4 ms·

>No, no one is entitled to the labor of others, not in this scenario where they are 3rd party to the damages. That doesn't even remotely make sense no matter ho

>No, no one is entitled to the labor of others, not in this scenario where they are 3rd party to the damages. That doesn't even remotely make sense no matter how bad of a sob story you attach to it. Absolutely! We should just Brian Kilmeade[0] those folks too, since they're just a burden on society, right? [0] https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/columnist/2025/09/17/fox-news-brian-kilmeade-homeless-comment/86181269007/ https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/columnist/2025/09/17/...

mothballed 1y ago
It's interesting to me you jumped right past charity, loans, work-trade, or any other variety of options and instead went straight to your preferred method of doing things -- either violence (tax man with guns) and if not that you question if they should be executed. I'm just advocating putting the violent methods aside.
- ThrowMeAway1618 1y ago
  Oh noes! I've been Poe's Law'd again! Mercy, mercy me! Or are you just spouting ridiculous tropes? Charity? Work-Trade? Loans? Paid by whom in that scenario? I'd expect you're more in line with Kilmeade than McCain. Why don't you just admit it? It's all out in the open now, no need to hide any more. You'll be broadly lauded for your economic smarts! Please.
  - mothballed 1y ago
    Your thesis is that people so broadly support additional tax money going to fix the 22 year old that it could be legitimate law, but somehow so few support it that charity or other alternatives (if the very people that support it weren't forced by law) would be a ridiculous trope? You're defeating your own argument.
    - ThrowMeAway1618 1y ago
      No. My thesis is that we can reduce total healthcare spending by having a single-payer system that covers everyone. It's not additional tax money, it's money that doesn't need to go to corporate jets and huge pay packages for the C-Suite and large dividends for the shareholders of insurance companies, healthcare providers, pharmaceutical companies and medical equipment manufacturers. And the tens to hundreds of billions we save on that can pay for that 22 year old. But we can't have that, now can we? Better to Brian Kilmeade 'em, eh?
      - mothballed 1y ago
        But you just said it's a ridiculous trope that people would want to charitably donate to the healthcare of others. How would you get the majority to support a single payer system when electing to help others is such a ridiculous trope that you flippantly dismiss it?
        ThrowMeAway1618 1y ago
        >But you just said it's a ridiculous trope that people would want to charitably donate to the healthcare of others. How would you get the majority to support a single payer system when electing to help others is such a ridiculous trope that you flippantly dismiss it? Are you really that ignorant of the issue, or are you just being deliberately obtuse? We as a society already pay way more than we would with a rational single-payer system. That's not hyperbole either. What's more, not having employers and employees pay insurance premiums would more than offset any additional taxes. But you knew that already, because we've known this to be the case for most, if not all, of your life. I'm done explaining the facts of life to you. Perhaps you should ask your dad.
        AnthonyMouse 1y ago
        > But you just said it's a ridiculous trope that people would want to charitably donate to the healthcare of others. How would you get the majority to support a single payer system when electing to help others is such a ridiculous trope that you flippantly dismiss it? A lot of people have a broken sense of fairness where they're only willing to help someone else if everyone else is required to do it too. It's one of the things causing the world to burn. Some of this is even learned behavior. A lot of the dumbest econ 101 classes teach people that giving to charity is irrational. (It's not irrational. It's something you do because you want to do it, like eating cake or buying a fast car. Once your basic needs are met, the purpose of having money is to use it for the things you want to use it for. It's not irrational to want to do something good instead of something insalubrious.)
- shadowgovt 1y ago
  If no one is entitled to the labor of others, why would we engage in charity? Work-trade when it's someone's health is slavery, so we're going to go ahead and pull that off the table. Loans are, more or less, how we've gotten into the awful state we are currently in in the US with unpayable medical debt. I propose an alternate approach: medical care is a civil service that you can voluntarily provide, like fire prevention or undrafted military service. If you do, you are paid the rate the society agrees to for the work. We all pay for it with taxes. If we want more of it, we raise taxes and incentives. This removes several perverse market effects and sets up a minimum standard of care divorced from individual circumstance to level out the effect of bad luck a bit. This is, more or less, a model that many countries are currently enjoying.
