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[Lord Shonus]

Corporations do not have the Eminent domain power. It is a power of the government. The fact that it is usually used for the sole benefit of corporations at their behest does not change that. If the government decided to eliminate the IRS and delegate tax collection to a company which then used taxation to line their own pockets, it would be still abuse of government power, because the government alone has the power of taxation.

Let me reiterate this, because you are the one that seems to be dense.

EMINENT DOMAIN IS A POWER OF THE GOVERNMENT, NO MATTER WHO IS BENEFITING FROM IT.

[Mego]

Corporations do not have the Eminent domain power. It is a power of the government. The fact that it is usually used for the sole benefit of corporations at their behest does not change that. If the government decided to eliminate the IRS and delegate tax collection to a company which then used taxation to line their own pockets, it would be still abuse of government power, because the government alone has the power of taxation.

Let me reiterate this, because you are the one that seems to be dense.

EMINENT DOMAIN IS A POWER OF THE GOVERNMENT, NO MATTER WHO IS BENEFITING FROM IT.

Let's not get this thread locked due to a flame war. Thanks.

[KaelGotDwarves]

I like how greatjustice first cherry picks information from the WHO report to back up his flawed argument and then argues that the WHO is a biased entity. Health care in more socialised countries are ranked higher than the USA. FACT. Okay then, just who do you suggest is better versed in world health than the World Health Organisation?

And lastly, you pull up the socialism version of godwining by bringing up flawed communism in the USSR. I might as well bash democracy because the Democratic People's Republic of Korea has democracy in their name.

Also, someone PMed me about your 'Libertarian' exploits in Simrepublic.

All in all, I'd like to thank you for clearing up the confusion of whether you were a troll or not. I will be ignoring your future posts and will invite others to do the same.

[SalmonGod]

And lastly, you pull up the socialism version of godwining by bringing up flawed communism in the USSR.

To be fair, he wasn't doing this seriously.  He was demonstrating how he believes others to be treating his arguments.  Whether that's true or not is an entirely other issue.

Honestly, GreatJustice doesn't strike me as a troll.  I'm sure he won't like this assessment, but it is in his defense.  He reads to me like someone who was heavily brainwashed through his childhood.  He was taught to believe certain things extremely dogmatically, and had his critical thinking skills thoroughly sabotaged.  He knows how to use the internet to look up information, but doesn't know how to patch it all together into a sensible worldview or formulate valid arguments.  It takes a lot of time and some gut-wrenching first-hand life experience for most people to grow out of this kind of training.

I could be wrong, but his disjointed patterns of thinking remind me very much of other people I've known who were simply raised to function that way.  They don't read like they're specifically tailored to cause flame wars, like most trolls do.  They're just frustrating.  So if he's a troll, he's not a very ambitious one.

[KaelGotDwarves]

He just cited the castlecoalition as his source on eminent domain in the same post as telling me that the World Health Organisation is biased. He's either completely devoid of the irony or something else I won't say.

Now I'm not saying that he's not sound in the head or brainwashed, salmongod, but his arguments would have more weight if they weren't slippery, irrelevant, and constantly contradicting each other.

[kaenneth]

I can live with eminent domain; if 99 out of 100 homeowners sold out their land the build a new mall that the whole town can use, and the 100th smack in the middle is holding out for 10x the value, or just being an old stubborn person... sucks, but it's essential.

Civil Forfeiture is what pisses me off.

http://www.drugtext.org/Crime-police-trafficking/presumed-guilty.html

[SalmonGod]

Now I'm not saying that he's not sound in the head or brainwashed, salmongod, but his arguments would have more weight if they weren't slippery, irrelevant, and constantly contradicting each other.

Of course, I'm not saying that bad critical thinking skills = mentally unsound.  Growing up in an extreme conservative environment in America just does this to people.  They're raised not only to argue, but to actually think in such a fashion.

[Techhead]

By the way, can we say that Godwin's Law covers bringing up Lenin/Stalin in discussions of modern socialism?

