I guess you can leave your liver there as well as your heart.
“San Francisco buys vodka shots for homeless alcoholics in taxpayer-funded program“
That’s just a typically lurid, “liberals are evil” Fox News headline, but it’s not exaggerated by that much.
The City of San Francisco is providing free beer and vodka shots to homeless alcoholics at taxpayer expense under a little-known pilot program.
The “Managed Alcohol Program” operated by San Francisco’s Department of Public Health serves regimented doses of alcohol to voluntary participants with alcohol addiction in an effort to keep the homeless off the streets and relieve the city’s emergency services. Experts say the program can save or extend lives, but critics wonder if the government would be better off funding treatment and sobriety programs instead.
There’s that saying along the lines of “the purpose of a system is what it does,” and I feel like it applies here, not just to the system but to ideology/philosophy behind it. Add to it MAID (Canada) or similar European off-shots, drug injection sites, approach to crime, and you get an even better picture.
Mildly (un)related, but I felt like The Good Place was also a good insight in it. You probably haven’t seen it, but the end of it is a pretty great example of how these people see life/existence in general and its purpose, but also how unfulfilling it is.
As opposed to the American model? Is that fulfilling? I don’t care if you die, I’m too selfish to get vaccinated, but I’ll tell everybody what a great person I am including myself and hopefully God, by virtue signaling against MAiD? Go fuck yourself, that’s pure evil.’
More importantly it does seem that nuance is either dead or dying in the United States. Rather than look at these things as an absolute, a more logical approach is to look at the situation these things replace (the same idea as opportunity cost.) What does MAiD replace? People with incurable diseases dying in pain. There are the sensationalist media stories of claims of otherwise, but the vast majority of Canadians who choose MAiD are in the final stages of cancer.
Safe injection sites similarly are better than people shooting up and killing themselves. Finally, who the Hell are you to decide if another person’s life is fulfilling or not?
You know where you’ll find people virtue signaling about political and day to day issues? In a comment section on a porn site.
Silliness aside, MAID serves to get rid society of undesirables, unproductive people, in name of liberal ideals, freedom (which you yourself echo), etc. As with everything, whether it’s abortion (either side), identity politics left or right, etc, all of it exists on a continuum. People who backed euthanasia, and those who’ve legalized it in the first place, won’t stop at killing off cancer patients and whomever, they’ll expand it as much as possible, and we’ve already seen that. You don’t need media to see it, you literally have people who’ve sought it, whether it’s those because of poverty (E.G., the woman who couldn’t find affordable housing, in particularly where chemicals wouldn’t be used, since they triggered her issues – hardly a person with “incurable diseases dying in pain,” the woman with mental issues (bpd/depression; belgium afaik, she posted on twitter about it. there’s countless people living with it just fine), or for that matter, the woman with dementia who said that considered (but was indecesive) on getting euthanized, ended up getting demented, and then the doctor & family decided to drug her and euthanize her as she struggled against it. Literally. To quote: “The doctor slipped a sedative into the woman’s coffee, before administering a lethal drug, as the patient was held down by her family and struggled against the injection.”)
This was in 2019! We’re well past “people with incurable diseases dying in pain” – the very rules already are beyond it (“people with physical ailments whose deaths are not reasonably foreseeable but who have chronic and life-limiting conditions”), and the ghouls pushing this are exactly the ghouls I said they are, and they’ll continue to be. Canada itself is, already, seeking to expand MAID to those *solely* experiencing mentally illness. This is, has been, and continues to be backed by Trudeau (albeit it has been temporarily delayed, it was supposed to b).
So the question becomes: Why do you wish to enable this?
“who the Hell are you to decide if another person’s life is fulfilling or not?
It’s an observation, based on trends, interactions with people, and analysis of the system more broadly. But certainly, I’m not a liberal/conservative, and as such I don’t worship individualism. Legalizing things like these harms society as a whole. Furthermore, much of “mental illness” is caused by the very system to begin with that wants to legalize killing people with mental illness. This isn’t exclusive to Canada. but west as a whole (and arguably beyond).
Btw, your point re: drug injection sites demonstrates that as well. The system is fundamentally incapable of addressing any of this, especially as it causes most of it, so those in charge opt for “solutions” like that which are anything but. Those druggies are people too and deserve help. This isn’t help, it’s enabling, deliberate, and systemic, coming from a system where Sacklers walked free. You can only be so charitable
“to those *solely* experiencing mentally illness”
* also
Ridiculous conspiracy theories. People in Canada seem to know where to draw the line pretty well. There is no evidence whatsoever for this slippery slope nonsense.
