[Conservationist]

When I saw the liberal paradise that is Austin, I realized that liberalism is basically parasitism. "If someone has x, and I don't, I deserve it, and I'll force them to share with social guilt"; after seeing that, and the complete social havoc -- where good people were not only ignored but socially persecuted, and vapid whores predominated and suffocated art and culture with their lies -- I left Austin and liberalism behind.

(There may be an honest liberalism. To me, when I was a liberal, it meant not allowing big pointless entities to rule over people in destructive ways. I'm thinking about all the people who got dicked over by their stupid jobs, all the toxic waste dumped into rivers, all the junk products that just ended up in landfills, all the overdeveloped areas where forests were sacrificed, etc. For me, liberalism meant restraining humanity's appetite with common sense. I soon learned that if you oppose power, however, you soon get people who oppose power for power's sake because they're powerless. They have no power in life and no control over their own appetites, so they hate anything that resembles power, but since they're weak, they don't attack directly but through whining. I was a classical liberal, which meant treat people fairly. That philosophy however decays un-gracefully into revenge for the underdog, hatred of excellence, and desire to turn the world into one uniform Safe(tm) place. I realized quickly how this plays into the hands of our leaders. It distracts our best people and sends them off to defend those who have failed at life, and then the activists in turn fail at life, so they spent their time fighting for the right to fail. It's a sick cycle but easily avoidable if you think it through: the problem isn't power, but people in power without a clue, and they're in power because all the failed people want pleasant illusions instead of reality. So if you're an honest liberal, don't take this column as a personal attack, or a political statement. I'm pointing out how liberalism commonly decays into self-importance, hipsterism and other problems, not trying to assault the emotional or psychological impetus behind liberal thinking.)

Austin is the hipster capital of the world, in many ways. I've been to Seattle and to San Francisco, to L.A. (Silver Lake) and to Mizzoula, MT, all of which are hipster-havens. But Austin hipsters have the city locked down. Under the guise of fighting the man, you're supposed to be weird and freaky and do whatever the man doesn't expect. But you go back to work the next day, having learned nothing. It's a good town to work food service until you're 42 and then become a regular, bitter writer on Alternet.org.

http://www.anus.com/metal/about/blog/pi ... .php?id=41

Modern liberalism is more like a fashion or a neurosis than a coherent political view. It's obsolete. It has fallen into fighting the same battles even though when it wins, the results it produces are a slow burn nightmare. Let's replace liberalism with something more progressive.

[ads89]

you make some very good points, but what about in the situation where if someone has x, and another person who has worked tirelessly there entire life, struggled in every scenario misses out on a fair share? shouldn't 'x' be distributed reasonably evenly? Just a thought, my third-eye view on rightest movements are someone sketchy at best.

[hanno]

I hear ya - this civic-hero script like where the bicycle-rights protesters end up scrapping with bystanders - like it's a thing unto itself to have what may or may not be the right idea. But I mean, there's always free cheese in a mousetrap - presume to rule by common sense and fairness - you take over the most empowering, cuddliest, golden-retrieveresque constructs, people are going to want in.

[Larendect]

I object to the way liberalism gives people a free pass for their weaknesses. It's one thing to help people when they can't do any better, but for most who profit from liberalism, it's simply a shield from reality.

40 years of liberal social experiments on the black community have been a disaster. By and large, the black community has seen little progress since times when they when didn't even have a chance.

Any black kid can learn a basic trade in Vo-Tech, and get a nice wage in an urban environment. Better yet, they can easily go to college, get a bachelors in something pointless, and get an even better wage sitting on their butt in an office. Instead, they are largely uneducated, worthless to a company, and simply a drain on society.

Blacks 40 years ago would have given anything for a loaned college education for a mere 2 years pay, which in turn led them to a lifetime of financial independence. This happens rarely, and I blame liberals and the victim complex they teach.
___

Don't bother calling me a racist, I really don't care, I'm illustrating a single example.

[Mercutio]

Most of those examples have a parallel on the Right. Substitute one or two words and you could be describing any trailer park in America.

