jerome scuggs' weekly "shit hits the fan" politics thread

[Epinephrine]

Really, if that's how you see it, then It's my fault for not making it clear. But at this point I think you're just a moron if you're going to use that "Jerome has no values" bullshit.

Here we are, in goddamned 2008, with the world falling apart around us, and why? Because the entire "welfare state" expirement is starting to wear thin, because the reality that our politicians painted for us - that they could spend their way out of debt and into a utopia - is bull.

I've been studying this for a long time, it's going to probably wind up being a part of my life's work, and it's paying off - for the past six months, using what I know about economics, politics, etc - I've been as dead-on about the situation as I think I can be.

I don't think I'd be so passionate - and therefore upset by your bullshit trolling - if I didn't believe that what I have to say is in the (true) best interest of every single planet on earth.

Though I suppose given your lack of actual reasoning here, I'd say that ad hominem is the only way to go. Classy.

I never said you have no values. I just said your value system is different from that of most people's.

You've admitted in the past in our debates about how you would support anarchy over government any time. You've admitted in the past and advocated for the removal of the FDA and even for any system of verifying that doctors have real credentials as done by government. You believe that companies will naturally create good drugs and that those that don't will eventually die off because of lack of customers.

You have also said that the best system is absolutely unfettered capitalism, and you've admitted that even though a lot of people will probably get screwed, you believe the ends justify the means.

What I believe you falsely believe is that things in the end will end up being better or more equitable than they are now. To that end, I don't even believe you believe in any sort of equality over the 'you get exactly in return what you pay for' type of system.

I have just neatly summed up your thoughts, and now you are angry that someone has exposed plausible endpoints of what you believe in.

What are these endpoints?

1) Lots of people will get screwed over in the end because they will have no healthcare because they can't afford it.
2) Lots of people will die without any regulation of drugs because there's absolutely nothing to stop sham companies from making sham products for a quick buck before closing up shop (see Chinese pharmaceutical companies)

and so on and so on.



Also I don't see any evidence of the world falling apart in 2008 as you so gloriously claim. The world is doing just fine actually. Sure there is a recession coming up in the USA, but in general the world is doing fine and in Europe where the welfare state is even more powerful they are having less of a problem with their economies than the USA (Canada as well for that matter is also doing better by most measures).

So in the end, I believe exactly what you have told us. Your system cares about unspecified endpoints, which you just believe will happen if everyone listened to milton friedman. You absolutely do not give a crap about any of the people who get screwed from switching over, because you think it's worth it in the end.

I point out that millions will probably get screwed unnecessarily for an unknown and unspecified benefit, and you don't like that idea, thus you call me a troll. LOL.


And the even more funny thing is I've sort of pieced together what you stand for, from your often contradictory posts in response to my posts. You've actually never sat out and wrote out exactly what kind of system you'd use to run the world and exactly how it would work and how it would benefit and how fast it'd work save pointing us to some random internet articles about other people.

I'm sorry, but it's pretty easy to point out flaws in existing systems, but it's going to definitely take a lot more than just your pointing out how some things now don't work to convince real people that your ideas actually work.

[gran guerrero]

Outside of a full-blown revolution, what am I supposed to be doing?

I keep asking myself this question too.

[Jerome Scuggs]

I would just like to know if you are doing anything to help the problems other than "informing others" aka bitching

Perhaps if people spent more time discussing instead of action for action's sake, we wouldn't be in this problem.

In my home town, I did the usual campaigning for Ron Paul, and I do my best to help the underground economy flourish, if you catch my drift. Aside from that I spend my days helping my friends choose investments and, not to toot my own horn, I don't have enough fingers and toes to count the number of people who are voting for whoever I vote for, no questions asked. People believe what I say, if only I could translate that gift of gab into a gift for writing, I'd be set to conquer the world.

By the end of August, I will be the chief editor for the economics and politics section of a multi-media project that's based in Philadelphia, a student at Temple University is orchestrating the whole thing. Depending on how it goes, by September I might be in Philly full-time to work with the TV/news project - but that's best case scenario, I don't expect it to be that fast. Next summer I'm going to head up to memphis for 4 weeks to start a commune (once again, asked by a personal friend because I'm "the guy who knows what's going on") and then to D.C. to intern for Vitter.

Outside of a full-blown revolution, what am I supposed to be doing? I'm only 20 years old. I'll take my ideas - which some of the brightest minds of the 20th century spent their entire lives explaining and defining - and tinker with them and refine them to the best of my abilities (as I've done even in these past few months), and by the time I'm done I might have a better set of ideas - or I might find that these guys really did have it right. Or hell, maybe they will be wrong - but until it's absolutely incontrovertible, I won't abandon them.