I support it because many people suffer needlessly with pain who want to die with MAiD. What alternative do you offer them? Simple minded binary absolutists like you took away the pain killers from the Sacklers, that for all of its faults, were helping limit the pain of these people.
Again, you can throw out the buzzwords like ‘enabling them’ all you want. What’s your alternative?
How far should we go in your non individualist world? Should people be told what to eat? Should people be made to wake up and go to sleep and exercise with some Big Brother watching over them?
Or it your non individualism only limited to other people and not yourself?
You’d probably have to point out what, exactly, the “conspiracy theory” is, if you want it addressed, but that doesn’t seem to be the point here. Rather, it seems to align with its usual usage; digression and/or delegitimization of what’s being discussed. As for why, let’s not forget that you’re a self-professed proponent of MAID.
People aren’t the ones deciding any of it, and even if they did it wouldn’t make it right.
“There is no evidence whatsoever for this slippery slope nonsense.”
I literally demonstrated it on this very subject, starting with the very justification for it which you brought up from which we’ve well departed, and with Trudeau and other liberals pushing to expand it even further to those mentally ill, along with bringing up several self-evidential examples such as abortion and IDPol.
“What alternative do you offer them?” I’m well familiar with motte and bailey and I don’t bite. Extreme, unreasonable, actively harmful precedents shouldn’t be set for the society as a whole because some people may experience more suffering than others. Besides, drugs exist, which can ameliorate the suffering.
Sacklers very well knew what would happen, knew people would get hooked on it and would die, and went as far as funding neo-con orgs like AEI to defend them. They are responsible for deaths of hundreds of thousands of people, and in any just society would have been on death row. The only thing they did beyond the previous, is causing more pain and suffering to untold number of people, not cure it.
“How far should we go in your non individualist world?” ? I disagree with your approach to it. As to why, TLDR: Individualism was never the norm to begin with, it was brought about through revolutions & imperialism. The very term originated as a pejorative & critique. Rather than being recognition of what people are it’s a fundamental part of liberal capitalism, and people have existed just fine without such identity to begin with throughout most of human history.
For someone who denigrates the concept of slippery slope (I’d note, again, I’m talking about political issues existing on a continuum, which is a different point and exists regardless of what it leads to), you sure seem to believe in it when it comes to using it against things you disagree with.
Regardless, Alasdair MacIntyre’s “After Virtue” touches on the subject quite well, although the book is primarily focused on critique of modernism, modernist morality (or lack thereof), and its conclusion is slightly lacking, even if its underlying arguments (return to virtue ethics and the importance of telos for an average person) are pretty good. Societal rules apply to everyone.
The Conspiracy theory is that the purpose of MAiD is for society to rid itself of undesirables rather than the truth which is that it’s offered to provide people a choice , many people who fought for the right to make this choice for themselves and for others.
I mentioned this in my first post. There are literally a handful of examples that the sensationalist media has played up, and not very accurately and that you are playing up to claim this nonsensical widespread conspiracy.
So, again, assuming their accuracy if a handful of bad examples are all that it takes for you to argue something is harmful to not allow it, I can easily find examples of people not getting enough sleep and dying or, even more easily, eating poorly and dying, or dying from lack of movement. So, again, should the government like a friendly Big Brother also check people to make sure they get enough sleep, eat properly and exercise enough? If not, why not? Give me a precise answer here.
The other problem is, is your criteria is so vague it can be used to justify outlawing virtually anything. “Legalizing things like these harm society as a whole.” Why are these things that yoiu mention harmful, but not other things, like even this website? That drugs and assisted suicide are considered ‘bad’ (or, more accurately worse than the alternative of not banning them) I’d argue is nothing more than status quo bias and not based on any actual evidence or logic. Many of these arguments come from right wing religious institutions or socially conservative organizations. I think these things are harmful to society as a whole and should be outlawed.
Status quo bias, fear of the unknown and sensationalist lies or half truths are all your arguments are based on. I think status quo bias, fear of the unknown and basing arguments on sensationalist half truths are all harmful to society and should be illegal. You should be in jail right now.