[Ashoka]

How else do you approach the problems that you mentioned?

'm thinking about all the people who got dicked over by their stupid jobs, all the toxic waste dumped into rivers, all the junk products that just ended up in landfills, all the overdeveloped areas where forests were sacrificed, etc.

You say "play into the hands of our leaders" as if they are the enemy, and actually I think they are the enemy at this point because they don't pursue agendas that are in the best interests of either the United States as a nation or as a people, yet these so-called leaders were elected by the people. So maybe its not liberalism, but the way we set up our democracy.

[foilist13]

I agree with most all of what he said. To address the issue of the person who works hard all their life and gets no where, I find it very hard to imagine such a situation. If you could give an example it would be very helpful to me.

The main problem with Liberalism is motivation. This issue comes up whenever the government takes it upon itself to directly care for the people, and redistribute the wealth. There is no longer any reason to work hard or try and start a business, because any money that you earn is just going to be taken away and given to those who did nothing. All my hard work was a waste of time, and i am no better off for it. If you are going to try to redistribute wealth only to those who really deserve it, it would have to be done on a case by case basis. Needless to say that would be horribly inefficient, expensive, and an overall waste of time.

BTW are there any Liberals actually in this thread?

[Ashoka]

foilist13- What if the wealth were redistributed through progressive tax reforms? Then it wouldn't be handouts and the people who were originally the objects of handouts would not be taxed, so they would keep what they work for and their purchasing power/standard of living would be more directly tied to how hard they worked.

[xr700]

The main problem with Liberalism is motivation. This issue comes up whenever the government takes it upon itself to directly care for the people, and redistribute the wealth. There is no longer any reason to work hard or try and start a business, because any money that you earn is just going to be taken away and given to those who did nothing. All my hard work was a waste of time, and i am no better off for it. If you are going to try to redistribute wealth only to those who really deserve it, it would have to be done on a case by case basis. Needless to say that would be horribly inefficient, expensive, and an overall waste of time.

Nobody is suggesting an exactly even distribution of wealth besides the communists, and those are a rare breed these days. All liberals want is a social safety net so we avoid things like the working poor and creating an underclass. If anything, pure Capitalism is extremely unmotivating to the poor since it is a system that rewards those who are already wealthy.

[Gork]

There are a lot of liberals who adhere to their ideals because they believe that society as a whole, rich and poor, is better off under those ideals.

The auto bailouts for example: conservatives say that we should let the car companies fail because they suck. While they do such, and while that qwould be preferable for a smaller company, those car companies employ 3 million people who worked hard every day of their lives and don't deserve to be jobless. They order parts made by other companies, by another million or so employees, and are made out of raw materials manufactured by another 2 million or so coal miners and iron workers. So while the executives fail miserably and should be fired for their incompetence, the other 6 million workers did nothing wrong, and them losing their jobs not only does nothing to advance capitalism, it would hinder our country for decades.

Another example is health care. Did you know that the #1 way to reduce health care costs is preventative care? And that our health care costs are higher than any other country in the world because we have so many people who are un- or under-insured, and they don't get preventative care? That if we had a national health care system our costs would drop dramatically, SAVING money?

Modern liberalism is, in many cases, a way for the rich to get much richer, and the way they get richer is by giving money to the poor so that the poor can spend it. If you have 95% of the wealth concentrated in 5% of the population, who is going to buy Nikes and Big Macs and Chevy Cavaliers? Rich people don't buy those things. Our economy depends on poor people having money, and if they don't have money because THEIR BOSS is an idiot, the rich people they were going to buy Nikes and Big Macs from lose money, too.

See how that works?

[evercloserunion]

What the OP describes could be applied to any ideology. Basically the gist of it is "liberalism is bad because the society it creates is shit". But pretty much all societies are shit, because so many people suck. If you look into any society it's easy to find the bad eggs and then you're only a hasty generalization away from discrediting the prevailing political trend in that society (I wouldn't go so far as to call modern liberalism an ideology). Take, for example, society in southern US, the epitome of anti-liberalism, where good conservative values prevail. You have appalling amounts of homophobia, racism and backwardness there.

