tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2925765946042638459.post6197179945594425581..comments2024-03-18T02:22:56.392-04:00Comments on Disgusted Beyond Belief: Selfishness and Biological DrivesDBBhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17805375811782552873noreply@blogger.comBlogger10125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2925765946042638459.post-7149127911184844422007-08-02T21:00:00.000-04:002007-08-02T21:00:00.000-04:00Valentine's day.Valentine's day.antiprincesshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06675693687192822141noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2925765946042638459.post-46483551272377652802007-07-31T15:45:00.000-04:002007-07-31T15:45:00.000-04:00I think with a child, love matters more than money...I think with a child, love matters more than money, but money obviously matters too. <BR/><BR/>I didn't even include all of the other costs in 'afford' - like toys, day care (or stay home?), car seats, strollers, ugh ugh ugh. Kids are a huge money pit. But it is worth it. <BR/><BR/>I don't think you need to be rich or well off to be able to take care of a child - but if you aren't then sacrifices have to be made. <BR/><BR/>And congratulations - February - when in February? My wife is due right now March 3rd. We waited a bit as well, though not as long as you. But then we may want as many as three, so I may be over 40 for the third at this rate.DBBhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17805375811782552873noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2925765946042638459.post-25348445568645889432007-07-31T15:29:00.000-04:002007-07-31T15:29:00.000-04:00oh - and we're old. we'll be in the delivery room ...oh - and we're old. we'll be in the delivery room (god willing) three months AFTER my fortieth birthday. (yes my first, no not planned - we thought I was infertile.)<BR/><BR/>But I don't have a self-concept that we're "have-nots". we're more like "have-enoughs". <BR/><BR/>I worry that won't be okay with the kid, frankly.antiprincesshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06675693687192822141noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2925765946042638459.post-58377854025643292782007-07-31T15:25:00.000-04:002007-07-31T15:25:00.000-04:00heh.ask me again in february... ;)seriously, this ...heh.<BR/>ask me again in february... ;)<BR/><BR/>seriously, this whole "afford" thing has me tied up in knots.<BR/><BR/>can anyone really "afford" children?<BR/><BR/>food clothes home toys stuff doctor more food bigger clothes more toys more stuff doctor dentist school school school lots more food much bigger clothes even more toys doctor dentist therapist lessons college - who affords it <I>really</I>, and who just goes deeper in debt, or scrapes by, or goes without something they used to think was a vital necessity?<BR/><BR/>should only folks who can <I>really</I> afford it have kids?<BR/><BR/>and how long can they really afford it until the price of life is jacked up AGAIN, and they're left with kids they can't afford?<BR/><BR/>AND, looking at it worldwide, if only people who could "afford" it, as we in the US conceive "affording" it, were allowed to reproduce, there'd be a hell of a lot of ghost towns around the world.<BR/><BR/>to answer your question (sorry for the delay) - I'd like to think that "affording it" consists of three more-or-less square meals a day and someplace to sleep out of the rain.<BR/><BR/>it's what my husband and I got as kids. and it's all we have now.<BR/><BR/>Little Mary Wolfgang (as we've termed the fetus) will be a secondhand rose, you bet. I'm not sure how I feel about that, but I couldn't really have an abortion just on accounta we're not rich.<BR/><BR/>the attribute "poor" was not an automatic dealbreaker for either of us growing up.antiprincesshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06675693687192822141noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2925765946042638459.post-5267612245338771562007-07-31T13:45:00.000-04:002007-07-31T13:45:00.000-04:00A-P - that's a good question. I think, at a minim...A-P - that's a good question. I think, at a minimum, it would include being able to pay for a child's food, clothing, and shelter. Perhaps some form of health coverage as well, though that gets into the general health insurance boondoggle in our nation right now. <BR/><BR/>But at the very minimum, I consider it irresponsible to have children one can't afford to feed, clothe, and shelter. Both because of the societal drain and because it is unfair to a child to be brought into that situation. My wife and I waited until we were into our thirties to have children because until then, we simply did not have the resources - time as well as money, to support having children. <BR/><BR/>What would you consider to be the meaning of "afford"?DBBhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17805375811782552873noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2925765946042638459.post-66413770672318869102007-07-31T13:39:00.000-04:002007-07-31T13:39:00.000-04:00Don't have kids you can't afford.what's your defin...<I>Don't have kids you can't afford.