The purpose of system is what it does. I think you’re being extremely charitable to people and ideology(es) that don’t deserve such charitability. It’d be too long to discuss it all, but liberalism arose to begin with as an ideology of bourgeoisie, serving to be utilized against aristocracy, and has since remained an ideology of our (international) ruling class. The purpose of said ideology has never been to serve people, but the said ruling class, and to justify the system that exploits and harms people by its very nature. Again, it’d be too long to discuss it all, but just looking at foreign policy should suffice, and the fact that imperialism, cultural, economical, and militarily, is always justified in name of liberal ideals, as it brings untold suffering and death to countless people. US and NATO, for one such example, took part in assassination of Gaddafi in name of “human rights,” which eventually led to countless dead in a civil war, slave markets, and refugee crisis that affected entire middle east & Europe. CIA has backed one group of terrorists in Syria, while Pentagon backed another; this has happened continuously even since liberal capitalism prevailed after WW2.
But to get back to the point, just looking at whom it targets (“provides for”) and its attempts at expansion demonstrate as much. The poor, economically unproductive people, along with people like mentally ill which it itself has created, and is unwilling/incapable of addressing it.
Once again, you don’t need to look at media for any examples; just look at the very people speaking out about it who’ve sought its “services.”
As for the rest, false equivalency. Governments aren’t sanctioning people “not getting enough sleep,” or eating poorly. They are sanctioning mass murder of unproductive people in name of liberal ideals, and they are attempting to expand it. Although certainly, it should encourage exercise given the obesity epidemic, but as I’ve already mentioned, it’s incapable & unwilling of doing anything for the people.
Nevertheless, as I’ve already noted, I’m neither liberal nor conservative, so “status quo bias” hardly plays a part in my views.
Yeah, I think that’s the key difference. You think rando people on online sites deserve jail because of heresy; I think people who enact policies that lead to mass murder & untold suffering of people should be in jail. I don’t center values as be-all-end-all, I center people and their well-being, and take issues on a case by case basis. If the government, ruling class, etc, is facilitating things that actively serve to harm people, and liberal capitalism has served such role since its very origin hundreds of years back, then those doing so should be held accountable, and the said system should be, justly, replaced. And it shall be, it’s just a matter of time. Liberal international order is already dead, the only question is what it’ll be replaced by. It’ll likely be a system that’s capable of ensuring basic things, like having high enough birth rates to sustain it. Suffice to say, the lowest birth rates tend to come from non-religious people… and the highest from Islam, which is bound to overcome Christianity within a few decades (granted, Christianity has been on its last legs since European revolutions). There’s a lesson there, I’m sure, but I doubt many will learn it.
I don’t even know why I bother, it seems pretty clear nobody is interested in this discussion, but a couple points:
1.Individual liberty has been a concept that people have been fighting for since at least the Age of Enlightenment and The Glorious Revolution. Whether people were happy with things before that, who really knows? That government records would say things like ‘the peasant collective is happy’ or whatever else shouldn’t be a surprise.
2.Your paternalistic concern over MAiD leaves out as I said that it was the people themselves who were suffering who sued the government to be able to access it. Governments opposed them. That you ignore their agency in this, or even that they have agency at all, and are to you, I suppose merely duped pawns, says really all anybody needs to know about your comments.
To the contrary, you can just look at other parts of the world. While liberal capitalism (or in some cases, just capitalism) has expanded globally, being imposed onto people, many still retain aspects of how life used to be, or for that matter, have until recently.
I’ll give you three different, short examples: Communities, which are being destroyed through internal immigration, still remain a fact of life in many places. This in turn means that people can rely on lifelong friends, extended family (both close and distant, who live nearby). How many Americans, Canadians, etc, know their neighbors for most of their life? Live close to their parents & extended families? While nuclear family itself has existed before enlightenment, it’s certainly been spearheaded by it, but it’s hardly the norm. Look at Asia for example.
Second example would be Afghanistan. If you want to bother, you can find articles where journos interview Talibans, who until recently were engaged in warfare, and since technically winning against ‘merica, have been turned into office-dwelling wage slaves in effort to provide for their families, and the tool it’s took on them and their psyche. Just because it’s the norm in the west, doesn’t mean people can brush off millenniums of human evolution. This is just one example (technology/capitalism) and the impact on people.
Third example would be the most salient and documented: China’s not so distant past. If that’s something you’re interested, I’d suggest East vs West by Rene Guenon, which exactly a century old.
Ultimately, you don’t really need to pay a fortune teller to find you if people have led better lives before liberal capitalism, or as you say, “individual liberty,” you just need to look elsewhere.