I think foilist asked for an example of someone working hard their whole life and getting nowhere. I don't know what you mean by "nowhere", but for summer jobs between school and college terms I worked for a while in a chipper in Dublin. I met people as old as 60 who'd been there all their lives, just frying chips day in day out and being paid comparatively little. Maybe I'm just an uppity Celtic Tiger child but I'd consider that pretty shit.

Many of the arguments put forward here are against badly managed liberal welfare states. Of course that's a valid condemnation but it's wrong to generalize. More often than not, government handouts are dependent (in theory anyway) on the grantee actively seeking employment. Make no mistake, the system is abused to shit and welfare fraud is a major problem. But it is not a inherent part of modern liberalism. It is something that can, and must, be combated, just like any crime or social problem.

I'm a liberal, a social democrat, and I believe in the welfare state. Not because I think there are no bad eggs in society, because trust me, I've seen them. I want a welfare state because the alternative would be shit. Not only for the hard-working poor and the honest homeless, of which there are many. But for everyone. Because as bad as it is having large no-go areas full of dangerous and violent council estates and flats (I'm currently living in student accommodation right beside some of Dublin's most notorious council flats and I hate it), having homeless slums would be ten times worse. Throw squalor, rampant disease, desperate starvation/cold and even more resentment into the equation and you have a fair idea. Are these the kinds of streets you'd like to be roaming after a night on the town? (That is not to play down the importance of protecting society's honest and vulnerable; I just want to point out that liberal welfare states have benefits for everybody.) A lot of the criticisms of welfare states a based upon the premise that welfare states are a result of the attitudes that they cultivate in some of their weaker subjects, ie victim complexes and over-exaggerated senses of entitlement. But remember that welfare states came about in a society where these attitudes were not common or widespread. The welfare state emerged for many good reasons, and so it should remain.

[PBVBROOK]

Not suprisingly there are few here who profess to be liberals. I do. But I am an old one so take that into account.

Liberalism first considers that individual rights trump other considerations. This freedom extends from speech rights (no matter how disturbing the speech is) to the right to be free from exploitation by others. In this regard it gives the individual the right to have a voice in the way ones economy is managed. And that this management should include a reasonable expectation that thier labor should be rewarded sufficiently. Look at the huge gulf between the rich and the working poor in America. There is no way this is justifiable. The issue is not about a business owners right to the fruits of thier investment. It has everything to do with the all to common situation where the business owner ears millions while the majority of his workers can't afford healthcare. Let me give you another way to look at the most contentious issue - the manditory minimum wage.

Walmart is the US largest employer. Very few of its employees have healthcare and the ones who do have very substandard policies. So who pays for the Walmart employees' healthcare? The taxpayer does. Actually the taxpayer combined with the folks who have healthcare policies. Who gets the fruits of the worker's labor? Walmart does. Who pays for it? The taxpayers. Who should pay for the fruits of the Walmart employees labor? Walmart through its customers. And four of the 10 richest Americans are the Waltons who own Walmart. Their net worth? Roughly 100 billion dollars. The cost to provide healthcare to all Walmart employees? Less than bank interest on their net worth.

I use the wild example of the Waltons to point to the liberal position. Liberals believe that healthcare is a basic human right. We believe that it is in our collective interest to have all of our citizens healthy. We believe that either the government should take over the responsibility or the employer should be compelled to pay a wage that allows the employee their choice of healthcare plans. I favor the later. So does Obama if we are to believe his platform.

Is this the dreaded "redistribution of wealth"? Sure. But it is clear that we can't trust the free market system to work in the current business environment. How do we know this? Look at the skilled trades. 40 years ago a good carpenter could earn a living with which he could raise a family of four. Not today. Was the free market system's answer to a shortage of carpenters to raise wages and lure more people into the trade? Nope. It was to import illegal labor from Mexico in such numbers that real wages for carpenters have fallen over the last 20 years while the number of employed carpenters grew astronomically. And how did these employeers go about accomplish this? They in essense bribed politicians to look the other way WRT immigration rules. So the people have to take action to correct this. Had the employers done the right thing by thier employees, they would have no issue with liberals.

