A Usenet persona calling itself KMAN wrote:

No
wonder you are a gun nut. Your utopia would obviously be everyone living in
a self-sustaining dwelling with a giant electrified fence to protect them
from having to be in contact with other people or even - gasp - where people
might care about each other.

I see. Respecting other people's right to live their lives as they wish
without having the government or one's nosy neighbors interfere is anathema
to you?

Living without a concern for others is anathema to me.

One can have concern for others without being compelled by law to enable
their bad decision making and behavior. Nobody's asking you to live without
concern. You can have as much concern as you like. You can give all your
goods to the poor and spend your life serving the poor while wearing
sackcloth and ashes if you like. You may not, however, compel anyone else to
join you unwillingly. That would be immoral and repugnant. Each individual
gets to choose how much concern he or she shows to others. It's not the
government's duty or authority to compel it.


Contributing to public education and public health is a simple and effective
means of showing concern for others.

Indeed. However, being compelled to to contribute to those causes by force
of law is morally repugnant.


My "utopia" is a land where people get to do what they want, so long as they
don't harm others

The fact that a system of private sector health care will cater only to
those who can afford to pay means that supporters of said private sector
health care are indeed harming others.

It's a rather large logical leap to blame those who dislike coercive
socialism and favor free-market health care for "harm" that others might
cause themselves through bad planning or misfortune.


--
Regards,
Scott Weiser

"I love the Internet, I no longer have to depend on
friends, family and co-workers, I can annoy people WORLDWIDE!" TM

© 2005 Scott Weiser

A Usenet persona calling itself KMAN wrote:

in article , Scott Weiser at
wrote on 3/22/05 12:06 AM:

A Usenet persona calling itself KMAN wrote:

in article , Scott Weiser at
wrote on 3/21/05 8:19 PM:

A Usenet persona calling itself KMAN wrote:


"Scott Weiser" wrote in message
...
A Usenet persona calling itself BCITORGB wrote:

Tink:
================
Hey frtzw, sounds like we got another dance going on, and someone got
your hot button. I'll probably set this one out, but I like to watch.
====================

Tink, it's not a hot button at all. It is simply disingenuous of Scott
to pop off with some one-off example and thereby try to discredit an
entire system.

It's hardly "one-off." It's pervasive and ubiquitous in every socialized
medicine system in existence because by its nature, socialized medicine
cannot provide effective on-demand health care to everyone.

Why do you have socialized education?

Because there's a lot of socialist swine down here too. We have to fight
them all the time.

Ah. So you would favour the total elimination of public education?

No, just public education financed by the forcible extraction of money from
people who don't have children in school. My model requires the actual
parents of children to pay for their children's education. If you can't pay,
don't have children or your kids might get to flip burgers, dig ditches and
harvest onions for a living. Dirty work, but somebody's got to do it, and
at least those kids will be citizens, as opposed to illegal aliens.

Ah. So you start holding a child accountable for their own future starting
with infancy.

No, I hold the parents accountable.

Born to parents who could not afford to send you to school?
Tough titties for you, this ain't the land of opportunity.

You confuse equality of opportunity with equality of outcome.

My, what a
beautiful world you would build.

There's no better way to stimulate parents to be successful than to make
them realize that the future success of their children depends on their
willingness to work hard and provide for them. We've seen for many years now
the result of granting the poor and uneducated "entitlements" that does
nothing but bind them and their children ever deeper into economic and
social poverty and degradation.

The one million illegal immigrants who come to this country each month know
this full well, which is why they come here and go to work in those jobs
that "Americans won't take," so that their children will have the
opportunity to prosper.

What's successful for the poor is denying them the public dole that binds
them to the public teat while forcing them to advance themselves in the
workforce. It builds self-esteem, character and gives them skills that will
serve them well in their lives. America is indeed the "Land of Opportunity,"
but the opportunities are not all positive opportunities. You have an equal
opportunity to FAIL as well as succeed. That's what causes people to strive
to excel and advance.

