Never can Iran have a Nuclear Weapon

Discussion in 'Middle East' started by Bush Lawyer, Jun 25, 2019.

  1. Doug1943

    Doug1943 Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    I suppose you're in favor of nuclear power then?
    And where is that political party whose existence is NOT based on 'promotion of many things that their own constituents want'. I've never seen such a party.
     
  2. Doug1943

    Doug1943 Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Absolutely. I agree entirely with that.
     
  3. Doug1943

    Doug1943 Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Here's a concrete example of where I believe the conservative understanding of human nature trumps (sorry) the liberal understanding: the so-called "Clinton Welfare Reforms". I also believe that conservatives have a better grasp of the importance of the traditional two-parent nuclear family.

    I've got to go to bed now so I'll reply, if required, in a few hours.
     
    Last edited: Jul 10, 2019
  4. LangleyMan

    LangleyMan Well-Known Member

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    There is very little collectivized production in this country.
    Of course, it does. I taught for more than three decades in public schools.
    The insurance or healthcare services? Certainly, some of the insurance is private, but health services are typically delivered privately.
    The "insurance" part of healthcare is a tiny fraction of healthcare services.
     
  5. Badaboom

    Badaboom Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Pot meet kettle... Poor poor you lol.
     
  6. dagosa

    dagosa Well-Known Member

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    Insurance is the driving force of healthcare. It is the impetus of healthcare. There is no private provider anywhere in the US that would commit to providing healthcare without guarantee of payment. Public funded Universal healthcare is a guarantee that no private insurance can match.
     
  7. dagosa

    dagosa Well-Known Member

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    You need to get a life.
     
  8. dagosa

    dagosa Well-Known Member

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    The Republican Party.
     
  9. dagosa

    dagosa Well-Known Member

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    They don’t have a better grasp of anything. They have a preference. That’s not the same thing.
     
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  10. LangleyMan

    LangleyMan Well-Known Member

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    Insurers may be the grease that matches services with insureds, but they aren't providing the service.
     
  11. Doug1943

    Doug1943 Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    A verbal quibble.

    People on the Right, as opposed to people on the Left, tend to believe in the importance of the traditional family. They are right to do so.
    Why they believe this is a separate question. Perhaps they believe it for bad reasons. That's another argument.

    There are virtues specific to both liberals and conservatives, just different ones. This has been best explored by Jonathan Haidt, in his The Righteous Mind. From the publisher's blurb:
    [QUOTE]In this “landmark contribution to humanity’s understanding of itself” (The New York Times Book Review) social psychologist Jonathan Haidt challenges conventional thinking about morality, politics, and religion in a way that speaks to conservatives and liberals alike.

    Drawing on his twenty five years of groundbreaking research on moral psychology, Haidt shows how moral judgments arise not from reason but from gut feelings. He shows why liberals, conservatives, and libertarians have such different intuitions about right and wrong, and he shows why each side is actually right about many of its central concerns. In this subtle yet accessible book, Haidt gives you the key to understanding the miracle of human cooperation, as well as the curse of our eternal divisions and conflicts. If you’re ready to trade in anger for understanding, read The Righteous Mind.[/QUOTE]

    Political 'arguments' along the lines of "my side is more beautiful, intelligent, patriotic, well-educated, hard-working, masculine" are tedious, always made by people with little knowledge of history, and who think the current American political landscape is universal.

    Politics is driven by perceived self-interest. Political divisions are usually along one of two lines: between what Matthew Parris calls 'the Successful and the Unsuccessful', or what I would call 'the contented and the discontented' -- conventionally, Right vs Left. Where this isn't true, the division is along tribal (ethnic or religious) lines. Any country where the latter becomes the dominant political division is in trouble. The Hard Left in the US (not the same things as liberals) has discovered that the racial fracture line is something they can work to open far more successfully than the class line. Yugoslavia, here we come.
     
  12. Doug1943

    Doug1943 Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    We have to use insurance as a way of paying for healthcare, because the costs that any individual may incur in the future, for his healthcare, are unpredictable, whereas the costs of a sufficiently large group of people are relatively predictable (although because of advances in medicine, this calculation is having to be continually revised, as we live longer).

    The only argument is: should government force us to insure ourselves?

    Insurance against the expenses of old age, when we cannot earn our livings, as well as against the medical costs of old age (which is when we usually have such costs), has to be paid by us when we are younger.

