House Votes to Repeal Obamacare

[Cu Chulainn]

This is simply not true... Is it OK for, if One Man has bread, to steal from him to feed the nine who hunger?

Uh yah especially if you leave 1/10th of the bread. If one man has a boat and others are drowning, if he refuses to help it's perfectly OK for them to force their way on.

You always have the right to try to live.

 

[Arwon]

I may have used the wrong word, El Mach, but, the scenario I described is fairly well documented and said patent violations do raise prices here in the US as pharma companies have to charge higher prices here to compensate for the losses overseas. Property rights are ultimately essential for an economy to function well, so when they're violated I don't think that's a way to promote economic growth. Consider the culture that develops where property rights are allowed to be violated during say, growth phase one. Is it likely that those who make $$$ will stop doing that once the economy reaches growth phase two? No.

How much of the knock-off generics are being used in countries where most people - and the govenrments - otherwise could not afford those medicines? The South African AIDS mediciation situation has been well documented, but are there hard numbers anywhere?

I'd actually venture a guess, based on the previously pointed out relationship between wealth and health spending that more of the drugs are being used in places like Australia and Canada and Europe where intellectual property rights are enforced, pharmaceutical subsidies are in operation, and thus our governments are paying your pharma companies, rather us doing so directly. Big pharma blaming Third World generics for high prices seems a bit too convenient.

This is purely anecdotal, but I want to pass it on as this was just discussed a couple of days ago with my sis in a round about way. She was talking about the high deductible health care account system they'd just gone to from the HMO.

She said that since they switched over to the HDHP (matched with a HSA), she's more likely to just keep her kids home if they have what she thinks is a 'flu bug' for a day or so and see if they get better, whereas previously with the HMO she'd always rush them right into the doctor, even though the doctor would obviously just tell her to watch them, do the fluids thing, etc (cuz, you know...viruses...).

So, if that's the typical attitude of the typical suburban wifey with kids (OMG, MUST GET TO DOCTOR EVEN THOUGH I KNOW THEY WON'T BE ABLE TO DO ANYTHING), then perhaps that has a lot to do with the stupid overall cost of healthcare.

Paranoiac middle class suburbanites overconsume healthcare compared to the more needy people in every developed country. It's one of the iron paradoxes of health economics and medical resource allocation that those who consume the majority of healthcare (private and public) tend to be the less depserately needy.

 

[Brian Shanahan]

Good. The last thing we need is socialized medicine.

1. Socialism/communism is bad.

Please explain, most of Europe's strongest years have come under a broadly socialist group of governments. All of Europes weakest years have come under right-wing regimes.

2. Offing/mistreating older people.

You know that repeating lies ad nauseum (to the point of sickness) makes them not one iota less false. Please grow up and engage in proper arguements for your position, not baseless accusations and outright lies.

3. Decline in quality.

OK I propose a test, both of us break our arms in the same manner, we then use our respective health systems to get the arms fixed, you using the completely private American one, and I using the (admittedly half-assed) socialised one we kind of have here, and a French poster does the same in his/her system. Lets see who works out better.

Oh no wait, we don't have to! It has been conclusively proven over and over again that compared to other developed countries' (and even some developing ones, I'm looking at you Cuba!) America's privatised system leads to slower, less effective care at a massively inflated price. Why do you think that extremely non-partisan organisation the WHO ranks the US at #37 in the world for healthcare (and it would probably be even lower but for the massive investment in socialised health for the ultra-rich).

Yeah, pretty much the whole of your arguement blown out of the water there.

 

[GhostWriter16]

Uh yah especially if you leave 1/10th of the bread. If one man has a boat and others are drowning, if he refuses to help it's perfectly OK for them to force their way on.

You always have the right to try to live.

No you do not have a right to steal. And if you tried, the one man would have a right to shoot you on the spot.

 

[ParadigmShifter]

Did Jesus say that?

 

[Cutlass]

I agree with the gist of your first three paragraphs, I just disagree on the timeline

I think that Indians in India and Chinese in China are not very far from being at a tech level where entrepreneurs are going to want patent protection for their work. Remember how patents work. I invent something, I determine which markets I think are worth pursuing, and then I patent that invention in as many of those markets as I can afford. In the process, I invent daughter companies with PO Boxes in the countries I'm claiming a patent, etc.

Remember, the inventor of the Nano wants his patent protected in India, so India's going to start thinking of protecting patents.

Anyway, I don't think we're disagreeing on much. Probably just the development curve towards the endgame.

I don't consider it about the development curve. Certainly they have the ability to originate intellectual property now. But. on the aggregate, do they gain more from the theft now than they would gain from the protections? It isn't that they are not creating now, it is that they gain so much from theft that curtailing that theft is a net loss to them. In order for the curtailing of theft to be a net gain to them, they have to, not just innovate, but be a leader in innovation.

 

[GhostWriter16]

Did Jesus say that?