As Linda Seebach said once, "The only way to make everyone equal is to
squash everyone flat."




"Pay-to-play" seems to be the new paradigm for everything from trash
collection to access to federal lands, why not education too?

It's just that usual nonsense about trying to give all kids a reasonable
opportunity to access what the world has to offer.

Public education is, by and large, a dismal failure, particularly in poor
communities where an education, free or otherwise, is not viewed as
necessary to one's future...mostly because welfare dwellers see the future
of their children as being merely a repeat of their parent's failures. There
is no stimulus to succeed, and generational failure is inevitable. Only when
one has to work to succeed is one likely to value the education one gets and
wish it for one's children.

Parents are not stimulated to encourage, assist, stimulate, enlighten,
browbeat, badger, threaten and otherwise require scholarship on the part of
their children if they see no future for them because the dole is all they
know. Give a man a fish, and he eats for a day. Teach him to fish, and he
can feed the world.


Then again, there's nothing to prevent the altruists and charitable
contributors from voluntarily funding public school programs. Heck, even
businesses have gotten into the act, recognizing that it's good policy for
them to support education for the next generation of workers they will need
to stay in business. And they understand that vocational training may be far
more valuable in the majority of cases than a college degree in a
non-technical field. A "liberal arts" degree is about as useless as an
appendix.

The worst thing about a liberal arts degree is that some of the graduates
might be capable of thinking.

True, but sadly, almost universally, they fail to realize that potential,
largely thanks to the pervasive leftist/liberal apologetics of failure and
muddled thinking taught to them on most of our college campuses.

Rare indeed is the student who is able to rise above the leftist propaganda
and demagogary to reach a state of enlightenment and understanding, and
every one who does is universally a conservative thinker.
--
Regards,
Scott Weiser

"I love the Internet, I no longer have to depend on
friends, family and co-workers, I can annoy people WORLDWIDE!" TM

© 2005 Scott Weiser

A Usenet persona calling itself Frederick Burroughs wrote:

Scott Weiser wrote:

A Usenet persona calling itself Frederick Burroughs wrote:


Scott Weiser wrote:


Quit worrying and get to work figuring out how to cut expenses and start
putting money aside for emergencies. Try a catastrophic health care plan
that excludes anything related to diabetes and has a high deductible. Such
plans are available at very reasonable costs. Of course, it does mean you
don't get to run to the doctor every time you or your kids get the
sniffles.
But that's a good thing. It forces you to work hard at staying healthy
(like
teaching your kids to wash their hands and keep their fingers out of their
noses) and it encourages you to save money.

Or, suck it up and die if necessary. It happens to all of us eventually
anyway, and you'll be making room for somebody else with better genetics.


Most of our "savings" are going into my son's college fund. So, should
we short his education in order to stuff more into "my" rainy-day
health care mattress?

That's a decision you should have made before having children. Why should
society bail you out of your lack of foresight and planning?


Sir, you have no ****ing idea at all about the foresight and planning
my wife and I put into bringing a life into this world.

Quite right. Please recognize that I'm speaking abstractly, I'm not
intending to impugn you or your family. I merely use your statements as as
platform for debate, not a personal attack. It's not intended to be
personal, please don't take it that way. This is the Usenet, after all.

Humans are
social animals, we find ourselves in families, extended families,
neighborhoods, communities, towns, regions, nations, SOCIETIES.

Societies are a give and take arrangement. Personal deficits in
foresight and planning can be supplemented by society. Personal
strengths are shared with society for the benefit of others. Observe
humans in a cold, rational, alien light. You will see a natural
tendency for interdependancy. Simplistic darwinism has evolved into a
more complex social structures.

