Optimization of government, libertarianism, universal health

kultur
That was also one of Obama's favorite movies of the year.
kultur
A list of his favorite movies of the year was published.
kultur
I came upon it by accident.
kultur
He also liked blackkklansman
Death_Syn
i imagine the guy has okay taste in media
kultur
he does, really.
Death_Syn
i don't like his politics, but as far as I can tell, he's an okay human
kultur
I'm sure bathhouse barry really enjoyed stroking it to moonlight
Monfd
Death_Syn: What are three things you dislike about Obama's politics?
kultur
not like us, eh?
nomic has left IRC (Quit: Leaving)
Monfd
I think the most objectionable thing about Obama's politics was his drone war. For example, he had the US federal government denote all males aged 16-60 in entire regions as combatants based merely on their age and gender.
Monfd
This is a violation of restrictions on warfighting and should result in life in prison.
Monfd
It is hard to justify putting him in jail for those serious crimes, however, when he's still much more ethical than the typical American leader.
Death_Syn
1. universal health care, 2. failure to pull .us out of foreign entanglements (.iq, .af, .sy, etc) 3. continued government intervention in the economy
Monfd
Death_Syn: To clarify, you're against the concept of universal health care?
Monfd
2. I largely agree
Monfd
3. Are you libertarian?
Monfd
What we know of you would indicate you're probably a pretty strong libertarian.
Death_Syn
I'm against the concept of subsidized health care.  I'm fine with any who are able to pay being allowed to access it.
09:11 Monfd
I was a libertarian in my youth, and now a democratic socialist or libertarian socialist.
Death_Syn
i was fairly democratic socialist in my early youth, went a bit republican in my teens, then graduated to libertarianism
Monfd
Interesting.
Monfd
Are you a parent?
09:12 Monfd
Being a parent leads to significant political changes in many people.
Monfd
Universal health care seems like, to me, a central goal of government.
Monfd
I'd put it above national defense in some important ways.
Monfd
So, in some context, national defense is probably the primary goal of the state, as it allows the state to continue existing to pursue other goals.
Monfd
But that's primarily in context in which there are credible threats to the continued existence of the state from outside forces.
Monfd
That is generally not the case today as it was in the past, though, of course, threats continue to exist in some important ways.
Monfd
So, national defense -- a central libertarian value for the government -- is useful because...why? It allows us to pursue other noble goals, both as a people and as individuals.
Monfd
But if the society is pursuing unjust goals, I see little purpose in exalting the value of national defense to support such inequity.
Monfd
And so, in an important way, national defense is an important value only when the society itself is pursuing noble goals, i.e. it gains its value from them instead of vice versa as above.
Monfd
Being healthy, avoiding avoidable illnesses, avoiding the psychological trauma that comes from accidents to our family members and children seem like very nearly the most essential service a society should aim for.
Monfd
So, I a absolutely conceptualize universal health care as a central responsibility of any society, and the state should participate in that process when there are citizens without such access.
Monfd
Also, it has a very nice secondary effect of promoting some amount of equality in dignity and resources which helps stabilize the republic.
Monfd
Large inequalities in wealth or dignity tend to destabilize democracies/republics over time, leading to autocracy.
Monfd
That is one of my central criticisms of libertarianism -- it's built of somewhat reasonable first principles without concerning itself sufficiently with the evolution of the system instantiated by those seed values, and history shows that unwatched societies tend to devolve into tyrannies.
Monfd
Of course, over-managed societies can often devolve into tyrannies too, and so we're left with a extremely complex optimization problem nobody has yet been able to solve.