Was I talking about Christian morality? Nope, I was simply talking about what the legal rights should be.

Did Jesus not say the Law still applied? And is stealing not against the Law?

 

[galdre]

No you do not have a right to steal. And if you tried, the one man would have a right to shoot you on the spot.

do people have the right to horde more than they need and therefore cause others to go without what they need?

Since the world belongs to all of us, do we not have an equal claim to its resources?

 

[GhostWriter16]

do people have the right to horde more than they need and therefore cause others to go without what they need?

Since the world belongs to all of us, do we not have an equal claim to its resources?

Now THAT'S a better argument! But still, if its someone's land, its their choice to choose to give up the resources or not. They should share, but they cannot rightfully be forced.

 

[JollyRoger]

Now THAT'S a better argument! But still, if its someone's land, its their choice to choose to give up the resources or not. They should share, but they cannot rightfully be forced.

How about gleaning rights?

 

[Cu Chulainn]

No you do not have a right to steal. And if you tried, the one man would have a right to shoot you on the spot.

So you would choose to die rather than steal? Baloney. You have no concept of how hard life is or how lucky you are and I sincerely hope you don't have to find out first hand.

Now THAT'S a better argument! But still, if its someone's land, its their choice to choose to give up the resources or not. They should share, but they cannot rightfully be forced.

If the amount of people with nothing becomes great enough, the haves can and will be forced to share what they have. You cannot ask people to politely starve to death and retain any semblance of moral high ground.

 

[uppi]

Did Jesus not say the Law still applied? And is stealing not against the Law?

Now THAT'S a better argument! But still, if its someone's land, its their choice to choose to give up the resources or not. They should share, but they cannot rightfully be forced.

And the Law commands you to leave a part of the products of your land to the poor.

If you think the Law still applies, you cannot just pick and choose which parts to follow.

 

[schlaufuchs]

Competency over ideology.

This. You know me so well Ajidica

Now THAT'S a better argument! But still, if its someone's land, its their choice to choose to give up the resources or not. They should share, but they cannot rightfully be forced.

Private property is theft. :3

 

[GhostWriter16]

So you would choose to die rather than steal? Baloney. You have no concept of how hard life is or how lucky you are and I sincerely hope you don't have to find out first hand.

You bet I would never steal!

If the amount of people with nothing becomes great enough, the haves can and will be forced to share what they have. You cannot ask people to politely starve to death and retain any semblance of moral high ground.

It WOULD happen, but that doesn't mean it should.

And I never said they could keep moral high ground and do it.

And the Law commands you to leave a part of the products of your land to the poor.

If you think the Law still applies, you cannot just pick and choose which parts to follow.

True, so true, but the idea was "Land cannot be truly owned." A lot of other laws in the OT came from this idea. Its a good idea, but cannot be implemented in the Modern Day. You can't tell someone who just bought a piece of land "Oh, sorry, land belongs to the community, hand it over."

But if land had never been owned in the first place, systems like the one Israel had were better.

 

[JollyRoger]

But if land had never been owned in the first place, systems like the one Israel had were better.

The land was owned, but the Israelis took it. Then they distributed it by tribe who distributed to individual families. These landholders were commanded by law to let the poor and aliens have gleaning rights.

 

[Arakhor]

True, so true, but the idea was "Land cannot be truly owned." A lot of other laws in the OT came from this idea. Its a good idea, but cannot be implemented in the Modern Day. You can't tell someone who just bought a piece of land "Oh, sorry, land belongs to the community, hand it over."

You certainly can. Common land, rights of way and so on are legally protected in this country. A landowner most certainly can be forced to make provision for ancient land rights.

 

[schlaufuchs]

You certainly can. Common land, rights of way and so on are legally protected in this country. A landowner most certainly can be forced to make provision for ancient land rights.

Study Medieval social history; you'll be surprised the types of things peasants did back then that would be considered by many to be impossible to implement today.

 

[Ajidica]

The Black Company during the Schmalkaldic Wars?
They had to be annoying, they gave Luther the best book title ever. 'Against the murderous, rapacious, theiving hordes of peasants'.

 

[schlaufuchs]

The Black Company during the Schmalkaldic Wars?
They had to be annoying, they gave Luther the best book title ever. 'Against the murderous, rapacious, theiving hordes of peasants'.

More the price controls, predisposition towards NOT making profits, ensuring everyone had enough to eat, things that would generally be considered SOSHALIST nowadays. Those sort of things.

Some of this stuff has fallen out of favor (in that it's painted by Marxists such as Tanney as some kind of "Just and perfect society" which it certainly wasn't), but the point that it existed still stands.

 

[Ajidica]

More the price controls, predisposition towards NOT making profits, ensuring everyone had enough to eat, things that would generally be considered SOSHALIST nowadays. Those sort of things.

Ah.
Apparently most Byzantine and Roman emperors would be socialist as they set price controls.