Look at socialization from an individualistic, developmental level. A
human is born totally dependent on its parents. He ages and becomes an
integral part of his family. He matures and becomes an integral part
of his community. At the most integral and mature stage, a person is a
contributing part of the community. As an infant, a person is almost
independent of community, but totally dependent on his parent.
Socialized medicine does not cater or promote infantile sloth and poor
health habits, it signals a mature and integrated society willing to
share strenths and weaknesses.

I disagree. The very nature of socialism is that the society forcibly
extracts "from each according to his ability" and gives "to each according
to his need." Forcible extraction of either labor or the rewards thereof
does not prove that a society is "willing to share strengths and
weaknesses." It's pure force.

The society that you describe is not a socialist one, it is a capitalist
one. It is a society in which those who excel are rewarded, thus providing
the opportunity for them to altruistically contribute to the community.
Making everyone equally poor and oppressed, which is what socialism does,
only makes everyone equally unhappy.

Socialism always fails because it cannot cope with the "free rider"
conundrum. Neither, in fact, can pure democracy. This is because both
systems (along with pure-form Libertarianism) depend upon a human trait that
is, at best, unpredictable and unreliable: altruism.

Besides, your son ought to be able to work his way through college, as many
millions of young people have done for a very long time. He'll be a better
student if he has to work for his education, just ask any party-girl at CU
who isn't smart enough to change a light bulb but gets to go to college and
party for four years because daddy's paying for it.

Students who work their way through college understand the value of a dollar
and the amount of hard work it takes to earn the educational privilege
college offers. Do you children a BIG favor and spend their inheritance and
college fund on yourself. Force them to become responsible, intelligent,
hard-working citizens, not self-indulgent, selfish, lazy layabouts with no
work ethic. You'll be doing society a favor too.


I expect my son to provide for himself, at school and in life. But,
I'm going to do my best to assist him if he needs it.

Good for you. He'll be a better man for it.

Really, I don't
understand the conservatives fixation on lazyness.

We have nothing against being lazy, we just object to the lazy expecting
others to support their chosen lifestyle.

Every single person
I know works. Youngsters are working on schoolwork and chores. Adults
are working at jobs. Even retirees work to supplement their income.
Everybody's working their asses off.

Go hang out in Watts for awhile. You'll meet a lot of people who don¹t.

Though admirable, it's akin to
some manic madness. For all the work being done, most have suprisingly
little to show for it, being only a paycheck or two from financial
disaster. And, spiritually, they're bankrupt.

I don't disagree, but again, why would they expect someone else to work that
much harder to provide them with the lifestyle to which they would like to
become accustomed? Life has never been easier. Life was much, much harder
for most of history...and pre-history.




If I require hospitalization and don't have
insurance, then I become indebted to the hospital and doctors for the
entire bill.

Yup. That's life. Life sucks sometime. Why is that my problem?


Sufficiently shared, problems diminish significantly. Life sucks less.

Indeed. Altruism is to be revered and rewarded with social approval.
However, forcible extraction of resources is not altruism, it's theft.




There goes my son's education, again.

Is your son disabled? Can he get a job? Is society going to have to take
over for you after you're gone because you didn't give your son the proper
work ethic and understanding of the costs of a college education.


My son isn't in high-school yet. Hopefully, society values higher
education and realizes the return from an educated citizenry. Again,
work ethic anemia is a common misdiagnosis; every one I know works his
ass off.

You live among an admirable group. Unfortunately, your experience is hardly
universal.




And, what happens
if I lose a foot (or suffer some other debilitating complication from
diabetes; heart disease, kidney disease, stroke...), and am unable to
work because of a disability? I guess we can sell the house and other
personal property to help pay the bills. My wife can get a 2nd and 3rd
job, and my son can kiss college good-bye.

