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[Shadowlord]

So you'd be ok with killing brain damaged people if they can't think or perceive any more? I admit that's a bit devil's advocate - but is there a difference? Why would you make a such a difference?

You weren't asking me, but personally, yes. Wait, what do you mean devils advocate? What difference? You basically just asked if someone who is brain dead should be kept alive. There's no chance of recovery, they're basically a corpse whose organs are being kept going temporarily (because they will still eventually start to decay).  The only reason I see is because you can't legally proceed with organ donation until that point, iirc.

... And if they have a soul then you may be chaining it to a corpse. So, good on you for supporting soul-torture, I guess.

[Dozebôm Lolumzalìs]

Dang I take forever to respond...

What has rights? A person, right? What makes a person? Not human DNA, obviously - human ears aren't people. Nor are brain-dead humans that still have functioning organs. Aliens could also be people. So something being "alive" or "human" doesn't make it a right-bearing entity. But what exactly is a person?

I'd argue that personhood is the result of sapience (sentience, self-awareness, consciousness, et cetera). And what is a necessary attribute for sapience? The ability to think and perceive. AFAIK, fetuses cannot perceive, sense, etc. until they are ~30 weeks old. (This might be smaller; at week 27 fetuses can operate their limbs and such, but still... there are a few months of pregnancy before fetuses can be said to be sapient.)

So...to continue the point here - why does a "person" have these rights in the first place? Why does sapience have anything to do with it in the first place?

Because only sapient things can complain if I destroy them. No, seriously, the rocks and the trees didn't send a representative to the meeting, so we figured "why count them in?"

On an actually serious note: for the first several weeks, embryos can't even feel anything. Even if you define "personhood" to include dogs and cats, embryos still wouldn't be included, unless you used a definition of "has human DNA" or something stupid like that. "Hey! I'm Bob the Hand!"

Where do we draw the line? I could see the argument made that we shouldn't perform abortions on 37-week-old fetuses, but that doesn't really happen (save for medical reasons). Most abortions happen in the early months, far before fetuses can sense or move.

So you'd be ok with killing brain damaged people if they can't think or perceive any more?

If they thought before, cannot think now, but could think tomorrow, then they're sort-of-a-person. (This is so that sleeping people aren't technically dead, by the way. )

If they cannot think, and will never be able to think (perceive, etc.), then they are not a person. That is an organism with no consciousness.

I admit that's a bit devil's advocate - but is there a difference? Why would you make a such a difference? I'd argue that it's just to make ourselves feel better, which isn't a really good reason.

There's a slight difference - brain-dead people used to be alive.

Is the entire difference the fact that a growing baby requires a host mother? Here's a thought from dystopian sci-fi: why don't baby's rights outweigh the mother's? After all, the whole purpose of the mother is so the infant can be created, isn't it? (Selfish gene theory and all that jazz).

Hey, watch out, down that road lies Social Darwinism. We rise above Survival of the Fittest.

Is something being killed? That's also debatable - fetuses act as "parasites", mostly, until the latest part of pregnancy. Not in the "augh infection kill it with fire" sense, not an emotionally-loaded term, just describing how they are not viable. But what if you don't consider them to be "parasites"? Are they a "bud" of the mother? I disagree - fetuses are separate organisms, so yes, something is being killed.

But we kill animals, we kill bacteria, we kill plants. Killing isn't in and of itself bad. Murder is bad because it's killing people. Killing animals might be bad because it is killing entities with the ability to perceive and (somewhat) think. Embryos can't do either.

Developing humans can perceive really quite early on actually.

[CITATION_NEEDED]

So what's the threshold? It shouldn't be arbitrary, but how do you pick?

*shrug* I don't. I think that it's very grey, and that the government shouldn't decide when a fetus is a person - until, perhaps, the later stages.

Hey, watch out - the continuum fallacy is dangerously close to what you're saying.

Is the whole argument because an embryo is inside a woman it shouldn't matter?

No. Because it affects a woman, the woman might matter more than the fetus.

Or I'll go back to this - why does sapience matter as a criteria? And if sapience does matter - why does it matter if a creature has sapience or is a creature capable of developing sapience had it been left alone for a few months or if it was sapient and lost sapience due to age or disease or accident?

Because it is generally immoral to end a consciousness, or to prevent a used-to-be-conscious person from becoming conscious again (no killing them in their sleep). But... think of it this way. If Sue refuses to have sex with Bob, that prevents a consciousness from forming - her potential son Rob will never exist. Is that immoral?