    Young people tend not to be provident. So there is an argument, with which I agree, for forcing them to be so, via compulsory insurance. There are many ways to do that, which do not completely socialize the costs of old age and medical care, but retain the concept of reward for effort (and luck).

    It's one of the ways the free market system, which has proven so enormously beneficial for mankind, can be made to work for everyone.

    You need some socialism in order to save capitalism.
     
  13. chris155au

    chris155au Well-Known Member

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    Does the Supreme Court pick up cases independently? I thought that they wait for cases to come to them. Isn't it the fault of the federal government for failing to take up cases against states?

    According to what?
     
    Last edited: Jul 11, 2019
  14. Doug1943

    Doug1943 Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    And shouting "Fire!" in a crowded theater is certainly something that should be punished by law.

    The problem is, what actually constitutes "shouting fire!" ?

    Most people who use this Oliver Wendell Holmes quote probably don't know that he used it to justify imprisoning the General Secretary of the Socialist Party, which had issued a leaflet calling on men to resist the draft.
    Source.

    Many people were imprisoned under Democratic President Woodrow Wilson, including the saint-like Eugene Victor Debs, the Socialist Party's presidential candidate. After the war was over, Wilson refused to pardon Debs. He remained in prison until the election of the Republican Warren G. Harding, who not only pardoned Debs, but invited him to the White House for a chat. Mean old Republicans.

    But back to "stoking race hatred".

    Suppose I write a book, and in that book I assert that a particular racial group is more intelligent than another, for genetic reasons. Would you consider that "stoking racial hatred"?

    Suppose my book points out that five of the six main oligarchs in Russia are Jewish. Stoking racial hatred?
     
  15. Yazverg

    Yazverg Well-Known Member

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    Everyone will have nuclear weapons with the time. The main issue is to preserve and extend collaboration on building mutual trust and minimize the chance for a conflict. At the moment politicians are going into a completely wrong direction. So, today it was Trump who could start a war easily developing into nuclear. Tomorrow it will be the guy who takes presidentship after Putin. The day after tomorrow it will be iranian leader... The very thinking of nuclear war as a possibility makes such a war a matter of time.
     
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  16. Doug1943

    Doug1943 Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    This is THE big problem facing the human race.

    We've solved the poverty problem pretty much. Capitalism is the cure, and it's being applied, albeit unevenly, almost everywhere.

    So many of our physical problems are rapidly falling before the advance of science and technology. Disease after disease vanishes into the history books. [I tutor kids, and I always ask my new tutees if they have ever heard of the word "polio". Most haven't. When I was their age, it was always on our minds, every summer.]

    Universal education, to the highest level, is almost available now: a re-run of the One Per Child project, financed by a few of the increasing number of billionaires, will bring the intellectual riches of the whole human race to the remotest village.

    Even our problems -- lots of wealth but too unevenly distributed, robots that can do all the dirty and boring work -- are 'good' problems to have. Solutions can be found.

    But .... a good war could really screw things up.

    Over what???

    The World Wars of the last century were caused, in part, by the false belief that to be prosperous, you had to have colonies. Totally wrong.

    Now, there isn't even anything material to fight over.
     
    Last edited: Jul 11, 2019
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  17. Bush Lawyer

    Bush Lawyer Well-Known Member

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    Really?
     
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  18. Steady Pie

    Steady Pie Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    As government takes over industries and raises taxes it becomes a mixed economy. I agrer that Finland is not a socialist country in whole - private ownership of the means of production still exists in most industries.

    However, it is MORE socialist than say... the United States. Public ownership is implemented in more industries. Tax rates are higher. If they put those tax rates to 100% and government took over the provision of remaining private industries, it would be fully socialist, albeit in a roundabout way.

    On the "universal healthcare is socialism!" debate I lie somewhere in the middle and see good points on both sides.



    Socialism is the means to achieve the ends of communism, they are not in competition.

    It just happens to not work. It devolves into authoritarianism. The proletariat cannot lead itself, and the vanguard party moves to consolidate their power once the old masters are dead or exiled.

    It's a human nature thing.

    Trade existed for eons before we formalised it into market ideology. That doesn't mean there weren't capitalist systems before we thought of the concept.

    Indeed, a lot of The Republic by Plato reads as advocacy for communism. A lot of the fascism of the 20th century was in part present in Caesar's Rome. We as humans tend to do things and come up with labels and intellectual frameworks later.
     
