RichardGibbons

Let me make this very simple for you. How are you going to enforce property rights and make murder illegal without a government and a legal system, and who will pay for those costs? In math, the most common way to prove something is true is to assume it isn't true, and then show that that assumption leads to a contradiction. That's why you're frustrated. You've assumed property rights and without government or taxation, and that leads to a very simple contradiction. You really want to be able to say with a clear conscience that taxation is stealing and also want to believe in property rights and basic legal protection. Yet you can't get property rights and legal protections without the government and taxes. Darn. It can be really annoying when you realize that a core belief leads to a contradiction. When people with intellectual honesty run into such a sticky situation, they change their core belief, but in your case, I recommend just waving your hands and whining that nobody's taking your argument seriously.

"Garbage for all" in the sense that it has the same outcomes as the US system, at lower costs. You are right that I give very little weight to anecdotes as opposed to scientific studies with data sets that can show significance. That said, I think that Canada actually has the best of both worlds--everyone gets good healthcare at reasonable prices, and rich, grass-is-greener people can jump down to the USA. And Canada gets to be a freeloader on US medical R&D. It's actually awesome for the rest of the world that Americans are happy being grossly overcharged. This would actually be interesting to test, because preventative stuff is typically very cost-effective. So, it would be interesting to know if the preventative effect of people going to the doctor "too often" actually saves money. Not sure what your point is here. We shouldn't test for STDs? People who enjoy having sex are evil? I actually was curious what the number was here, but couldn't find it in 5 minutes of searching. Thanks for ruining my browser history. :) I'd be totally into trying a small fee for service (small relative to the patient's income), to see the impact on both costs and outcomes. Don't forget doctors deliberately restricting the supply of physicians. It's amazing that with all these factors adding inefficiencies, the US system is over 50% less efficient, isn't it? I agree. I bet this is another "doctor monopoly" thing. Yeah, it certainly isn't perfect. It's just far closer to perfect than the American system.

Sure. Is morality always black and white, or are there ever shades of grey? Am I a slave if society prevents me from raping you and burning down your home? I think there is moral justification for society to prevent its members from doing whatever they want and also making those members pay for it, primarily because there doesn't seem to me to be any reasonable alternative. Are there any rapists or arsonists around here who strongly disagree, and can offer their own solutions?

It's a reasonable question. Part of the answer is that I didn't do it within the American system, and couldn't have done it in the American system. If we're talking about the Canadian system, then there are a few things I'd change, some toward the left, and some toward the right. Another part of the answer is the recognition that people are different, and luck played a huge role in my success--likely more than my own efforts. Like, I was born in Canada, come from a middle class background with caring parents who impressed on my the value of education, I was really good at school, particularly math and science (I was best math student in my city), I had good nutrition, and had few worries about money. All these things are luck. Plus, I know that my personal outcome means almost nothing. So the right strategy isn't to generalize from it. Rather, the right strategy is to try to arrange the system to minimize the effects of luck, so that the people who work the hardest have a chance at the greatest success. Not sure where I said that I wanted more regulations. I largely want regulations of the kind that ensure people get what they pay for in cases where it is unreasonable for individuals to properly investigate whether they would get what they think they're paying for before they buy. (e.g. Someone shouldn't need to investigate every bridge every time they drive over it, nor send their food to a lab to see if it will kill them before eating it). I'm not sure if this level of regulation is more or less than there is now. With a larger safety net and expanded social programs, I think it would be easier to get out of poverty because the statistics show that it is when you compare income mobility across countries and across states. (That said, I don't necessarily think the same about everything in Canada, since there's diminishing returns.) I don't think the reduced motivation is that significant an effect. Pretty well everyone seems to want to get ahead. I think it sucks being poor, and people care a lot about relative wealth. This keeps motivation high in most cases. When they did guaranteed income experiments, the only classes of people who significantly reduced the amount they worked were older teenagers, who spent more time being educated, and mothers who spent more time taking care of their kids. To me, both those outcomes seem good for society, and also don't support the premise that lower motivation as a result of social programs is a huge problem. So I take it from the fact that you're against complications, that you're in favor of a single payer healthcare system? It's far less complicated, collecting the taxes that are already being collected, cutting out all the waste caused by middlemen in the US system, maximizing the negotiating abilities of the single payer, cutting the tie between jobs and healthcare, greatly increasing employment mobility. The evidence I've seen indicates that single payer leads to the same outcomes as the messed up American system, at two-thirds the cost, and you don't get all these people dying because they can't afford medical care, nor bankrupted from some random illness. A no-brainer, right? I agree. Everything should be done thoughtfully, and not to appease some populist sentiment.

Here is what it means to be poor in America, from Scalzi. Certainly not the same as being poor in India, or in America 200 years ago. Nevertheless, I'd greatly prefer not to be there. The biggest problems for me would be the constant, wearying grind, and the knowledge that even if I work really hard, and I'd still have a high chance of never getting out of poverty. In combination, these things would be crippling.