That could happen. It would be unfortunate, though hardly unique. Again, why
is that my problem? Perhaps you should have bought a smaller house, a
cheaper car and saved more money. Your best bet is to invest your son's
college fund in an emergency medical account and tell him he'd better look
forward to working his ass off to be worthy of the privilege of a college
degree. If your son truly understood the situation you're in, and if he was
an ethical and compassionate son, he'd decline to take your money and offer
to go to work to help you save enough to provide for your future medical
needs. After all, he's lived on-the-cuff his whole life so far, right? Time
for some payback. Sounds like you need it.


My son understands his situation very well, and mine. And, though his
mother spoils him, I don't think it will subtract from his character.
He's developing into a sharing and community minded individual.

Good for him. Good for you. Still, you avoid the fundamental question of why
anyone else should be required to make up the deficit you suffer, or may
suffer from?




Or, maybe my wife should
take the financially sound course and divorce me?

Why not? In today's society, she can do it and you can still live together
just as you do now. Once more, why is that a problem for which I should be
required to pay?


Look around you. How much of what you own did you actually *build*.

Most of it.

Did you create the dirt under your home, the air you breath, the water
in "your" stream? You are part of webs, cycles, networks, societies.
There are universes swirling around you, unrecognized and
unacknowledged.

True, but how does that impose a liability on me to pay for your health
care?

You should be required to pay because you will pay
less,

Will I? I say I will pay more, and what's more, I will be paying more for
other people's health care. Right now, I can pay NOTHING AT ALL for health
care if I so choose. Why should I be denied that right?

and you will gain the genuine freedom of having a health care
system that will be there for you, your family and your neighbors.

That's rather like saying it's okay to put me in prison unwillingly because
I'll have the freedom of three hots and a cot...and free health care...which
is not really free at all, but is funded by other people.





Along with my choice
of being the recipient of bad genetics (or, was it the immunoglobulin
shot I got when I was 8 years old, to hyperactivate my immune system
against the measles going around the neighborhood at the time.

Life suck sometimes. I felt the same way when I was diagnosed. How is that
your problem?


We're a social animal, remember? If my taxes help fund a discovery by
NIH, or make medicine more affordable, or make health care in general
more affordable, I'm all for it.

And you are free to contribute any amount you choose directly to the
government to fund it. But if I don't want to, why should YOUR altruistic
instincts be forcibly imposed on ME for something I may not ever use?

I don't know, a
single-payer, national health plan sounds like the more sensible,
manageable, efficient and affordable system.

Except that they don't work, ever. And, they are immoral, unethical and
fattening.


Not according to the people who have it.

Welfare queens are happy to get a check too. That doesn't make it moral,
ethical or non-fattening.

One shouldn't judge the program based only on the opinions of those who
benefit from it.

--
Regards,
Scott Weiser

"I love the Internet, I no longer have to depend on
friends, family and co-workers, I can annoy people WORLDWIDE!" TM

© 2005 Scott Weiser

A Usenet persona calling itself Michael Daly wrote:

On 21-Mar-2005, Scott Weiser wrote:

Take a pill, your blood pressure is spiking...

**** off, dickhead. You are still posting nothing but lies and
bull**** and still wouldn't know a fact if it bit you in the
ass.

How erudite. How scholarly. How persuasive. Not.


Nope, not for hospitalization or surgery.

Bull**** again. Not all medical care is covered by government
health care and you _can_ buy insurance for the rest. I live here
and I have such coverage. You haven't got a clue what you're
talking about, as usual.

Funny, a credible AP reporter says Canadians are prohibited from buying
outside insurance for hospitalization and surgery.

Yer credible AP reporter is wrong. Tough ****.

And we should take YOUR word for it because....???

--
Regards,
Scott Weiser

"I love the Internet, I no longer have to depend on
friends, family and co-workers, I can annoy people WORLDWIDE!" TM

© 2005 Scott Weiser

A Usenet persona calling itself Michael Daly wrote:

On 21-Mar-2005, Scott Weiser wrote:

You're nitpicking. Forty percent is still a lot to pay for somebody else's
health care.

