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Well, it doesn't. Healthcare shouldn't be funded by taxes, so thank Obama for that, unless you mean Medicare and Medicaid. Medicare is seniors and disability I believe so that isn't what you mean. That leaves Medicaid.

Now, if you mean Medicaid then before you attack people with diabetes(who aren't all diabetic because they're fat and love sugar btw)and obesity, you need to address the issue of illegal aliens getting their hospital visits paid for because they work off book and send the money back to their origin country. I pay my taxes, my parents paid theirs, their parents paid and so on, back 200 years. If anyone is entitled to healthcare help, its me.

You're grasping at straws trying to find ways to infringe on the rights of others because you believe your way is the only way. Its wrong.


STUBS!




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Stubs I am genuinely amazed at your ability to string together all this right wing swamp fever and never worry about staying consistent.

Here is chain of events: Agriculture subsidies distort price of corn, making high fructose corn syrup(HFCS) a disproportionally cheap sweetener. Public is hard-wired to prefer sweet, but HFCS is least sweet alternative, resulting in substantial extra calories at the same sweetness level as alternatives. This results in extra calories consumed from nearly all prepared food, as a result obesity levels of general population is getting worse and medical costs going up for everyone involved.

How we pay for medical costs is irrelevant, 100% private insurance distributing costs to you by increasing premium or Obamacare directly taxing you - your costs will still go up even if you are not obese. These are systemic costs.

This has nothing to do with illegal aliens using hospitals, Agenda 21 and UN, or any other boogeyman you can invent.



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Empirically is not an application method here, its an ideology. Because first of all, we would have to agree on greater good. There is not an objective standard for this. I can already tell that we will not agree on what is good, and what is not - let alone a universal method for weighting degrees of goodness for comparison even when we do agree something is good.

Second of all empiricism has its own faults which I am sure you are aware of. These faults are exacerbated the more complex the system being subject to study.

It sounds more like what you are really advocating is a form of rationalism.

Now if we are to talk about ending sugar subsidies.. that is something we can agree on. This is a large part of the reason I object to your lambasting of the free market here. Sugar is heavily subsidized, distorting the market by underpricing sugar artificially. Which is both bad for the economy, and in this case may be detrimental to health by making sugar much more calorie efficient per dollar than it should be.

You used a case of known govt interventionism to attack market economics, which does not follow.

My core objection to your form of empiricism, is the injection of politics into daily living. This is fait accompli when the govt starts getting involved, turning the actions of everyday living into political actions. Turning anything anyone could ever scape up even a superficial case against into a political topic.

While I do not have a blanket objection to some forms of rationalism per se - I think it of prime importance that these types of scenarios are accounted for and avoided. The methods and metrics are more important than the concept itself here, else where does it start and where does it end?


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As such, "you can pry HFCS out of my cold dead hands" is false dichotomy problem (e.g Pro or Against problem).

It isn't about your individual choice to eat what you want - choice to avoid HFCS doesn't exist. You would be hard-pressed to find any non-HFCS prepared food. I obsessively read food labels, I know what I am talking about here.

The choice is to a) stop subsidies or b) regulate use or consumption of HFCS. a) is clearly better solution, but not very politically feasible.


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Originally Posted By: Derid

Empirically is not an application method here, its an ideology. Because first of all, we would have to agree on greater good. There is not an objective standard for this.


This is valid criticism, but it can be equally applied to any other form of governance. Still, this criticism is overly general - I hope you would agree that economical policy or questions of taxation produce very quantifiable "greater good".

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Second of all empiricism has its own faults which I am sure you are aware of. These faults are exacerbated the more complex the system being subject to study.


Can you demonstrate that current alternatives of dogma and guessing are any better? With empiricism there is a feedback process that would produce better results, does such process exist in the current system?

Quote:
You used a case of known govt interventionism to attack market economics, which does not follow.


No, I use this to highlight the case of private enterprise intentionally engaging in a disinformation campaign to preserve profitable status quo. The fact that the status quo is a result of government intervention is only coincidental.


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If b is really more feasible than a... isnt that a wake up call, that just maybe you are focusing on the wrong problem?

If we want to talk about greater good here and all.

