ethics question you might face on interview trail

[Lucca]

Continued...


"The trouble is that positive rights infringe on negative rights (and sometimes other positive rights), while negative rights don't tend to infringe on any other rights. This is why first-generation rights are so widely accepted as inalienable, while second-generation and third-generation rights (which are generally positive rights) are far more debatable and controversial. Using your example, I certainly have a duty to respect your negative right to not be killed, by not killing you. That is an indisputable negative duty of mine. However, I believe you are begging the question when you say I have the positive duty to prevent others from killing you. This is the entire question we are discussing. Do I truly have a duty to stop others from killing you? At what cost to myself? At what level of risk to my own well-being must I intervene in a dangerous and violent situation? Forcing me to carry out my supposed positive duty of ensuring your safety directly infringes on my negative right to not be harmed myself."

I dont think I'm begging the question here. It is a given that any right, positive or negative, implies both positive and negative duties in order to continue existing. It is one of the foundational ideas of philosophy of rights and the actual arguments about it are very abstract but just think for a second: You do not have to violate someone's rights to be complicit in their violation. Like we would all probably agree that the people who were complicit with the Nazis were not violating the rights of the targeted populations, but they are in fact complicit in the violation of human rights and therefore were not acting morally. I really, really hate appealing to authority here but for the sake of time I'm just going to say that you will be very hard pressed to find any professional or scholar who doesn't agree that rights imply both negative and positive duties.

The rest of your paragraph refers to tactics but it doesnt invalidate a duty. Some people try to refer to these scenarios as heroic action, where duties to yourself and others come into conflict and you choose to sacrifice duties to yourself to some extent for the sake of your duty to others.

I think in general you have a problem with rights and duties coming to conflict. This is to be expected. If this was not the case, ethics would be over and nobody would argue about anything. Positive rights exist and are formulated because we believe there is a moral imperative for them to exist, because they serve our interests and advance humanity. It doesn't mean they aren't "really" rights. If you think the only "real" rights are natural rights then you are basically alone in that corner aside from the people who have drunk the kool-aid, suspended all analytical thought, and claim that the only thing that matters is the individual, etc. etc.

"Healthcare is absolutely something that can be stolen, and this happens all the time. If someone creates a new medication, which is one aspect of healthcare (in that it is an intervention against disease with the aim of preventing or alleviating suffering), that can be stolen. The intellectual property of researchers can be stolen such that they cannot profit off of their discoveries."

Again, I disagree with your definition of healthcare. The IP for a drug isn't "healthcare". It's the IP for a drug. Can it be stolen? I guess, yeah it can but it doesn't mean that "healthcare" can be stolen.

"The government can force healthcare providers to perform procedures without receiving compensation for their time, work, or expertise. This is all stealing. Perhaps morally justified, sure, but violation of negative rights nonetheless."

If someone receives care for free then the provider has agreed to the provide it for free. If someone receives care "for free" in the sense that they themselves dont pay for it, but somebody else does, that is not theft.

"When someone comes into the ER and cannot pay for the medications they receive, they are taking money from those who bought it.
"You say that "to have a right to healthcare means that a duty exists to initiate intervention when appropriate," but such a duty violates negative rights. How can you say "the physician is still compensated," when that is so often not the case? It is simply ignorant to say that "medications are not stolen, they are paid for even if they are free to the individual at the time of service," because someone is obviously paying for those medications, even if they don't want to. Whether tax money is taken from citizens who aren't benefiting from the medication, or whether the hospital is footing the bill for patients who don't pay what they're legally obligated to, the medication must be paid for and someone who doesn't want to pay will have money taken from them to cover the cost. That is theft, and a violation of their negative rights. Whenever someone gets something "for free," something is stolen from someone else. No free lunch. Whether that's moral or immoral is beside the point of rights violations."


No, they are taking medications from the ER. If healthcare is their right, the ER has a duty to provide it when appropriate. Somebody is paying for those medications down the line but that isn't theft either. If the cost is covered by raising prices across the board for people who can pay, then that is not theft. If the cost is covered by insurance providers increasing their premiums, then that is not theft. If you believe that is theft and you don't want your money to be "stolen" to pay for who people who can't pay then don't own insurance and pay straight cash. The second that money leaves your hands, it is not yours. The insurance providers and healthcare institutions will do as they see fit with it. Whether or not their actions are appropriate is a separate question, but it is not theft. Theft would be someone can't pay for medications, I steal your wallet and make you pay for it. Whenever you pay for anything you are paying in some part for things that are of no benefit to you personally (at least not immediately) like corporate tax rate, health insurance for a company's employees, enough to pay employee factories, an increased rate to afford third party consultants who analyze the business' supply chain, a fund for executive severance packages, etc. etc. etc. Every transaction ever would be theft in that case, and it is just absurd to even suggest such a thing.

I really, really don't want to address the "taxation is theft" line of argument either but in one line: no it isn't, society is founded on a social contract of which taxation is a part, it is not theft simply because you declare it to be so, any money you do earn within a society is only possible because of the structure of the society which you agree to maintain through a variety of mechanisms. Taxation is the membership fee for participating in society and enjoying its benefits. Whether or not we should fund certain things and to what extent, again, is a separate argument but the actual mechanism of how funds are raised, taxation is not theft.

---

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[aalamruad]

I didn't read every single word of this novel of a post, but have you ever lived in poverty? The single moms or even just single people living below the poverty line are not living with the same quality of life as an entire culture living in "poverty" outside of society. That's an extremely immature viewpoint that smacks of someone who has never had to choose between dinner for yourself or dinner for your kids (not really a choice, and thank God I've not been in that situation with my kids; however, I was poor and living in poverty when I was single for a few tight years).

You don't seem to appreciate the difference between absolute and relative poverty, evidenced by your referencing of the poverty line. The poverty line is an arbitrary designation of relative poverty, not absolute poverty. We're discussing absolute poverty here, and that's what I believe I clearly stated in my post.

To answer your question about my personal experiences with poverty (which are irrelevant anyways, but I'll answer since you seem to be hung up on it), I have lived in relative poverty in the US, much of my family continues to live in relative poverty, and I have extensively worked with groups of people who are both relatively and absolutely impoverished both inside the US and in other countries. Those experiences don't influence my opinion of the natural state of humankind throughout the past 200,000 years. Completely unrelated.