Yer still both math and fact challenged. Why don't you give up, dickhead?

Because poking Netwits like you through the bars of your cage is so much
fun!
--
Regards,
Scott Weiser

"I love the Internet, I no longer have to depend on
friends, family and co-workers, I can annoy people WORLDWIDE!" TM

© 2005 Scott Weiser

A Usenet persona calling itself Wolfgang wrote:


"Scott Weiser" wrote in message
...
...It's coercive socialism, no matter how you look at it. Coercive
socialism is
evil. Profoundly, ineluctably evil in its every manifestation, no matter
how
glossily covered, prettily dressed up or facilely excused. It always and
inevitably ends in oppression, tyranny and terror.

As good an argument for refusing the services of firefighters as one could
ever hope to encounter.

Well, not quite. Firefighting falls under the general heading of services
made necessary by the concept of "exported harm."

Because there is always a danger that a fire on one person's property can
(and often does) spread to other property, and because no individual
property owner is adequately prepared to deal with a fire once it's out of
control, it is reasonable for government to provide skilled and equipped
resources at public expense to prevent exported harm, and it's also
reasonable for government to spread the costs of such specialized training
and equipment over all of those who contribute to the risks involved. This
is the same rational for taxes for military spending.

The link between the harm of uncontrolled fire and the extraction of money
from the public is quite direct, and the risks are shared by all persons in
the community equally because everyone is placed at risk by an uncontrolled
fire.

On the other hand, the link between one's private health care issues and
some sort of overall public harm is extremely tenuous at best, and doesn't
justify the forcible extraction of money from everyone in order to provide
health care for some. The risks are not equal.

--
Regards,
Scott Weiser

"I love the Internet, I no longer have to depend on
friends, family and co-workers, I can annoy people WORLDWIDE!" TM

© 2005 Scott Weiser

"Scott Weiser" wrote in message
...
A Usenet persona calling itself Wolfgang wrote:


"Scott Weiser" wrote in message
...
...It's coercive socialism, no matter how you look at it. Coercive
socialism is
evil. Profoundly, ineluctably evil in its every manifestation, no matter
how
glossily covered, prettily dressed up or facilely excused. It always and
inevitably ends in oppression, tyranny and terror.

As good an argument for refusing the services of firefighters as one
could
ever hope to encounter.

Well, not quite. Firefighting falls under the general heading of services
made necessary by the concept of "exported harm."

Because there is always a danger that a fire on one person's property can
(and often does) spread to other property, and because no individual
property owner is adequately prepared to deal with a fire once it's out of
control, it is reasonable for government to provide skilled and equipped
resources at public expense to prevent exported harm, and it's also
reasonable for government to spread the costs of such specialized training
and equipment over all of those who contribute to the risks involved. This
is the same rational for taxes for military spending.

The link between the harm of uncontrolled fire and the extraction of money
from the public is quite direct, and the risks are shared by all persons
in
the community equally because everyone is placed at risk by an
uncontrolled
fire.

On the other hand, the link between one's private health care issues and
some sort of overall public harm is extremely tenuous at best, and doesn't
justify the forcible extraction of money from everyone in order to provide
health care for some. The risks are not equal.

Cholera is private? Diphtheria? Malaria? Dysentery? Influenza? Typhus?
Typhoid? HIV? Syphilis?

How much risk does a burning farmhouse in the middle of a section of wheat
or corn represent to the body politic? Is this not a private home care
issue?

How about municipal water treatment? Where is the "exported harm" in
allowing anyone who wants it to drink polluted water?

Stupid as you are, you've missed the one bit of equity hidden in all your
twaddle. The rest of the world cares every bit as much about your wellbeing
as you do about theirs.

Wolfgang
who, deriving a great deal of satisfaction from annoying one nitwit at a
time, cannot understand why anyone would go to all the trouble inherent in
wholesale.

