US Politics: Free Trade, Freer Trade, and Nuclear War

[Rippounet]

4 hours ago, Darth Richard II said:

Squab is a well known troll, you're wasting your time.

Well of course, using big -ism words with little regard to their meaning is always a big clue, but it's hard to distinguish a serious libertarian from a troll on the internet.

Speaking of big words...

Quote

During the interview, Jones -- a right-wing conspiracy theorist -- said he wanted to know why liberals hate America and "love communism."

How do you guys understand "America" in that sentence? I have a theory, but I'd like to check that I'm on the right track in understanding right-wing nutjobs...

[Darth Richard II]

In that sentence? America = white supremacy.

[OldGimletEye]

7 hours ago, Squab said:

I have very little doubt you give bad advice with your beautifully worded strawmen. Please let me have a go. 

Well you seem to think any progressive taxation or wealth redistribution is illegitimate, so which strawman was I bringing up again? So sorry for poking a bit of hole in libertarian philosophy.

7 hours ago, Squab said:

Socialism is a great ideal, free money for everyone from the money trees and the world runs on unicorn farts. But really, socialists are full of shit. They just want control of someone else's money and when they take it they screw up whatever they said they wanted to do with it. Everyone gets demotivated and eventually starves like the Venezuelans. Or the North Koreans. Or the Cubans.

Great stuff if everyone wants to be equally hungry and poor. Except for whoever ended up in charge of the mess, usually the authoritarian who tried to implement "real socialism" this time round.

Well, really I’m more of Keynesian, that does back the welfare state, and things like universal healthcare and public education, etc. And I think at this point in time labor's bargaining power could use a bit of a boost. And I dissent with conservatives over bank regulation. I certainly dissented with their dipshittery during the GFC and their continued dipshittery. I certainly sit left of center within the American political spectrum. I’m generally fine with private markets providing most commodities, but not all. I’m not sure if that makes me a socialist or not. But, in some people’s book, it probably does. So I’ll roll with it, and don’t really care if I’m called a socialist and am fine with the label.

Anyway, what exactly is your evidence that since about the end of War 2, the Republican Party has produced higher economic growth? Or where is your evidence that the American conservative movement has produced higher economic growth.

Oh, you don’t have any. 

But, anyway, please tell us all about the Bush Boom and the Brown Back boom. Don’t be humble or shy, stand up for the libertarianism. Keep on being bullish on Bush and pumped for Trump.

You're doing a heck of job there with these kind of arguments!

Quote

The world runs on unicorn farts.

I thought it ran on libertarian pixie dust.

[OldGimletEye]

2 hours ago, Rippounet said:

How do you guys understand "America" in that sentence? I have a theory, but I'd like to check that I'm on the right track in understanding right-wing nutjobs...

Don't know. I think I'd just say to somebody like Jones, "Oh I don't hate America. I just hate conservatives." That kind of stupid idiocy is certainly deserving of a smart ass retort.

[Gorn]

Left-wingers don't get to opt out from paying for the military, and the right-wingers don't get to opt out from paying for healthcare. In America, the right-wingers should consider this a bargain, since your military costs waaaaay more. There was also no left-wing analogy to the military draft during the years when it was active.

[GAROVORKIN]

7 hours ago, larrytheimp said:

***Watches a mackerel swim slowly by, a 5/0 circle hook jabbed through its nose.  Remains motionless***

So your hobby is fishing then? 

[OldGimletEye]

Now for libertarian sorts of people that think I made a completely unfair mockery of libertarian political philosophy by saying it takes you to place where you’d actually support absolute monarchy, it’s not like I’m sittin here just making this shit up all by myself.

In fact, here is one of your guys basically saying the same thing.

And then you have sorry ass clowns like Peter Theil, concluding that democracy isn’t compatible with freedom, as I guess we’re to be ruled by the likes of Peter Theil, and for all his whining about freedom ends up supporting one orange authoritarian clown because he thinks higher taxes upon himself is a bigger threat to freedom, than the shit Trump actually does. Pinochet is probably rolling over in his grave that Trump is getting all the lime light as the "libertarian's dictator".

And then you look at some of the creepiest of the creepers in the alt right, the so called neo-reactionaries, who evidently would like to replace democracy with aristocracy, it’s not really surprising that many of them began their life as “libertarians”.

Libertarians have earned themselves a very bad reputation.What a sorry ass political philosophy.

