The PPACA Thread Part III - Let's have a healthy debate!

[Rover]

Re: The PPACA Thread Part III - Let's have a healthy debate!

The Mormon Church. So mind control it is!

I thought he was going to suggest we partner with the Moonies...

[FadeToBlack&Gold]

Re: The PPACA Thread Part III - Let's have a healthy debate!

As a shelter for their earnings, from which they take a salary. Read: Clinton Foundation.

I'll be sure to tell my dad that his entire career spent running a non-profit adult foster care org, was really just "a shelter for his earnings", rather than a life-long mission to provide care for those unable to care for themselves.

I know the concept of altruism is difficult for a POS sociopath like you to understand, but you could at least try.

[Kepler]

Re: The PPACA Thread Part III - Let's have a healthy debate!

How do you propose we get people to participate? Mind control?

Enlightened self-interest, the same reason highly educated and/or wealthy and/or white and/or male people vote for policy outcomes which will cost them personally, at least in the short term, but benefit the society as a whole.

I am proposing that a large enough subset of the population has outgrown the monkey stage of human evolution so we don't need state-centered, coercive mechanisms to bring about the type of society we want to live in. Because obviously that percentage is still nowhere near an actual majority, we'll need to "economically secede," and of course we'll still keep participating in society as a whole and work for good policies in government.

But we may be big enough now to go it alone for many things. Obviously the huge, overarching things like defense we still need the state for. But we should at least look at taking libertarians up on their ideas, though with entirely different goals in mind. The libertarians dream of a war of all against all with the best rising to the top and everyone else reduced to slavery. In fact, that is the very outcome that is developing now in late stage capitalism, But can we use exactly the same non-coercive philosophy to create economic values that reward safety, diversity, and just generally Doing Good? Can we consciously make a compact to mutually support private entities that follow those principles and shun those that do not?

The thing about the Free Market is: it works OK with science, and science is the only thing mankind has ever stumbled upon that makes the material lives of people better. We should keep the Free Market and simply shift the definition of "success" from amassing money to amassing money while respecting quality of life for the community at large. And most importantly, it should all be voluntary. It is no better to be ordered around by a lefty d-ckface than a righty d-ckface.

I think it is worth a shot, because the worm in the leftist apple has always been the threat of coercive power being used against individuals. Rousseau's (and hence modern liberalism's) original sin is the idea that forcing people to adhere to the general will is somehow not contradicting their personal will because if they knew what was good for them they would naturally adopt the general will. Well, Rousseau was a little sh-t who was terrible to every actual human he ever met, and it shows. F-ck that noise.

We can do better. We've been thinking about socialist and communist and anarchist theory for 170 years. There are a ton of good ideas out there, from the left (mostly) but also sometimes from the right. Righties don't understand that starving is just as coercive as a bayonet, but that doesn't change the fact that they are right that bayonets are no way to drive people to do good, and the left has, on occasion, forgotten that.

[BassAle]

Re: The PPACA Thread Part III - Let's have a healthy debate!

If you think I'm talking about communism or even socialism you completely missed my point.

I'm talking about a free market system. The only change will be in what the customers demand. I propose creating a system where consumers demand that product quality includes the quality of the world produced: the employees' wages, the owners' contributions to charitable causes, the observance of environmental protection standards in the making of the product. I propose we do this privately, as our own responsibility. Ignore statute and develop conscience.

We've seen little efforts of the same type: fundies flocking to Chik-Fil-A for political reasons, boycotts of companies over their hiring practices.

The beauty of this is it will be entirely voluntary. Where we organized as workers in the 20th century, we will organize as consumers, in sufficient numbers that we can force companies to either change or die. It's what we've done through the ballot hitherto. Now we should do it with our purchasing decisions. Libertarians have always made the valid point that the state is dangerously placed to threaten freedoms (most neglect the fact that inequality is a far more immediate and non-hypothetical threat).

I propose we reject Rousseau and embrace Adam Smith and Hayek, both of who insisted society must recognize and through some means ensure the needs of the neediest are met. Plenty of subjective factors contribute to product "quality": aesthetics, for example. We simply need to insist on adding other factors when weighing our decisions.

Obviously, many people are blind to these things. Many people only care about themselves. I'm saying, let them go. Those of us who do care should create our own parallel system and live within it. Let the right have the state and let them rot.