A Usenet persona calling itself Wolfgang wrote:


"Scott Weiser" wrote in message
...
A Usenet persona calling itself Wolfgang wrote:


"Scott Weiser" wrote in message
...
...It's coercive socialism, no matter how you look at it. Coercive
socialism is
evil. Profoundly, ineluctably evil in its every manifestation, no matter
how
glossily covered, prettily dressed up or facilely excused. It always and
inevitably ends in oppression, tyranny and terror.

As good an argument for refusing the services of firefighters as one
could
ever hope to encounter.

Well, not quite. Firefighting falls under the general heading of services
made necessary by the concept of "exported harm."

Because there is always a danger that a fire on one person's property can
(and often does) spread to other property, and because no individual
property owner is adequately prepared to deal with a fire once it's out of
control, it is reasonable for government to provide skilled and equipped
resources at public expense to prevent exported harm, and it's also
reasonable for government to spread the costs of such specialized training
and equipment over all of those who contribute to the risks involved. This
is the same rational for taxes for military spending.

The link between the harm of uncontrolled fire and the extraction of money
from the public is quite direct, and the risks are shared by all persons
in
the community equally because everyone is placed at risk by an
uncontrolled
fire.

On the other hand, the link between one's private health care issues and
some sort of overall public harm is extremely tenuous at best, and doesn't
justify the forcible extraction of money from everyone in order to provide
health care for some. The risks are not equal.

Cholera is private? Diphtheria? Malaria? Dysentery? Influenza? Typhus?
Typhoid? HIV? Syphilis?

Excellent questions all, and the answer is "no, they are not."
That's why public health efforts funded by involuntary taxation to prevent
and control such outbreaks are perfectly acceptable. All people are placed
at risk by this exported harm, all people pose a risk of transmission
(exportation) of this harm, thus all people may be required to pay to
prevent it and may be compelled to be innoculated and/or isolated as
necessary to prevent the spread of such diseases. That's one of the
contracts people agree to when they live together.

However, diabetes, broken ankles and heart disease are not a public health
threats, which means that the government has no call to impose the costs of
treating such individual illnesses on others, because there is no exported
harm that justifies imposing this burden on others.


How much risk does a burning farmhouse in the middle of a section of wheat
or corn represent to the body politic?

Rather a lot, actually, something you'd know if you lived on a farm. Range
fires kill more firefighters every year than forest fires do.

But the point is that fires don't just occur in farmhouses in the sticks.
Municipal fire companies were originally set up in this country because of
severe problems with urban fires and the ineffectiveness of "subscription"
based volunteer brigades in places like New York and Chicago. More harm was
exported by the Great Chicago Fire than has ever been exported by all forest
fires combined since 1700.

Is this not a private home care
issue?

No, it's not. Now, whether or not the farmhouse owner chooses to demolish
(or build) his house with his tractor is not an issue of exported harm, and
therefore the government has no reason to interfere.

How about municipal water treatment? Where is the "exported harm" in
allowing anyone who wants it to drink polluted water?

The same reasons you cite above: Cholera, Diptheria, etc. Again, it's a
public health issue. Contaminated water can spread disease. The same is true
of municipal sewage systems. Treating effluent is done to eliminate the
public health threat inherent in untreated sewage. All members of the
community contribute to the sewage and consume the water, and thus all
members can be legitimately required to share in the economic burdens
involved in keeping both sanitary.

But now we come to the question of when are water quality treatment
standards legitimate and when are they illegitimate?

Standards that water be non-infective are appropriate because of the risk of
exported harm through disease outbreaks.

Standards that control contamination that is NOT contagious, such as lead or
arsenic are NOT legitimate, at least insofar as being imposed as an unfunded
mandate by the federal government, because, provided citizens have adequate
notice, they can choose not to drink the water and thus not be exposed to
the hazard that only harms those who consume the water.