Not so much. Once he's president (and not campaigning), if he says he'll do X, I believe he'll do his utmost to do it, and protests will make no difference. So, a totally reasonable strategy is to do things that will encourage him not to say he'll do X in the first place. (Almost everyone cares about saving face, and I think Trump more than most.)

I suspect the point is to influence policy now. Suppose there's some policy that Trump's just barely on the cusp of implementing. If he believes that everyone who dislikes the policy will just accept it, he might be more likely to pass the policy than if he believes that the people who hate the policy will shut down a major city for weeks and leave him with horrible media coverage. (I have no idea if that works, or if that's what they're really thinking, but it is one plausible and logical reason for protests.)

Somalia. I hear Mogadishu's lovely this time of year. Yep, but the majority wants the insurance. Remember? Civilization?

Living in a country that forces you to buy insurance is a voluntary act also. Your country will also force you not to rape and murder people. Welcome to being a human in the civilized world. You can't do everything you like if a majority disagrees with it. (Well, not without being killed or imprisoned.)

Wow, we should stop wasting all that money on traffic lights, air traffic controllers, IT security. There's so much waste in trying to avoid disasters. Don't bother to maintain those dykes and dams to prevent flooding. Just buy a bunch of mops! Heck, forget exercise or healthy eating--just install personal defibrillators. Short Gold's Gym! Buy Coke! Buy Defibtech! If we follow your suggestion, I imagine we'll be able to free up at least 10% of the capacity of the economy, leading to golden age of prosperity.

Thank you for reminding me of this, rkbabang. You're absolutely correct, and I really needed to keep that in mind this week.

I was actually curious if this was true--interpreting it as "social mobility is higher now than it used to be"--not quite the same thing, but in the same ballpark. My reading, based on this and a couple other search results, is that post-war, there was a large surge in absolute mobility, caused by the structure of the workforce changing (people naturally moving into more valuable jobs), but the relative social mobility--the chance that two people in different classes ending up in different class destinations than the rest of their class--was small. So, I interpret that as--people in general are richer on average because a tide has lifted all boats. However, the chance of them becoming rich isn't actually any easier relative to what it used to be. I find that super surprising. Though I'd also say, I'm not that confident (in my expert 5-minute investigation ;)) that they truly have the historical data to be confident in their conclusions.

Yeah, I guess it really shows to you how inaccurate your own anecdotal experiences are compared to the real world, solid statistics, doesn't it? By degree? I guess by that you mean, in America, you can have people are so poor that they die from bad luck because they can't afford health insurance, and sometimes incredibly poor people becomes multi-billionaires--though an absolutely infinitesimal number of them. Whereas in Western Europe, you don't have many people who die from bad luck because the have no health insurance, but they also have a much better chance of becoming millionaires, but not billionaires. I guess that would be a difference of degrees, sure. By attempting to reduce the impact of bad luck, left wing programs result a lower standard deviation of net worth, and this is, in fact, one of their purposes.

Yeah, except you missed the second part of what I said. If you don't have reasonable income mobility, you don't have justice. Why would anyone believe the system is just if it's basically impossible for the poor to become rich?

I know. It makes me want to weep. In the past, you've implied that humanity needs to evolve socially to reach a better place for everyone, and I'm right there with you. Human nature is broken. We need to get beyond the "us" and the "them".

Just keep on whacking that straw man. Nobody's wanted equality since Lenin. What people want is low enough inequality that the poor don't rise up and shoot the rich, but instead have the income mobility to rise up and become the rich.

Let me help you with this. Electing an openly racist and sexist president matters. It changes the culture of the nation. That might not impact white males, but it can make a real difference in the day-to-day life of minorities and women. This twitter feed has a few (well, fifty), examples. To me, this is very worrisome.

I'm curious about what you mean by this. Like, are you suggesting that Trump and the Republican Congress and Senate will reverse this inequality? Or that they'll mess up so badly that a Bernie Sanders socialist type will be elected (making the pendulum swing way too far to the left)? Or do you mean it in more of a hand-wavy way, like "This election shows the people are furious, and something going to change. I'm not sure how it will happen, but it will." Just curious what was in your head as you were writing this. (I think I mostly agree, but I'm in the hand-wavy camp. I don't see an easy path from where we are now to what you suggest, and that worries me greatly.)

Aside from the gratuitous ad-hominem (bullying and insulting Democrats for being bullying and insulting), I think you're actually right about the general concept. Both candidates were unpopular and controversial, so many people didn't want to deal with the BS they might have to go through if they admitted that they liked a candidate. Hence, the high number of undecided, and potentially a lot of people lying to pollsters. (And really, it doesn't even have to be that high. The swing states often had a sub three percentage point difference. So if you're polling the typical 1000 people, that's only 30 people lying to you during a really controversial campaign.) Plus, the other thing is that I think by the end Nate Silver gave Trump just under a 1 in 3 chance of winning based on the data from the polls. So, has anyone here ever rolled a die and had it come up 1 or 2? Did you think that die was rigged? What about rolling a 7 with a pair of dice? If you believe the polls, that's all that had to happen for Trump to win.