To clarify the dispute between you and @Hierophant , s/he had it right. I see what you're saying about the added difficulties of being impoverished in a successful society, but again you're comparing absolute poverty to relative poverty. You said that it's probably worse to be a single mother with a minimum wage job in America than to live in an absolutely impoverished society. Really? I think you'd rather raise a child in America on $10k/year where at least you can provide your child with food, water, and shelter, education, and healthcare than raise your child in a place where childbirth is extremely dangerous, food is incredibly scarce, and all water sources are contaminated in life-threatening ways. I'd argue that you're actually the one who doesn't understand the realities of poverty in other countries if you think those people are better off than Americans who have access to free education, free food, high-quality hospitals even without being able to pay, etc. But back to the main point you two disagreed on: absolute poverty is very similar in America and in third-world countries. By this I simply mean that both cases are similar to the ways humans have lived for the past 200,000 years in that it is difficult to access food, water, shelter, basic healthcare, etc. That is the only argument I'm making. If you want to debate the additional sociological impacts of being in an industrialized nation i.e. stigma/discrimination/whatever, that's fine, but again, it's beside the main point that the lives of absolutely impoverished individuals are fundamentally the same everywhere as a result of the difficulties of meeting basic human needs of survival.

 

[Matthew9Thirtyfive]

You don't seem to appreciate the difference between absolute and relative poverty, evidenced by your referencing of the poverty line. The poverty line is an arbitrary designation of relative poverty, not absolute poverty. We're discussing absolute poverty here, and that's what I believe I clearly stated in my post.

Fair enough, but it seemed to me that you stated absolute poverty in a city is the same as absolute poverty in the bush. Is that not what you meant?

To answer your question about my personal experiences with poverty (which are irrelevant anyways, but I'll answer since you seem to be hung up on it), I have lived in relative poverty in the US, much of my family continues to live in relative poverty, and I have extensively worked with groups of people who are both relatively and absolutely impoverished both inside the US and in other countries. Those experiences don't influence my opinion of the natural state of humankind throughout the past 200,000 years. Completely unrelated.

Considering I made one passing comment about your experiences, I'd hardly say I'm hung up on it.

To clarify the dispute between you and @Hierophant , s/he had it right. I see what you're saying about the added difficulties of being impoverished in a successful society, but again you're comparing absolute poverty to relative poverty. You said that it's probably worse to be a single mother with a minimum wage job in America than to live in an absolutely impoverished society. Really?

That's actually not what I said. I said they are different, not that one is worse. Hierophant specifically asked me to choose the worse situation. I said it would probably be worse to live in a city with no food, inadequate resources, and children, but that such a comparison isn't very good because situations change and there are too many variables.

I think you'd rather raise a child in America on $10k/year where at least you can provide your child with food, water, and shelter, education, and healthcare than raise your child in a place where childbirth is extremely dangerous, food is incredibly scarce, and all water sources are contaminated in life-threatening ways.

Sure would. Never said anything to the contrary.

I'd argue that you're actually the one who doesn't understand the realities of poverty in other countries if you think those people are better off than Americans who have access to free education, free food, high-quality hospitals even without being able to pay, etc.

You guys love straw men don't you? Where did I say that? I specifically compared poverty in a developed or developing country to an isolated society (which was your comparison). I may not have worked extensively with the impoverished like you, but I've been on deployment to extremely poor, extremely ****ty countries where the poor are intentionally kept poor and made to subsist on extremely poor quality food with no access to healthcare. No where in my posts did I ever say that was better than America.

You either need to work on your reading comprehension or learn what a straw man is. Unless it's intentional, which I'm starting to think it might be.

But back to the main point you two disagreed on: absolute poverty is very similar in America and in third-world countries. By this I simply mean that both cases are similar to the ways humans have lived for the past 200,000 years in that it is difficult to access food, water, shelter, basic healthcare, etc. That is the only argument I'm making. If you want to debate the additional sociological impacts of being in an industrialized nation i.e. stigma/discrimination/whatever, that's fine, but again, it's beside the main point that the lives of absolutely impoverished individuals are fundamentally the same everywhere as a result of the difficulties of meeting basic human needs of survival.

You think living on the streets is similar to living the way humans did 200,000 years ago? Now I know you're full of crap. That was the argument I took issue with, and I explained why they are different. You then created a bunch of straw men and had your way with them. If you would like to actually explain why you think a person living 200,000 years ago is like the homeless guys in OB, I'm ready to listen.

Edited to say: I don't want to derail the thread anymore. I will gladly continue this in a PM or another thread though. It's an interesting topic.

 

[wizzed101]

@Matthew9Thirtyfive Living in the street does not constitute absolute poverty. I don't think there is such a thing as absolute poverty in America. Poverty is about accessibility not affordability. In a sense, he is right: a theoretical case of absolute poverty should be the same everywhere, by definition.

Keep fighting the commies @walloobi

 

[Matthew9Thirtyfive]

@Matthew9Thirtyfive Living in the street does not constitute absolute poverty. I don't think there is such a thing as absolute poverty in America. Poverty is about accessibility not affordability. In a sense, he is right: a theoretical case of absolute poverty should be the same everywhere, by definition.

Yeah, I conceded that. But if you're going to compare apples to oranges, you can't pretend they are the same. A man living in the bush just isn't the same as a man living on the street.

But also:

But back to the main point you two disagreed on: absolute poverty is very similar in America and in third-world countries. By this I simply mean that both cases are similar to the ways humans have lived for the past 200,000 years in that it is difficult to access food, water, shelter, basic healthcare, etc.

That's what I was arguing against.

Keep fighting the commies @walloobi

I'm no red!

 

[aalamruad]

Fair enough, but it seemed to me that you stated absolute poverty in a city is the same as absolute poverty in the bush. Is that not what you meant?



Considering I made one passing comment about your experiences, I'd hardly say I'm hung up on it.



That's actually not what I said. I said they are different, not that one is worse. Hierophant specifically asked me to choose the worse situation. I said it would probably be worse to live in a city with no food, inadequate resources, and children, but that such a comparison isn't very good because situations change and there are too many variables.



Sure would. Never said anything to the contrary.



You guys love straw men don't you? Where did I say that? I specifically compared poverty in a developed or developing country to an isolated society (which was your comparison). I may not have worked extensively with the impoverished like you, but I've been on deployment to extremely poor, extremely ****ty countries where the poor are intentionally kept poor and made to subsist on extremely poor quality food with no access to healthcare. No where in my posts did I ever say that was better than America.

You either need to work on your reading comprehension or learn what a straw man is. Unless it's intentional, which I'm starting to think it might be.