Certainly citizens are entitled to KNOW what the quality of their water is,
and whether harmful chemicals or substances are in the water, and in what
quantity, but beyond that, it becomes a matter of individual assumed risk,
not a matter for federal interference in local water provider policy and
practice. If people want to drink pesticide-laced water, that's their right.

The classic case is the Clinton Administration's charade of lowering the
federal standard for acceptable levels of arsenic in water just before
Clinton left office, purely in order to hand Bush a "hot potato" that was
factually unnecessary and factually imposed a crippling financial burden on
tens of thousands of rural water system operators for no credible reason.

Arsenic levels were set properly before, and there was no objective evidence
of a risk of exported harm that justified changing them.

Stupid as you are, you've missed the one bit of equity hidden in all your
twaddle. The rest of the world cares every bit as much about your wellbeing
as you do about theirs.

So what? I didn't ask them to care for me, nor do I accept their "caring" if
financial strings are attached. The "rest of the world" cannot decide it
"cares" about me and then force me to pay for their "caring" if I don't want
their help.


Wolfgang
who, deriving a great deal of satisfaction from annoying one nitwit at a
time, cannot understand why anyone would go to all the trouble inherent in
wholesale.

Economies of scale and viral replication theory.

--
Regards,
Scott Weiser

"I love the Internet, I no longer have to depend on
friends, family and co-workers, I can annoy people WORLDWIDE!" TM

© 2005 Scott Weiser

"Scott Weiser" wrote in message
...
A Usenet persona calling itself KMAN wrote:

No
wonder you are a gun nut. Your utopia would obviously be everyone
living in
a self-sustaining dwelling with a giant electrified fence to protect
them
from having to be in contact with other people or even - gasp - where
people
might care about each other.

I see. Respecting other people's right to live their lives as they wish
without having the government or one's nosy neighbors interfere is
anathema
to you?

Living without a concern for others is anathema to me.

One can have concern for others without being compelled by law to enable
their bad decision making and behavior. Nobody's asking you to live
without
concern. You can have as much concern as you like. You can give all your
goods to the poor and spend your life serving the poor while wearing
sackcloth and ashes if you like. You may not, however, compel anyone else
to
join you unwillingly. That would be immoral and repugnant. Each individual
gets to choose how much concern he or she shows to others. It's not the
government's duty or authority to compel it.

I disagree. I think there are basic human rights that should be afforded
everyone. This includes education and health care.

Contributing to public education and public health is a simple and
effective
means of showing concern for others.

Indeed. However, being compelled to to contribute to those causes by force
of law is morally repugnant.

Not to me. I'm proud to do it. I'm not proud when government does a poor job
of it, don't get me wrong on that. But I am proud to be a part of a society
that sees education and health care as necessities of life.

My "utopia" is a land where people get to do what they want, so long as
they
don't harm others

The fact that a system of private sector health care will cater only to
those who can afford to pay means that supporters of said private sector
health care are indeed harming others.

It's a rather large logical leap to blame those who dislike coercive
socialism and favor free-market health care for "harm" that others might
cause themselves through bad planning or misfortune.

Or having the audacity to be born poor.

Talk about repugant. You define selfishness.

"Scott Weiser" wrote in message
...
A Usenet persona calling itself KMAN wrote:

in article , Scott Weiser at
wrote on 3/22/05 12:06 AM:

A Usenet persona calling itself KMAN wrote:

in article , Scott Weiser at
wrote on 3/21/05 8:19 PM:

A Usenet persona calling itself KMAN wrote:


"Scott Weiser" wrote in message
...
A Usenet persona calling itself BCITORGB wrote:

Tink:
================
Hey frtzw, sounds like we got another dance going on, and someone
got
your hot button. I'll probably set this one out, but I like to
watch.
====================

Tink, it's not a hot button at all. It is simply disingenuous of
Scott
to pop off with some one-off example and thereby try to discredit
an
entire system.