  19. Doug1943

    Doug1943 Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Oh yes.
    Most people think that the world is like it was fifty years ago, when the majority of mankind lived in extreme poverty. They're often astonished when they see the actual figures -- I know I was. There's something about us that relishes bad news, I guess. Or perhaps it's that our intelligentisa are resentful that it was socialism that kept some of them in poverty, and capitalism that has dragged them out of it.

    Anyway, have a look at this chart. Notice the proportions of people living in extreme poverty, vs those who are not. Up to the middle of the century, those in extreme poverty significantly outnumbered those not in extreme poverty. Then something happened .... as Mrs Thatcher said, "Rejoice! Rejoice!"

    [​IMG]
     
    Last edited: Jul 11, 2019
  20. Bush Lawyer

    Bush Lawyer Well-Known Member

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    "Number of people not in extreme poverty." Hmmm. They live on about $2.00 a day, lucky buggers! Yay for not being in extreme poverty!
     
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  21. Doug1943

    Doug1943 Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Some people are never satisfied. I suppose they have a deep psychological need to believe everything is terrible, and getting worse. Eyoreism.
    You have to look at the trend. It's not that people who were living on $2.00/day are now living on $2.25 a day. We're getting richer.
    Yes, yes, yes ... there are gross inequalities, including unfair inequalities in many Third World countries where the market and the rule of law is weak.
    And there are many problems to be solved ... for instance, it's good that Brazil is growing, but it's not good that the Rain Forest is disappearing.

    But... we're getting richer. And that's the material foundation for an improvement in our culture: our educational level, our morality. But ... erst kommt das Fressen, dann kommt die Moral, as Comrade Brecht said.

    [​IMG]
     
  22. Yazverg

    Yazverg Well-Known Member

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    I would rather agree to the statement that the problem of world poverty has in general been solved. We just need a proper comparison without being emotionally driven. So, if we compare the US today and the US a hundred years ago, Russia today and a hundred years ago, China, India, Europe etc., we would find that within this hundred years most part of populations has made a huge leap forward in terms of struggle with poverty. I might complain today that I need to pay huge percentage for bank loans in order to get a bigger flat or house, but a hundred years ago a person in my position would dream of having these 'problems'. Of course it's different for other countries and in african or latin american regions people still suffer a lot, but again we need to compare them not to the modern EU level of welfare but with their own level a hundred years ago. I really don't know any example that within this period some country started to experience more poverty.

    I belive that there should be a big rearrangement of world political concept in general. Liberal globalization is an obvious failure. But something of that kind has to be performed. Capitalism needs not to be destroyed but to get reformed in order to allow the survival and development. An obvious cure for getting more even spread of wealth is to make a sort of limit at the upper end, providing a successful businessman with more non-money motivation and duties in his business area. That would still motivates to give their best, but restrict the possibility to make an ill-use of the money. But I don't have a full concept of the better future, I just feel the need for a change. If it doesn't happen peacefully then corruption and degradation will still force people to make a change during and after the war. E.g. we started to speak of racism and fascism. Which is perceived so bad just because we had a brutal WW. If we didn't it would still sound OK if some person (no matter the education or results) would say of himself as superior towards other person (regardless of this person qualities) just because of nationality. I believe that in future it will sound the same way with the people who make 100 000 000 times more money than an average worker.
     
  23. Doug1943

    Doug1943 Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Yes, it's tricky. We don't want to kill the goose that lays the golden eggs.
    But ... imagine a billionaire ... how much more of life's pleasures can this person consume, as compared to the ordinary person. Surely most of a billionaire's money doesn't get spent on gold-plated toilets, but is re-invested. Now some people would say, the government should take away his money and let some government employees invest it instead of him. I'm not so sure this would give us a better outcome.

    Question: which is managed better, Microsoft, or liberal San Francisco?
    [​IMG]
     
  24. dagosa

    dagosa Well-Known Member

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    And neither is the provider providing the service without insurance of payment. Providers never provide care on a wish and a prayer. Even so called “free healthcare.” Has financial backing. Volunteerism in healthcare does not exist with out financial support. Insurance, public or private, is at the root of all healthcare.
     
  25. dagosa

    dagosa Well-Known Member

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    That’s a bogus comparison. One is a tightly controlled environment, one is not. Comeback from fighting in a real shooting war and tell us which is managed better, Microsoft or a successful mission in war where fewer soldiers are killed. Big city management has all sorts of uncontrolled factors that obviously gave you a false sense of what is right or wrong. You’re fallacy of business skills some how making success is dis proved over and over. It is apparent with Trump.
     

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