"Rigid Class System in Europe" Bob Roll Comments

In article ,
h squared wrote:

wrote:

Bill (and HH), you'd probably like to read this article on pension
plans and spreading demographic risk/trends over larger pools
of employers and employees, by Malcolm Gladwell,
which appeared in the latest New Yorker:
http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/articles/060828fa_fact

i did like that article which is a little funny because i didn't
really know what a pension was or how it worked until i read the article
& so wouldn't have guessed i would like it. (i will have to just work
until i die or until i kill myself because i'm sick of working, so i've
never paid attention to that stuff).

heather
(exactly how does ben find time to read these things and also keep up
with rbr? i need to give him a raise...

Maybe Ben has more time to look at that stuff now that they've dissed Pluto.

--
tanx,
Howard

Never take a tenant with a monkey.

remove YOUR SHOES to reply, ok?

h squared wrote:
(exactly how does ben find time to read these things and also keep up
with rbr? i need to give him a raise...

Howard Kveck wrote:
Maybe Ben has more time to look at that stuff now that they've dissed
Pluto.

Dumbass,
Stop being so insensitive. Heather is from Pluto.

Howard Kveck wrote:

(exactly how does ben find time to read these things and also keep up
with rbr? i need to give him a raise...

Maybe Ben has more time to look at that stuff now that they've dissed
Pluto.

Next up: dissing Mickey, Donald, and Goofy.

Pudd'nhead Wilson wrote:
Steven Bornfeld wrote:


The free marketers seem to think they have a measure of control in the
system as it exists now.


Your comment is self-contradictory. If "they" are "free marketers,"
then they are against control. To the extent it is a "controlled
system," then a free marketer is against it. The US "system" is not a
free market in health care -- a free marketer could not support it
as-is. Other governments may interfere more "effectively," or at least
you might think so if you simply look at health care alone.


My guess is that they haven't had to deal with
catastrophic illness in a loved one lately.


It sounds like you are resorting to "they are just cold-hearted
assholes" ad-hominium, and relying on an emotional response, instead of
making a rationale critique. That is okay for the usenet.



Just re-read this. Forgive me, I didn't notice your name after the
"Pudd'nhead Wilson" sobriquet. I don't always follow rbr, and hadn't
noticed your return. I won't go further into this conversation with
you, as I remember fairly well how you stand. I also have a seriously
ill father, so I'm not thinking that straightly on the bigger issues
right now.
It is good to see you back here, in any case.

Steve

--
Mark & Steven Bornfeld DDS
http://www.dentaltwins.com
Brooklyn, NY
718-258-5001

Mark & Steven Bornfeld wrote:

Forgive me, I didn't notice your name after the
"Pudd'nhead Wilson" sobriquet.

No worries.

I also have a seriously ill father, so I'm not thinking
that straightly on the bigger issues
right now.

Best of wishes with your father.

It is good to see you back here, in any case.

Thanks, but I gotta go again.

Greg

Mark & Steven Bornfeld wrote:
Pudd'nhead Wilson wrote:

(3) Eliminate any government involvement (end all regulation).

"Free Market" is the real new age religion

Ernst Noch wrote:

Mark & Steven Bornfeld wrote:

Pudd'nhead Wilson wrote:


(3) Eliminate any government involvement (end all regulation).


"Free Market" is the real new age religion


Ernst--

This was from Pudd'nhead, not moi.

Steve

--
Mark & Steven Bornfeld DDS
http://www.dentaltwins.com
Brooklyn, NY
718-258-5001

Ernst Noch wrote:

Pudd'nhead Wilson wrote:

(3) Eliminate any government involvement (end all regulation).

"Free Market" is the real new age religion

It is religion in the same way that pigs can fly.

in message . com,
Pudd'nhead Wilson ') wrote:

What is a 'right' and who gets to
decide what is a 'right'?

There are essays to treatises written on the topic.

There are essays and treatises written about all sorts of things. The
existence of such scrivenings does not automatically convey intellectual
credibility to their content.