It's hardly "one-off." It's pervasive and ubiquitous in every
socialized
medicine system in existence because by its nature, socialized
medicine
cannot provide effective on-demand health care to everyone.

Why do you have socialized education?

Because there's a lot of socialist swine down here too. We have to
fight
them all the time.

Ah. So you would favour the total elimination of public education?

No, just public education financed by the forcible extraction of money
from
people who don't have children in school. My model requires the actual
parents of children to pay for their children's education. If you can't
pay,
don't have children or your kids might get to flip burgers, dig ditches
and
harvest onions for a living. Dirty work, but somebody's got to do it,
and
at least those kids will be citizens, as opposed to illegal aliens.

Ah. So you start holding a child accountable for their own future
starting
with infancy.

No, I hold the parents accountable.

But the child suffers.

Born to parents who could not afford to send you to school?
Tough titties for you, this ain't the land of opportunity.

You confuse equality of opportunity with equality of outcome.

No, I don't, actually.

There is no equality of opportunity for a child born into a poor family who
cannot access education or health care.

My, what a
beautiful world you would build.

There's no better way to stimulate parents to be successful than to make
them realize that the future success of their children depends on their
willingness to work hard and provide for them. We've seen for many years
now
the result of granting the poor and uneducated "entitlements" that does
nothing but bind them and their children ever deeper into economic and
social poverty and degradation.

The one million illegal immigrants who come to this country each month
know
this full well, which is why they come here and go to work in those jobs
that "Americans won't take," so that their children will have the
opportunity to prosper.

What's successful for the poor is denying them the public dole that binds
them to the public teat while forcing them to advance themselves in the
workforce. It builds self-esteem, character and gives them skills that
will
serve them well in their lives. America is indeed the "Land of
Opportunity,"
but the opportunities are not all positive opportunities. You have an
equal
opportunity to FAIL as well as succeed. That's what causes people to
strive
to excel and advance.

As Linda Seebach said once, "The only way to make everyone equal is to
squash everyone flat."

You can't have an equal opportunity to anything if you are hungry,
uneducated, and without access to health care.

"Pay-to-play" seems to be the new paradigm for everything from trash
collection to access to federal lands, why not education too?

It's just that usual nonsense about trying to give all kids a reasonable
opportunity to access what the world has to offer.

Public education is, by and large, a dismal failure, particularly in poor
communities where an education, free or otherwise, is not viewed as
necessary to one's future...mostly because welfare dwellers see the future
of their children as being merely a repeat of their parent's failures.
There
is no stimulus to succeed, and generational failure is inevitable. Only
when
one has to work to succeed is one likely to value the education one gets
and
wish it for one's children.

Parents are not stimulated to encourage, assist, stimulate, enlighten,
browbeat, badger, threaten and otherwise require scholarship on the part
of
their children if they see no future for them because the dole is all they
know. Give a man a fish, and he eats for a day. Teach him to fish, and he
can feed the world.

How ironic, to use the "teach him to fish" analogy while saying that poor
people should not have access to education.

Can someone draw me an irony meter please!

Then again, there's nothing to prevent the altruists and charitable
contributors from voluntarily funding public school programs. Heck, even
businesses have gotten into the act, recognizing that it's good policy
for
them to support education for the next generation of workers they will
need
to stay in business. And they understand that vocational training may be
far
more valuable in the majority of cases than a college degree in a
non-technical field. A "liberal arts" degree is about as useless as an
appendix.

The worst thing about a liberal arts degree is that some of the graduates
might be capable of thinking.

True, but sadly, almost universally, they fail to realize that potential,
largely thanks to the pervasive leftist/liberal apologetics of failure and
muddled thinking taught to them on most of our college campuses.

Rare indeed is the student who is able to rise above the leftist
propaganda
and demagogary to reach a state of enlightenment and understanding, and
every one who does is universally a conservative thinker.

In your fantasy world.

Is George W. Bush one of your elightened right-wing graduates? LOL.