You think living on the streets is similar to living the way humans did 200,000 years ago? Now I know you're full of crap. That was the argument I took issue with, and I explained why they are different. You then created a bunch of straw men and had your way with them. If you would like to actually explain why you think a person living 200,000 years ago is like the homeless guys in OB, I'm ready to listen.

Fair enough, but it seemed to me that you stated absolute poverty in a city is the same as absolute poverty in the bush. Is that not what you meant?
They're the same on the fundamental level of not having adequate access to necessary resources to sustain human life. Different in other ways, but similar to our 10,000 year old ancestors in the constant pursuit of not dying.

Considering I made one passing comment about your experiences, I'd hardly say I'm hung up on it.
It wasn't "one passing comment." You repeatedly questioned my experiences and maturity:
-"but have you ever lived in poverty?"
-"That's an extremely immature viewpoint that smacks of someone who has never had to choose between dinner for yourself or dinner for your kids"
-"I think the view that a person living in squalor in the US is equal to living in an isolated society is immature, because it says to me that the person has never seen the realities of living in squalor."
-"I think his argument is extremely academic and removed from reality."

I don't have much of a problem with you making these claims, because you did so before I explained my personal experiences with poverty, but they're ad hominem arguments nonetheless.

That's actually not what I said. I said they are different, not that one is worse. Hierophant specifically asked me to choose the worse situation. I said it would probably be worse to live in a city with no food, inadequate resources, and children, but that such a comparison isn't very good because situations change and there are too many variables.

You said "But I'd say the society where everyone shares the same quality of life and works towards the survival of the population probably has it better than the mom trying to take care of her kids on a minimum wage job." I'm not creating any straw man arguments here. It sounds like you're saying an absolutely impoverished society that works together has it better than a relatively impoverished single mother in an industrialized nation. My apologies if I'm misinterpreting. Please clarify.

Sure would. Never said anything to the contrary.

Yes, you did. You said "forced to choose, I'd say the mother has it worse." Again, please clarify if I'm misunderstanding, but again it sounds like you're saying that an entire community of people in absolute poverty is better off than an individual in relative poverty who is generally alone in her struggles. My apologies if I'm interpreting that wrong.

You guys love straw men don't you? Where did I say that? I specifically compared poverty in a developed or developing country to an isolated society (which was your comparison). I may not have worked extensively with the impoverished like you, but I've been on deployment to extremely poor, extremely ****ty countries where the poor are intentionally kept poor and made to subsist on extremely poor quality food with no access to healthcare. No where in my posts did I ever say that was better than America.

Relax with the "straw man" claims. No one's trying to do that. When you say "minimum wage," we assume that you're referring to someone living in America in relative poverty. I'll wait for your clarification.

You either need to work on your reading comprehension or learn what a straw man is. Unless it's intentional, which I'm starting to think it might be.

If there are any straw man arguments going on, I assure you they're unintentional, and probably a result of your vague posts more than anything.

@Lucca thanks for the post, I'll respond when I have a bit more time later today.

 

[Lucca]

Fair enough, but it seemed to me that you stated absolute poverty in a city is the same as absolute poverty in the bush. Is that not what you meant?
They're the same on the fundamental level of not having adequate access to necessary resources to sustain human life. Different in other ways, but similar to our 10,000 year old ancestors in the constant pursuit of not dying.

Considering I made one passing comment about your experiences, I'd hardly say I'm hung up on it.
It wasn't "one passing comment." You repeatedly questioned my experiences and maturity:
-"but have you ever lived in poverty?"
-"That's an extremely immature viewpoint that smacks of someone who has never had to choose between dinner for yourself or dinner for your kids"
-"I think the view that a person living in squalor in the US is equal to living in an isolated society is immature, because it says to me that the person has never seen the realities of living in squalor."
-"I think his argument is extremely academic and removed from reality."

I don't have much of a problem with you making these claims, because you did so before I explained my personal experiences with poverty, but they're ad hominem arguments nonetheless.

That's actually not what I said. I said they are different, not that one is worse. Hierophant specifically asked me to choose the worse situation. I said it would probably be worse to live in a city with no food, inadequate resources, and children, but that such a comparison isn't very good because situations change and there are too many variables.

You said "But I'd say the society where everyone shares the same quality of life and works towards the survival of the population probably has it better than the mom trying to take care of her kids on a minimum wage job." I'm not creating any straw man arguments here. It sounds like you're saying an absolutely impoverished society that works together has it better than a relatively impoverished single mother in an industrialized nation. My apologies if I'm misinterpreting. Please clarify.

Sure would. Never said anything to the contrary.

Yes, you did. You said "forced to choose, I'd say the mother has it worse." Again, please clarify if I'm misunderstanding, but again it sounds like you're saying that an entire community of people in absolute poverty is better off than an individual in relative poverty who is generally alone in her struggles. My apologies if I'm interpreting that wrong.

You guys love straw men don't you? Where did I say that? I specifically compared poverty in a developed or developing country to an isolated society (which was your comparison). I may not have worked extensively with the impoverished like you, but I've been on deployment to extremely poor, extremely ****ty countries where the poor are intentionally kept poor and made to subsist on extremely poor quality food with no access to healthcare. No where in my posts did I ever say that was better than America.

Relax with the "straw man" claims. No one's trying to do that. When you say "minimum wage," we assume that you're referring to someone living in America in relative poverty. I'll wait for your clarification.

You either need to work on your reading comprehension or learn what a straw man is. Unless it's intentional, which I'm starting to think it might be.

If there are any straw man arguments going on, I assure you they're unintentional, and probably a result of your vague posts more than anything.

@Lucca thanks for the post, I'll respond when I have a bit more time later today.

no worries it takes a long time to write these up

 

[Vladimir7]

My problem here is that no one seems to be putting forth their idea of a solution for Healthcare in America that is feasible under the current system. More specifically a way to ensure that issues like paying for bone marrow donations are fixed.

Does anyone have an idea on what a good solution would be??

 

[Vladimir7]

And @Lucca , i wouldn't necessarily equate being american = knowing about objectivism. In N= my friends, a solid amount of them don't know or have very little knowledge of what objectivism is, or who Ayn Rand is.

Since you do know however, what are your thoughts on it/ her views then?

 

[Lucca]

My problem here is that no one seems to be putting forth their idea of a solution for Healthcare in America that is feasible under the current system. More specifically a way to ensure that issues like paying for bone marrow donations are fixed.

Does anyone have an idea on what a good solution would be??

I think there was a pretty good discussion on the first page of potential solutions

And @Lucca , i wouldn't necessarily equate being american = knowing about objectivism. In N= my friends, a solid amount of them don't know or have very little knowledge of what objectivism is, or who Ayn Rand is.

