Paleo Diet: Raw Paleo Diet and Lifestyle Forum
Raw Paleo Diet Forums => Off Topic => Topic started by: goodsamaritan on January 08, 2011, 08:35:40 am
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Paleo diet is expensive because it is REAL FOOD.
So it is poverty that keeps people from being able to eat REAL FOOD?
43 Million Americans on Food Stamps?
http://www.zerohedge.com/article/food-stamp-usage-hits-new-high-432-million
Can the americans here explain the food stamp system circa 2011?
You issue some kind of debit card to the poor, right?
And they can just buy from any participating food selling firm? Also clothing?
Please explain to us non americans how this works.
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I get food stamps.
Yeah I get a card and a pin #. The money comes monthly.
Oh and yeah, I can only get food. Its called a Questcard here. I only can get food.
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A person will apply for an interview and receive a debit card with an amount that varies depending on things like children and income.
I do not know If the healthier markets accept the card, whole foods would be your best bet, but there is little chance that some one would go there if they could get more matter at the store right down the street. A card would dry up quick at whole foods anyway.
The last time I saw one being used, the guy was buying a bunch of candy at the regular market.
This is what It will buy you in Arizona. They can buy food from any place that accepts food stamps, meaning big corporate companies.
https://www.azdes.gov/main.aspx?menu=162&id=5203 (https://www.azdes.gov/main.aspx?menu=162&id=5203)
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I get food stamps.
Yeah I get a card and a pin #. The money comes monthly.
Oh and yeah, I can only get food. Its called a Questcard here. I only can get food.
Which places do you use the card?
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I go to Outpost Natural foods. They have 3 stores here and except questcard/foodstamps. THey have Wisconsin local grass fed beef. Ground is 5$ a lb. Not too bad.
Whole foods excepts foodstamps but they don't have local grass fed meats like outpost. Their grass fed meats comes from a different state than Wisconsin. They have grass fed lamb from new zealand. It's like wtf? Meat from all the way over there, ridiculous.
Outpost is the best Natural food store in Wisconsin, and maybe the whole midwest. Or perhaps the United STATE! Fresh unforzen grass fed beef from all different cuts. And local, can't beat that!
BTW, if anyone is near Milwaukee, outpost is good place to go.
http://www.outpost.coop/
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There was a time when I first started eating raw meats they didn't have local grass fed beef and had organic beef from North Dakota or something. Man they are meeting the needs!
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I go to Outpost Natural foods. They have 3 stores here and except questcard/foodstamps. THey have Wisconsin local grass fed beef. Ground is 5$ a lb. Not too bad.
Whole foods excepts foodstamps but they don't have local grass fed meats like outpost. Their grass fed meats comes from a different state than Wisconsin. They have grass fed lamb from new zealand. It's like wtf? Meat from all the way over there, ridiculous.
Outpost is the best Natural food store in Wisconsin, and maybe the whole midwest. Or perhaps the United STATE! Fresh unforzen grass fed beef from all different cuts. And local, can't beat that!
BTW, if anyone is near Milwaukee, outpost is good place to go.
http://www.outpost.coop/
I CHECKED THEIR WEBSITE!!
FUCK ME... I THINK I GOTA MOVE TO WISCONSIN ONE DAY
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Paleo diet is expensive because it is REAL FOOD.
So it is poverty that keeps people from being able to eat REAL FOOD?
43 Million Americans on Food Stamps?
http://www.zerohedge.com/article/food-stamp-usage-hits-new-high-432-million
Can the americans here explain the food stamp system circa 2011?
You issue some kind of debit card to the poor, right?
And they can just buy from any participating food selling firm? Also clothing?
Please explain to us non americans how this works.
Well its true that people with less money often resort to fast food and other crap, but I live in a very well-off suburb of chicago and people still don't give a crap what they eat. Today my friend told me he finally figured out a diet that works...He said all you need is marijuana and bananas. Made me lol. Anyway I guess more people do go in the health crowd here though because I know two raw vegans but still either you care or you don't its generally not the money.
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BTW, if anyone is near Milwaukee, outpost is good place to go.
http://www.outpost.coop/
Pretty website. I should make websites that look like this! Thanks!
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No prob guys, I like to share my good fortune. Unfortunately though, they only carry grass fed liver for organs.
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I am on food stamps and I use it mainly to buy my wife and kids food, I have 3 kids and a stay at home wife and make less than 30,000 a year so that qualifies me for 500 dollars a month in food assistance. Every six months I have to show proof of income and get the card renewed. Good food is so expensive and I wouldn't be able to live as well If I didn't have that assistance. There is an Irony about the program which is if I made an extra 500 a month through hard work I would lose my benefits so I am stuck on this reservation with no motivation to better my income. There are many people who are in the same situation. There is no motivation for me to work harder for less money, so I am better off camping out on the boarderline of poverty.
We get some choice Items at the whole foods store and I try to buy some of the cleaner foods the standard grocery stores have to offer. I buy my meats with cash from a restaurant. I am fairly poor and I have to budjet my diet strictly and I have sacrificed many material goods to be able to afford good food for my family. It is well worth not having cable TV , my own cell Phone, new shoes, curtains, appliances, or a fancy ride, car insurance, etc in order to provide me and my family with good food.
I see wealthy people who have everything , but feed their kids garbage, many of these these kids are surrounded by fancy toys and material goods but they are being made sickly and stupid from bad nutrition and I know that my children are much better off than the majority of children who come from wealthy homes.
I justify my eatting at the governments expense by knowing that If I couldn't afford to feed my family well, then the government would be having to pay for a lifetime of their medical expenses due to sickness that is caused by poor nutrition. As things are, I never have to take my kids to a government Doctor, except for their yearly check ups in which they are labeled to be perfectly healthy. Do you know how much money I will save the government just by raising healthy kids who will hopefully grow up into healthy productive adults.
I know many poor families who actually sell their food stamps for drug money and let their kids live on noodles and cereal.
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Food stamps? My god, you Americans have all the luck - gun-ownership rights, food-stamps, local and State referendums etc.
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I am on food stamps and I use it mainly to buy my wife and kids food, I have 3 kids and a stay at home wife and make less than 30,000 a year so that qualifies me for 500 dollars a month in food assistance. Every six months I have to show proof of income and get the card renewed. Good food is so expensive and I wouldn't be able to live as well If I didn't have that assistance. There is an Irony about the program which is if I made an extra 500 a month through hard work I would lose my benefits so I am stuck on this reservation with no motivation to better my income. There are many people who are in the same situation. There is no motivation for me to work harder for less money, so I am better off camping out on the boarderline of poverty.
We get some choice Items at the whole foods store and I try to buy some of the cleaner foods the standard grocery stores have to offer. I buy my meats with cash from a restaurant. I am fairly poor and I have to budjet my diet strictly and I have sacrificed many material goods to be able to afford good food for my family. It is well worth not having cable TV , my own cell Phone, new shoes, curtains, appliances, or a fancy ride, car insurance, etc in order to provide me and my family with good food.