  - mothballed 1y ago
    >If no one is entitled to the labor of others, why would we engage in charity? Because some people want to help others beyond what they're forced to do. There is a long history of charitable health services in the US and worldwide, you might rightly ascertain they can't possibly provide all of medical care, nonetheless it's non-zero enough to dispel the notion it can't be provided in the absence of an entitlement. > medical care is a civil service that you can voluntarily provide, Civil services are funded by people working to pay their taxes. Work-trade when it's someone health is slavery, so work-trade when it's to not have to go in a tiny cage dragged away by an IRS agent has to be slavery too, especially when you consider the health implications of that. Therefore the public / civil service options are tossed out by your own criteria. Loans, again, if those aren't allowed you can toss out any government option because that's a huge part of how the government is funding itself. Using your own criteria only charity or cash payments would be allowed. Not sure I agree with that one, but that's what you're leaving us with.
    - shadowgovt 1y ago
      I think if you're arguing "taxes are slavery" you are coming from a vantage point that is far too libertarian to have a constructive conversation. We can probably just short-circuit that by saying "The only way people in the US get jailed for taxes is by committing fraud; we correctly left debtor's prison in the past" and be done with that, yes? Taxes aren't slavery; they're how we operate modern, functional, post-feudal societies (and whether they are actually "paying for" services or are "redistributing supply and demand more equitably by curtailing the spending power of the ones who have too much so that the ones who have too little can have access to resources at all" is an implementation detail for macroeconomists and operators of fiat currencies). You do raise the interesting question of funding it by buying bonds though. I don't see an issue with that; the argument against loans is a practical one, not a theoretical one ("the private debt incurred upon patients is, in essence, an involuntary one-sided loan granted to them, and we've seen that lead to massively unfair outcomes"). Voluntarily loaning the government money seems to work great and is miles distant from involuntarily-accrued (or accrued under duress; "sure, that procedure is optional because you always have the option to die") medical debt.
- UncleMeat 1y ago
  People say that charity should happen instead of taxes. Will you commit to giving all money from future tax cuts to charity? The practical reality is that charity does not meaningfully solve these problems at scale.
  - mothballed 1y ago
    Of course not. At scale you basically need to remove the government from the situation, they're the one regulating health care into a gigantic blimp. Once health care is completely deregulated and the costs drop you won't need to spending anything close to "all [future] money." Now if you offered me a deal, I could substitute all my taxes, or even everyone's taxes, for charity, yes I would take that in a heartbeat. In all likelihood I think I would probably donate about 10% of my income to charity if there were no taxes, but the government is so terribly ineffectual it might actually beat the 20-30% I pay now.
    - UncleMeat 1y ago
      Have you though? There have been tax cuts in the past. Did you take your savings and give to charity?
      - mothballed 1y ago
        Look like the effective tax rate has went up rather than down since I started working in 2010, most of which I was closer to the top 1% than the middle 20%. [] There is no savings I can identify there, nor in my tax records, which have only increased in % as I've made more money. And all well above the 10% of the income I would pledge to donate to charity if taxes are eliminated. But yes I have donated to charity on occasion (sometimes formally, sometimes directly in cash to people that needed it), despite the fact I keep getting taxed harder every year and despite the fact the government robs me of ~20-30% of my income under its own bloated forcible charity scheme. [] https://www.concordcoalition.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/Tax-Rich-8.png https://www.concordcoalition.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/...