Since you do know however, what are your thoughts on it/ her views then?

A fish might not know what water is, doesn't change the fact that it surrounds them. Objectivism and Ayn Rand were taught in my high school, at least. There are objectivist groups on campus. Sometimes I go to their debates out of morbid curiosity. One bore the excellent title, "Does inequality exist?" where one of our Econ profs who studies inequality answered "yes" and then a finance prof answered "no". Most people in the room at the end still sided with "no it does not exist". Good times.

To be blunt, I think Objectivism is a load of crap and I think Ayn Rand was insane. Even as a writer her books are not very good and the philosophy itself is crude and doesn't make any sense even on its own terms. There's a reason that the only place where you really find objectivism having a very strong foothold is in institutions whose only purpose is to advance the interests of particularly the groups and individuals who benefit from its exaltations and whose enemies lose out as a result of its application. Its continued popularity is sustained almost entirely by those groups and individuals, it certainly isn't advanced by scholarly consensus or reasoned debate. In fact, the only place where you can even find it taken seriously is probably the United States and maybe the United Kingdom, maybe. For all of its talk about "facing reality boldly" and radical self-interest and objectivity, it is absolutely not objective, it is cowardly in the sense that it encourages people to shirk away any consideration of actually sustaining a community and any duties or responsibilities which that might entail. It's foundation is based on a tautology (reality is reality; in other words, there is no point in considering how reality could be any different than it might be at any particular time, proposition doesnt even make any sense), it's argument for morals is that the only point of morality and ethics is to elucidate man's own self-interests which is just a jargon use of the term morality, basically it just means there is no morality. A society based on radical self-interest doesn't make any sense whatsoever, it certainly isn't moral, and it could be argued that its only result would be absolute destruction.

One essay to consider, tangentially, on this matter is "The Iks" by Lewis Thomas from The Lives of a Cell

"
...I have a theory, then. The Iks have gone crazy.

The solitary Ik, isolated in the ruins of an exploded culture, has built a new defense for himself. If you live in an unworkable society you can make up one of your own, and this is what the Iks have done. Each Ik has become a group, a one-man tribe on its own, a constituency.

Now everything falls into place. This is why they do seem, after all, vaguely familiar to all of us. We’ve seen them before.

This is precisely the way groups of one size or another, ranging from committees to nations, behave. It is, of course, this aspect of humanity that has lagged behind the rest of evolution, and this is why the Ik seems so primitive. In his absolute selfishness, his incapacity to give anything away, no matter what, he is a successful committee. When he stands at the door of his hut, shouting insults at his neighbors in a loud harangue, he is city addressing another city.

Cities have all the Ik characteristics. They defecate on doorsteps, in rivers and lakes, their own or anyone else’s. They leave rubbish. They detest all neighboring cities, give nothing away. They even build institutions for deserting elders out of sight.

Nations are the most Ik-like of all. No wonder the Iks seem familiar. For total greed, capacity, heartlessness, and irresponsibility there is nothing to match a nation. Nations, by law, are solitary, self-centered, withdrawn into themselves. There is no such thing as affection between nations, and certainly no nation ever loved another. They bawl insults from their doorsteps, defecate into whole oceans, snatch all the food, survive by detestation, take joy in the bad luck of others, celebrate the death of others, live for the death of others..."

 

[Vladimir7]

Hope you saw my second question.

 

[Lucca]

Hope you saw my second question.

responded in an edit

 

[Vladimir7]

I think there was a pretty good discussion on the first page of potential solutions



A fish might not know what water is, doesn't change the fact that it surrounds them. Objectivism and Ayn Rand were taught in my high school, at least. There are objectivist groups on campus. Sometimes I go to their debates out of morbid curiosity. One bore the excellent title, "Does inequality exist?" where one of our Econ profs who studies inequality answered "yes" and then a finance prof answered "no". Most people in the room at the end still sided with "no it does not exist". Good times.

To be blunt, I think Objectivism is a load of crap and I think Ayn Rand was insane. Even as a writer her books are not very good and the philosophy itself is crude and doesn't make any sense even on its own terms. There's a reason that the only place where you really find objectivism having a very strong foothold is in institutions whose only purpose is to advance the interests of particularly the groups and individuals who benefit from its exaltations and whose enemies lose out as a result of its application. Its continued popularity is sustained almost entirely by those groups and individuals, it certainly isn't advanced by scholarly consensus or reasoned debate. In fact, the only place where you can even find it taken seriously is probably the United States and maybe the United Kingdom, maybe. For all of its talk about "facing reality boldly" and radical self-interest and objectivity, it is absolutely not objective, it is cowardly in the sense that it encourages people to shirk away any consideration of actually sustaining a community and any duties or responsibilities which that might entail. It's foundation is based on a tautology (reality is reality; in other words, there is no point in considering how reality could be any different than it might be at any particular time, proposition doesnt even make any sense), it's argument for morals is that the only point of morality and ethics is to elucidate man's own self-interests which is just a jargon use of the term morality, basically it just means there is no morality. A society based on radical self-interest doesn't make any sense whatsoever, it certainly isn't moral, and it could be argued that its only result would be absolute destruction.

One essay to consider, tangentially, on this matter is "The Iks" by Lewis Thomas from The Lives of a Cell

"
...I have a theory, then. The Iks have gone crazy.

The solitary Ik, isolated in the ruins of an exploded culture, has built a new defense for himself. If you live in an unworkable society you can make up one of your own, and this is what the Iks have done. Each Ik has become a group, a one-man tribe on its own, a constituency.

Now everything falls into place. This is why they do seem, after all, vaguely familiar to all of us. We’ve seen them before.

This is precisely the way groups of one size or another, ranging from committees to nations, behave. It is, of course, this aspect of humanity that has lagged behind the rest of evolution, and this is why the Ik seems so primitive. In his absolute selfishness, his incapacity to give anything away, no matter what, he is a successful committee. When he stands at the door of his hut, shouting insults at his neighbors in a loud harangue, he is city addressing another city.

Cities have all the Ik characteristics. They defecate on doorsteps, in rivers and lakes, their own or anyone else’s. They leave rubbish. They detest all neighboring cities, give nothing away. They even build institutions for deserting elders out of sight.

Nations are the most Ik-like of all. No wonder the Iks seem familiar. For total greed, capacity, heartlessness, and irresponsibility there is nothing to match a nation. Nations, by law, are solitary, self-centered, withdrawn into themselves. There is no such thing as affection between nations, and certainly no nation ever loved another. They bawl insults from their doorsteps, defecate into whole oceans, snatch all the food, survive by detestation, take joy in the bad luck of others, celebrate the death of others, live for the death of others..."