I see wealthy people who have everything , but feed their kids garbage, many of these these kids are surrounded by fancy toys and material goods but they are being made sickly and stupid from bad nutrition and I know that my children are much better off than the majority of children who come from wealthy homes.
I justify my eatting at the governments expense by knowing that If I couldn't afford to feed my family well, then the government would be having to pay for a lifetime of their medical expenses due to the sickness that are cause by poor nutrition. As things are, I never have to take my kids to a government Doctor, except for their yearly check ups in which they are labeled to be perfectly healthy. Do you know how much money I will save the government just by raising healthy kids.
I know many poor families who actually sell their food stamps for drug money and let their kids live on noodles and cereal.
Wow Sabertooth,
you are very wise indeed - it took me a long time to figure this out. I agree with everything you say. But you still should try to read good books - i believe books and nature are the best teachers.
have you tried foraging or growing ur own food?
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Food stamps? My god, you Americans have all the luck - gun-ownership rights, food-stamps, local and State referendums etc.
I agree... Americans are lucky with the food stamps program.
We have no such thing in my country.
Any other country out there with a similar food stamps program?
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Wow Sabertooth,
you are very wise indeed - it took me a long time to figure this out. I agree with everything you say. But you still should try to read good books - i believe books and nature are the best teachers.
have you tried foraging or growing ur own food?
thank you. My wife is very interested in maintaining her own garden. We don't have suitable land at the moment but we plan to move within this next year, and will most likely have a better place then. She wants to build her own garden at that point, and have the kids help her with it. I'm sure that will help us a lot (with food for them). She had a small garden at her fathers' house growing up, and that was the only way she ever got any food that was not out of a box or freezer as a child so she remembers how much that small bit of actual, real food helped her.
Also at some point in my life I plan on purchasing a hunting permit and hopefully bringing home some wild game meat that way. In Kentucky where I live, it is ridiculous the amount of red tape one needs to wade through, just to get a gun and go out into the woods to bring back some dinner for the family. But I'll do it someday.
We once had a small flock of chickens, and we still talk about going back into that plus adding some turkeys to the mix. Once that comes to pass, it will be a good source of fresh eggs & occasional poultry for us. I am interested in having a rabbit hutch, so I can have fresh rabbit meat. We throw around these ideas a lot and it seems a lot of it just might work for us.
It's just that these plans & dreams take some time to come to fruition. My wife hopes/believes that next spring, we will be in a much better place financially and will be able to get into a better home, hopefully with just a small bit of land, and then we will make all these things happen. :)
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Also at some point in my life I plan on purchasing a hunting permit and hopefully bringing home some wild game meat that way. In Kentucky where I live, it is ridiculous the amount of red tape one needs to wade through, just to get a gun and go out into the woods to bring back some dinner for the family. But I'll do it someday.
I dont know much about hunting but why not bow and arrow. Its equally effective, not sure if that too involves red tape.
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I agree... Americans are lucky with the food stamps program.
We have no such thing in my country.
Any other country out there with a similar food stamps program?
We don't have food stamps but if you can't find a job you get free money here about $470 a fortnight plus money for rent/utilities. You also get heavily discounted medical and public transport. If you convince them you are to unwell to work which is pretty easy you get around $600 a fortnight plus rental/utilities.
The money can be spent on anything.
I know people who have been able to pull off a pretty good lifestyle with this money. Not so much now with the mining boom but it is definitely a possible lifestyle choice.
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Wow Sabertooth,
you are very wise indeed - it took me a long time to figure this out. I agree with everything you say. But you still should try to read good books - i believe books and nature are the best teachers.
have you tried foraging or growing ur own food?
I have scavenged a good amount of road kill and have gotten a deer just recently, I like deer but Its real lean and I cant eat a lot of it. I also have some back yard chickens and I get some eggs, and will be trying to expand in the spring. I really want to set up some rabbit hutches, I think I could easily turn a few bails of hay into some tasty rabbit in no time.
As for reading good books; I sometimes wish I still took more time to read literature cover to cover as I had before this whole internet addiction creeped up on me. When I was a teenager I would spend endless days in the park beside the city library reading quietly. I read Dostoevsky, Victor Hugo, Goethe, and countless others. It was a happy time for me. I found reading to be an more engaged kind of meditation which allowed my mind to focus on streams of thought and to cultivate a greater overall awareness and inner peace. When I wasn't reading I was scrounging for vitals, or getting into mischief.(I camped out on the street for the entire summer I turned 19 and it was a good experience). I found some street kids that just wanted to have fun , playing cards in the park, breaking into the hotels for the indoor pool and sauna, climbing to the top of buildings, just clowning around. I also talked to allot of the fallen people who lived on the street. There is much to learn from people who have been down life's rocky road if you are willing to listen to their stories. Most of the far out conspiracy stuff I believe in was learned from talking to my old war vets and other street people long before I ever began to troll the internet.
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Food stamps? My god, you Americans have all the luck - gun-ownership rights, food-stamps, local and State referendums etc.
You are being facetious - yes?
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I read Dostoevsky, Victor Hugo, Goethe, and countless others. It was a happy time for me. I found reading to be an more engaged kind of meditation which allowed my mind to focus on streams of thought and to cultivate a greater overall awareness and inner peace.
Most of the far out conspiracy stuff I believe in was learned from talking to my old war vets and other street people long before I ever began to troll the internet.
Sabertooth,
since you have read more literature than i have, any recommendation for kids. How to start them on it, my daughter is 8.5yrs old i want to start her on good literature but have no clue (being a science guy). Any ideas on how to start get her started.
Curious about the conspiracy stuff from vets.
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Sabertooth,
since you have read more literature than i have, any recommendation for kids. How to start them on it, my daughter is 8.5yrs old i want to start her on good literature but have no clue (being a science guy). Any ideas on how to start get her started.
Curious about the conspiracy stuff from vets.
When I was in the 4th grade I was a stubborn student, and the way public schools are set up didn't fit my style of learning so I had trouble in school, my mother told me that I could either take after school tutoring with this mean old woman we called Bucktooth Owens, or I could read a book for an hour in my room each day. I chose to read in my room. My mother was raised in South Dakota and had a complete collection of the little house on the prairie written by Laura Ingells Wilder from when she was a child. I remember reading Farmer boy cover to cover when I was about nine years old. Its the first book that began my recreational reading habit. These were some really down to earth books written about life on the frontier from a perspective of Laura as she was growing up. She turned her childhood stories into the little house on the Prairie series of books that were easy for me to read and I found enjoyable. You may have to read a few chapters of a book to her in order to spark her interest, my father read the hardy boys books to me when I was about seven or eight and I believe just reading to children before bed is a good way to interest them into books. I really don't know of too many other books to recommend for a 9 year old girl, I also became intersted in the science fiction works and fantasy fiction like the hobbit and lord of the rings.
