sprucevoid (u/sprucevoid)

sprucevoid commented on Scott Adams has died youtube.com/watch?v=Rs_Jr... · Posted by u/ekianjo

<<I posted

You posted a blog of some organization unhappy about the cuts. Not exactly a gold standard for unbiased opinions. YOu want to convince me? Do your own calculations. Show me your work. Show that you can think critically. Am I not seeing that now.

<< You jumped in with mumblings of some unspecified number of lost jobs and vague claims about said job losers demise and then one mean online comment to you.

So ... you can understand my perspective, but choose to minimize it. I guess its ok. At least you are honest about effectively saying 'anyone who complains about it is a loser'. I will admit that it does not sound like the best way to win hearts and minds, but what do I know.

I would like to say that you have achieved nothing by not convincing me, but you did manage to do something remarkable. You actually motivated me to vote for a republican this election cycle. I suppose I am no longer center.

sprucevoid · 2 months ago

You suppose

sprucevoid commented on Scott Adams has died youtube.com/watch?v=Rs_Jr... · Posted by u/ekianjo

A4ET8a8uTh0_v2 · 2 months ago

<< Those you would label "woke" are famously supporters of universal health care.

Here is a problem of sorts. Some of us happen to live in the real world. Our lives do not exactly depend on some imaginary future state we advocate for. As such, a threat to alter my habitat now is of bigger import as opposed to some potential future benefit. Can you understand that perspective?

And that is before I remember that 'your' ( quotation very much intended, because we both know it is not yours; you may not even know why you aligned with it ) side would not exactly be above, say, denying said universal healthcare to republicans..

<< No, wht you are doing is supporting an administration killing ~1,000,000 people << On the one hand ~1,000,000 deaths and on the other hand some people lost their jobs and you got a mean comment online?

Eh.. hyperbole will not get you far here. May I refer to you site FAQ? I can't tell if I am wasting my time with you or not.

sprucevoid · 2 months ago

> denying said universal healthcare to republicans

How many do you claim hold that view? Can you cite some prominent examples? I want health care for all, including you.

> hyperbole

I posted https://www.cgdev.org/blog/update-lives-lost-usaid-cuts "lives lost based on the decline in outlays (current spending) may be in the range of 500,000 to 1,000,000 and potential lives lost based on the decline in obligations (commitments to future spending) are between 670,000 and 1,600,000."

and asked for data on the original "balancing out claim". You jumped in with mumblings of some unspecified number of lost jobs and vague claims about said job losers demise and then one mean online comment to you. That's where we're at, that's the tally based on the data you provided.

sprucevoid commented on Scott Adams has died youtube.com/watch?v=Rs_Jr... · Posted by u/ekianjo

A4ET8a8uTh0_v2 · 2 months ago

Sure. People only lost their jobs and what not ( which in US means.. well, slow, and without health insurance, likely unpleasant demise ). Totally different. On this very forum, I had someone tell me in a very subtle way that it is a good idea that I stay quiet if I know what is good to me. But pendulum swings. It always does. Only difference is,we are forcing people to live up to the world they have ushered in. I hope you said thank you, because wokeness got you to this very spot.

sprucevoid · 2 months ago

On the one hand ~1,000,000 deaths and on the other hand some people lost their jobs and you got a mean comment online?

> lost their jobs ... which in US means ... slow, and without health insurance, likely unpleasant demise

Those you would label "woke" are famously supporters of universal health care. Universal as in would cover everyone including every single Jan 6 participant. On the one hand people striving for health care for all. On the other hand https://www.theguardian.com/business/2025/nov/20/hospitals-s...

> we are forcing people to live up to the world they have ushered in

No, wht you are doing is supporting an administration killing ~1,000,000 people and taking away health care from everyone, including people in the group you identify with.

sprucevoid commented on Scott Adams has died youtube.com/watch?v=Rs_Jr... · Posted by u/ekianjo

CaptWillard · 2 months ago

"We need to make it shameful to be bigoted again"

Interesting way to put it. For the past decade or so, many flavors of bigotry have been lauded and socially rewarded.

At the same time, many valid viewpoints and statements have been mislabeled as "bigotry" by the incurious and hivemind-compliant.

These things are balancing out lately, but quite a lot of damage was done.

sprucevoid · 2 months ago

> These things are balancing out lately

What measures and data do you base that claim on?

https://www.cgdev.org/blog/update-lives-lost-usaid-cuts "lives lost based on the decline in outlays (current spending) may be in the range of 500,000 to 1,000,000 and potential lives lost based on the decline in obligations (commitments to future spending) are between 670,000 and 1,600,000."