A (negative) right
is something one is born with due to the nature of being human.

As there is nothing whatever that falls into this category, the category
is pretty meaningless; but I grant you the (empty) category.

(You
can see why positivists need to do away with natural right -- they can
impose any policy they fancy, at whatever time they wish, if there is
no such thing as a right.)

Don't confuse my position with a positivist one. You are creating an aunt
sally. I have said nothing which defends positivism, nor would I, since
I oppose it.

Natural rights/law claims you have a right to an _independent_ life,
and that you have a right to property.

How?

As a matter of fact, I utterly refute that there is any 'right' either to
life or to property. Life is something we have briefly as a result of an
arbitrary accident - a rather cruel and pointless joke played on us by
the universe. We don't have a 'right' to it. We just have it, and have
to tolerate it, until it ends or we choose to end it. Property, on the
other hand, is purely artificial: merely a mechanism locking in
privilege. It is self-serving hegemony in its rawest and least
attractive form.

If there were such rights, on what foundation could they be based? How
would you know (without hand-waving, please) what they were?

Any rights theory really comes down to consensual
acceptance of a single non-human authority, and, in a
multi-faith world, we don't have one.

It is true that in older natural rights/law theory, the thinkers did
include language of a "God." Â*However, a deity is unnecessary to the
theory, and more modern readings would reveal this to you.

Call me old fashioned if you will, but given a choice between $DEITY and
hand-waving, I'll choose $DEITY. Descartes tried to argue from first
principles to the existence of $DEITY; arguments from first principles
to the assertion of particular, specific 'rights' are equally vacuous.

So any talk about 'rights' is
either simply woffle or else a bid for hegemony.

Actually, to *not* talk about it is the track to hegemony. Â*If there
are no foundations in boundaries ("free spheres") and regulation of
human behavior and exchange, *anything goes*. Â*Postitivist doctrine,
left to rule by itself, is dangerous for exactly this reason.

Anything /does/ go. It's tough, but that's life.

I'm not denying that societies find ways to regulate themselves, but
that's a very different thing from asserting that there is some
principled or objective basis on which this is done. In practice,
powerful groups make rules to defend their interests - and 'property' is
a perfect example of that.

Actually, though, there is one principled and objective basis on which
human societies can be (and, to be fair, mostly, at least partially,
are) regulated, and that is utilitarianism. Which is where we came in.
You don't like it. I don't much, either, but I am reminded of what
Churchill had to say about democracy.

The postitivist doctrine is difficult to systematically refute. Â*But
it, at best, only gives partial answers. Â*Natural law is more
encompassing, and in my opinion, it can actually suck up positivism and
utilitarianism into it.

But it is childishly easy to refute. You can't successfully drag it
through a first year undergraduate philosophy seminar - the wheels fall
off.

* Â*Following is from the recent Norwood case. Â*Obviously I disagree
that "Government is the necessary burden."

CITY OF NORWOOD, APPELLEE, v. HORNEY ET AL., APPELLANTS. (TWO
CASES.)
CITY OF NORWOOD, APPELLEE, v. GAMBLE ET AL., APPELLANTS. (TWO
CASES.)

America is a capitalist society. That its courts uphold the values of the
society from which they are taken is neither interesting nor evidence of
anything at all.

--
(Simon Brooke) http://www.jasmine.org.uk/~simon/

;; I'd rather live in sybar-space

Mark & Steven Bornfeld wrote:
Ernst Noch wrote:

Mark & Steven Bornfeld wrote:

Pudd'nhead Wilson wrote:


(3) Eliminate any government involvement (end all regulation).

Is there anyplace on earth where this has been tried where it has worked at all?
And why hang the AMA while leaving the pharmaceutical
industry (where the money really resides) off the hook?


"Free Market" is the real new age religion


Ernst--

This was from Pudd'nhead, not moi.

Steve

Sorry, I accidentally deleted the part of your comment I wanted to
quote (fixed above), but the quoting depth still should've made it clear
what wasn't from you.