Kids are amazing in their ability to learn under the right circumstances if it was not for the independent learning that was encouraged by my Mother I would of never became literate had I just relied on the public schools. There is a book called Dumbing us Down I think that every parrent who has kids in school should read. It was written by an award winning teacher who explains how schools were set up to limit children's mental development in a way that was scientifically designed and developed. The author had also written a book called the Underground history of America were he explains how compulsory schools were set up and established by the big foundation philanthropist against the will of the people , so that they could develop the masses into mindless drones. Its very credible research.
http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/chapters/index.htm Here is the ebook on The history of education
I cant find Dumbing us down, but there is a summery of the 7 basic lessons that are part of the hidden curriculum http://www.Johntaylorgatto.com/bookstore/dumbdnblum3.htm
As for the conspiracy stuff from vets. I don't know were to start, There was this one man I met on the streets who was sprayed with agent orange in Vietnam, He literally had cancers eatting his legs up. Thousands of troops were deliberately marched into areas that were just sprayed with the poison. I also knew this man who went blind after desert Storm, due to the vaccines. My grandmother worked in the V. A. hospital and was full of horror stories about crazy vets she had to care for, there were many vets that were labled as shell shocked or post traumatic stress syndrome, but in reality they were damaged chemically by either vaccination or some other method. She was never allowed to diagnose the vets with anything, If they had agent orange spots it had to be labled as suspected agent orange. I have studied back to world war one and how soldiers on both sides were given the same poisonous inoculations which triggered the Spanish flu epidemic that killed millions. The vaccines are not as deadly nowdays, but they still damage the vets in more insidious ways. Most of what the vets I met have told me is just common knowledge about how the government is running the drug trade and how the wars are a complete sham operations.
I met an explosives expert who went into kosivo during the whole Bosnia convict and he said that after one operation he went back to the hotel and watched on the US news how he had just blown up some ammunition's warehouse when in reality he said it was just a warehouse for food and civilian supplies. All the war news that gets back to the American people is filtered and turned into propaganda. Bill Clinton painted UN markings an US jets and sent them in to blow up bridges and infrastructures in order to put those people in their place. The government would not submit to the tyranny of the bankers and were in the process of building a financial system that was free from outside influence, so they had to be dealt with. False charges of genocide were thrown out as justification for blowing up innocent civilians, and overthrowing the government and somehow everything is justified.
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I justify my eatting at the governments expense
Justify what? The government is a ponzi scheme and you were smart enough to position yourself at the recieving end on the schtick. Other notable welfare clients in your country include (but are not limited to) IG, JP Morgan, Citigroup, Wells Fargo, Bank of America, Merrill Lynch, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, NC Financial Services. Heck, America's got so much money that they put our (Denmark) and several other "national" banks on welfare too. THANK YOU AMERICA!
Notice how this system actually manages to take the worst of crony capitalism and the worst of socialism and stir it into an unholy concoction. If you have a company thats going well, goddamn you are The Man! you will be rewarded your own weight in gold many times over, even if you fail you will get your weight worth in gold because ...tadaa...if you fuck up you can just send the bill to the treachery (formerly treasury) to get picked up by "we the people". Fan fucking tastic, if you ask me.
If someone who did not position themselves at the system output bitch at you, tell them to stop paying for your sustainance, that you never asked for HIS money. To which they will reply, "But I cant! Then Ill go to jail!". Camly answer him: "well then Im not really the problem here am I? I dont own a gun, I am unable to take anything from you by force even if I wanted to". You could also remind him of the other wellfare clients that you would suspect were doing fairly well on their own just to get some perspective on relative cost of each welfare client. Citigroup = $25 billion in welfare so far. Thats perspective!
You have to justify nothing! These other fuckers have to justify why they are so happy getting fleeced for no real benefit of their own (they could not have gotten both cheaper, better, and best of all voluntarily) and then pass the blame onto people who are just like them, but who refuse to pay for the party when you dont even get to choose the music.
The value in this system is now spread so thin it is practically worthless. When a company like "facebook" is worth more than large corporations that actually produce something, you know the financial system is desperately trying to turn into value, what isnt value, to keep going for another few rounds. They try and teach us that value is where we put our money, but that is a paradox because then what makes the money valuable? We put our value into things we like, thus making them valuable, but if the money is backed by little but IOU's, most of which we know for a fact defaulted (money was created by the bank and lend out, but value did not come back in since the project failed and nothing was created, so the money pool grew without new value to back it up), then we cannot create value with "not value". A generated interrest from people is not "value". I could announce that every day at noon I would walk down to ground zero, take a plate and shit on it, right out in the middle of the squre. I would generate A LOT of interrest, but had I created value? You need to look at the system like this to understand why true evil is staying willingly ignorant about this mindboggling abuse of us all. And seen in this light, what you do is "the right thing to do". Now if you could avoid taxes without getting mauled by banksters, I would coin you a hero.
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I was being facetious and I personally think my 6000 dollars a year in government aid I receive is just a drop in the bucket and Its definitely something I need and have earned. At least the American people have enough influence to gain some of the chicken scratch leftovers out of the government feeding trough to make sure that the working poor who built this empire don't go hungry. The big conglomerates get their billions of dollars in kickbacks and people like me are dished out some chicken scratch to keep us on the reservation. I consider it Hush money If you think I bitch about the government now lord knows what I would do If my family was truly starving. The cost of food is so outrageous that without this assistance there would be millions of Americans would be more willing to confront the injustices head on, if it wasn't for these welfare programs. The sad thing is that everyone with a brain knows that with this technology Clean food could be produced and shipped out much more frugally than what is being done today and food cost should be an issue of the past. Yet we spend more time and money on foolish things than we do on the nourishment of our bodies
My Granny raised her children in South Dakota before the food stamp programs existed, She raised 6 kids on one income and my grandfather was to ignorant and selfish to even ask the local charities for help, by the time she left him she weighed 95 pounds and all the kids were malnourished. They would eat mainly cornmeal mush, oatmeal or potatoes. My Granny would tell me how the government would subsidize local farms to grow corn and nothing else. The local farmers were being paid to grow only corn while the local kids were starving for real food. (this is my heritage; the midwest was turned into an big Agra reservation in which healthy foods were discouraged from being grown by the federal government) She told me that when there was too much corn produced they would just dump it on the side of the road. Some farmers would get subsidy checks for growing absolutely nothing. The land of America is so rich there is no reason for people to go hungry. There would be no need for foodstamp programs if the government subsidy programs didn't distroy the family farms that used to make up the heart of America in the first place. There was a day in age when everyone had their own hogs and chickens and the neighbors sold each other food for a fraction of what food in the stores cost. It seems that the more money government forces into these programs the more harm it does overall, even if it seems that some individuals are helped the greater overall effect is negative. People who are now spoiled on government food cards will never have the motivation to forrage or grow their own, and most of them are not aware of how damaging much of that possessed food they buy with their money can be, and so they pass on a legacy of poor nutrition to their children. I consider it a blessing for those who use it wisely and can use it to provide quality food, I just wish things weren't so bad that now over 40 million Americans have to depend on it for survival. The persent situation seems to be alright I just worry about what will happen years down the road when the new food regulations go into effect and half the nation has these rationing cards, they will have no choice but to eat what ever big Agra puts on the shelves, just as the Indians had no choice but to eat the reservation food that killed them off.