Furthermore, abortion is a difficult decision. You don't have mothers thinking "eh, I'll just pop off to the doctor's and murder this baby in me." Why should the government do this - if the embryo is not a person, which it isn't, why should the government control and limit a medical procedure?

Wait what? The government controls and limits all sorts of medical procedures.  And what does the "difficulty" of the decision have to do with it?

The government makes sure that medical procedures are safe for those involved, right? Regulation? It doesn't say "chemotherapy is immoral, ban chemotherapy".

It's difficult because there are many things to balance, because it is murky gray. The government cannot help anybody by enforcing "this is the RIGHT SOLUTION" on mothers.

Birth control is equivalent to stopping people from having sex is equivalent to early abortion. They all prevent a human life from forming. Is that undesirable? Perhaps. But it is the choice of the mother, just like it is the choice of the mother to not have sex, and its difficult one. She doesn't need the government to tell her how to choose.

I don't agree with that equivocation. There is at the very least a significant chemical and physiological difference between failure to fertilize an egg and abortion.

And there's a significant chemical difference between this egg and this rock, but neither is sapient.

In a more "person" sense there is a difference between "I don't want to become pregnant, so I will take precautionary action" and "I think I might have become / know I am pregnant and I don't want to be."

...a difference, sure. An important difference? Not really.

Also what about the fact that a man can try to ensure pre-conception birth control equally as a woman, but cannot (legally) compel a woman to have or forego an abortion?

...what about it? There do exist differences, but for the purposes of "is it murder" they're all equivalent.

And sometimes it's for medical reasons, or rape.

So medical necessity is actually a rarity, and it the one situation where I would personally have trouble making such a decision, and I don't envy anyone who has to make such a decision.

If I had a fetus in me, I'd have trouble aborting it under any circumstances. It would be difficult. It would also be difficult for me to eat meat, but I don't want meat-eating outlawed.

Regarding violent situations: I can understand why someone would make that decision, but I disagree with it.  My sentiment on that one is about the same as if someone chose to take up heavy alcohol consumption after some similar traumatic event - I can understand it, but not support the action.

I'm fine with disagreeing. I just don't think the government should get involved, especially in rape cases.

Suffice it to say - the entire subject of abortion is just a mess because of the inability for humanity to agree on a fundamental basis for deciding "when an embryo deserves protection"; so the best we get is majority opinion often with a very vocal minority.

I don't know if I'm in the minority, though... I wonder what the liberal position is.

RANDOM: They must put something in the water for aerospace people. Like @Wierd I also have aerospace roots. Uncanny. (Mine was doing aircraft engine controller electronics and software design.)

I will join that club one day, just you see!

One example of an idea that backfired was conservatives in Australia who brought in community service requirements for welfare recipients. The idea was that having to do community service work would push the lazy welfare recipients towards seeking work, to get away from the obligations.

In fact, it had the opposite effect: doing community service made the welfare recipients happier, and reduced their incentives to find paid work. What they didn't understand here was human nature, due to their negative caricature of the "typical welfare recipient" as lazy evil people who don't want to do anything for others. Basic human needs include dignity and social contact, and either work or community service can provide those.

Aha, I knew it, people are driven to do work by more than greed! (Could I get some links to this? It sounds like GREAT supporting evidence for my belief that anarchism could work...)

[wierd]

Nonsequitur. Not what I suggest.

See above post.

Focus on asset poverty, and the whole society rises much more for the same coin spent than spending on long term income poverty. It increases economic opportunity more, which cultivates markets and rising wages, which then provides opportunity to low income impoverished.

It is by its nature, short term, one off firms of assist, such as debt forgiveness.

[Dozebôm Lolumzalìs]

Go back 4 pages, and read my position, then come back again.

I'll be here.

link pls

Here you go.

http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=159257.msg7282156#msg7282156


Nenjin, re education.

This is the age with the single easiest access to knowledge EVER.  Self education is not only possible, it is exactly what I did, and despite being so poor as a child that I wore hand me down shoes and hone made clothes made of fabric remnants that were on sale, I now make more than 200k a year in aerospace.

Opportunity is there. These are not feudal times. You just need to apply yourself.

I assist those I see trying to do that, and help them succeed. I am less inclined to feed the poverty of people unwilling to better themselves.

(You're in aerospace?! SQUEEEE!!~ [In case you can't tell I like aerospace QUITE A BIT!] What do you do??)

I don't want to misinterpret you, so I'll ask this in very clear terms.

Do you agree with the following sentence?

"The majority of Americans at or below the poverty level have the ability to improve their fiscal situation to above the poverty line."

