reply to post by vexati0n
Your argument is a little thin, and it relies waaay to heavily on the "slippery slope" principle.
First of all, education can be free, to the student. Those who carry out all the tasks associated with providing that education must be paid, but the
money to pay them needn't come from the students.
Slippery slope? Your second sentence demonstrates handily that I am not speaking to any "slippery slope", and what I am speaking to is an ideology
that clearly exists here and now. There is no "slope" to
"slip" down, we're all ready there.
If there is a cost to something then it is expressly not free. "Free to the student" is not a slippery slope, it is sloppy syllogism. At no cost
to the student would be truer, but let's not pretend that there is no cost to a good education.
There are various ways in which to provide a student a good education without placing the burden of cost on that student. Charitable, or "not for
profit" organizations is one way. Foundations and Trusts can easily be set up towards this specific aim. That is one way. Is that what you are
suggesting? Do you think we need more Foundations and Trust Funds set up for students so they don't have to pay for their own education? I could
very easily, even emphatically agree with that.
There are other ways, but I personally think the one I have just spoke to is the strongest, and I imagine that if you disagree you will have no
problems in listing the other options, or at the very least, another option.
When I say "health care" I do not mean the quackery they would love to sell you at herbal stores, I mean actual medicine that has been shown to have
an effect on disease. I do not mean raw milk (although by all means drinking that should be legal). The FDA is crooked, but it's entirely appropriate
that it forbids the packagers of herbal "remedies" from claiming their products cure disease, because those products don't cure disease.
The so called "quackery" you speak of is not as preferable to you as the licensed and sanctioned quackery of the main stream medical profession,
which at this point includes not just doctors and scientists, but pharmaceutical companies and astonishingly even insurance companies, is it? Is it
just because you don't agree with the claims made by the "alternative medicine" crowd, and seemingly agree with the "conventional wisdom" crowd
that you presume we should adopt a fiscal policy mandating healthcare that eschews all
alternative methods and only adopts what is approved by you and your ilk?
Personally, I remain ambivalent about either side, with noticeable exceptions. The noticeable exceptions are the fact that
iatrogenocide
- death by doctoring - being the third leading cause of death, and Congress' answer to the clear link between certain SSRI's and anti-depressants to
suicidal tendencies was handled by mandating labels warning of this suicidal tendency, and given that "conventional" Western medicine is hopelessly
lost when it comes to handling chronic diseases, I would argue that the quackery is universal.
But anyway, yes I'm advocating a single-payer healthcare system. Did you know that the government collects more money in Medicare taxes right now per
citizen, than pretty much any other industrialized nation collects from their citizens, and yet provides only a tiny fraction of the health care other
nations do? All because for-profit
Insurance companies have their hand in the pot. For-profit insurance should be illegal, because the only way to make a profit in that industry is to
collect premiums and then refuse to pay for treatments in return. It's a scam.
While taxation is necessary in order to have a government, taxation in perpetuity is, at best, dubious, and at worst a gross intrusion upon the rights
of the people. Taxes are solely to sustain a government. Government has given tasks. A government founded on freedom, a government that is built by
law, and follows the rule of law, is tasked with the protection of peoples rights above all else. When that very same government, at some point, opts
to expand beyond the scope of that simple task, it follows that such a government must now make a decision between protection of rights, or their new
found agenda. When the agenda is the choice, this is where those in government begin deciding whose rights get trampled upon.
When you magnanimously declare that there should be no cost to the student, you understand that this means someone picks up the cost, but you don't
seem to care to go beyond that and question who makes the decision as to who picks up the cost, what method will be employed to guarantee the
person(s) chosen to pick up the cost comply, where and when this method will be used and for how much? These concerns you seem more than willing to
leave up to them.
The problem in this sloppy syllogism is that the premise is faulty. The premise of "free education and health care" is predicated on the belief
that a certain fundamental rights must be funded by the aggregate so that those asserting their right can be given that right "free". It is a
presumption that rights work in a positive sense, as
opposed to the negative.
Rights are not defined by what we can do, but are defined by what we cannot do. Unless we are defending ourselves, or property, or other people, we
do not have a right to cause other people harm. Thus, outside of necessary defensive moves, if what we do causes no harm, then what we do, we do by
right. This equation is simple, it is true, it is universal, and it is absolute, just as all law is. When this simple, true, universal and absolute
law is discounted as "just a theory", then other theory's are offered that assert that "the laws of
science" do not act in the same way that the "laws of man" do. So, where the "laws of science" are simple, true, universal, and absolute, the
"laws of man" are all too often complex, demonstrably false, elitist, arbitrary, capricious, and malleable.
It becomes necessary, when pushing agendas that include "free" education, and health care, to diminish the law, and turn it into inventions of
humanity rather than discoveries. When law is recognized as something that exists with or without governments...indeed, with or without
humanity....it is understood that these laws cannot be forced to fit within hopelessly idealistic agenda's. It becomes necessary to discount rights
of individuals as being nothing more than that of which the government allows. It becomes necessary to do this, because someone has to pay for your
hopelessly idealistic agenda, and even you, in all your seeming naivete, recognize that this cost...the debt owed from your "free" programs...will
have to be paid by people who, at the very least some of them, will not want to accept a liability for a debt they did not contract to.
All this yammering on about "medicare" and such is nothing more than smoke and mirrors. Not all taxes are scams, but the so called "Personal
Income Tax" is a scam, so it follows that all programs sustained by this scam would in themselves be scams as well. You seemingly hope to deflect
the issue, which is who is going to pay the costs of your "free" programs?
You disingenuously attempt dismiss my question of cost as being a fallacious argument of "slippery slope", but only the willingly indoctrinated will
accept this falsehood. I am not in anyway relying on "slippery slopes", nor am I relying on the sloppy syllogism you embrace.
What I am relying upon is the self evident law that all people posses inherent rights that are unalienable and that there is no lawful authority that
can come along and declare these rights granted fictions by their authority. You can tell yourself that your advocacy of taking wealth from others in
order to give others of your preference programs you advocate is moral, compassionate, and just, but none of this is true. Theft is not moral, and
your insistence that it is okay to take from some to give to others is theft. Disregard for the unalienable rights of all people is not
compassionate, it is callous and cruel. There is no justice in a callous, cruel, program of thievery.