Well for one, I agree that Objectivism has a lot of flaws, and so does she. My personal belief is that there needs to be a balance, but a balance favoring freedom of the individual not altruism. Take the United States for example, a lot of its principles are based on self interest, but it hasn't been destroyed yet. In fact, I argue it's the opposite. That's because it thrives on capitalistic ideals. The notion that there is a free market, but it's regulated. Allowing people to pursue their self-interests allows them to succeed immensely... And while I do believe there is definitely inequality in all countries of this world (It's absurd imo that certain people think there isn't), we can't just start taking things from people and distributing it out to society just for the sake of equality. That act itself counters the premise of equality in alot of scenarios.

Basically: Capitalism, not Communism, makes the world a better place.

 

[Lucca]

Well for one, I agree that Objectivism has a lot of flaws, and so does she. My personal belief is that there needs to be a balance, but a balance favoring freedom of the individual not altruism. Take the United States for example, a lot of its principles are based on self interest, but it hasn't been destroyed yet. In fact, I argue it's the opposite. That's because it thrives on capitalistic ideals. The notion that there is a free market, but it's regulated. Allowing people to pursue their self-interests allows them to succeed immensely... And while I do believe there is definitely inequality in all countries of this world (It's absurd imo that certain people think there isn't), we can't just start taking things from people and distributing it out to society just for the sake of equality. That act itself counters the premise of equality in alot of scenarios.

Basically: Capitalism, not Communism, makes the world a better place.

The question is not whether self-interest is good or bad, the question is how self-interest functions in the context of a broader society. With no checks, power and capital are used to exploit others and what you get is a divided society where some people are very very free and some people are really really not. This is more than just "regulating" capitalism. Capitalism can't exist without this exploitation. For one, neither laissez-faire capitalism or communism has ever existed on this Earth. The US is not based on free market principles. It is a state-capitalist economy where industry is subsidized heavily by the public, with no control over production or the wealth it generates and most of the profits are fed entirely into private hands. I agree that we shouldn't just take things from people. The biggest way we could stop taking things from people is by not preventing democracy at every single opportunity so that we can maintain control over other people's resources and using force and violence to ensure that a status quo where part of the world is essentially just a resource bin for another part of the world to consume continues. This is even further off topic though, if you want to discuss it, feel free to PM.

 

[redferrari]

As long as alcoholics can be paid to "donate" (sell) plasma, I think that someone willing to go through the process should absolutely have the opportunity to be paid, although I personally wouldn't accept payment. Altruism in its purest form is rare, and in this day and age, people expect something in return for doing good for others. It's frightening to think that way, but it's reality.

 

[Vladimir7]

Altruism in its purest form is rare, and in this day and age, people expect something in return for doing good for others. It's frightening to think that way, but it's reality.

Well yeah, sadly, people tend to do their best when they are rewarded...

 

[YoungDoc25]

As long as alcoholics can be paid to "donate" (sell) plasma, I think that someone willing to go through the process should absolutely have the opportunity to be paid, although I personally wouldn't accept payment. Altruism in its purest form is rare, and in this day and age, people expect something in return for doing good for others. It's frightening to think that way, but it's reality.

I'd rather see those handouts go away and see discounts applied to their healthcare costs.

 

[Dr. Trenb]

I would only counter that I think philosophy should be informed by the empirical realities on the ground. As several posters have pointed out, it is certainly conceivable that legalisation of bone marrow for sale could have morally and socially undesirable outcomes.

I find your attitude on this issue similar to the drug war proponents.
It is absolutely conceivable that immoral outcomes might arise from my stance but they are nevertheless subjective.

I understand that the aforementioned statement carries value judgements, but I ask it be considered in the abstract (e.g. there are undesirable outcomes that some would agree upon, and they could arise with legalisation). This is true regardless of how we believe it should work.

We both agree on allowing the individual to give (assuming you support organ donation) so the act itself is not the problem. Yet, my stand on the freedom to choose whether to donate or sell is not considered in the abstract?

I apologize it took me few days to respond. I have been quite busy.

 

[Dr. Trenb]

For the sake of debate, where do you think "natural rights" come from?

Irrelevant where they come from.

What gives you the impression that there's anything natural at all about human rights?

By natural I mean you are, and every other human being, is born with them. A group of other beings of your species, can't grant or deny you freedom to blab your mouth. They can grant you health care, but that is at the expense of someone else's time/effort.

Religious influence aside, they're actually an entirely human construct.

Everything is human construct.

And given that rights and ethics are human constructs, who are you to say that it isn't society's (or government's) place to make regulations or legislation regarding ethics and morality? Who cares that morals are relative, if they can be regulated in ways that produce happiness/safety/cooperation/etc which benefit large groups of people?

Because who are you to coerce me into doing something I do not believe in? No society "produces happiness" with coercion.

 

[Lawpy]

Everything is human construct.

Define "everything". Just a bit confused here.

 

[JJRousseau]

I find the talk of natural right and your assertion that:

Everything is human construct.

to be a rather inconsistent philosophy in terms of basic logic.

The assertion of human beings have a natural right that cannot be taken or given by any species, yet everything is a human construct... And thus, there is a contradiction.

 

[To be MD]

This morning I watched a well made, short film titled Everything. It is 16 minutes that raises an important question about bone marrow donation. http://www.everything.movie/

Should bone marrow donors be paid?

Discuss.

@LizzyM ,

As an adcom, is there a "danger" of an applicant who communicates (as Vlad stated on the first page) saying that this woman's actions were reasonable given the circumstances?

I am not speaking of the doctor's responsibilities; I am wondering if it is a "red flag" for an applicant to say that Kohliberg's stages of moral reasoning (i.e., pre-conventional, conventional, and post-conventional levels of morality) are completely valid and a good starting point for approaching ethical issues.

In short, is it "bad" to say that someone is in the right to do something illegal for a higher purpose (e.g., the mother breaking the law in order to try to guarantee her daughter's survival)?
----

For those of you not in the know of Kohilerg or the Heinz Dilemma, moral reasoning boils down to three stages, each higher than the next:
1) Pre-conventional: consequences & punishment/rule following
2) Conventional: social order (e.g., the law) & established norms
3) Post-conventional: individual judgment (e.g., saving a life > following the 'rules') & universal principles of humanism

 

[LizzyM]

@LizzyM ,

As an adcom, is there a "danger" of an applicant who communicates (as Vlad stated on the first page) saying that this woman's actions were reasonable given the circumstances?