[GAROVORKIN]

26 minutes ago, OldGimletEye said:

Now for libertarian sorts of people that think I made a completely unfair mockery of libertarian political philosophy by saying it takes you to place where you’d actually support absolute monarchy, it’s not like I’m sittin here just making this shit up all by myself.

In fact, here is one of your guys basically saying the same thing.

And then you have sorry ass clowns like Peter Theil, concluding that democracy isn’t compatible with freedom, as I guess we’re to be ruled by the likes of Peter Theil, and for all his whining about freedom ends up supporting one orange authoritarian clown because he thinks higher taxes upon himself is a bigger threat to freedom, than the shit Trump actually does. Pinochet is probably rolling over in his grave that Trump is getting all the lime light as the "libertarian's dictator".

And then you look at some of the creepiest of the creepers in the alt right, the so called neo-reactionaries, who evidently would like to replace democracy with aristocracy, it’s not really surprising that many of them began their life as “libertarians”.

Libertarians have earned themselves a very bad reputation.What a sorry ass political philosophy.

You might find Historian Eric Hobsbaum to be of interest. 

[Rippounet]

@darth @OGE  Thanks guys... Hmmm, it seems I went for something way too complicated...

4 hours ago, Gorn said:

Left-wingers don't get to opt out from paying for the military, and the right-wingers don't get to opt out from paying for healthcare. In America, the right-wingers should consider this a bargain, since your military costs waaaaay more. There was also no left-wing analogy to the military draft during the years when it was active.

We should definitely think of a left-wing analogy for the military draft. Like mandatory service in a humanitarian cause of your choice. Right-wing nutjobs could choose to be conscientious objectors and serve for a couple of years in the military instead.
Libertarians would go bonkers.

[Ice Queen]

2 hours ago, OldGimletEye said:

Now for libertarian sorts of people that think I made a completely unfair mockery of libertarian political philosophy by saying it takes you to place where you’d actually support absolute monarchy, it’s not like I’m sittin here just making this shit up all by myself.

In fact, here is one of your guys basically saying the same thing.

And then you have sorry ass clowns like Peter Theil, concluding that democracy isn’t compatible with freedom, as I guess we’re to be ruled by the likes of Peter Theil, and for all his whining about freedom ends up supporting one orange authoritarian clown because he thinks higher taxes upon himself is a bigger threat to freedom, than the shit Trump actually does. Pinochet is probably rolling over in his grave that Trump is getting all the lime light as the "libertarian's dictator".

And then you look at some of the creepiest of the creepers in the alt right, the so called neo-reactionaries, who evidently would like to replace democracy with aristocracy, it’s not really surprising that many of them began their life as “libertarians”.

Libertarians have earned themselves a very bad reputation.What a sorry ass political philosophy.

Most libertarians I know have never once thought about things like democracy and freedom, corporate power, raising the bar on the welfare of people, or any of those noble ideas. 

Their train of thought stops at "government=bad". 

[Fragile Bird]

11 hours ago, IamMe90 said:

Not sure about that; I'm a type 1 diabetic and I have a fairly standard employer-sponsored health insurance plan; I'd say it's definitely better than average, but comparable to plans offered by many other employers across most of the country. I pay $30 each for my monthly prescriptions of both my long-lasting and short-acting insulins, which contain 5 vials/cartridges of insulin. Under the ACA about a year and a half ago, I paid roughly the same. 

However, if you do not have health insurance coverage, boxes of Insulin can literally cost in excessive of $1,000 each. Which is absurd. The cost of the prescription hardware, such as glucosemeter test strips and syringes/needles, are also insane uncovered. They're like, hundreds of dollars at the least for a month's supply. 

I meant, of course, people without insurance for the greatest savings, but I was also horrified that some people were paying, iirc, $350 to $450 WITH insurance! By driving to Canada for a weeken and picking up a 6 month supply they had a weekend holiday and had a tidy sum of money in their pocket. As I said, insulin and other supplies are available here without prescription, and a quick look on the internet found prices as low as $38 ($30 US ) at Walmart and $42 or $43, iirc, at more expensive pharmacies.

[GAROVORKIN]

7 minutes ago, Fragile Bird said:

I meant, of course, people without insurance for the greatest savings, but I was also horrified that some people were paying, iirc, $350 to $450 WITH insurance! By driving to Canada for a weeken and picking up a 6 month supply they had a weekend holiday and had a tidy sum of money in their pocket. As I said, insulin and other supplies are available here without prescription, and a quick look on the internet found prices as low as $38 ($30 US ) at Walmart and $42 or $43, iirc, at more expensive pharmacies.