I purchase a lot of clothing from Patagonia. Patagonia is a "B-Corp" (Benefit Corporation). They are legally required to take into consideration the welfare of their workers and the environment in addition to shareholder (family trust) profits. They also donate 1% of all sales (not profits, so they can't avoid it by paying out big salaries) to grassroots environmental organizations. They consider it a penance for doing harm to the environment -- they are always trying to reduce the environmental impact of their products (as long as it doesn't affect quality), but they know no matter what they will always have some negative impact. "Let My People Go Surfing" is a great book that describes their business values.

[Kepler]

Re: The PPACA Thread Part III - Let's have a healthy debate!

I purchase a lot of clothing from Patagonia. Patagonia is a "B-Corp" (Benefit Corporation). They are legally required to take into consideration the welfare of their workers and the environment in addition to shareholder (family trust) profits. They also donate 1% of all sales (not profits, so they can't avoid it by paying out big salaries) to grassroots environmental organizations. They consider it a penance for doing harm to the environment -- they are always trying to reduce the environmental impact of their products (as long as it doesn't affect quality), but they know no matter what they will always have some negative impact. "Let My People Go Surfing" is a great book that describes their business values.

I'll check it out, thanks. Sounds like what I'm grasping about for.

[FlagDUDE08]

Re: The PPACA Thread Part III - Let's have a healthy debate!

How do you propose we get people to participate? Mind control?

Dumb them down by putting fluoride in the water and womanizing them by adding chemicals to the food to enhance estrogen. Oh wait...

[Kepler]

Re: The PPACA Thread Part III - Let's have a healthy debate!

Dumb them down by putting fluoride in the water and womanizing them by adding chemicals to the food to enhance estrogen. Oh wait...

"Womanizing?"

[dxmnkd316]

Re: The PPACA Thread Part III - Let's have a healthy debate!

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=4PrajazXCpQ

Duh

[FreshFish]

Re: The PPACA Thread Part III - Let's have a healthy debate!

So to be clear, you need profit as a motivation otherwise people will only care about profit?

You do realize there are very effective non-profits that deliver based on peoples belief in their mission and desire to fulfill it? (In addition to them still getting paid to do a good job)

I'm not saying profit is the only motivator: competition is the best motivator. One way that we commonly measure the results of competition is by using profits, there are other measures as well that can be used for the basis of competition.

You do realize that electric companies and gas companies tend to be private companies, regulated monopolies, rather than run by governments, right? Why would that be the case? Maybe because government knows it lacks the requisite expertise? or perhaps because governments tried to run them at one time and found that having private companies run them merely happened to deliver better quality and value to the customers at lower cost, while providing an incentive to those companies to continue innovating to upgrade their technology?


Right now, many medical practices won't accept Medicaid patients. and you want that to spread that practice even further???

[dxmnkd316]

Re: The PPACA Thread Part III - Let's have a healthy debate!

Lacks the requisite expertise? Your entire post treats the government as a person who can't hire or learn. If the government wanted to run the power companies, they would hire the people necessary.

[BassAle]

Re: The PPACA Thread Part III - Let's have a healthy debate!

You do realize that electric companies and gas companies tend to be private companies, regulated monopolies, rather than run by governments, right? Why would that be the case?

Because it just happened that way. Because private companies began offering these services to people with enough disposable income for luxuries like electric lights and gas stoves, as they grew, consolidated, and became powerful monopolies they started ****ing over consumers so the Government had to step in and regulate them.

[BassAle]

Re: The PPACA Thread Part III - Let's have a healthy debate!

Lacks the requisite expertise? Your entire post treats the government as a person who can't hire or learn. If the government wanted to run the power companies, they would hire the people necessary.

It's as if he never heard of the Tennessee Valley Authority

[dxmnkd316]

Re: The PPACA Thread Part III - Let's have a healthy debate!

Bought a washing machine and a Chevrolet?

[jerphisch]

Re: The PPACA Thread Part III - Let's have a healthy debate!

Its as if he never heard of the Tennessee Valley Authority

Or Colorado Springs Utilities, or a very long list of others around the country.

[BassAle]

Re: The PPACA Thread Part III - Let's have a healthy debate!

Or Colorado Springs Utilities, or a very long list of others around the country.

In Maine, the towns with the cheapest electricity tend to be ones with municipal utilities. (except for some of the small island communities that rely on diesel generators. some of those have been installing wind turbines to supplement, or selling out their power co-ops to one of the two main utility companies in the state so they can install undersea cables to deliver power, downside is they lose most or all of their local workers so linesmen have to be brought in by ferry to do maintenance)