I am not speaking of the doctor's responsibilities; I am wondering if it is a "red flag" for an applicant to say that Kohliberg's stages of moral reasoning (i.e., pre-conventional, conventional, and post-conventional levels of morality) are completely valid and a good starting point for approaching ethical issues.

In short, is it "bad" to say that someone is in the right to do something illegal for a higher purpose (e.g., the mother breaking the law in order to try to guarantee her daughter's survival)?
----

For those of you not in the know of Kohilerg or the Heinz Dilemma, moral reasoning boils down to three stages, each higher than the next:
1) Pre-conventional: consequences & punishment/rule following
2) Conventional: social order (e.g., the law) & established norms
3) Post-conventional: individual judgment (e.g., saving a life > following the 'rules') & universal principles of humanism

I have no experience with regard to how an adcom interpretes the response to a question of this sort so don't ask my opinion.

 

[Vladimir7]

@Goro @gyngyn thoughts on this?

 

[Goro]

Thoughts on what?

@Goro @gyngyn thoughts on this?

 

[aalamruad]

@Lucca *Whole post quoted in blue below*

So let's pick this apart. Your first claim is that the circumstances of how absolute poverty is created are unimportant because the material conditions can be identical for two groups with different circumstances, namely one which is poor because of inequitable distribution of resources and another because there are no resources to begin with. Furthermore, the second claim is that the latter case is "nature-made". I disagree.

I believe you may have missed my point, which is actually quite benign. I don’t think the circumstances of how absolute poverty (which I’ll refer to as “poverty” from here on, since relative poverty is obviously beside the crux of our discussion) is created are morally unimportant at all. This is evidenced by my previous post where I said it would indeed be immoral to refrain from helping an impoverished child if you had the ability to provide assistance. All I claimed was the quality of life of an impoverished individual is fundamentally the same in all circumstances, in that they struggle to obtain food, water, shelter, etc. This is not a moral argument. It is an argument that the definition of poverty does not change with changing surroundings, which isn’t really even an argument at all. You’re absolutely correct that new moral questions are raised when surroundings change, but this is unrelated to the nature of humankind. Perhaps I should define “nature” even more precisely. When I say “nature,” I mean that humans have been living in poverty for nearly 200,000 years, and that is what I consider to be the natural state of man. When a child is born to an impoverished mother in America, the fundamental struggles of that child and mother are similar to the fundamental struggles that a mother and child faced fifteen millennia ago. In that sense, and only in that sense, the conditions of the modern-day impoverished mother and child are initially born from the nature that is the human struggle to survive. Immediately thereafter, moral questions are obviously posed to surrounding individuals who could help the mother and child overcome the nature of the human struggle to survive, but I am simply saying that the poverty they face is nature-made because it is the default human condition, and then man-maintained through lack of immediate intervention. Again, I’m not making a moral argument here. I think we agree on the moral obligations of surrounding individuals to help, but disagree on the semantics of “made” vs. “maintained.” My genuine apologies if I’ve wasted your time with a semantics debate, or if I misinterpreted Mandela’s quote.

The circumstances matter because the circumstances determine the actual choices available in a particular scenario. The existence of this choice characterizes the problem as a moral one. Without choice, there cannot be a moral question. Given absolute poverty in a society is a result of inequitable distribution, there are a variety of choices. Some of those choices eliminate absolute poverty, others do not, others alleviate it but do not eliminate it, others exacerbate it. My argument is that the best moral choice is the one which eliminates absolute poverty.

Agreed on all accounts, assuming you use “equitable distribution” to mean “fair distribution” rather than “distribution that leads to equity.” I much prefer equality to equity, so if you truly mean to suggest we strive for equity, we disagree.

If it is actually the case that no resources exist or are able to be created to eliminate absolute poverty, then there is moral question because there is no choice to begin with. It has nothing to do with quality of life, it has to do with how the existing material circumstances came about and in every single case material circumstances are determined by human intervention. Even in a hunter-gatherer society, it is human intervention which allows shelter to exist, food to be gathered or hunted, the wounded or ill to be cared for, etc. In the default state where every man is an island absolute poverty is the only state. There is nothing else to do but meet one's own needs. In a community which only comes about through the intervention of willful action (people stay together instead of killing eachother for resources and territory, they raise children together, they make decisions about where to move the tribe given a set of circumstances, etc.) and not through nature. We are programmed as social animals, and the constraints of the natural world determine how a community is organized, but there are a million and one ways for communities to be organized and for any one to actually come about it requires human intervention. The advanced case is modern society. It is still the case that we are programmed as social animals, constraints still exist, but our capacity to create and mobilize resources is much greater and this opens up more options for us to pursue including the abolition of absolute poverty. This does not only apply to material distribution but to everything. Almost every element of society exists only because of willful intervention, almost nothing is natural in the sense that you use, in that it comes about as a result of a default state of nature.

Given the working definition of “nature” that we’ve agreed on as the “default state of humankind in nature, at least until relatively recently when enormous developments have been made,” (i.e. how humans have lived for 200,000 years) I think it’s misguided to claim “the default state [is] where every man is an island.” Communities don’t only form “through the intervention of willful action.” Families, communities, tribes, etc. have always been a part of human nature. Sure, it’s only been for the past 6,000-10,000 years that true civilizations have existed, but to claim that communities of humans are unnatural is simply wrong given the overwhelming evidence that human communities have existed ever since humans have existed. It is natural to live in communities, and it is natural to be impoverished.

How can you say both that communities don’t come about through nature, but that we are also programmed as social animals? That seems completely contradictory to me. If communities existed 100,000 years ago, for example, then communities are natural. Maybe I’m misunderstanding your use of the term “human intervention.”

To reply to the example about the tribe, you identify a scenario where he choice is available, so there is a moral question, and the choice is made not to intervene. That is immoral if you take it as a given that nobody should live in absolute poverty. It is not the only question to be answered and there other considerations to keep in mind and the responses you think are appropriate might come into conflict with eachother and that has to be resolved somehow.

I don’t take it as a given that nobody should live in absolute poverty. It would actually be pretty ethnocentric and too morally absolute to make such a claim, in my opinion. I think there’s enormous value in allowing certain communities/cultures to maintain their ways of life, even if that comes at the cost of some poverty. Even from a practical standpoint, I’ve seen transient medical interventions actually harm third-world communities by making them permanently dependent on such assistance. Without well-planned, well-funded, well-executed, well-received overhauls of the underlying systems that lead to such poverty in those communities, I think intervention is often morally unjustified. And that isn’t only the case for rare uncontacted tribes, but for some entire third-world countries too. Freedom from poverty is too often accompanied by the decimation of culture.