You may have been consorting with the 'limousine liberals' that everyone hates. These screwed up rich folks are free with other people's money. They see victims in everyone and responsibility in no one. Thier total rejection of personal responsibility and sickening paternalism is not liberal by any stretch of the immagination. True liberals believe is personal freedom. The freedom to suceed and the freedom to fail. But all in the context of thier being free from the tyranny of the golden rule. He who has the gold makes the rules. We utterly reject that.

[QatzelOk]

It's a good town to work food service until you're 42 and then become a regular, bitter writer on Alternet.org.

What's wrong with working for a living, and then writing?

It sounds like you are trying to hold up the American Dream of catharsis-via-consumption as the normal, healthy lifestyle, and anything else as liberal-deviant-bad.

Meanwhile, back in fake-hipsterville, my main complaint about most hipsters is how shallow their politics and philosophy are. It's all about vintage clothing and the right music collection. What about ideas and acts of benevolence? What about open discussions about virtually any subject?

**turns bitter and writes an article for Alternet**

[PBVBROOK]

What's wrong with working for a living, and then writing?

It sounds like you are trying to hold up the American Dream of catharsis-via-consumption as the normal, healthy lifestyle, and anything else as liberal-deviant-bad.

Meanwhile, back in fake-hipsterville, my main complaint about most hipsters is how shallow their politics and philosophy are. It's all about vintage clothing and the right music collection. What about ideas and acts of benevolence? What about open discussions about virtually any subject?

**turns bitter and writes an article for Alternet**

Wow! Way to go Quatz.

[aysse]

What is the difference between the welfare state and this neo-liberal type state i've recently heard about?

[Phred]

Liberalism first considers that individual rights trump other considerations.

Liberals believe that healthcare is a basic human right.

Please explain to the audience whose individual rights are to be violated in order to provide the healthcare that is supposedly a basic human "right". In your scenario the individual rights of the doctors and dentists and nurses and X-ray technicians and ambulance drivers and pharmaceutical inventors are being trumped here. Do they not have individual rights too? If not, why not?

Phred

[Admin edit: If you intend to precise who is the author of the quote you are using in your reply, do not write his or her name above the quote. Use this:]

Code: Select all[quote="username"][/quote]

[PBVBROOK]

Please explain to the audience whose individual rights are to be violated in order to provide the healthcare that is supposedly a basic human "right". In your scenario the individual rights of the doctors and dentists and nurses and X-ray technicians and ambulance drivers and pharmaceutical inventors are being trumped here. Do they not have individual rights too? If not, why not?

What individual rights of these folks are violated by providing universal health care? Please don't tell me I have run into another so-called free marketer. But for you (I would not insult the 'audience' by asserting they need an explination) I will tell you.

There is no "right" for a person to pursue a vocation outside of the constraints put on it by a society. No one has the right to pursue a career as an executioner in England. England has no death penalty and therefor no need for executioners. If one wants to aspire to practice medicine they must accept that society will place constraints upon this practice. For example they may not prescribe Heroin in America. Another angle. No one has the right to select by whom they are to be paid. If the US should adopt a single payer system (God forbid) then that is how a doctor or ambulance driver will be paid. If they don't like it they can move or find another job. The very notion that ones method of payment is a human right is absurd.

The people you mention all have individual rights. And they are constrained by our societies laws. You have taken far to big a step here.

I could have given you the trite answer. I could have said "how many people have to die to pay for some arrogant doctors right to own a Jaguar?" How many people have to remain uninsured to pay for some banker's yacht? How many Wall Street thieves should we bail out with far more money than it would take to provide universal healthcare?

I said: "Liberalism first considers that individual rights trump other considerations". Not ALL other considerations. One does not retain the proverbial right to shout fire in a crowded theater.