People are a product of the system, the idea that people exist who just happen to embrace very ideals echoed by the system & ruling class to begin with is absurd. They are a product of education (which replaced church as a form of propaganda), media, and social osmosis. Kinda tangential, but the idea of “free marketplace of ideas” has always been a myth popularized by the ruling class, and easily demonstrable by the fact that significant majority – up to 90% – of people share same underlying values with slight, intra-ideological variations. And the current system utilizes all the same tools, and has expanded them, as have previous to censor dissent. Half of European countries arrest people over -isms, you have conservative states passing “anti-semitism” bills over pro-Palestinian protests, most of it built on the very values and systems implemented by liberals and leftists to begin with, now being utilized against some of them. Soviets did the same. China does the same, but with different things (as they are illiberal, -isms are hardly a concern of theirs). Christianity did the same (heresy/witchcraft). Heinrich Kramer wrote an entire book on witchcraft, and in one part argued that if you didn’t believe witches existed you were guilty of heresy. The only question was what kind of heresy; deliberate or one coming from ignorance. And I’m sure I don’t need to talk about how heretics were punished. Not much different than today. But I digress.
None of this isn’t a new phenomenon. The concept of cultural hegemony has been around since at least ~1920s (Gramsci). Ruling ideology, similarly, isn’t static. Ruling ideology has been modified/replaced by different variations before, too. That’s what “culture war” is – a conflict between those ascribing to old ruling ideology and those raised with new one, with the latter backed by institutions, corporations, politicians, etc. It’s happened in 60s, and it’s happening again, although it’s almost over.
So your appeals to “people” “choosing” things are erroneous, and even if that were the case, there’s two reasons I wouldn’t find it to be a riveting argument: democracy isn’t a thing, and if it was I wouldn’t support it.
I suppose some of that is a fair point. There is a tension between individual liberty and the collective and this has probably been going on since the dawn of civilization. However, to say that people living in communities that emphasize the collective (Quebec, Canada is especially like that somewhat) don’t also have some desire for individual liberty and personal choice is not shown by any of your examples, just that collectively those communities have chosen the collective.
I don’t like this kind of argument, because it seems to me that mehboring’s points are based on high-order abstractions about the way things ought to be, or on things that are simply not true, but instead are propaganda, like “They [liberal governments] are sanctioning mass murder of unproductive people in name of liberal ideals, and they are attempting to expand it”.
This does not examine the practical aspects of the situation. Do these drug/alcohol programs keep people from committing crimes and winding up in prison? Does they reduce the cost to society in terms of death, of either the victims of crimes of drug addicts or of the drug addicts themselves from getting impure drugs? Does it reduce the cost of property damage, policing, and prisons? Or does it increase them?
Personally, I think drug addicts are going to take drugs, and alcoholics are going to drink, whether there are programs like this or not. They only stop if they themselves want to, or if they can’t get the money to buy drugs or alcohol (or if they die). It has proven impossible to cut off the supply. As a society, we want to deal with that problem in a way that is good for society as a whole – both the drug addicts and the non-addicts. Do these programs like this one in San Francisco get us closer to this goal or not?
And don’t talk about stuff like “sanctioning mass murder”. Maybe the government does not understand the effects of what it is doing. Remember, what it is doing is often what is demanded by a majority of the public. But to call it eyes-wide-open sanctioned murder mistates the problem in a way so extreme that it is not worth discussing it.
Love him or hate him, Milton Friedman explained why governments can’t cut off the supply except through possibly extreme authoritarian measures that Western societies anyway have deemed unacceptable. As far as I know, Friedman was the first to explain that in the illicit drug market (and it is a market like any other) neither the supplier or the consumer (the demander) have any interest in preventing the transaction like through police involvement. So, this means that unless some third party catches them in the act and reports this transaction in real time, the police need other ways of finding and eliminating the supply whether it’s through things like omnipresent cameras, random searches of individuals and businesses looking for drug production. The sometimes proposed solution of 100% searches of containers at ports is based on ignorance and is completely impractical because it would require virtually shutting down the economy. It also leaves out that many drug/inputs to drugs come in bypassing the ports (like in Florida) or are completely made domestically.
I never thought of it that way. I just thought the demand was too big to be denied a supply. That, and the fact that it did not outrage the public enough, the way kiddie porn does. But Friedman’s point makes a lot of sense. Thanks!
“through possibly extreme authoritarian measures that Western societies anyway have deemed unacceptable.”
