevates their own power and importance.

This is a fairly symmetric picture, btw, with Christian Right on one side, and Gay Activists on the other.

[nucklepunche]

The thing is that people who care about social issues tend to be the big donors. Rich people simply care more about these things than poor people. I heard that 1 of every 6 Obama bundlers is LGBT and this was MSNBC doing the reporting. It makes sense. By the same token there are a lot of Christian conservative Republican billionaires who are social issues driven. Think Philip Anschutz, Howard Ahmanson jr, Rich Devos, Tom Monaghan, etc. There is also the Christian right they can motivate. Also there's a lot of big bucks behind the televangelists.