I see no real easy way out of the Charity trap other than being able to play the system for what you can get out of it As long as I can still find some decently produced food in the grocery store with my hush money, I will remain somewhat content although ever vigilant.
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life is complicated :'(
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life is complicated :'(
Not really.
Stay focused.
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I see no real easy way out of the Charity trap other than being able to play the system for what you can get out of it
I disagree.....but before I go on, I need to make clear that I am not personally attacking you - I am addressing multiple posters who see "gaming the system" as a functional alternative. That said....
First, no one said getting out of any trap is easy, so "easy" isn't a prerequisite to escaping the trap.
Second, I see no shame in doing what needs to be done to take care of your family. But conversely, I see no pride in taking regular hand-outs from Big Brother.
Third, government is incredibly inefficient. Your productivity is taxed (income tax), and that is given to various departments. The foodstamp office soaks up 90 cents on every dollar in administrative costs. Only 10 cents actually goes to families in the form of financial assistance.
If those figures belonged to a private charity (United Way, Salvation Army, Red Cross, Good Will, YMCA, American Cancer Society, etc), there would be public outrage, boycotts would ensue, top dogs would be fired.
Fourth, achieving excellence in what we do & caring for our families (a goal of all men), cannot be done to its fullest extent while we allow an external force to rob us....or worse, willingly participate in the system. It has been said several times that gaming the system is right & that there is no incentive to work harder to make more because losing hand-outs (& possibly falling into a higher tax bracket) just evens things out. "Why bother to work harder for the same thing?"
I disagree with this assumption. There is more to the pay-off than the dollar figure at the end of the day. Keep things as they are, and they'll likely be there tomorrow, next week, next year, 5 years hence....it never changes.
Drop the hand-outs (even at a loss) and you stand on your feet with pride stemming from the knowledge that you have provided for your family and that you are on your way UP. Nothing will stay the same, and you owe nothing to anybody.
My personal take - I don't believe in federal level governmental assistance of any kind. Not to the rich, not to the poor.
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handouts of any kind do not solve the problem.
there is a hungry man, you give him a fish, he eats the fish, then he gets hungry again, problem continues.
instead, give him a fishing rod, so he can feed himself now. problem solved.
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handouts of any kind do not solve the problem.
there is a hungry man, you give him a fish, he eats the fish, then he gets hungry again, problem continues.
instead, give him a fishing rod, so he can feed himself now. problem solved.
But in these countries there is nowhere for them to fish, the governments have made it so. That's why the government needs to give them fish, or they would revolt.
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VhAx8WzNJT0
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But in these countries there is nowhere for them to fish, the governments have made it so. That's why the government needs to give them fish, or they would revolt.
43 million AMERICANS on food stamps. America is FULL of fish, and plenty of places to fish.
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43 million AMERICANS on food stamps. America is FULL of fish, and plenty of places to fish.
is most of this stamp food money is spent on junk food (corn, canned, cured meat.....).
it could a way to create consumers for junk food (which already is subsidized by tax payers)
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America is full of people who still catch and eat fish as well as hunt wild game, they are the hillbillies who don't have the internet so you would never know they existed. They are out there, and there is a substantial number of them, but from what I can tell their society is crumpling( I am not being funny or grandiose in any respect) The hill people in Kentucky have been stricken with a disease of addiction to prescription pills and many of the young people are so doped up they cant care for themselves and the charity foods they get in Appalachia are not nourishing children proper. They are a frail shadow of the people their grand pearents were. I am sure that SD knows about the problems I speak of. There is an epidemic that is taking its toll in way that aren't being acknowledged. I know there is a majority of adults who get some kind of government assistance are some kind of addict, whether its the geriatric with their nerve pills, or some hillbilly with inexplicable back pain(who happens to have a doctor in Florida), its these people who are the biggist burden to they system. Someone who works hard and is just in need of extra support is someone we all can agree to help, but some addicted person who is so messed up they cant even raise children righteously or someone wont try help build a nice community , these are people who need to be put in check. How could this be done without being called unfair is a matter of debate.
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is most of this stamp food money is spent on junk food (corn, canned, cured meat.....).
it could a way to create consumers for junk food (which already is subsidized by tax payers)
yes its a vicious cycle people who eat junk food are the first to fall victim to poor health and when they are disabled living on foodstamps they buy the same junkfood they were always eatting
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43 million AMERICANS on food stamps. America is FULL of fish, and plenty of places to fish.
Well, not so. You do need a license, and for certain fish like salmon you need a certain license. Also its hard to find a clean place to fish in the city here. Although, I ate a trout cooked right from a city pond. Prob not a good idea to do frequently. It's not really a scare from the gov., some waters here are truly fudged up. I would have to find a good spot away from pollution.
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I want to go spear fishing. It's illegal now I think though. You know, the spears with the fork shape. I got a couple fishing forks I could uses.
http://fishing-master.iblogger.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/ice-fishing-spear.jpg
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can't believe people still insist on such universalized simplistic panning of such things
there is inequity everywhere and the systems made to compensate for it are incredibly flawed. OK. All these public arguments do is set off balance the same old tug of war between the people (and thus government) who is set on cutting such things out of existence for their own pocket...or one that rationalizes such assistance and interference in a variety of social and economic things. Back and forth, thats it.
The idea that within the present system that people really have a choice whether to accept or reject assistance is just mind boggling to me. the reason that many Americans are on some type of assistance is because there is that much inequality due to the way capital works, not due to how some corrupt version of social informed american capital works. In fact it seems(ed) far less a problem in the more socially-democratic European countries.