In half European countries people get arrested and sent to prison for -isms. Douglass Mackey in US got sent to prison for posting memes online without any proof that anyone believed them, and with many other people with various political views making same memes and facing nothing of the sort. A woman, leftist, progressive woman, just got 5 years in jail for blocking an entrance to an abortion clinic. Alain Soral, a marxist & once a member of French communist party, has faced jail numerous times over statements deemed “anti-semitic” in France, and has most recently got 2 months in jail for describing a journo as a “queer” and “fat lesbian activist for migrants.” The very notion of cancel culture is that people are rendered unable from finding work the moment they transgress whatever norms have been imposed on them. This doesn’t apply to rich (we live under capitalism, and money is god) unless they go as far as, idk, raping kids, but primarily middle class, upper middle class, and those aspiring to be either. It’s inherently a class issue, serving as a form of class expulsion; any job where they run a basic google search on a person’s name becomes at that point out of reach. So the idea that “authoritarianism” in the west is unacceptable is absurd. Fucking Lilian Gish got blacklisted from Hollywood 80-ish years back over criticizing warmongers. Before that you’ve had commies purges from academia; after that you’ve had countless people lose jobs for mildest heresies. Fucking cern physicist got fired over basic observation when it comes to sexes. James Watson, a nobel prize winning scientist, had his honorary titles stripped over his controversial comments, and ended up having to sell his nobel prize medal as he ended up destitute. So frankly, in what world do you live in? What’s more authoritarian that destroying people over heretical speech and thoughts? That’s ignoring that the very same thing has led to more than few suicides. See Mike Adams (professor), August Ames (pornstar), or for that matter, the woman who ran Much Ado About Nothing who attempted suicide.
Furthermore, it’s not as if there weren’t attempts at it. Prohibition was a thing, and it had relative success. It’s have been a complete success, in fact, if the very government and politicians weren’t working with mafia to begin with, which was already a thing before it.
The prevalence of weed usage alone demonstrates this, as its normalization and quasi legalization has only spurred it.
Adam, I suggest you stop discussing things with mehboring. It really does not seem worth the effort, given the things he says he believes. Of course, maybe he is the one who is right about everything, and I have a whole lot of loose screws. It is not really for me to say, is it? But it’s the course I intend to follow, anyway. It is good of you to take the time to explore these issues.
I agree, it’s just going around in circles.
Thankfully, no one is forcing others to discuss things with me. And I’m certainly right – we’ve had centuries of liberal capitalism, so blindness to what it does & causes is entirely of one’s own making. There’s plenty of books out there both critiquing and documenting it, old and new, even by liberals themselves (E.g., Left Behind in Rosedale is one such example, written by a professor). Cheers!
I kinda missed another good example, but western/US backed (PP, World Bank, UN, USAID, gov) mass sterilization campaign in India is a great example as well, especially as it disperses of any notion of “good intent.” National Security Study Memorandum 200 demonstrates that this is a bipartisan liberal issue pursued by both democrats and republicans.
Fun fact: Indira Gandhi who enacted said sterilization campaign in India, was awarded by UN “United Nations Population Award” years later. It was the first time said reward was given out. Another person that received it was Qian Xinzhong, who enforced a sterilization policy after a first child. Fittingly, he was the chairman of “National Population and Family Planning Commission.”
“Maybe the government does not understand the effects of what it is doing.” The purpose of the system is what it does. And this system didn’t start yesterday. “Remember, what it is doing is often what is demanded by a majority of the public.” ??? In what world? Immigration demonstrates this is false. Even California demonstrates this – look at Proposition 187 and the current state of California. Studies show, similarly, that what government does is in line with what rich want, and when people support an issue and rich don’t, it usually doesn’t get enacted. That’s ignoring lobbying (billions), role of NGOs, and role of money in politics that basically ensures politicians serve the ruling class to begin with, and not the people. How supported such Governments are can be seen with America & congress, which as of right now has 16% approval rate (gallup). And let’s not get even started on other countries, the role of NGOs (just look at Georgia right now), or the fact that industries in many are owned by foreigners effectively preventing the notion that the government could ever work for the people, as the moment they did anything contrary to interests of those owning the companies, there’d be mass layoffs, sanctions, etc, and in turn color revolution. See Russia as example.
“I think drug addicts are going to take drugs, and alcoholics are going to drink, whether there are programs like this or not.” Then you don’t understand people and what leads to such things to begin with. In fact, you’ve went as far to essentialize an issue some contracts due to their personality traits & environment into an identity that’s inherent to who they are. It’s absurd. Just as absurd it is to suggest that solution to it is to give access to people, which speaks for itself. I’m hardly someone who believes in democracy, in part because I think people are flawed but also because they should focus on their lives, not politics, but even my views on people are far, far above what yours seem to be, as you basically want to condemn people to life of misery, waste of existence, “existing” solely to get high or drunk, enable them rather than offer them help. To each their own, but… damn, it certainly re-affirms many of my views.