If you wanna read what I'm about - here it is. You'll probably see why he's my role model :wub:

[Summa]

Really, if that's how you see it, then It's my fault for not making it clear. But at this point I think you're just a moron if you're going to use that "Jerome has no values" bullshit.

Here we are, in goddamned 2008, with the world falling apart around us, and why? Because the entire "welfare state" expirement is starting to wear thin, because the reality that our politicians painted for us - that they could spend their way out of debt and into a utopia - is bull.

I've been studying this for a long time, it's going to probably wind up being a part of my life's work, and it's paying off - for the past six months, using what I know about economics, politics, etc - I've been as dead-on about the situation as I think I can be.

I don't think I'd be so passionate - and therefore upset by your bullshit trolling - if I didn't believe that what I have to say is in the (true) best interest of every single planet on earth.

Though I suppose given your lack of actual reasoning here, I'd say that ad hominem is the only way to go. Classy.

Jerome has values. Do his values coincide with most common people's? No. He has values nonetheless.

I don't deny Jerome's passion for one second, but honestly I have to fall back on a cliche here "If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the problem." I know Jerome knows that what he is preaching is probably not practical and some if not most of it will not come to fruition. The only thing that really bothers me about Jerome is his incessant bitching about the government and what its doing wrong, and I never have heard of anything that Jerome has tried to do to change things. I could be wrong for lack of knowledge there though. Take me for example, I am just a normal player in this game and I see it dying, so I took it upon myself to run TWDT to try and bring some fun and life back instead of sitting around grumbling. And as for Jerome's stance on stupid people and it being their fault for being where they are, I can definitely see where hes coming from because I honestly feel the same way sometimes. And yes anyone in this world can move up by shear force of will, but is it usually practical and realistic? Not really. People get screwed by the system and culture. Your basis of values as a youth come from you parents or lack their of. If your daddy is dealing drugs or going pay check to pay check and dropped out of high school. Chances are you are going to learn bad lessons from him and be set up to fail. People don't deserve to die or be thrown by the wayside for their own ignorance or being screwed by the system....anywayz i got on a tangent. I would just like to know if you are doing anything to help the problems other than "informing others" aka bitching

[Jerome Scuggs]

Really, if that's how you see it, then It's my fault for not making it clear. But at this point I think you're just a moron if you're going to use that "Jerome has no values" bullshit.

Here we are, in goddamned 2008, with the world falling apart around us, and why? Because the entire "welfare state" expirement is starting to wear thin, because the reality that our politicians painted for us - that they could spend their way out of debt and into a utopia - is bull.

I've been studying this for a long time, it's going to probably wind up being a part of my life's work, and it's paying off - for the past six months, using what I know about economics, politics, etc - I've been as dead-on about the situation as I think I can be.

I don't think I'd be so passionate - and therefore upset by your bullshit trolling - if I didn't believe that what I have to say is in the (true) best interest of every single planet on earth.

Though I suppose given your lack of actual reasoning here, I'd say that ad hominem is the only way to go. Classy.

[Epinephrine]

I assumed Jerome would have health insurance because I could not concieve of anybody who wasn't covered by health insurance to argue from the perspective of private healthcare.

I wouldn't blindly support national healthcare if it was clearly failing. The fact is, it isn't: it's one of the things we are most proud of. The most cherished chapters in our political history are the creation of the welfare state in the early 20th century and the NHS after the second World War.

Your problem is that you actually believe that Jerome has a value system consistent with that of most people in the world or that he is advocating for his country. In reality, Jerome doesn't want the United States either.

He wants a world with absolutely no government, where everyone does whatever they want with absolutely no regulation. In terms of healthcare, that is no insurance, no regulation of doctors (in his system, everyone who calls themselves a doctor can be a doctor, and it's up to the consumer to educate themselves, and since consumers are super smart, eventually only 'real' doctors will stay in business anyway, so regulation is actually pointless), no regulation of medications (see blurb about regulating doctors, once enough millions die from faulty drugs, people will smarten up and stop buying said drug), and absolute free choice to do whatever the hell you want to do.

Note that this means, that he actually absolutely doesn't give two shits if millions of people die by faulty drugs, or use sham doctors, or that in any capitalistic system where you are trying to get something relatively 'expensive', lots of poor people will always be screwed. No it's their fault for being poor. It's their fault for being uninformed customers. It's their fault for believing company advertising when they really should know better and not take sham medications. It's their fault for visiting a crappy doctor, because people should have long ago learned who all the good doctors were.

So Jerome's views are actually not very consistant with reality. Since he knows that in real life his ultimate goals will probably never come to fruition, he is happy enough to just rail against a public system of anything or government anything just because.

[Summa]

you sound kinda like the guy with the ponytail.