Think back to all civilizations about how those with resources treat those with little. At least with some assistance, a few intelligent, good people on this board can get some decent food for their family. If a referendum was voted tomorrow and such blanket theories really penetrated the masses, all you would have is a few richer fat cats and a many more desperate people on the streets. The money saved would go absolutely no where towards benefiting those people as an isolated act. The fact that people can cite the pointless war funding and other things to possibly whittle away at the estate taxes and make progress is just scary. There is absolutely no one that makes money at that level that doesn't owe a tremendous debt to individuals from pollution/energy/ and other inequities and damage they have caused creating their wealth. They should just transfer those dead peoples accounts right to the food debit cards. fair to me. Unless you are like Tesla or something, all profits have an implied debt to people and the planet, no seedy underbelly of destruction in politics should overshadow that. A good political viewpoint/argument has the ability to target issues on a case basis, and not just suggest massive ideological changes to get things running. This would mean taking 43 million people off, and doing what....?
the video I posted was Jared Lee Loughner
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Wasn't Rome a welfare state, the people were kept happy off of the spoils of the Provence's and fed by the work of slaves, it was a workable model for that time and place, it must of been nice at least for those who weren't the slaves, then again I bet some of the slaves had it better than others.
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Wasn't Rome a welfare state, the people were kept happy off of the spoils of the Provence's and fed by the work of slaves, it was a workable model for that time and place, it must of been nice at least for those who weren't the slaves, then again I bet some of the slaves had it better than others.
I've studied alot of that stuff and medieval history. Medieval serfs worked like 15 hours a week or something. it ridiculous that people cannot see that problems are the very systems of profit making at the expense of just about everything, and assume the freedom to express the same unregulated activities is ok. No evidence of government interference in regards to civil rights or any other such things can sway these people, even though its clear that if these basic constitutional type governments existed in the past (of which coincidentally there has never been to prove workability), the country probably wouldn't have moved forward at all in regards to these points/no intervention.
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I've had pretty extreme pessimistic views on government, or the environment myself in various periods as hopelessly deranged, and ultimately what becomes apparent is the same kinds of statements could have been made over decades, century, millennial even. Why be the person held up in their barn since the 60's spewing the same nonsense about how the government is going to come in any day now.
corruption in government is not new, the only thing that has increased is awareness of corruption. There are indeed so many murky realizations that become almost shocking in terms of what ours and other governments do to the point that it becomes unfathomable.
Ultimately what it comes down to is this stuff doesn't hold a candle to Mao or Stalin or whatever and being shot in the head for doing nothing. I know my freedom is limited in various ways and my body and mind has suffered to a large degree based on unfairness, but I don't have a curfew or am in constant fear of death from Mexican drug lords or religious zealots or had to join an army when I was 14. These are things that are forced. taxes are just pay to play.
Its not particularly new-agey to believe that anything that promotes constant fear/danger is bad by default, particularly when many of these issues are not new and don't/won't change. I just saw some study that noticed actual brain differences in conservatives and otherwise in terms of the enlargement of nodes that produce fear. Acknowledging that the system will not change dramatically is not cynicism but the opposite. Plenty of issues from casinos being built in every town to money relegated to health care and food stamp programs are issues that need to be tackled individually within that system and that is just the way it is. Saying things are default bad because of some ideal makes 0 sense. Saying that people should have the right to just put up a casino anywhere or all drugs should be legal due to hypocrisies or because that is capitalism is just naive.
for me my main political issue these days is whether the bike paths get sweeped or not. I like sticking with things I can prove are good and therefore that is my issue. Some people think that in such tight economic times, this is not important and if I was a good citizen I should have a car and do what everyone else does. If you get some (dreadful!) FDR inspired person, maybe they will pay someone to sweep the bike path (with stolen money) to create some jobs and maybe even put a pull-up bar in the park by my house. Odds areit will be incredibly inefficient and knowing my hood filled with kick backs and corruption. Either way, I'm pretty sure I would have a hard time convincing an unregulated auto-industry to donate to produce and maintain more bike paths, so with that alone I know that such ridiculous expectations of what is fair or unfair have no relevance in the real world.
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My remark about "fishing" was metaphoric, not literal.
To be blunt & literal: We don't need to indefinitely support people through public aid. Period. If public money is to be spent, it should be spent on education & training. To quote the old saying referenced by YS: "Give a man a fish, you have fed him for today. Teach a man to fish, you have fed him for a lifetime."
The idea that within the present system that people really have a choice whether to accept or reject assistance is just mind boggling to me.
Not to me.
1) There are plenty of people who reject using public assistance, and many who use it for an extremely short period of time (treating it as "emergency assistance") and then walk away. My argument is first and foremost against using it for long periods of time or indefinitely ("gaming the system" arguments).
2) My secondary argument is that the federal level government (in the US) should not be engaged in ANY sort of public aid, whether to the rich or the poor. I'm as much against corporate bailouts and industry subsidies as I am against food stamps and free housing.
3) Next on the list, I argue that government AT ANY LEVEL is not fit to provide such assistance (see my earlier post citing the fact that gov soaks up 90% of the cash for administrators). Of course, this is hardly an "argument" in the traditional sense; it is simply a fact of life.
4) Government has never been about getting rid of these systems. Government implemented these systems and then worked hard to expand the systems (despite their lip-service to the contrary).
5) KD - your final question was "This would mean taking 43 million people off, and doing what....?".
Simple enough. Cut out all public assistance over the span of a few years so people know it's coming and can prepare. Cut it all, welfare to the rich and then welfare to the poor. And then, while we're at it, cut the income tax to zero.
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My remark about "fishing" was metaphoric, not literal.
To be blunt & literal: We don't need to indefinitely support people through public aid. Period. If public money is to be spent, it should be spent on education & training. To quote the old saying referenced by YS: "Give a man a fish, you have fed him for today. Teach a man to fish, you have fed him for a lifetime."
yeah I'm well aware of this stuff but you are already presenting a problem. You are giving caveats to a ideology that is so rigid if it every happened (which it won't), people wouldn't be able to say "hey lets take everyones money again because people arn't being educated and no one wants to pay for it and so forth."
The reality is is that only in todays corrupt situation can people use these programs and scholarships and so forth to pull themselves out of poor circumstances. There might be a shitstorm of problems resulting from that and mass problems economically too, but it IS better than Laissez-faire style mentalities penetrating real issues that impact real people. Since what you are saying won't happen, the only result is impacting peoples minds to cut such programs and similar things on the basis that such things are unfair, without actually having drastic restructuring to make up for it. Happens all the time on the local level. This is why people increasingly shft parties these days, because such issues get split, and people all of a suffen find that certain things are important for them or others and are not cut and dry. The basic idea that these thigns are theft and so forth..really is just big talk...that IS society. If people can make coherent claims and arguments that don't fall back on such assumptions on how a society could work, then that is fine.
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Sabertooth, Rome had a wonderful civilisation, but slavery was one of the reasons it was eventually destroyed, according to Gibbon. At first glance , slavery might seem like it benefits the masters but it actually weakens them, making them too dependent on such slaves. For example, Ancient Greece had already discovered steam-technology thousands of years before the Industrial Revolution but they failed to develop it, because they already had slaves to do the rowing of the boats etc., so couldn't be bothered. Same with Rome- at first, Rome used its own citizens for its armies and rewarded them with foreign plots of land seized from their enemies after 20 years' service, but then they turned to using foreign mercenaries instead, and the Roman Empire started to decay.