The great thing about tonight has actually been the election coverage in Canada. I've never seen an election team on CBC be so bitterly honest about their fears. Almost always, they try to hedge and present a balanced view. Tonight, they're not even trying. It's like they're drunk, or so exhausted that all of their normal wariness and self-censorship has vanished. It's clear they're angry, terrified, and totally freaked out. Peter Mansbridge is actually starting to lose it. He got some of the swing state stories wrong and is now asking his commentators whether they think Trump reads.... :) I've never seen that for him. (Maybe part of it is just because these guys have no teleprompter, but still....)

LOL, no argument from me. When I say, high income mobility, you know I'm Canadian, and talking about Canada and some of the European nations, right? Interesting black and white perspective, very different than mine. I think if I were parachuted into Somalia, one of the countries with the least government, I'd have a really, really hard time trying to establish the lifestyle I have now. Maybe you wouldn't, or maybe you're just naïve, and don't really understand how hard it would be. To give a specific example, when I had a young family, I founded a company I later sold for millions. But I couldn't have done that if I didn't live in a country with single-payer healthcare--I wouldn't be able to afford a health crisis. To risk bankrupting myself or losing a family member to some random disease because I wanted to tilt at windmills would've been the height of irresponsibility. So, without that government help, there's a good chance I wouldn't have been as successful. Maybe I would have--it's hard to know exactly how alternative futures would've worked out. But it's unlikely. So yeah, I'm brainwashed. Just a zombie. "Grr. Argh. Brains." Wow, you sound so confident. You should absolutely bet on this. 20 or 25% of your portfolio in options on hyperinflation happening in the next five years. You'll make millions. Hundreds of millions! LOL, yeah. Just assert it doesn't. Ignore income mobility stats, happiness stats, really almost anything. Funny thing is, I'm in a country far more socialist than yours, yet it has lower debt to GDP, better income mobility, and equivalent healthcare at a far lower price. Yet you'd rather just wave your hands and scream "Socialism is evil!" than actually analyse the situation and figure out what works. Socialism works well in some situations, and capitalism works well in some situations, and it is possible to combine them in productive ways. (I mean, I know you don't really care about how reality works, but why don't you think about what metrics you care about, and then look at the countries that have excelled in those metrics, rather than just mindlessly bleating ideology?)

Thanks Tim, for your thoughtful response. It is an interesting conundrum for me, because if you hire a hit man to kill someone, I think you can equally be charged with murder, not just the hit man. And I think you should be. To me, this question might be problematic to the anti-choicers in the same way as "can you abort a baby while the mom is labor, about to deliver it?" is to the pro-choicers. The pro-choice counter-argument is that such a scenario basically never occurs outside life-threatening scenarios. But that's still intellectually unsatisfying, even if it is a practical position to take. Just as "charge the doctor, not the woman" is a practical anti-choice solution, but still intellectually unsatisfying. (You can pay a person to kill someone for you, and not be charged? And what if the woman goes at herself with a coat hook so she's the doctor and the patient?) I think the big problem is the main milestones in development that people understand are conception and birth. If technology adds a couple other milestones like "ability to think" (don't ask me to define that, because I don't know), it might make some of these answers easier. (For instance, we already consider death to be cessation of brain functions, so a loose parallel is already there.)

Just out of curiosity, if you feel this way, would you have the courts throw women who have abortions into prison for first degree murder? (Like, if you think abortion is the deliberate killing of people then it's murder. And it's clearly premeditated, which makes it first degree.) I saw a video where they asked some anti-choice protestors that, and only one suggested prison was the right punishment, which seemed odd to me. So I'm curious if that's where your beliefs lead you, to first degree murder charges. Or do you just say fetuses are people who deserve to be protected, but are different somehow so it would be a lesser charge than first degree murder? Or something else?

That said, it is interesting to think about where I'd be in a different political system. I suspect that with the same parents in a much more libertarian system, if brains were helpful in getting you ahead, I'd have a good chance of being ahead of most people. If other factors like EQ, brawn, or connections were more important, I think I'd probably be behind the average person. I think Buffett has basically expressed the same sentiments. In almost all reasonable scenarios, I suspect I'd be way behind where I am now--my country is designed rather nicely for me to get ahead in a low-risk way. In almost any libertarian system, I think connections to the wealthy and powerful would be more important than anything, except maybe parents, so I'd fail horribly. It is an interesting thought though. It really makes you appreciate a system where a person has a reasonable chance to better their position in the world (i.e. high income mobility).

A huge part of what I accomplished was because of the education system and the support of my government. So, by missing school, you've missed out on reading comprehension and the scientific reasoning. Any other big gaps? Do you know what algebra is?