What is your best estimate of deaths due to "woke" or whatever you consider the scourge of the "past decade" to be?

How many visas revoked due to the holder being not woke enough? How many people were deported from the US for being insufficiently woke? And so on. "Woke" may not be what you meant. Whatever you meant, present your measure and data.

sprucevoid commented on The necessity of Nussbaum aeon.co/essays/why-readin... · Posted by u/rbanffy

nathan_compton · a year ago

I don't think we disagree. I object only to the delusion that there is something immutable, primary, or divine about the idea.

sprucevoid · a year ago

agree

sprucevoid commented on The necessity of Nussbaum aeon.co/essays/why-readin... · Posted by u/rbanffy

pdonis · a year ago

> If you think there's an inviolable set of Ur rights

I made no such claim. Of course any right can be violated, since rights aren't laws of physics, they're agreements that citizens of a civil society make with each other in order to be able to build wealth through cooperation, specialization, and trade. And people always have the ability to violate agreements. That doesn't mean they should, it just means they can. And of course there are always people who do. But that doesn't mean there has to be conflict between the rights themselves. It just means there are always at least some people who refuse to respect other people's rights, and we have to have some kind of plan for dealing with them.

> Your inability to articulate them cogently

I don't know where you're getting that from, since the old saying I mentioned already contains the basic answer: life, liberty, property. (I might also add the pursuit of happiness, from the Declaration of Independence.) But it's true that it's easy to misunderstand what those rights mean, particularly "liberty", and to think that they must be in conflict because, for example, my "liberty" has to include the right to take your life if I feel like it. But that's nonsense, and there is plenty of literature in philosophy, ethics, and political science expounding a proper concept of "liberty" that includes the obvious point that your right to liberty does not include violating the rights of others.

> Refusing to think critically

Is exactly the problem with people who can't understand how there can be a set of basic rights that aren't in conflict, because they can't, for example, imagine any concept of "liberty" that isn't "I can do whatever I feel like".

sprucevoid · a year ago

> a set of basic rights that aren't in conflict

Do you have a reply to the arguments in these linked texts that property is inherently coercive? https://mattbruenig.com/2015/10/01/capitalism-is-coercive-an...https://mattbruenig.com/2014/05/07/property-and-conflict/

sprucevoid commented on The necessity of Nussbaum aeon.co/essays/why-readin... · Posted by u/rbanffy

pdonis · a year ago

> Hard to tell what those people would report if we had a time machine and could go and ask them.

Yes. Which means it's impossible to use such reports to make general claims about what kind of government is better.

> if a system with a less extensive state that offers less of public services like schooling, infrastructure and health care is what is really better for people, why haven't people made it happen already?

Because "people" can't make it happen in societies where the government controls all those things. Governments have huge advantages over private providers in terms of protecting themselves from competition, without having to actually provide better service.

And even with all those advantages, people still do try to opt out. If government-run schools in the US, for example, were really so great, there wouldn't be so many people trying to get their kids into private schools, or home schooling. But because such people still have to pay taxes to support public schools, those options are only open to the affluent. And schemes like school vouchers to try to level the playing field somewhat never gain any real traction because politicians don't have to answer to the people as a whole, only to special interests--and teachers at government-run schools are a huge special interest.

> gradual steps towards such system should, if they are really an improvement for people, show up as higher scores in happiness surveys.

Only if they exist to be surveyed.

sprucevoid · a year ago

> it's impossible to use such reports to make general claims about what kind of government is better.

Across 1000 years of history, yes. But as already noted in those cases objective health/longevity differences can settle the issue. The report can then be used as a one source of evidence in comparison between the setup in countries today.

> Because "people" can't make it happen in societies where the government controls all those things.

People can vote for parties and candidates with an agenda to abolish public funding of education and infrastructure, but people choose not to. Very few vote for the libertarian party in the US for example.

> And even with all those advantages, people still do try to opt out.

In the countries that score best in terms of happiness and life satisfaction there is wide and strong popular support for an extensive welfare state with tax funding of schools, infrastructure and health care. Is your view that large majorities of people in those countries over decades are consistently mistaken about both their reported happiness and their support for their welfare state?

> If government-run schools in the US, for example, were really so great, there wouldn't be so many people trying to get their kids into private schools, or home schooling.

The US is not in the top of the report I cited and has many problems in the schooling system. One underpinning factor is segregation (ethnic and socioeconomic).

> school vouchers

... are tax funded, so is a variant of an extensive welfare state on the funding side. A drawback with such a mixed setup (public funding of private provision) for schooling is that it often requires even more regulation, oversight and middle men activities due to for profit and competition dynamics. The US health care system is a prime example of how cost-ineffective such systems can become compared to more straightforward public provision of health care in other countries.