So I suppose I not only disagree with Mandela about the semantics of “man-made,” which is ultimately a pointless disagreement, but I also disagree that poverty can – or even should – be eradicated entirely. In a country like America though? Sure, I’m completely on board in spirit and in practice. Perhaps even in the majority of impoverished places. But to want “eradication” is a bit too impractical and extreme.

With that said, from here on I’ll consider “poverty” to be absolute poverty that can be easily overcome (i.e. poverty in America) without the risk of destroying culture, which I believe is the issue we find most important/relevant/practical.

But, to the essential question at hand: Is a state natural given that it comes about through human intervention? With your definition of natural, the answer is no. Where we disagree is whether or not poverty comes about through human intervention or not. Like I explained above, in a modern society, that is the case. Poverty is unnatural within a modern society because it is not because of nature (in other words, not because of concrete physical constraints) that it continues to exist because there exists the means with which to eliminate it, instead it continues to exist because we do not apply the means that exist in order to eliminate it. That is a choice, it is a decision made by humans not to do so, and therefore it is sustained only through human action.

I didn’t define nature as “concrete physical constraints.” In my previous post (and further clarified earlier in this post) I essentially defined it as the quality of life that humans have always had in nature. Again, a boring discussion of semantics (made vs. maintained/sustained). I believe we agree on the issue of morality here, which is all I really care about. I see your point about inaction actually being an active choice, and I agree.

A very old fallacy. I'm just going to quote Hegel here, Philosophy of Right Section 3:

"When those who try to justify things on historical grounds confound an origin in external circumstances with one in the concept, they unconsciously achieve the very opposite of what they intend. Once the origination of an institution has been shown to be wholly to the purpose and necessary in the circumstances of the time, the demands of history have been fulfilled. But if this is supposed to pass for general justification of the thing itself, it turns out to be the opposite, because, since those circumstances are no longer present, the institution so far from being justified has by their disappearance lost its meaning and its right."

The "institution" in this case is absolute poverty. It's origins are from material circumstances as we have discussed. In the very beginning of human history, those circumstances were "wholly to the purpose and necessary in the circumstances of the time" since it was just a matter of fact that the material circumstances were in constant flux and limited in such a way that almost everyone would be in constant need of them; hence, hunter-gatherer society. This does not generally justify absolute poverty because this is no longer the case. It is therefore fallacious to suggest that simply because something has been the case that it is justified for it to continue. In fact, people made arguments exactly like yours to justify the continuation of slavery since it was just "a fact of existence" and that just because slaveowners existed and the slaveowners themselves were definitely immoral didnt mean that you were acting immorally if you were not an abolitionist. You further prove Hegel's point by first conceding that not helping the impoverished is immoral and then justifying the continued existence of absolute poverty.

Since your justification is based on a fallacy, I don't have to answer the first half, but I will anyway: A child's poverty is suddenly man-made if it is the case that it could cease to exist if men intervened. Again, the lack of intervention is also a choice and one deliberately made outside of the physical constraints of the natural world.

My God, you’ve egregiously misinterpreted my point. I’m well aware of the fallacy of justifying a practice based on out-of-context historical tradition. I did not fall victim to that fallacy by any stretch of the imagination. Again, I was simply attacking the word “man-made.” In no way did I justify the maintenance of poverty in a place like America. I argued that bystanders don’t “make” a person impoverished, and this is simply because each person is naturally made impoverished due to being born as an animal who’s in need of food/water/shelter/etc. It’s through the immoral inaction of those bystanders that the individual then remains impoverished. At that point, the poverty is actively maintained by the bystanders, because they chose to not combat the person’s impoverished nature through intervention. Again, if I refuse to share my sunscreen with a friend, and she becomes sunburned, I did not burn her. My immoral inaction allowed her to be harmed by a natural process. Still immoral, sure. But to say that I burned her would be incorrect. Similarly, to say that men "make" others impoverished is incorrect, unless they actively strip the person of all their wealth and belongings. Not a moral argument, and not a justification of anything.

It’s truly baffling that you’re comparing my statement about semantics to the logic of justifying slavery. My entire paragraph was pretty transparently about the difference between “man-made” and “nature-made,” and I explicitly denounced the practice of inaction as immoral in a place like America, so I don’t know how you came to the conclusion that I justified absolute poverty in America as acceptable. Maybe you mistook my comparison of the quality of life of the Sentinelese people and impoverished American children as justifying the latter. I was simply saying that both cases approximate the quality of life of humans throughout history, making both cases “natural” given the definition we agreed on. My apologies if that was confusing.

I hope I don't have to refer to the tired "trolley problem" to demonstrate that inaction is also an action. You don't eliminate decision making by not making decisions, you instead cede decision making to the underlying structure that created a particular question. This is why we call poverty "structural violence". No one person is responsible, and it would make no sense under any legal framework to call the rich murderers for allowing the poor to starve, but it is absolutely the case that it is only because of the structure of society, namely that structure which determines the distribution of resources, that poverty is allowed to come about. The maintenance of that structure is immoral and you can be rich, poor, or middle class and be complicit in the maintenance of that structure, most famously by refusing to acknowledge that it is immoral. Even if you feel on some emotional level that immoral inaction is not as immoral as direct immoral action it does not mean that you are not acting immorally in every case. Again, if you just give up the futile mental self-protection of pretending that you are always doing the best you morally can and that sometimes, maybe even most of the time you are acting immorally then you can get over the emotional problem and get to a point where you can start thinking about how to solve actual problems.

Please do refer to the tired old trolley problem. You sound dismissive of ethical philosophies other than utilitarianism, is that the case? I do in fact think that immoral inaction is often better than direct immoral action, and not just from an emotional standpoint. Do we kill a healthy patient who can donate organs to five dying patients? Absolutely not. Trust in medicine as an institution would be destroyed. Do we steal from the mega-wealthy to provide for the impoverished? Perhaps, but then we don’t get people like Bill Gates who practically eradicate entire diseases like polio, and we don’t incentivize the development of entrepreneurs into new rich philanthropists. I think you’re oversimplifying morality when it comes to the differences between action and inaction in practice, not just in theory. I’m sure you’ve put a lot of thought into this type of thing though, so I’d like to hear your opinions.