Another point:- the reason why Christianity was one of the other main reasons for the destruction of the Roman Empire was the existence of slavery, as slaves were the most devoted/fanatical of the Christian followers.
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Sabertooth, Rome had a wonderful civilisation, but slavery was one of the reasons it was eventually destroyed, according to Gibbon. At first glance , slavery might seem like it benefits the masters but it actually weakens them, making them too dependent on such slaves.
True Tyler,
we had Slave Kings in India, who were slaves to begin with but they grew in rank in the army (as they did the actual fighting) untill eventually they overthrew their weak rulers.
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yeah I'm well aware of this stuff but you are already presenting a problem. You are giving caveats to a ideology that is so rigid if it every happened (which it won't...
I disagree.
I often hear that certain things "won't ever happen"....but I'm old enough to remember when all manner of things were never gonna happen. Not to mention stories from my dad and grandfather about things they heard would never happen (my grandfather was born prior to social security cards, gun control, free housing, & food stamps...my dad never would have dreamed of free health-care outside of the military). I remember the fall of the Soviet Union and the Berlin Wall.
I was around in the Reagan years when we were calling for legalization, and I was told by a politician (and everyone else) that legal pot was "never going to happen". Now, almost 30 years later, everyone assumes it's just a matter of time....and they are correct.
I was around in the Clinton years when everybody laughed at Hillary and her health-care plans and said it would never happen. Now, almost 20 years later, we've already passed large portions of it and the fight quietly continues.
I was listening to libertarian philosophers (hardly a "rigid ideology", if that is what you refer to) for the past 30 years talk about everything from legalized prostitution to Health Savings Accounts to Fair Tax to selling off public lands to ending foreign wars...and listening to everyone else laugh (if they noticed at all) and say "never gonna happen". Now, ALL of these ideas have entered the mainstream (prostitution enjoys de facto legal status in most local levels so long as their "escort services" and "massage parlors" are registered; republicans have co-opted ideas like HS accounts & Fair Tax; Bush DID sell off a small percentage of public lands; etc.).
Anything is possible, but political change doesn't happen overnight.
To your earlier point, I absolutely agree with focusing at the local level and making meaningful changes there first. Hence my points about the irrelevancy of the federal gov in the "2020" thread.
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No need to overthrow them, just focus on overGROWing them.
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The problem really is not that things 'can't' or 'won't' happen (I'll still go with this expectation myself), but you can't wait till things shift dramatically before making judgments on things on a case by case basis. The idea that these things are unfair or whatever really are only from the perspective that one would know that other systems would do a better job within the same situations, not some utopic fantasy of what life could be. I got into this stuff along time ago with Heinlein, and other SF stuff and it made alot of sense for future moon civilizations and that is about it. Many problems ultimately have nothing to do with our particular government or any government but just how people will behave and how money and status (or lack there of) will come into play. There is no precedent for saying that even with an excess of unfettered wealth that people will give 1/3 of their income voluntarily to helping and educating others across the entire spectrum of class and race. People can say (as their opinion) that they don't believe people should fundamentally have the responsibility to that, and i'll just say based on the way the system works and people are able to make money only at the expense of others, that it is fundamentally wrong to think so.
Didn't think it was a good idea to read/participate in the thread you are talking about. To me it just seems obvious in regards to this issue alone that REAL people would be in a worse spot if there were not such systems in place - as immediate or even gradual removal of such policies would not automatically mean more jobs or tools and resources - so everything else just seems pretty theoretical/judgmental to me.
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The way I see it, technology is advancing to the point where real, personal freedom is potentially attainable within perhaps 50 years or less. For example, if solar power advances steadily as now, we will in 2 decades or 3 at most, be able to use solar power for free without having to pay electricity companies constantly for use of lights etc.. The Internet and Skype already make it possible to communicate across vast distances for free. If technology goes anywhere near the Singularity-threshold, we will certainly all be independent of government, of course, but I can see other ways right now:- I already know of a number of RVAFers who have gone back to Nature and just live on a farm and get all their food from cattle/chickens/fruit-trees etc. they own.
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The way I see it, technology is advancing to the point where real, personal freedom is potentially attainable within perhaps 50 years or less. For example, if solar power advances steadily as now, we will in 2 decades or 3 at most, be able to use solar power for free without having to pay electricity companies constantly for use of lights etc.. The Internet and Skype already make it possible to communicate across vast distances for free. If technology goes anywhere near the Singularity-threshold, we will certainly all be independent of government, of course, but I can see other ways right now:- I already know of a number of RVAFers who have gone back to Nature and just live on a farm and get all their food from cattle/chickens/fruit-trees etc. they own.
If the whole idea about technological singularity is true, and if we are indeed able to free ourselves of biological limitations by merging with machines, what we do now will ultimately be pointless. :D However, I want to feel great in the meantime at least. ;D
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If the whole idea about technological singularity is true, and if we are indeed able to free ourselves of biological limitations by merging with machines, what we do now will ultimately be pointless. :D However, I want to feel great in the meantime at least. ;D
I've thought about that
going to check into my 2:30 nanobot detox, I ate a chili cheeze donut last night and need a good blood cleaning
I agree with Tyler really, I mean people dismiss how much freedom already is available and how much some of this stuff is inevitable. The policies now have their place now in terms of providing services based on a shift of past-present-future ways of living. I'm always just supremely shocked with how negative people can flip some of this stuff particularly in my 5 years of wasting time on health forums. Mostly it seems like an awareness to how bad things have always been but flipped somehow into how worse they are getting. I'm pretty pleased I can actually access organic food and walk home and not get stabbed. Neither option was around in the 80's where I have lived. The internet is a helpful improvement too, invented by Al Gore of all people ;D
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I often wonder how society will be in future. For example, will money even exist in the future? If the singularity, provided it happens, does make energy dirt cheap, and if technology creates more sophisticated machines to do the work that humans do, we won't really have a use for money at some point. There may be a point when humans don't have to perform maintenance on sophisticated machines because of being able to sustain themselves. Then, there goes the maintenance work for humans too.
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There may be a point when humans don't have to perform maintenance on sophisticated machines because of being able to sustain themselves. Then, there goes the maintenance work for humans too.
Inspite of all the glamour of science i really doubt humans will merge with technology.
After delving into qigong/taichi i have realized that we humans have not even aware of the connection to the very body we posses & strange thing is that very few even talk about it ..
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Another point:- the reason why Christianity was one of the other main reasons for the destruction of the Roman Empire was the existence of slavery, as slaves were the most devoted/fanatical of the Christian followers.
So an ideology held by slaves has the power to overthrow empires(interesting), I can see in the power of Christianity the ability to bring chaos to an orderly civilization and understand why it caused such a ruckus within the empire of Rome. Slaves should not be allowed to have a faith in a higher power, for if they do then the masters authority is negated, Its the ultmate your not the boss of me, God is> mentality that gave Christianity its power.