How about this one?

"The majority of Americans at or below the poverty level have the ability to improve their fiscal situation to above the poverty line, and consciously choose not to do so."

Nenjin, I support limited assistance. Time limited, and rate limited. When the money will run out, you look for ways to support yourself.

Being poor isn't just a six month thing, as you know. Being black is forever. Being perceived as ghetto despite being an aight guy can be forever. The only way you over come the stereotype is by being skilled at something useful and being good at it. But how are you supposed to do that when you go to a school in a ghetto that no one gives a fuck about and no law or even belief exists that you should get help? "We support limited assistance for schools. Time limited, rate limited. When the money will run out, you look for ways to support the school yourself." And since what money schools get still goes through state government first....when the people holding the purse strings looks at the data and goes "they're all fuckups, fuck em", even promising people can get trapped in a place they can't escape. And maybe their natural good character and try-hard will get them out of it. But since we're talking averages here, how much more of them would have succeeded if someone actually, truly gave a fuck. Enough they're willing to risk the money going to shitheads so they can help one person actually live the dream.

Trust me, I've known some fucks too and I don't disagree that welfare reform needs to happen on some levels. But welfare traps/fraud is hardly the basis for an entire attitude that basically kicks someone out of society with no formal declaration. Shit at least in prison they'd feed you. Why not fulfill the stereotype then? You seem oblivious to the cyclical problem you say you hate.

Being black is not a permanent disadvantage, and promulgating that falsehood is racist as fuck, and demotivating as fuck.

...no, it's not racist to say that racism is prevalent, what the fuck do you mean? African-Americans don't tend to do as well, not because of any intrinsic lesser-ness, but because of the way they are treated!

I have worked with a fellow " by the bootstraps" guy, who was black, and designed ICs for Texas Instruments. He and I were in complete agreement on this matter. We discussed living in ghettos, and the trap of being told you can never achieve.

It's a good thing that we don't tell ghetto-ites that they can't achieve, then. Because assisting people is the same as telling them that they'll never make it! Just abandon them, and they'll do so much better!

If you are seriously telling people they will never have better than other people because if something as bullshit as gender or race, you sir are causing terrible harm.

...if you ever open your eyes, you'll have a hell of a shock. Yes, inequality based on ethnicity, sex, etc. exists.

I am a CNC programmer who programs industrial milling machines that cut aviation components from blocks of solid metal. I also have the skillset to design such parts. I get payed very well for this.

Your other questions are a false dichotomy though.

(sorry about the "open your eyes" thing, I edited it to be less insulty, I should really calm the hell down and think about the person on the other side of the screen)

For the first two questions, no to both.
The unasked question:

Do enough poor people in america refuse to better themselves that they are destroying the chances if the others through abuse if the system?

That one is the yes.

Soooo... they can't better themselves, but because they "refuse" to better themselves, they wreck things for everyone else? Huh?

As somebody who saw "middle class" as a tiny point of light at the top of the sky, trust me, that far down, you don't want to go down further, but that is what happens when you give too much assist via welfare.

Giving more assistance... means that people have worse lives? Huh?

The govt can't give you a 200k earning value.
Improving yourself can.

But that's not always possible! I have a list somewhere of how poor people are disadvantaged, I'll find it tomorrow.

When you have to go deeper to get there though, you ate strongly dismotivated.  When you have nothing but personal time, and healthcare, and enough to eat. Why bother working 8hrs a day or more for less?

That is the problem.

But people do want to work. In a post-scarcity world, with plenty of food and healthcare (just manufacture it from mass and energy!), I would still work, because I like to do science. And if people don't like the jobs that exist... just wait a few years and they'll become roboticized anyway!

Furthermore, I doubt that poor people can't think more than a few minutes into the future - having a job can help you get ahead, get you on the track to higher places. Or so everyone's been told...

[wierd]

Reela, your inability to see how it applies is a serious handicap.

Here, let me spell it out for you.


1) welfare is controversial here because it is at capacity. It needs more and more money, because it is not actually solving poverty.

2) because the system is at capacity, it cannot stop additional slide into poverty.

3) the article points out how much potential poverty there really is, very clearly, and how assistance there avoids income poverty. (Which you seem unable to grasp.)

4) the money being spent on income poverty alone being refirected to asset poverty will drop additional rates of new poverty faster than the current methods do, and does not create the perverse incentive.

5) thus, the people leeching on the current system, and keeping it from fulfilling its real mandate of reversing poverty, actually contribute to poverty because the system cannot stop the backslide. Each one you support emperils dozens of others.