Medication tends to cost money to produce. If your  getting for cheap in Canada, it's coming out of someone else pocket is it not?

[Which Tyler]

Yes, it comes out of the profit margin for the extortionistic Big Pharma companies.

Insulin costs single-figures USD to produce - depending on the method of production of course.

We have been producing Insulin for 90 years; but there's still no generic insulin on the market in the US, as each pharma company has their own patents, so they produce the expenseive stuff, because they can sell it at an extortionate markup. Most of the world doesn't have this issue, and are perfectly happy using insulin derived from farm animals rather than genetically modified bacteria - which methods cost tens of dollars to produce; but more important, take longer to build up turnover, by which time they're replaced with a new production method (to keep things within patent); creating scarcity, and bumping prices up.

http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMms1411398

[Rippounet]

6 minutes ago, GAROVORKIN said:

Medication tends to cost money to produce. If your  getting for cheap in Canada, it's coming out of someone else pocket is it not?

Because Canadian big pharma is no doubt selling drugs at a loss...

[GAROVORKIN]

7 minutes ago, Rippounet said:

Because Canadian big pharma is no doubt selling drugs at a loss...

Which inspired me to do a thread Topic  about medication costs. 

[Martell Spy]

5 hours ago, Gorn said:

Left-wingers don't get to opt out from paying for the military, and the right-wingers don't get to opt out from paying for healthcare. In America, the right-wingers should consider this a bargain, since your military costs waaaaay more. There was also no left-wing analogy to the military draft during the years when it was active.

There are left-wingers that would like to opt out of the military, but I don't think most Democrats want this. I certainly don't. I think the position of most Democrats is that we don't need to constantly shovel money at the Pentagon with no oversight and questioning of efficiency. It's a pretty moderate and reasonable approach. As opposed to the radical Republican approach, which is to constantly cut domestic programs and shovel the money over into the military as much as possible, when not diverting funds to the wealthy.

And the Republican stance on domestic spending programs is basically, "Someone brown somewhere is benefiting from this program, we have to cut it completely!"

And something that hasn't been brought up in this discussion is Medicare, the highly successful and socialist program. The Republican party is heavily made up of people who happen to be on Medicare. And many more Republicans who aren't on Medicare are often those with employer healthcare, because they skew older and white, and older and whiter people tend to have better jobs in the U.S. 

Meanwhile, with the Obamacare repeal attempts, Republicans attempted to really hammer people aged around 45 and up who aren't on Medicare yet, in particular sick ones. So, you have these asshole Republican voters who are squatting on some of the best healthcare in the country trying to destroy the lives of these sick people around 45 to 60 years in age or so. Making healthcare more expensive for older people who aren't yet on Medicare was a central part of the Obamacare repeal attempts. It was sick, selfish, and radical.

[IheartIheartTesla]

12 minutes ago, GAROVORKIN said:

Medication tends to cost money to produce. If your  getting for cheap in Canada, it's coming out of someone else pocket is it not?

Insulin and metformin (generic diabetes medication) are pretty old chemistries, the original cost of doing research on them has been repaid million fold already. Basically with commodity materials like that everything beyond the price of production (and other things in the supply chain) are pure profit. The fact that insulin still costs me $10/mL with my insurance as a co-pay should piss you off more than some poor sap getting it for cheap in Canada (hint: the former has way more people paying into it than the latter).

[GAROVORKIN]

2 minutes ago, IheartIheartTesla said:

Insulin and metformin (generic diabetes medication) are pretty old chemistries, the original cost of doing research on them has been repaid million fold already. Basically with commodity materials like that everything beyond the price of production (and other things in the supply chain) are pure profit. The fact that insulin still costs me $10/mL with my insurance as a co-pay should piss you off more than some poor sap getting it for cheap in Canada (hint: the former has way more people paying into it than the latter).

Insulin treatment has been around since the early 1920's . So why does it still cost what it does? It in  should theory cost next to nothing .

[Fragile Bird]

11 minutes ago, GAROVORKIN said:

Insulin treatment has been around since the early 1920's . So why does it still cost what it does? It in  should theory cost next to nothing .

Uh, so why did you ask me that question?

And, btw, insulin was discovered and formulated in Canada.

[GAROVORKIN]

1 minute ago, Fragile Bird said:

Uh, so why did you ask me that question?

And, btw, insulin was discovered and formulated in Canada.

Because I didn't see your comment.