I then said, "Liberals believe that healthcare is a basic human right". Liberals believe that for a society to allow people to be ill and even die for the lack of available healthcare, on the absurd notion that the free market calls upon that society to tun its back on those most in need, is criminal and demeans the entire society. I love the simple statement made by Britian's Lord Warner. He said, "We as a society have decided to take care of one another when we are ill." People who think that some odd purists-notion of what form an economic system takes is more important that caring for one another when we are sick are the real sick ones.

So the next argument, one I hear frequently, is that nobody is denied health care in the US for an inability to pay. This is simply and patently untrue. Whenever a woman is called upon to choose between putting food in front of her children or paying for a doctor to look at the suspicious lump in her breast, she is placed in an untenable position. And she will usually err in favor of feeding her children. And even if she goes to the emergency room , though they may never actually collect, the hospital will hound her for payment and force her into bankruptsy in some cases in the attempt to extract money she does not have. Wee are not necessarily talking about those who are out of work here. We are talking about people who work for some of the most profitable corporations in the country. Companies that threaten to export jobs rather than pay for health care. And companies that are governed by a system that allows them to do it.

But we are a representative democracy. And the people are getting tired of being exploited. Those of us who are older remember when insurance was affordable and available at most workplaces. And even those few who were not insured could still farily comfortably pay for a doctor visit. Now insurance is becomming rare. The cost of health care is skyrocketing and I have yet to hear a good explination of why. Only excuses. Most of which point at some people getting very rich. (Malpractice cases are the most absurd are frequently cited.)

So many Americans are at risk as we speak. I think I am going to go with Lord Warner. I will vote and work for a society that decides to take care of one-another when we are sick. I am ashamed of Americans, who value their rather dubious right to choose their doctor, over the very lives of their neighbors. They are first order scum in my opinion. I have no problem taking the money from their grubby little hands and investing it in saving someones life.

[Phred]

What individual rights of these folks are violated by providing universal health care?

Their right to sell their labor to whom they choose, when they choose, at the price they find acceptable, for starters.

Please don't tell me I have run into another so-called free marketer.

You have. I realize liberals cannot answer those who espouse individual rights without exposing the inherent contradictions in the Liberal position, but you surely must have realized one of us would wander by sooner or later.

Your basic error was repeating the Liberal canard that "Liberalism first considers that individual rights trump other considerations." In actual fact, Liberalism discards individual rights at the earliest possible opportunity. As soon as a Liberal has identified something he classifies an "injustice", massive ongoing violations of individual rights become the preferred - nay, the only - solution to the "problem". You admit this yourself when you say

There is no "right" for a person to pursue a vocation outside of the constraints put on it by a society.

And there is the Collectivist position in a nutshell. Far from individual rights trumping other considerations, the Liberal position is that group pseudo-rights trump individual rights every time. In actual fact, ethically speaking an individual has every right to pursue whatever vocation he wishes, always assuming his efforts to do so do not violate the rights of anyone else. The only constraints society may ethically impose upon his pursuit of vocation are those constraints addressing those situations where his activities violate the rights of another. For example, when a chemist sets up shop next door to a restaurant and the toxic fumes from his laboratory threaten the health of the patrons of the restaurant.

If one wants to aspire to practice medicine they must accept that society will place constraints upon this practice.

Why must one accept "society" abrogating this power to itself? This is clearly an incidence of individual human rights being trumped by other considerations. What is the rationale for rejecting the first principle of Liberalism?

For example they may not prescribe Heroin in America. Another angle. No one has the right to select by whom they are to be paid.

Both constraints are ridiculous and both constraints are clearly violations of individual rights. I ask again, by what rationale does "society" decide that physicians may not prescribe heroin to their patients? By what rationale does "society" decide that a doctor may not accept payment from the patient to whom he is providing treatment?

If the US should adopt a single payer system (God forbid) then that is how a doctor or ambulance driver will be paid. If they don't like it they can move or find another job.