A civilization that relies on slavery must not allow the slaves to become educated or to let them worship a higher power unsupervised. The holy spirit if given any slack, will rise up and break the chains of bondage for those with faith and can cause the mightyest tyrants to lose control, there is power in the powerless. That I am sure of.
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To me it just seems obvious in regards to this issue alone that REAL people would be in a worse spot if there were not such systems in place - as immediate or even gradual removal of such policies would not automatically mean more jobs or tools and resources - so everything else just seems pretty theoretical/judgmental to me.
KD - First off, of course its judgmental. We ALL make judgments about the perceived efficacy of a given idea or set of ideas. But is it theoretical? Not at all. America existed & did quite well without federal taxes or social security or foodstamps (for 3 examples) for most of it's history.
Second, whether real people would be worse off is certainly a matter of debate. However, you seem to miss one of my earlier points. Namely, it is not within the purview of the federal gov to provide these services. However, these services can certainly exist by various other means, from private charities to community-based groups to local &/or state governments.
My point is simple: We can have services without the federal government providing them.
The way I see it, technology is advancing to the point where real, personal freedom is potentially attainable within perhaps 50 years or less.
Tyler - One of the points I was making in the "2020" thread. There, I said, "...with the combination of the pace of technology and the organic/primitivist leanings of western culture.....(we'll reject the idea) for government & traditional authority structures to solve human problems..."
Inspite of all the glamour of science i really doubt humans will merge with technology.
Turkish - But we already have. Eyeglasses & wristwatches (superficial integration) gave way to Cochlear Implants, insulin delivery systems, artificial hearts & voice-boxes, neural-control prosthetic limbs, & pace-makers (full integration via surgery) are just a few examples of how we've already merged. Most of these are medical uses of technology, but communications isn't far behind...from implanted RFID chips (already being done) to experiments with embedded tele-communications technology (essentially implanting your cell phone or web capability), we're swiftly moving into other areas....with no end in sight.
Provided each of us can opt in or out of any technology and at any level, I see no cause for alarm.
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KD - First off, of course its judgmental. We ALL make judgments about the perceived efficacy of a given idea or set of ideas. But is it theoretical? Not at all. America existed & did quite well without federal taxes or social security or foodstamps (for 3 examples) for most of it's history.
Second, whether real people would be worse off is certainly a matter of debate. However, you seem to miss one of my earlier points. Namely, it is not within the purview of the federal gov to provide these services. However, these services can certainly exist by various other means, from private charities to community-based groups to local &/or state governments.
My point is simple: We can have services without the federal government providing them.
hmm, to me the this is just an argument of many is what I am saying. My problem is its often portrayed as 'the way things are' which can be easily refuted by just saying 'things change'. Obviously these things at some point were popular enough to be implemented and remain so by hook or by crook perhaps, but nonetheless. Other than people stating such things loudly, I am unaware how these things are indeed beyond the purview of government, since government in fact does them, and since the documents that create the government allow for the government to shift and change. So while many criticisms might be entirely accurate (and they usually are), I don't see how such things appear to anyone as so cut and dry, absolute.
As for pre-modern America not needing such things, I think that is just too simplistic for me. In my opinion, gasoline, cigarettes and people who make fortunes selling Fig Newtons and other things should be taxed to all hell, because these things are harmful for the world and impact others. Even if I don't buy gasoline or cigarettes these things effect me, so I should receive some kind of benefits in the forms of parks, or street sweeping, or public care for my parents so they don't have to live in my house and annoy me. To me these are the kind of issues that government at least has the potential to solve, and I can say this without thinking that these things are at all efficient or fair because everything about acquiring wealth is unfair and has consequences and drains resources. At the end of the day most peoples issues seem indeed how much money they have left over, yet the intrusiveness of government is usually the tactic that is used to place fear over such 'theft' which ultimately is really not that new historically - as pointed out.
without any form of government, or public space, there is absolutely nothing to do other than to vote with my money , and no mechanism to achieve any kind of retribution for all the complicated shit that is completely out of control yet affects me regardless. There really is no rebutal for things like civil rights, child labor, minimum wage etc...which wouldn't have ben resolved through free markets and choice to takes ones business elsewhere. When you have the ability for massive oil spills and people setting off dirty bombs and all kinds of deranged social pathologies due to chemicals and drugs and stuff, this brings things out of the Wild West days and into a more complex chemical equation to balance.
Without a large national tax base, Libya could drop napalm on my farm due to a bad bid for GE and who is going to pay for the damage? the league of extremely wealthy untaxed citizens? The world is just too complicated for such 'fairness'.
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...I am unaware how these things are indeed beyond the purview of government, since government in fact does them, and since the documents that create the government allow for the government to shift and change....
It is very cut and dry: The US Constitution delineates the powers & responsibilities of the federal government AND the means by which we change said powers & responsibilities (the amendment process). Anything done (by law or tradition) outside of that is outside of their mission and subject to be struck down once it is heard by the Supreme Court.
That they engage in activities that are outside their perview (and thus illegal) doesn't magically make it legal or right. This sort of flagrant disregard for process & law from lawmakers is appalling.
In my opinion, gasoline, cigarettes and people who make fortunes selling Fig Newtons and other things should be taxed to all hell, because these things are harmful for the world and impact others. Even if I don't buy gasoline or cigarettes these things effect me, so I should receive some kind of benefits in the forms of parks, or street sweeping, or public care for my parents so they don't have to live in my house and annoy me.
Good point. However, this has nothing to do with food stamps. This has to do with government taxing businesses who provide goods that possess a negative impact, then using that money to positively impact the entire community. Food stamps are presumably used to the benefit of select members of society.
There is a separation between levels of government. State government provide for "free and appropriate education", so it is properly their place to provide schools. There is no such mandate in the US Constitution (federal level government), so they should not be involved in any way. Not by collecting & distributing taxes, not by setting policies, etc.
The subject/example at hand is food stamps. This is not a power or responsibility delegated to the federal government. As such it should be left to some combination of the following: communities, private organizations, local governments, & state governments.
To my knowledge, ALL state governments have a legal obligation to work with a balanced budget (even those who find themselves in the red). Federal gov has no such requirement, and thus engages in all manner of higher dangerous deficit spending and is notoriously irresponsible, fiscally speaking. Note my former example of 90% of public assistance monies being soaked up by administration.
Communities, private orgs/charities, and state & local govs are FAR better suited than federal gov to work assistance programs efficiently.
without any form of government
Who said anything about no government? Not me!
I said food stamps & similar assistance programs were not within the perview of the federal government. That is not an opinion, that is a fact. I said the federal government is incredibly wasteful. That too is a fact. But my proposed solution is not to abolish all government. I never said anything at all like that.