[Dozebôm Lolumzalìs]

"Leeching"? Please stop the loaded language, they're not all lazy good-fur-nothins.

[Reelya]

One example of an idea that backfired was conservatives in Australia who brought in community service requirements for welfare recipients. The idea was that having to do community service work would push the lazy welfare recipients towards seeking work, to get away from the obligations.

In fact, it had the opposite effect: doing community service made the welfare recipients happier, and reduced their incentives to find paid work. What they didn't understand here was human nature, due to their negative caricature of the "typical welfare recipient" as lazy evil people who don't want to do anything for others. Basic human needs include dignity and social contact, and either work or community service can provide those.

Aha, I knew it, people are driven to do work by more than greed! (Could I get some links to this? It sounds like GREAT supporting evidence for my belief that anarchism could work...)

They've tried it multiple times over the last 20 years. here's an article about the latest attempt:
https://www.greenleft.org.au/content/work-dole-leaves-jobseekers-worse

Work for the Dole workers receive only Centrelink payments and travel allowance for participating in the program. When working for the maximum number of hours, they will work for less than the minimum wage. Newstart recipients will be working for $10 an hour while Youth Allowance recipients will be working for $5 to $8 an hour. The minimum wage is $16.87 an hour.

One of the most common arguments for Work for the Dole is that it benefits job-seekers because it improves employment outcomes.
...
The study showed that six months after starting Work for the Dole, 71.4% of participants were still unemployed, compared to 59.1% of non-participants. This gap began to slowly shrink so that by 12 months, the difference between the two groups’ continued unemployment had narrowed from 12.3% to 10.3%. 

So we have a situation where forcing 18-25 year olds (that's who gets Youth Allowance) to work for $5 an hour makes them less likely to seek out the minimum-wage $16 an hour jobs, than people who were just given money to live on without obligations. Clearly, the amount of money per hour worked isn't the main motivator.

[smjjames]

The fact that wages haven't increased in a long time (well, except for the CEOs  ) doesn't help things either.

[wierd]

No shit.

One of the reasons I want to see employment reform that only allows wages in the form of dollar bills.

Ceos get megabucks like that by exploiting capital gains, which is tax free.

Pay them in dollar bills, and lots of problems go away.

[smjjames]

Are you saying we need a $1 min wage? I'm not following with the pay in dollars, including CEOs. Do you mean paying in physical cash like in the era before credit cards?

Paying in physical cash didn't stop the moguls and tycoons of the Gilded Age.

[wierd]

Don't be thick.

Ceos take a big chunk of their pay as stocks and other options, which then grow via capital gains.

That payment method is tax free.

Make them take dollars (as in, currency, like everyone else), and now they have to pay income tax.

[smjjames]

They'll find a way to avoid even the income tax somehow, that's what CEOs do (maybe not ALL CEOs though), avoid taxes.

That should be made into a GEICO commercial somehow.

[Rolan7]

...Capital gains tax is a pretty serious thing...
I wouldn't be surprised if getting payed in those ways makes it easier to exploit some loophole, but it's certainly not so simple as capital gains being untaxed.

[wierd]

It is deferred until you remove it, allowing it to build as a multiplier.

They get paid X$ worth of stock, which is deferred. It grows 20% in 10 years. It is now (X+((X/10)*2) in value, which is further deferred as more stock, and it grows exponentially.

By the time they cash in the stock ( which they never do, they take the dividends), they have multiplied X many times, and have gotten way more money in the long run.

The end goal is to restrict the obscene wealth gap, and return some normalcy.

Insisting on cash payments greatly reduces the initial capital of the scheme, greatly diminishing their earnings.

[Reelya]

3) the article points out how much potential poverty there really is, very clearly, and how assistance there avoids income poverty. (Which you seem unable to grasp.)

No it doesn't. Here's your article again for rereference:
http://www.nccp.org/publications/pub_918.html

Asset Poverty and Debt Among Families with Children

Increasingly the significance of asset ownership among low-income families is being recognized.1 Assets such as savings and homeownership are vital components of a family’s economic security, along with income and human and social capital.2 In this report, we use the term “assets” to refer to financial and economic resources, not including human capital. Unlike labor market earnings, income generated from assets provides a cushion for families in case of job loss, illness, death of a parent, or even natural disaster.

that article points out how owning a house provides protection from slipping into poverty. The policy proposals at the end are all about expanding the welfare system to help more people. But that neither gets people off welfare or fixes the reasons people become poor and don't have assets.