The govt spends so much of our energy on wrong things, the greater good could quickly be served by ending those things that are obviously wrong first. This would then make it easier to objectively identify areas where govt intervention was actually needed. Just as in this sugar case. We might well find, that by ending sugar subsidies and returning to real market pricing of sugar that over consumption drastically decreases , killing multiple birds with one stone. As opposed to spending yet more of societies resources on policing and regulating sugar, which without addressing the core political and philosophical issues of the subsidies might even result in yet greater subsidies as the sugar makers complain it is even harder to turn a profit.

This line of thinking is also a large part of the reason that I favor more local govt intervention when intervention is called for. Having different areas under the same societal umbrella try different methods presents much more viable control groups. It is much easier to see if a policy is effective and does not create drastic unintended consequences when you are comparing say Ohio and PA - as opposed to comparing a national policy to pure theorycraft or even the rest of the world.

Not is not to say perfection is achieved, but the picture becomes clearer.


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Originally Posted By: sini


This is valid criticism, but it can be equally applied to any other form of governance. Still, this criticism is overly general - I hope you would agree that economical policy or questions of taxation produce very quantifiable "greater good".


Thats because the objectives in those fields have already been outlined and agreed upon , whereas "greater good" as a term itself remains vague. Economics and taxation revolve around quantifiable flows of currency. "Good" is an abstract term, whereas currency reflects an abstract concept of wealth - it is the fact that the concept of currency has been created and refined that allows us to thereby get a reliable measure of wealth. No "currency" has yet been created for the abstract concept of "good".

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Can you demonstrate that current alternatives of dogma and guessing are any better? With empiricism there is a feedback process that would produce better results, does such process exist in the current system?


In theory the current system should already work that way.

When proposing drastic change, I think the burden is on the proposition to relay why the new paradigm would be different and better. Often times pointing out faults in the current system is enough to garner support, and a point I repeatedly try to make is that I find this to be mistaken thinking.

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No, I use this to highlight the case of private enterprise intentionally engaging in a disinformation campaign to preserve profitable status quo. The fact that the status quo is a result of government intervention is only coincidental.


I think you got the cart before the horse here. The fact that government has been empowered to fiddle with economics in this matter is problem. This incentives people to work on making govt act in a non rational manner in of itself for private gain - this has been shown in all governmental systems tried thus far.

The fact that money is what people are twisting govt to obtain in this case is what is coincidental.


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Originally Posted By: Derid

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Can you demonstrate that current alternatives of dogma and guessing are any better? With empiricism there is a feedback process that would produce better results, does such process exist in the current system?


In theory the current system should already work that way.


I disagree.

Current system has very short memory. Do you think if our voter base had significant representation of people that lived through 30s, we would have had reckless deregulation that caused 07 crash?

Current system tends to be populist and knee-jerk reactive - change is not enacted based on evidence, instead it is enacted based on emotion, often as via manufactured crisis. This will get only worse, because now it became possible to reach individual voter through media.

Current system prone to dogmatism and epistemic closure.


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As I said - in theory. Ignoring your supporting economic assertions for the moment because I find them largely incorrect, I will agree with you on the concept that our current govt provides suboptimal results in many cases.

I have already expounded on my view of why I think this is the case, which is largely due to the mathematical social distance between the people and govt as measured in degrees of separation, ratio of representation, and too much conflux of issue management into to small of a political space. As well as my prescriptions for remedy.

Your theory is understandable, but thus far I am unable to devise a method of concrete implementation that would actually arrive at the goal you seek. Even if the vision has some appeal - I see no way to make it a reality that actually works as you envision.

If someone were to outline a method by which it could work in practice, I would keep an open mind.


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Originally Posted By: sini
It isn't about your individual choice to eat what you want - choice to avoid HFCS doesn't exist. You would be hard-pressed to find any non-HFCS prepared food. I obsessively read food labels, I know what I am talking about here.
You're doing it wrong. Don't buy the pre-prepared crap they sell you in the grocery store. Buy fresh (or as close as you can get) fruits, vegetables and meats and cook your own food. There is absolutely zero HFCS in the food in my house. And contrary to your assertion, no one is forcing me to buy any or addicting me to it.

Originally Posted By: sini
The choice is to a) stop subsidies or b) regulate use or consumption of HFCS. a) is clearly better solution, but not very politically feasible.
You argue for more government while pointing out that political realities make effective/efficient government unlikely at best.


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