</I><BR/><BR/>what's your definition of "afford"?antiprincesshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06675693687192822141noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2925765946042638459.post-36654059097626489872007-07-30T08:22:00.000-04:002007-07-30T08:22:00.000-04:00Ballgame - those at the top of the heap who curren...Ballgame - those at the top of the heap who currently control our government are not free marketeers, they are socialists who vote funds for a minority instead of for the population at large. They are not interested in a free market. Halliburton doesn't get all those billion dollar contracts because they are the best company in the market for them, they get them because of corruption in the government where tax dollars are sent to the friends of those in power. <BR/><BR/>So in that case, income is redistributed from the middle class to the rich by taxing the middle class and then using those tax dollars to pay the friends of the elite. That is not a free market. And it is a concern. The libertarian solution is to shrink the tax base and the power of government so that there is not much money available for the powerful to redistribute to their friends. And to shrink the power of government as well - rather than expand it as has happened for the last six years. <BR/><BR/>I wouldn't say the poor are better off in Europe - there is a large group of young people now who cannot get jobs because socialist policies make firing so hard - employers don't want to get stuck so they just stop hiring. And there are huge swaths of the economy where unproductive companies continue, eating up lots of tax revenue to keep them afloat, when it would have been better to let the companies die and new companies form that would be productive. Europe's tax base is in trouble because an ever larger percentage of taxes must be taken to support a population of decreasing production. That can't go on forever. <BR/><BR/>Note that I am libertarian leaning - I don't advocate eliminating government, simply minimizing it. And truly, what would be wrong with a voluntary system for helping those who can't support themselves? <BR/><BR/>I agree the tax system is messed up where the rich pay less than they should proportionately. I favor a graduated, but mostly flat, tax rate - like set a flat tax rate of 25% but exempt the first 50K (per person) or something like that. Then the poor and most of the middle class would pay little to no taxes (and no payroll taxes - talk about regressive) and the rich would still pay an appropriate amount.DBBhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17805375811782552873noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2925765946042638459.post-18036156961043766012007-07-29T23:05:00.000-04:002007-07-29T23:05:00.000-04:00dbb, I enjoy your blog and mostly agree with many ...dbb, I enjoy your blog and mostly agree with many of your sensible observations, but I believe you are profoundly misguided on the viability of 'libertarianism' as an political/economic model.<BR/><BR/>First, a specific criticism:<BR/><BR/><I>[E]ven the poor in our nation do so much better than the average person in so many other nations.</I><BR/><BR/>This is false. The poor in the U.S. fare worse than the poor in virtually any other First World nation (i.e. Canada, Britain, France, Germany, Sweden ... I believe this is also true for Japan and Italy but don't know for sure). This is not an accident, as those nations have positive real-life experiences with Social Democratic/democratic socialist regimes, and their "conservative" parties are closer to our Democratic Party in many regards than they are to the rightwing zealots currently occupying our White House. (Unfortunately, the logic of investment competition will drive those foreign conservative parties to support increasingly exploitive policies the longer neocons are in power here in the U.S.)<BR/><BR/>More broadly, your theoretical constructs of 'efficiency', 'self sufficiency', 'productivity', and 'corruption' simply don't line up in the real world as your OP implies.<BR/><BR/>No one is 'self sufficient' in a modern economy; all live at the mercy of others who provide goods and services to them as part of organizations. I would also dispute the notion implied in your OP that income = productivity, as it can be quite reasonably argued that some of those at the very top of the economic heap are in fact society's biggest parasites.<BR/><BR/>The 20th century is littered with nations avowedly embracing "free market" policies whose political arenas have choked on the corruption of appeasing the super-rich, with disastrous results for anyone not a part of this benighted class (Mexico, Chile, Argentina, Brazil, etc., to name just a few). Given the suspension of habeas corpus and the recent Executive Order authorizing the Treasury Dept. to freeze all assets of anyone they deem to be a "significant risk" to interfere with the "stabilization" efforts in Iraq, it is legitimate to ask whether we still live in a functioning democracy here in the U.S., or whether once again "free marketeers" have corrupted the body politic at its very core.ballgamehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00011432052047279365noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2925765946042638459.post-88913273793751069522007-07-29T17:46:00.000-04:002007-07-29T17:46:00.000-04:00I don't advocate just cutting and leaving everyone...I don't advocate just cutting and leaving everyone behind. I advocate