mothballed 1y ago

It's interesting to me you jumped right past charity, loans, work-trade, or any other variety of options and instead went straight to your preferred method of doing things -- either violence (tax man with guns) and if not that you question if they should be executed. I'm just advocating putting the violent methods aside.

ThrowMeAway1618 1y ago
Oh noes! I've been Poe's Law'd again! Mercy, mercy me! Or are you just spouting ridiculous tropes? Charity? Work-Trade? Loans? Paid by whom in that scenario? I'd expect you're more in line with Kilmeade than McCain. Why don't you just admit it? It's all out in the open now, no need to hide any more. You'll be broadly lauded for your economic smarts! Please.
- mothballed 1y ago
  Your thesis is that people so broadly support additional tax money going to fix the 22 year old that it could be legitimate law, but somehow so few support it that charity or other alternatives (if the very people that support it weren't forced by law) would be a ridiculous trope? You're defeating your own argument.
  - ThrowMeAway1618 1y ago
    No. My thesis is that we can reduce total healthcare spending by having a single-payer system that covers everyone. It's not additional tax money, it's money that doesn't need to go to corporate jets and huge pay packages for the C-Suite and large dividends for the shareholders of insurance companies, healthcare providers, pharmaceutical companies and medical equipment manufacturers. And the tens to hundreds of billions we save on that can pay for that 22 year old. But we can't have that, now can we? Better to Brian Kilmeade 'em, eh?
    - mothballed 1y ago
      But you just said it's a ridiculous trope that people would want to charitably donate to the healthcare of others. How would you get the majority to support a single payer system when electing to help others is such a ridiculous trope that you flippantly dismiss it?
      - ThrowMeAway1618 1y ago
        >But you just said it's a ridiculous trope that people would want to charitably donate to the healthcare of others. How would you get the majority to support a single payer system when electing to help others is such a ridiculous trope that you flippantly dismiss it? Are you really that ignorant of the issue, or are you just being deliberately obtuse? We as a society already pay way more than we would with a rational single-payer system. That's not hyperbole either. What's more, not having employers and employees pay insurance premiums would more than offset any additional taxes. But you knew that already, because we've known this to be the case for most, if not all, of your life. I'm done explaining the facts of life to you. Perhaps you should ask your dad.
      - AnthonyMouse 1y ago
        > But you just said it's a ridiculous trope that people would want to charitably donate to the healthcare of others. How would you get the majority to support a single payer system when electing to help others is such a ridiculous trope that you flippantly dismiss it? A lot of people have a broken sense of fairness where they're only willing to help someone else if everyone else is required to do it too. It's one of the things causing the world to burn. Some of this is even learned behavior. A lot of the dumbest econ 101 classes teach people that giving to charity is irrational. (It's not irrational. It's something you do because you want to do it, like eating cake or buying a fast car. Once your basic needs are met, the purpose of having money is to use it for the things you want to use it for. It's not irrational to want to do something good instead of something insalubrious.)
shadowgovt 1y ago
If no one is entitled to the labor of others, why would we engage in charity? Work-trade when it's someone's health is slavery, so we're going to go ahead and pull that off the table. Loans are, more or less, how we've gotten into the awful state we are currently in in the US with unpayable medical debt. I propose an alternate approach: medical care is a civil service that you can voluntarily provide, like fire prevention or undrafted military service. If you do, you are paid the rate the society agrees to for the work. We all pay for it with taxes. If we want more of it, we raise taxes and incentives. This removes several perverse market effects and sets up a minimum standard of care divorced from individual circumstance to level out the effect of bad luck a bit. This is, more or less, a model that many countries are currently enjoying.
- mothballed 1y ago
  >If no one is entitled to the labor of others, why would we engage in charity? Because some people want to help others beyond what they're forced to do. There is a long history of charitable health services in the US and worldwide, you might rightly ascertain they can't possibly provide all of medical care, nonetheless it's non-zero enough to dispel the notion it can't be provided in the absence of an entitlement. > medical care is a civil service that you can voluntarily provide, Civil services are funded by people working to pay their taxes. Work-trade when it's someone health is slavery, so work-trade when it's to not have to go in a tiny cage dragged away by an IRS agent has to be slavery too, especially when you consider the health implications of that. Therefore the public / civil service options are tossed out by your own criteria. Loans, again, if those aren't allowed you can toss out any government option because that's a huge part of how the government is funding itself. Using your own criteria only charity or cash payments would be allowed. Not sure I agree with that one, but that's what you're leaving us with.
  - shadowgovt 1y ago
    I think if you're arguing "taxes are slavery" you are coming from a vantage point that is far too libertarian to have a constructive conversation. We can probably just short-circuit that by saying "The only way people in the US get jailed for taxes is by committing fraud; we correctly left debtor's prison in the past" and be done with that, yes? Taxes aren't slavery; they're how we operate modern, functional, post-feudal societies (and whether they are actually "paying for" services or are "redistributing supply and demand more equitably by curtailing the spending power of the ones who have too much so that the ones who have too little can have access to resources at all" is an implementation detail for macroeconomists and operators of fiat currencies). You do raise the interesting question of funding it by buying bonds though. I don't see an issue with that; the argument against loans is a practical one, not a theoretical one ("the private debt incurred upon patients is, in essence, an involuntary one-sided loan granted to them, and we've seen that lead to massively unfair outcomes"). Voluntarily loaning the government money seems to work great and is miles distant from involuntarily-accrued (or accrued under duress; "sure, that procedure is optional because you always have the option to die") medical debt.
UncleMeat 1y ago
People say that charity should happen instead of taxes. Will you commit to giving all money from future tax cuts to charity? The practical reality is that charity does not meaningfully solve these problems at scale.
- mothballed 1y ago
  Of course not. At scale you basically need to remove the government from the situation, they're the one regulating health care into a gigantic blimp. Once health care is completely deregulated and the costs drop you won't need to spending anything close to "all [future] money." Now if you offered me a deal, I could substitute all my taxes, or even everyone's taxes, for charity, yes I would take that in a heartbeat. In all likelihood I think I would probably donate about 10% of my income to charity if there were no taxes, but the government is so terribly ineffectual it might actually beat the 20-30% I pay now.
  - UncleMeat 1y ago
    Have you though? There have been tax cuts in the past. Did you take your savings and give to charity?
    - mothballed 1y ago
      Look like the effective tax rate has went up rather than down since I started working in 2010, most of which I was closer to the top 1% than the middle 20%. [] There is no savings I can identify there, nor in my tax records, which have only increased in % as I've made more money. And all well above the 10% of the income I would pledge to donate to charity if taxes are eliminated. But yes I have donated to charity on occasion (sometimes formally, sometimes directly in cash to people that needed it), despite the fact I keep getting taxed harder every year and despite the fact the government robs me of ~20-30% of my income under its own bloated forcible charity scheme. [] https://www.concordcoalition.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/Tax-Rich-8.png https://www.concordcoalition.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/...