[SalmonGod]

By the way, can we say that Godwin's Law covers bringing up Lenin/Stalin in discussions of modern socialism?

It really should.  It's on the same level of memefication and is used in basically the same fashion.

[Capntastic]

"So when the Soviet Union collapsed under Yeltsin, when Yeltsin privatized every last thing, deregulated the markets in the process, and removed the social safety net in the process, why don't libertarians hold the period between 1990 and 1998 as the grand period of Russian development considering it aligns perfectly with libertarian advice?

If Libertarianism works, and Yeltsin did what libertarians demand a state should do, why don't libertarians hold this period up as a success story?

I mean, Russia during that period went from being communist to being an unregulated private market controlled place, so clearly libertarians should be looking at this place for guidance.

Is it because it's hard to use as support because of the soul crushing 70 percent poverty rate that took over (from the soviet 1989 high of 12 percent)?

Is it because wages, living standards, literacy standards, homeless standards, and the overall level of happiness was totally and nearly completely obliterated compared to communist Russia?

Why aren't libertarians shouting from the rooftops about the success of Yeltsin?

Why aren't libertarians screaming from the rooftops about the failure of Putin's social reforms regarding privatization? "

Free market capitalism won the cold war for the US because it infected Russia.

[GreatJustice]

Corporations do not have the Eminent domain power. It is a power of the government. The fact that it is usually used for the sole benefit of corporations at their behest does not change that. If the government decided to eliminate the IRS and delegate tax collection to a company which then used taxation to line their own pockets, it would be still abuse of government power, because the government alone has the power of taxation.

Let me reiterate this, because you are the one that seems to be dense.

EMINENT DOMAIN IS A POWER OF THE GOVERNMENT, NO MATTER WHO IS BENEFITING FROM IT.

This times 100.

If the government does something bad on behalf of a corporation, it is not suddenly the corporation doing the bad action, it is the government (which has that power in the first place).

I like how greatjustice first cherry picks information from the WHO report to back up his flawed argument and then argues that the WHO is a biased entity. Health care in more socialised countries are ranked higher than the USA. FACT. Okay then, just who do you suggest is better versed in world health than the World Health Organisation?

I like how you have not posted a single link, source, reference, and have literally paid not one iota of attention to my argument.  You haven't even linked to the WHO report you claim "proves me wrong" (though it has not a single connection to any of my arguments so far).

He just cited the castlecoalition as his source on eminent domain in the same post as telling me that the World Health Organisation is biased. He's either completely devoid of the irony or something else I won't say.

So you think there have been less cases of Eminent Domain seizure than provided? Do you have an alternative source?

The WHO is rather obviously not an unbiased source, especially if you  read some of what is ranked on the survey, but I'm not bothering to press that because it's a null point. Obviously, if (almost) every country in the world has socialized healthcare, then a survey of the highest quality healthcare will reveal the top countries to have... socialized healthcare!

And lastly, you pull up the socialism version of godwining by bringing up flawed communism in the USSR. I might as well bash democracy because the Democratic People's Republic of Korea has democracy in their name.

Did you seriously think I was arguing that?

... I really have nothing to say.

Also, someone PMed me about your 'Libertarian' exploits in Simrepublic.

Truly a relevant topic worth expansion upon in the American Election Megathread

[Owlbread]

I think political discussions on internet forums suffer when they become embroiled in such irritating jargon as Godwin's Law, Strawmanning, Cherry Picking, Trolling, Flame War and the like. I think if you actually refer to what these phrases mean - rather than saying "Dude you're strawmanning me quit it", how's about "your argument is fallacious because you're misrepresenting my position". My concern is that if you keep using the expression "strawmanning" you're going to end up with people who don't know what that word means and it will become corrupted and used for other inappropriate purposes, rather like the words "fascist" and "communist" for "totalitarian" and so on.

George Orwell's fifth rule: "(v) Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent."

[Sheb]

Lots of country don't have governmental healthcare system.

[Owlbread]

Lots of country don't have governmental healthcare system.

And lots of countries do, past and present.

[Sheb]

Yup. So it's significant than all the top ones are socialist.