In other words, the way "society" has decided things are to be done trumps the individual rights of the doctor or ambulance driver.

Look, we all understand that Liberals honestly believe humans cannot be left to live their lives as they see fit - that Liberals honestly and sincerely believe that humans must be forced to act in ways they would not choose on their own to act. The rest of us disagree with the Liberal belief that this is a correct and necessary and ethical way of running a society, but we at least understand that Liberals have deluded themselves into believing their way is a sensible one. Liberals are not just pretending to believe this nonsense, they actually do believe it.

What those of us who actually do believe that individual rights trump other considerations find so hilarious is the Liberal insistence that they, too, believe individual rights trump other considerations, when their every action and utterance belies their claim.

Many of us who believe individual rights trump other considerations have hypothesized that this fundamental contradiction in Liberal thought, this cognitive dissonance, does much to explain the other wackiness exhibited by Liberal thinkers. I myself am unsure whether this central contradiction is the causative agent or merely another, separate, manifestation of some other underlying intellectual pathology. Psychology is not my area of expertise.

The very notion that ones method of payment is a human right is absurd.

This statement is so hilarious I can do nothing other than let it stand there in all its glory for the audience to mock.

The people you mention all have individual rights. And they are constrained by our societies laws. You have taken far to big a step here.

The far too big a step that was taken was "society's" decision to violate the rights of the individuals in question. There is no need to have placed those constraints on them and no ethical justification for having done so. It is of course true that some constraints must be placed on some behavior exhibited by some individuals. That truism is not however a blank check for "society" to declare that whatever constraints it enacts tomorrow are justified because it already has enacted constraints in the past.

I said: "Liberalism first considers that individual rights trump other considerations". Not ALL other considerations. One does not retain the proverbial right to shout fire in a crowded theater.

This of course invites the question - under what circumstances is society acting ethically when it violates the rights of an individual? And before we can answer that question, we must provide a definition of individual rights. The Liberal's definition of "rights" differs from that of the rest of us, because Liberals haven't thought the question through far enough to resolve the inherent contradiction in believing that health care (as just one of a seemingly endless list of Liberal wished-for goodies) can somehow be an individual right.

I then said, "Liberals believe that healthcare is a basic human right".

Never realizing the inherent contradiction between that declaration and your declaration that individual rights trump other considerations.

Liberals believe that for a society to allow people to be ill and even die for the lack of available healthcare, on the absurd notion that the free market calls upon that society to tun its back on those most in need, is criminal and demeans the entire society.

Liberals believe all kinds of things which make no sense when thought through to their logical conclusions.

WHY do you believe allowing an ill person to die is a criminal act? Which ethical principles lead you to believe you are my keeper?

But we are a representative democracy. And the people are getting tired of being exploited.

Ah. I wondered how long it would take that Libbie cliché to appear. "Exploited". The "people" of the United States are not being "exploited".

Those of us who are older remember when insurance was affordable and available at most workplaces.

Those of us who are older can remember when there was no such thing as a heart transplant, too. Or MRI machines. What's your point?

Now insurance is becomming rare. The cost of health care is skyrocketing and I have yet to hear a good explination of why.

You've heard it, you just haven't thought about it. See my above comment.

(Malpractice cases are the most absurd are frequently cited.)

Or you've managed to dismiss undeniable evidence because it doesn't fit your preconceived Libbie worldview.

I have no problem taking the money from their grubby little hands and investing it in saving someones life.

Yes, we know this. You are a self-proclaimed Liberal, after all. We know you believe people have no right to spend their money, that only Libbies have the right to spend that money. We knew that the instant you proclaimed yourself a Liberal. What gets so tedious is your self-righteous insistence on dressing up your powergrabbing ways in a pretty pink tutu by doing the obligatory Libbie throat-clearing of - Yes, yes, of course individual rights are important, BUT... then immediately moving on to a lengthy laundry list of areas in which individual rights must be set aside - oh, sorry: constrained. At least have the guts to do what the rest of the Collectivists do and admit your disdain for individual rights up front.