> Only if they exist to be surveyed.

Are you saying you don't think there's any gradual differences in how extensive the welfare state is among the countries listed in the report?

sprucevoid commented on The necessity of Nussbaum aeon.co/essays/why-readin... · Posted by u/rbanffy

pdonis · a year ago

> What's your empirical evidence

What if you gave the same happiness survey to people in Saga period Iceland, which had no government at all?

Or to people in some of the American colonies in the late 1600s and early 1700s, such as Pennsylvania, which had governments, but those governments did virtually nothing?

The fact that all first world countries today have governments with vastly more power is no evidence at all that such a system is the best. All it means is that that's the only kind of system that's being evaluated for first world countries. It's easy to place first if you're the only one in the race.

sprucevoid · a year ago

Hard to tell what those people would report if we had a time machine and could go and ask them. I sure as hell wouldn't want to switch position with them. Would you? On objective measures of health, nutrition, longevity and prevalence of violence they would score much worse.

> The fact that all first world countries today have governments with vastly more power is no evidence at all that such a system is the best.

It is some evidence. Since if a system with a less extensive state that offers less of public services like schooling, infrastructure and health care is what is really better for people, why haven't people made it happen already? See here also my previous point that gradual steps towards such system should, if they are really an improvement for people, show up as higher scores in happiness surveys. Absence of that trend is some evidence against your claim.

sprucevoid commented on The necessity of Nussbaum aeon.co/essays/why-readin... · Posted by u/rbanffy

pdonis · a year ago

> empirical studies of life satisfaction and happiness

Are subjective. People's responses will be relative to what they're used to and what possibilities they see for their lives. These studies give no evidence at all that you could not have people whose subjective satisfaction and happiness was just as high, or higher, in a country with a minimal government along the lines I've described. They also give no evidence that such a country could not do as well or better in objective terms.

sprucevoid · a year ago

> Are subjective. People's responses will be relative to what they're used to and what possibilities they see for their lives.

People report how well they experience their lives as going. Not perfect, people can be mistaken and you might now better than them how happy they really/objectively are I suppose. But then again, do you have any better empirical evidence in support of what you proposed? If not how confident can you really be about it?

> These studies give no evidence at all that you could not have people whose subjective satisfaction and happiness was just as high, or higher, in a country with a minimal government along the lines I've described.

They don't prove that it is impossible, true, but if your proposed setup really was so much better wouldn't gradual steps towards it also be somewhat better in ways that made people report greater life satisfaction and happiness? And wouldn't then that show up in the ranking so that the top scoring countries would be those that come closest to (or least far from) your ideal? But that's not what we're seeing, the top scorers have the most extensive welfare states. That's some evidence against your claim.

> They also give no evidence that such a country could not do as well or better in objective terms.

What's "objective terms"? Do you mean longevity? Health outcomes? The top scoring countries in terms of happiness score very high there too.

Note also that you claimed that all systems going further than what you suggested would have "eternal conflict", which sounds really serious and awful and thus would realistically affect how people report how well their lives are going. Isn't the report evidence against that claim of yours?

sprucevoid commented on The necessity of Nussbaum aeon.co/essays/why-readin... · Posted by u/rbanffy

nathan_compton · a year ago

I'm frankly suspicious of the framing of human relations in terms of rights for a few reasons, the first and most important of which is that rights are imaginary things that never actually intercede in the world to make anything happen. Rights are always enforced/protected by human beings who also conceived of them. From this point of view believing in the God of Thunder is more reasonable than believing in "the right to bodily autonomy" because at least sometimes we actually hear thunder.

But furthermore, the framing of rights seems pretty flimsy. Some people like to assert that rights are god given, but people can neither agree whether god exists nor what rights any particular god would "give" if so, and so for a political body that wishes to confine itself to that which is collectively plausible, the only justification for rights left is that they promote the common good. But if that is the case, then we ought to be open to any sort of thing which promotes the common good and the discussion of negative or positive rights seems at best a useful shorthand for certain perspectives.

In practice rights are just whatever the masses can demand from the powerful and while it might be the case that imagining that they are god given or obvious in their nature is helpful from a like propagandist point of view, as a person who prefers to think clearly, I can't countenance the self delusion.

sprucevoid · a year ago

Legal rights can be seen as especially strong claims, with implications and interactions to be further specified in laws and regulation. What alternative do you think would be more useful arrange human relations, if not literally appeals to the God of Thunder?