getting as many people self-sufficient as possible, with private charity taking care of the rest. That is not writing anyone off - that is make sure everyone is taken care of in the most efficient manner possible. <BR/><BR/>And as for the world as a whole, I just don't see how that is the responsibility of any one nation. I'm talking about just the United States. To a certain degree, I think it is somewhat arrogant to think we have any say at all in how others in other nations handle their affairs. Iraq is an example of how messing with another nation, even with alleged good intentions, can go horribly wrong. We can't solve other nation's problems - that either comes from within or doesn't come at all. Certainly we can make things worse, and we should avoid doing anything that does so, but I don't think we should be sticking our noses in other nation's business. <BR/><BR/>I do think we need to remove obstacles to prosperity. I think we have done that to a great degree already - which is why even the poor in our nation do so much better than the average person in so many other nations. Not that they are doing that well, but obviously, every incremental step that improves the lot of even the most worst off is a good one. <BR/><BR/>And you mentioned the worst problem that one has with socialist/communist systems - corruption. In a system where things are based on confiscation of wealth from the productive to be given to whomever the government wants, that is a recipie for rampant corruption. Then, the money goes to whomever those in power vote for it to go to. And so what invariably happens is that nations where there is large welfare and heavy taxation is that most of that money ends up going into the pockets of the high government officials that run things and the poor stay poor - and they stay far far poorer than the poor in our own nation. <BR/><BR/>That's one of the central reasons communism simply does not work and never could work - it goes against human nature. So while I don't advocate doing things just because they match biological forces, I still think it is important to pay attention to them because if you don't and if you try to create an economy that ignores them or goes too much against the grain of how people are, it is destined to fail. For instance, if you tried to set up an economic system that required people to give up sex for pleasure (to use an absurd example) well, that just isn't going to work, because people won't, no matter how hard you try. <BR/><BR/>I advocate libertarinism because I think it is the system that would maximize the number of self-sufficient people, and would give them enough excess that, through private charity, everyone else could be taken care of. Marxism (and variations thereof) have already been experimented with and those experiments all failed, showing that it is something that just sounds good on paper, but is unworkable in reality and not a sustainable economic model. <BR/><BR/>That's because wealth itself is not a zero sum game - the truly successful people create it and increase it for everyone. Any system that prevents wealth creation ultimately is doomed to stagnate and die.DBBhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17805375811782552873noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2925765946042638459.post-34006829196739250482007-07-29T14:57:00.000-04:002007-07-29T14:57:00.000-04:00DBB, I understand your reasons for supporting a li...DBB, I understand your reasons for supporting a libertarian system. I also understand your references to the natural world, arguments that have been made since the late 1800s, about "sapping the strength of the strong to help the weak eventually hurts a society," and all that. And in nature, that is the way things have gotten to be the way they are. As an athiest, I know that viewing human societies as an extension of the natural world also fits in with your libertarian philosophy.<BR/><BR/>While allowing natural or biological forces to rule societies has been a great drive in evolutionary development, I have to disagree that it is the moral thing to do for human societies. Allowing self-sufficiency to rule can only cause a widening gap between the haves and the have-nots. In nature, this is a great thing because the fittest species get on the evolutionary fast track, and the others die off. Hell, that's how we got here in the first place.<BR/><BR/>But I'm not sure this is the most ethical track to take now that we're here. I think there is sometimes a difference between what is natural and what is morally right--not every biological urge, certainly, but at least in this case.<BR/><BR/>I guess what it comes down to is that I just can't justify writing off an entire section of the world's population just because they are incapable of achieving "self-sufficiency." The natural world can be a cruel place. It doesn't stop to ask why an individual or population isn't self-sufficient. We can, though. And I think that, for the most part, we are obligated to remove some of the obstacles that prevent people from becoming self-sufficient, like race, poverty, corruption, and access to education.<BR/><BR/>But I think this is the same argument Marxists and libertarians have been having for decades.Erinhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03315849412290918217noreply@blogger.com