Chuckie: Are we gonna have a problem here?

Clark: No, no, no, no! There's no problem here. I was just hoping you might give me some insight into the evolution of the market economy in the southern colonies. My contention is that prior to the Revolutionary War, the economic modalities, especially in the southern colonies, could be most aptly described as agrarian precapitalist.

Chuckie: Let me tell you something -

Will: Of course that's your contention. You're a first-year grad student; you just got finished reading some Marxian historian, Pete Garrison probably. You're gonna be convinced of that 'till next month when you get to James Lemon. Then you're going to be talking about how the economies of Virginia and Pennsylvania were entrepreneurial and capitalist way back in 1740. That's gonna last until next year; you're gonna be in here regurgitating Gordon Wood, talkin' about, you know, the pre-revolutionary utopia and the capital-forming effects of military mobilization.

Clark: Well, as a matter of fact, I won't, because Wood drastically underestimates the impact of social -

Will: "Wood drastically underestimates the impact of social distinctions predicated upon wealth, especially inherited wealth"? You got that from Vickers' "Work in Essex County," page 98, right? Yeah, I read that too. Were you gonna plagiarize the whole thing for us? Do you have any thoughts of your own on this matter? Or do you, is that your thing, you come into a bar, read some obscure passage and then pretend - you pawn it off as your own, as your own idea just to impress some girls, embarrass my friend?

Clark: [looks down in shame]

Will: See, the sad thing about a guy like you is, in 50 years you're gonna start doin' some thinkin' on your own and you're going to come up with the fact that there are two certainties in life: one, don't do that, and two, you dropped 150 grand on a f***in' education you could have got for a dollar fifty in late charges at the public library!

Clark: Yeah, but I will have a degree. And you'll be servin' my kids fries at a drive-thru on our way to a skiing trip.

Will: That may be, but at least I won't be unoriginal. But I mean, if you have a problem with that, I mean, we could just step outside - we could figure it out.

Clark: No, man, there's no problem. It's cool.

Will: It's cool?

Clark: Yeah.

Will: Cool.

Chuckie: Fuckin' damn right it's cool. How do you like me NOW?

Morgan: My boy's wicked smart!

^^^^^^ one of my favorite movies the following is my favorite quote

Will: Why shouldn't I work for the N.S.A.? That's a tough one, but I'll take a shot. Say I'm working at N.S.A. Somebody puts a code on my desk, something nobody else can break. Maybe I take a shot at it and maybe I break it. And I'm real happy with myself, 'cause I did my job well. But maybe that code was the location of some rebel army in North Africa or the Middle East. Once they have that location, they bomb the village where the rebels were hiding and fifteen hundred people I never met, never had no problem with, get killed. Now the politicians are sayin', "Oh, send in the Marines to secure the area" 'cause they don't give a shit. It won't be their kid over there, gettin' shot. Just like it wasn't them when their number got called, 'cause they were pullin' a tour in the National Guard. It'll be some kid from Southie takin' shrapnel in the ass. And he comes back to find that the plant he used to work at got exported to the country he just got back from. And the guy who put the shrapnel in his ass got his old job, 'cause he'll work for fifteen cents a day and no bathroom breaks. Meanwhile, he realizes the only reason he was over there in the first place was so we could install a government that would sell us oil at a good price. And, of course, the oil companies used the skirmish over there to scare up domestic oil prices. A cute little ancillary benefit for them, but it ain't helping my buddy at two-fifty a gallon. And they're takin' their sweet time bringin' the oil back, of course, and maybe even took the liberty of hiring an alcoholic skipper who likes to drink martinis and fuckin' play slalom with the icebergs, and it ain't too long 'til he hits one, spills the oil and kills all the sea life in the North Atlantic. So now my buddy's out of work and he can't afford to drive, so he's got to walk to the fuckin' job interviews, which sucks 'cause the shrapnel in his ass is givin' him chronic hemorrhoids. And meanwhile he's starvin', 'cause every time he tries to get a bite to eat, the only blue plate special they're servin' is North Atlantic scrod with Quaker State. So what did I think? I'm holdin' out for somethin' better. I figure fuck it, while I'm at it why not just shoot my buddy, take his job, give it to his sworn enemy, hike up gas prices, bomb a village, club a baby seal, hit the hash pipe and join the National Guard? I could be elected president.

[Squeezer]

Oh, is that what he keeps doing?

I don't get my care at a reduced cost - I pay the actual market price, in cash. What I don't pay for is the bureaucratic overhead. If I pay in cash without using insurance, that's money I save the clinic - probably even more money than I save myself. The trend started in Texas and it's made its way over here.