You actually explicitly demonstrate how slavery is not natural. It is not the default state of nature. Slavery requires first the existence of will and second the ability to impose that will on others in order to come about. Would it come about every time this was the case? I don't know, it's a speculative question and it depends on what you think the nature of intelligence is. I'm glad you see how this particular question doesnt really make sense in this discussion.

Slavery is in fact the default state of human interactions in nature, given our definition of “nature” as the way humans have always lived. To deny slavery being natural is to deny the prehistoric existence of slavery, which is to deny reality. I’m obviously not justifying slavery (don’t whip out another Hegel quote), but I’m just saying that it’s an unfortunate practice that has always been a direct result of human interactions, up until and including the present day.

As a side note, I’m curious as to why you think slavery requires “the existence of will.” Do you really think humans have free will in any true sense of the word? You’d be hard pressed to find any physicist who understands the human brain (or any scientifically-educated philosopher) who claims that free will is anything other than an illusion. I assume you have some interesting thoughts on this topic too, even though the debate has essentially been settled.

I dont think I'm begging the question here. It is a given that any right, positive or negative, implies both positive and negative duties in order to continue existing. It is one of the foundational ideas of philosophy of rights and the actual arguments about it are very abstract but just think for a second: You do not have to violate someone's rights to be complicit in their violation. Like we would all probably agree that the people who were complicit with the Nazis were not violating the rights of the targeted populations, but they are in fact complicit in the violation of human rights and therefore were not acting morally. I really, really hate appealing to authority here but for the sake of time I'm just going to say that you will be very hard pressed to find any professional or scholar who doesn't agree that rights imply both negative and positive duties.

The rest of your paragraph refers to tactics but it doesnt invalidate a duty. Some people try to refer to these scenarios as heroic action, where duties to yourself and others come into conflict and you choose to sacrifice duties to yourself to some extent for the sake of your duty to others.

I think in general you have a problem with rights and duties coming to conflict. This is to be expected. If this was not the case, ethics would be over and nobody would argue about anything. Positive rights exist and are formulated because we believe there is a moral imperative for them to exist, because they serve our interests and advance humanity. It doesn't mean they aren't "really" rights. If you think the only "real" rights are natural rights then you are basically alone in that corner aside from the people who have drunk the kool-aid, suspended all analytical thought, and claim that the only thing that matters is the individual, etc. etc.

You’re clearly much more experienced with ethical philosophy than I am, so I have no issue with your appeal to authority and I’ll defer to your analysis here. But I don’t quite understand one thing: if human rights are inalienable by definition, how can we all possess any two rights that conflict with each other? Wouldn’t they have to be fully compatible in all cases to both be truly inalienable? Why don’t we just consider things like the right to free speech to be the true, inalienable rights (since no one can ever take that away from you, similar to how no one can ever stop you from believing in a particular religion), while other things that infringe on those inalienable rights to simply be important values and ideals which often morally justify the violation of certain rights? Sorry for all the questions, but I’ve always been curious and you seem well-educated on these issues.

Again, I disagree with your definition of healthcare. The IP for a drug isn't "healthcare". It's the IP for a drug. Can it be stolen? I guess, yeah it can but it doesn't mean that "healthcare" can be stolen.

"The government can force healthcare providers to perform procedures without receiving compensation for their time, work, or expertise. This is all stealing. Perhaps morally justified, sure, but violation of negative rights nonetheless."

If someone receives care for free then the provider has agreed to the provide it for free. If someone receives care "for free" in the sense that they themselves dont pay for it, but somebody else does, that is not theft.

How do you disagree with my definition of healthcare? I used the definition you provided. Medications are interventions against disease with the aim of preventing or alleviating suffering. That’s the exact definition you gave. Medications can be stolen, and thus healthcare can be stolen.

On second thought, I’d rather not have another discussion of semantics haha, those have grown old quickly.

No, they are taking medications from the ER. If healthcare is their right, the ER has a duty to provide it when appropriate. Somebody is paying for those medications down the line but that isn't theft either. If the cost is covered by raising prices across the board for people who can pay, then that is not theft. If the cost is covered by insurance providers increasing their premiums, then that is not theft. If you believe that is theft and you don't want your money to be "stolen" to pay for who people who can't pay then don't own insurance and pay straight cash. The second that money leaves your hands, it is not yours. The insurance providers and healthcare institutions will do as they see fit with it. Whether or not their actions are appropriate is a separate question, but it is not theft. Theft would be someone can't pay for medications, I steal your wallet and make you pay for it. Whenever you pay for anything you are paying in some part for things that are of no benefit to you personally (at least not immediately) like corporate tax rate, health insurance for a company's employees, enough to pay employee factories, an increased rate to afford third party consultants who analyze the business' supply chain, a fund for executive severance packages, etc. etc. etc. Every transaction ever would be theft in that case, and it is just absurd to even suggest such a thing.

If someone goes to a private hospital’s ER, receives treatment, receives a bill, and does not pay, that seems a lot like theft to me even if healthcare is a human right. Food is also a human right, but if someone goes to a restaurant, eats food, receives a bill, and leaves without paying, that’s pretty transparently considered theft. If this happens often, and the restaurant decides to raise the price of all meals such that paying customers cover the cost of the stolen meals, it’s still theft to leave without paying even though the cost will be covered by those who voluntarily give up their money to pay for their food. What am I missing?

I really, really don't want to address the "taxation is theft" line of argument either but in one line: no it isn't, society is founded on a social contract of which taxation is a part, it is not theft simply because you declare it to be so, any money you do earn within a society is only possible because of the structure of the society which you agree to maintain through a variety of mechanisms. Taxation is the membership fee for participating in society and enjoying its benefits. Whether or not we should fund certain things and to what extent, again, is a separate argument but the actual mechanism of how funds are raised, taxation is not theft.

Fair enough, taxation in general is certainly not theft. But at some point, it pretty closely approximates theft, wouldn’t you say? Can no taxation ever be considered theft, no matter the rate or level of corruption and wastefulness of the government? Isn’t it true that your money is forcefully taken on threat of imprisonment? Some of the richest individuals in history gained their wealth through taxing their citizens at unbelievably high rates for personal gain, would you not consider even that to be theft?

 

[To be MD]

Thoughts on what?

From adcom POV:

Applicant says breaking the law for the greater good of the patient = Uh-oh or Yeehaw?

 

[Goro]

OK only to save a patient's life in an acute situation.

From adcom POV:

Applicant says breaking the law for the greater good of the patient = Uh-oh or Yeehaw?

 

[JB50]

I am not contributing very much here but these types of posts is why I think physician's enjoy each others company. So much thought and grit in these posts.