Phred

[PBVBROOK]

Their right to sell their labor to whom they choose, when they choose, at the price they find acceptable, for starters.

No one has such a right now. But they will still have the right to try under Obama's proposed solution. They will find a larger paying market as people will be insured. If the answer is a single-payer system (not Obama's Plan) they still have the same rights they have now. They just have a less diverse market. Wages will stabilize at what the market will allow. Of course if as you say they do not find the wages acceptable, they are free to look elsewhere. I have heard no plan that proposes one-size-fits-all wages. But then you know that is the case now. Only the insurance companies and Medicare a Medicaid are setting the prices. The average physicians "retial" rate is paid by virtually no one.

The only constraints society may ethically impose upon his pursuit of vocation are those constraints addressing those situations where his activities violate the rights of another. For example, when a chemist sets up shop next door to a restaurant and the toxic fumes from his laboratory threaten the health of the patrons of the restaurant.

Or building unsafe houses, or selling dangerous drugs, or opening a porn shop next to a school, or not cleaning the kitchen in thier restaruant, or not practicing medicine without a license, or not selling alcohol to a minor, or not flying an airliner without a pilot's license, or not teching our children without proper education, or not operating an unsafe truck, or not importing laborers from Mexico, or not pay payroll taxes....on and on. Any theory that asserts the "right" to do business without reasonable requirements to do so imposed by the people through their representatives and expressed as laws of the land is silly and will never happen. It has never existed in the past and it will never exist in the future. This mythical "right to do business" you assert does not and has never existed in any society with which I am aware.

ethically speaking an individual has every right to pursue whatever vocation he wishes

I see nothing 'ethical' in this statement. No one has such a right now. I would say that in the discussion at hand a person could still pursue any vocation they choose. I would also say that the people of the US have no obligation to create a market for them. It is this 'seekers' obligation to try to find a market. That is inherent in any vocational consideration.

Your assertion that Physicians should be allowed by some rediculous free-market theory to prescribe harmful drugs to their patients is absurd and I need not speak to it.

By what rationale does "society" decide that a doctor may not accept payment from the patient to whom he is providing treatment?

Doctors under any plan I have seen will still be allowed to accept payment from any patient they want. They will simply not be able to bill the government for more than the government is willing to pay. And that is exactly as it is now. If you think for a moment that the average physician decides how much to charge you do not understand the US medical system. The number of private-pay patients in the US is very small. And it would be much smaller if virtually everyone is covered by insurance. In that case, as now, the physician may choose to accept what the insurance company is willing to pay or they can choose not see the patient.

In other words, the way "society" has decided things are to be done trumps the individual rights of the doctor or ambulance driver.

Yes. No change at all. That is the way it has always been and that is the way it will be. But really. Do you think ambulance drivers are freelancers? They work for someone for a salary. You are arguing about some individual right that does not exist. The right you seem to be calling 'individual' is actually exercized by their employer who sets the wages, working hours and other conditions of employment. And this employer has no problem telling an ambulance driver who is dissatisfied with his/her wages where to get off. You assert rights for people that do not exist in any practical sense. Of course the ambulance drivers can unionize.....

PBV: The very notion that ones method of payment is a human right is absurd.

This statement is so hilarious I can do nothing other than let it stand there in all its glory for the audience to mock.

Back to the drawing board sport. Your entire argument devolves to who pays who, how much, and for what. You assert as a 'right', the individuals attempts to 'market' their skills. This entire argument is about who pays for the services someone renders. If the people decide to create a large insurance company and the doctor doesn't want its money then they can try to market somewhere else. But they have no right to the money the people reserve for this insurance company to spend. Surly as an obvious libertarian, you would not deny the people acting in congress, through thier elected representatives the right to define that government as they please. The congress banned the slave trade in 1808. Surely you do not believe that the right to conduct the slave business trumps people's right ban it? It was, after all, first and for most a commercial endeavor.

WHY do you believe allowing an ill person to die is a criminal act? Which ethical principles lead you to believe you are my keeper?