Without a large national tax base, Libya could drop napalm on my farm due to a bad bid for GE and who is going to pay for the damage? the league of extremely wealthy untaxed citizens? The world is just too complicated for such 'fairness'.
Not so. First, it IS a delineated responsibility of the federal government to provide for the national defense.
Second, if Libya dropped napalm on your farm, the US military is going to bomb Libya, but not pay for your farm.
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There is a separation between levels of government. State government provide for "free and appropriate education", so it is properly their place to provide schools. There is no such mandate in the US Constitution (federal level government), so they should not be involved in any way. Not by collecting & distributing taxes, not by setting policies, etc.
The subject/example at hand is food stamps. This is not a power or responsibility delegated to the federal government. As such it should be left to some combination of the following: communities, private organizations, local governments, & state governments.
Most of the things which are the most rational and the most doable criticisms/solutions revolve around this states/federal kind of issue. I couldn't agree more. the problem is with the wide spectrum of anti-government (don't fool yourself) philosophy, even when the 'ideal' libertarian state provides for no such structure to 'force' the kinds of social and 'unfair' policies that communities usually have to face to do things positive collectively because usually these things don't make sense rationally to those who don't need them. If you have small communities in some distant land with no massive history of unfairness, these things make perfect sense, but its virtually impossible once seen so black and white - to make people accountable for such actions without such particular governmental bodies. Claiming how corrupt or wasteful things are doesn't really prove anything in this regard, just states the obvious.
heres a recent kerry speech on growth vs..
http://leadenergy.org/2011/01/kerry-speech/
not vouching for it, but according to many folks, i'm sure kerry is just some foolish zombie so these ideas are defacto false. The problem is, is people say they don't have some kind of philosophy when obviously they will dismiss anything that has to do with action by the federal government without acknowledging any positives along with negatives throughout history. Or worse..they WILL deviate from some libertarian hard-line theories, and then obviously just vote unilaterally for reductivist policies anyway, even when they say their primary motives are liberty in social issues which might get sweat under the rug in such administrations. The reason it has to do with food stamps, is by my logic even if you can prove that food stamps shouldn't be issued by the federal government, it doesn't mean people here don't need food stamps or these things will be provided elsewhere, or that these things are just 100% enabling for 100% of people, it just means that perhaps better strategies could be created. Many people DO NOT believe people should HAVE to pay for others misfortunes, although its obvious the web of success/failure implied and effect of resources/pollution etc... in any system even sans corrupt government, so I think you may be fairly unique in your altruistism or acknowledgment there.
I would rather focus on creating better strategies by any means/administrations in the near future, than focus on how inherently wrong everything is, and would never exclude any possibilities (even roles of large governments) in making those kinds of changes. In the end, like anything, libertarian philosophy embraces a variety of spectrums with many probably not caring one bit about actual social rights, or on the other end, genuinely believing they have no obligation to help/educate/pay-fairly-others/clean-up-the-environment as long as their is some proper survival-of-the-fittest unfettered setting.
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I disagree.....but before I go on, I need to make clear that I am not personally attacking you - I am addressing multiple posters who see "gaming the system" as a functional alternative.
I dont see it as functional. I sincerely hope the burden will make the system default. Because at the core I share your beliefs. The state should be a minimal arrangement that forces people to honour willingly and fully understood contracts, punish those that break the social contract and provide a basic framwork of infrastructure that allows for peoples creativity to flow easily. I have come to believe that there are certain businesses that should fall in under "basic infrastucture provided by the state". Central banking (banks can be privately owned but should hold no power to create money) e.g.
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I would rather focus on creating better strategies by any means/administrations in the near future, than focus on how inherently wrong everything is...
On that we agree. I hope my comments in this thread weren't taken as me seeing everything in the negative. I typically focus on positive & constructive avenues. However, I gotta take a shot now and then!
I dont see it as functional. I sincerely hope the burden will make the system default. Because at the core I share your beliefs. The state should be a minimal arrangement that forces people to honour willingly and fully understood contracts, punish those that break the social contract and provide a basic framwork of infrastructure that allows for peoples creativity to flow easily. I have come to believe that there are certain businesses that should fall in under "basic infrastucture provided by the state". Central banking (banks can be privately owned but should hold no power to create money) e.g.
Agreed across the board.
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Of course I should add that I in no way speak for the majority of libertarians. My personal brand of libertarianism pisses most libertarians off....especially with regard to Intellectual Property, lands held in trust by the government, land as property, and the like.
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Of course I should add that I in no way speak for the majority of libertarians. My personal brand of libertarianism pisses most libertarians off....especially with regard to Intellectual Property, lands held in trust by the government, land as property, and the like.
Same here. There is only a single world and we share it. What we can produce from it, obviously, should be ours to keep, But there must arise some consensus that the raw materials used, comes from a shared pool and as such some level of taxation to be used for the common good is fair and reasonable. Most libertarians I know abhor such a line of thinking. Also, more and more I have come to understand the label 'libertarian' as a badge of self congratulation and I in return loathe that.
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On that we agree. I hope my comments in this thread weren't taken as me seeing everything in the negative. I typically focus on positive & constructive avenues. However, I gotta take a shot now and then!
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Of course I should add that I in no way speak for the majority of libertarians. My personal brand of libertarianism pisses most libertarians off....especially with regard to Intellectual Property, lands held in trust by the government, land as property, and the like.
no, I think most of your arguments are reasonable and fairly constructive to me and I agree with many of them on some level. The problem is some (or many) peoples' arn't. I've certainly come across people who will argue there should be no public spaces or protected parks and resources, as well as people who will use terms like 'coercion' and 'force' to try to make arguments definitive when they are not so. Certainly the Social Darwinists and the like and many others often do reflect racial or other biases. The social contract alone is full of such enforcement that does not exist in the state of nature as that is the whole point. ...I think you have argued against this before, but I still have yet to figure out how within a accomplished libertarianism people can set up democratic governments based on taxation if they decided those were better, it seems to me that those with power at that point have very little need to enter into such a system willingly. Perhaps that is for another day. But at least there is some acknowledgment that within the reason of libertarian thought there is alot of uh..unreasonable people perhaps...
Basically what it comes down to is that in the present situation what I am saying is in every case less government will not always translate to the most good, particularly because all of the other corresponding factors will have experienced minimal progressive change. So when these ideas permeate the culture it does not always bode well for all individuals as actually seen in our history which does oscillate between these things (70's, 80's etc..). Popularity of tax criticisms can result in popularity of 'flat tax' and similar theories which make 0 sense and would just leave for less funds and more debt for the same crappy systems. I gave a pretty superficial point with my bike path thing, but its totally true! just universally stating food stamps are not good, just makes little sense to me in the present environment of which we cohabitate, not saying their arn't better solutions or even minimalist solutions.