Fluffz: F.A. Hayek, "The Road to Serfdom", chapter 3: 'Individualism and Collectivism'. Hayek goes very in-depth about the concepts of "majority rule" in the political and economic sphere.

you sound kinda like the guy with the ponytail.

[Kolar]

That's odd. My dentist can't wait to see me.

[Jerome Scuggs]

as Epi lightly points out each time a thread like this is created, he relies on some doctors to do their work for free or at reduced cost

Oh, is that what he keeps doing?

I don't get my care at a reduced cost - I pay the actual market price, in cash. What I don't pay for is the bureaucratic overhead. If I pay in cash without using insurance, that's money I save the clinic - probably even more money than I save myself. The trend started in Texas and it's made its way over here.

Fluffz: F.A. Hayek, "The Road to Serfdom", chapter 3: 'Individualism and Collectivism'. Hayek goes very in-depth about the concepts of "majority rule" in the political and economic sphere.

[Kolar]

I think he has stated before he does not have health insurance because he finds fault with the current system in the United States as much has he does with the UK and Canadian system, as Epi lightly points out each time a thread like this is created, he relies on some doctors to do their work for free or at reduced cost. Whether that has changed or not I don't know. It's not really important, his opinion more or less has not.


I do agree with you that for this debate to have any meaning it has to be done based on statistics and facts, not on tabloids and hearsay. I think the disconnect on health care is about the goal of the system beyond the issues of ownership and control.

[MetalHeadz]

I don't think Jerome is one to argue from the perspective of which best helps himself (or people he cares about?). I think that could be said about a lot of people on health care. They'll support a system (public or private) which royally screws them.

I assumed Jerome would have health insurance because I could not concieve of anybody who wasn't covered by health insurance to argue from the perspective of private healthcare.

I wouldn't blindly support national healthcare if it was clearly failing. The fact is, it isn't: it's one of the things we are most proud of. The most cherished chapters in our political history are the creation of the welfare state in the early 20th century and the NHS after the second World War.

[Kolar]

To clarify, I wouldn't be so bold as to call you a redneck (this is obviously not the case.) It was more a comment on the infallibility, gullibility and bias of conservative America. I think I would be right in saying that you were probably someone with health insurance though?

I don't think Jerome is one to argue from the perspective of which best helps himself (or people he cares about?). I think that could be said about a lot of people on health care. They'll support a system (public or private) which royally screws them.

[MetalHeadz]

This is my point. The state's mere existence leads to "croney capitalism", which I whole-heartedly oppose - and probably even more so than you might, because it's annoying that people confuse free market economics with "croney capitalism"

As for your points about "perfect competition", I am a student of a school of economics that completely agrees with you. But you're missing my critical point on that issue.

You also managed to call me a "redneck" and a "rich american", the contradiction I will ignore. I never defended our healthcare system - it's as shitty as yours.

http://www.dukenews.duke.edu/2004/02/healthcare_0204.html

http://www.heritage.org/Research/HealthCare/BG1211ES.cfm

http://www.commonwealthfund.org/newsroom/newsroom_show.htm?doc_id=223578

Don't be stupid and say an entire system works because you got good treatment. Just because you got your arm fixed doesn't mean the articles I posted aren't true. If the system was so broken that even broken arms couldn't be fixed - I wouldn't be posting, the problem would solve itself.

To clarify, I wouldn't be so bold as to call you a redneck (this is obviously not the case.) It was more a comment on the infallibility, gullibility and bias of conservative America. I think I would be right in saying that you were probably someone with health insurance though?

I'm not claiming that 'universal' healthcare is a perfect system. You are right to posit the flaws. On a note of concession, national healthcare is extremely beaurocratic and structurally complex, which is something you do not find so much in private healthcare where profit is at the minds of every director and chairperson. However, you only cited individual cases as evidence that national healthcare is deficient, as I did for the opposite case. If you would like to get into discussion whereby aggregate statistics were used only as evidence, I would be more than happy.

And, to bring you to a question which you rather equivocally dodged, do you think that a country (like the UK) with a healthcare system which treats all of it's patients, bar a few which you have keenly brought to my attention (and has higher life expectancy, lower infant mortality rate and 25% more nurses per 1000 people) is better than a country which denies 16% of it's people on a financial basis? Excuse the rhetoric, but the answer is no.

[Kolar]

Ok, lets assume we change the system now, destroy all states, goverments, all regulations and all infrastructure. People spread out and start farming, a clean fresh start.

Sounds like a Chávez plan to me.

Brave new world anyone? What you suggest is Dictatorship of the majority. Everyone is in the minority sometimes, the freedome you seek is destroyed by itself. An argumentation like that is not foolish but dangerous. I question the goal you are tryin to reach, im not saying it cant work.

Google his sig....