You make this so easy. I think I will just let that statement of your position stand.

Ah. I wondered how long it would take that Libbie cliché to appear. "Exploited". The "people" of the United States are not being "exploited".

That is not for you to decide. It is for the people to decide. The relative welfare of the people can be measured but in the final analysis the people decide whether they feel they live in a fair system or not. What are the measurments? The gap between the rich and poor has expanded by 17% in the past 40 years. Real wages (even with energy prices factored out) have been falling for decades. In 2004, the median income for a man in his 30s, a good predictor of his lifetime earnings, was $35,010, the study says, 12% less than for men in their 30s in 1974 -- their fathers' generation -- adjusted for inflation. (NC 2007) This despite rises in average worker productivity. This is simply to say that "the rich get richer and the poor get poorer." From 2000 - 2007 Median income fell .6% while the number of Americans living in poverty grew 1.2%. All this while the gap between the rich and poor is growing while the GDP during the same period (PPP to be fair) grew 26%. And you have some reason for expecting the American people to be unconcerned? And you deny thier right to ask their government to look into it? And do something?

Those of us who are older can remember when there was no such thing as a heart transplant, too. Or MRI machines. What's your point?

Technology is not the cause of the increase in health care costs. Every expert from the AMA to the USPHS will tell you that better care provides for better outcomes and that this care is a money saver in the long haul. You will also find that preventive care and public health initiatives should more than pay for themselves. But for a large percentage of Americans, preventive care is only a dream. Why? No insurance. No way to pay. (And oh by the way. I had a proceedure for which my insurance paid the hospital $235.00. The hospital made a profit at this number. This same proceedure, if I were uninsured and paying for it myself, would have been $2550.00 with 20% discount if I paid cash. Care to explain to us why this is fair? Your beloved free market system is breaking it off in the asses of the uninsured. And to make matters worse, when they can't collect but $500.00 of this absurd charge (more than double what they bill the insurance company) they write the other $2050.00 off as a tax loss.) And you want to know why health care costs are rising? Sheesh.

Yes, we know this. You are a self-proclaimed Liberal, after all. We know you believe people have no right to spend their money, that only Libbies have the right to spend that money.

Nonsense. You have been listening to too much Rush Limbaugh.

What gets so tedious is your self-righteous insistence on dressing up your powergrabbing ways in a pretty pink tutu by doing the obligatory Libbie throat-clearing of - Yes, yes, of course individual rights are important, BUT... then immediately moving on to a lengthy laundry list of areas in which individual rights must be set aside - oh, sorry: constrained. At least have the guts to do what the rest of the Collectivists do and admit your disdain for individual rights up front.

Nonsense again. You do a great Sean Hannity impersonation.

You have no clue about individual rights. You have been so tainted by this conservative rhetoric that you can't even defend the rights you have. You completely deny that the people acting through their representatives have the right to define their form of governance. What would you call that? Certainly not any form of democracy. YOU are the one that puts the theoretical 'rights' of a corporation over the rights of the individuals who happen to be employed by that corporation. You want the rights of the American worker to be subordinated to the desires of Sony, Mercedes, Hitachi and Izuzu. YOU believe that Humana's decisions about who gets to live and who doesn't is just the exercize of their right to free market economics. YOU believe that a poor dying child is way less important than the insurance company's desire for profit. Fortunately the American people seem to have your number. They are waking up to the fact that many of the richest countries in the world have universal health care. And they are tired of getting screwed by unrestrained business that has dimished their wages, cut thier benefits, exported their jobs overseas and imported illegal workers. So standby for news. The system is about to change. And the fault lies with people just like you who put the desire for profit over the welfare of their fellow citizens.

[perpetuum]

I have a gut feeling that the poster is an offspring of welfarism middle-class. More like a grandson of a wealthy union worker who provided his family with education and career out of the factory or another possibility is that he's farm subsidies son of a farmer, who relied on Fed to get his ass to where he is now.

Your input is awesome.