I gave up on this group once I found out you have to manually invite people in order for them to be able to post. You can't just make it public. I decided I didn't want to play gatekeeper.
Plus there didn't seem to be much interest.
Still, if you want, we can try pushing it again.
We don't need to kill animals for clothing. In fact most clothing is made from crops such as cotton, not from animal products.
We also don't need to eat meat to be healthy.
We know very well how suffering comes about -- our senses send signals to our brain which in turn creates the feeling. Plants don't have brains or any other means of cognition, therefore they cannot suffer.
There's no such thing as rights in the sense that you are using the term. We should simply do what we can to minimize suffering, both human and non-human.
I don't see this system as convoluted at all. To put it more simply: Animal suffering matters, although it matters less than human suffering. Even if it were convoluted I don't think that would be relevant because it would simply be reflecting the complicated nature of reality.
A good first step would be to stop breeding and slaughtering mammals and birds in factory farms. If you accept that animal suffering matters at all, factory farms are obviously a horrible thing.
I am most definitely not associating sentience in the broad sense with human level sentience. Again, I see a gradient of cognitive sophistication going from zero to human-level. As we move along this continuum, an organism accumulates moral weight. You can't really capture that idea in a single word, so I'm using "sentience", in the broad sense, as a rough approximation.
I agree with you that human sentience is greater that animal sentience. If we could quantify suffering (which we theoretically could), we might come up with a formula that looked something like this:
amount_of_suffering = damage_inflicted x capacity_for_pain
(the x signifies multiplication)
Where capacity_for_pain might be 1 for humans and .01 for cows and .000001 for shrimp.
"Since no animal has human sentience, or awareness, they are afforded no rights and may be eaten at will."
First, I don't think the concept of "rights" makes a lot of sense. I think all ethics must come from a Utilitarian perspective. And from here I see no such thing as absolute rights, human or otherwise. There is only maximization of overall quality of life; a concept which in turn is based on the simple miracle that organisms have evolved a capacity to feel good and bad. The only reason people generally have a "right" to life is because society could not function if we didn't harshly condemn murder. "Thou shalt not kill" is a good guideline for practical reasons; it is not a universal imperative (there are times when murder can serve the greater good).
But I digress. My key point is that suffering is bad and should therefore be minimized; killing animals causes suffering and is therefore bad; factory farming causes massive, widespread suffering and is therefore an abomination.
"You'd have to develop a moral system based entirely on animal sentience, and decide whether that moral system is equal to humans. To do THAT, you need objective criteria."
We have objective criteria, at least in theory: suffering in all forms is a result of neural activity. The firings of neurons can be measured and quantified. Of course we lack the technical sophistication to measure suffering, but we can come up with crude estimations. For example if I were to flick my finger against my arm, a few nerves would fire, a bit of neural activity would occur, and I would feel a very slight amount of pain. If I were to take a knife and plunge it into a cow's side repeatedly, quite a lot of nerves would fire strongly, massive neural activity would occur, and the cow would feel a great deal of pain. So there you go, objective suffering.
"animals have no morals and actions from or towards them cannot be judged on a moral scale"
From yes, towards no. Most animals are not capable of moral reasoning, therefore their actions can't be judged on a moral scale. However, it does not follow that us causing them harm is irrelevant.
"And my subjective sensations are different than yours."
Not at a basic level. It's safe to say we both experience roughly the same thing upon being hit in the head with a baseball bat, or upon having an orgasm. At the very least I hope we can agree that one of these is better than the other in both your case and mine.
Let's break out the dictionary.
Main Entry: sen·tient
Etymology: Latin sentient-, sentiens, present participle of sentire to perceive, feel
1 : responsive to or conscious of sense impressions
2 : aware
3 : finely sensitive in perception or feeling
I see see nothing in there about "abstract thoughts". I'd say capacity for pain fits definition 1 and possibly 2 and 3. Let the quibbling commence.
As for just what sorts of animals can feel pain, I don't think that is a settled question.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
I will grant that eating clams and shrimp is probably roughly akin to eating plants from a moral perspective, and is therefore probably ok.
"So, the best you've got there is a ban on cows and most other mammals."
And possibly chickens and other birds.
"You can try out some moral mumbo-jumbo, but those are random value judgments which aren't based on anything objective."
Mumbo-jumbo? Pain is bad. It's that simple. Subjective sensations of good and bad are the foundation of any system of ethics.
You are of course right that we can't "half-eat" something. It's the same problem we face with abortion. We are forced to draw a line somewhere and say, "After it reaches this level of cognitive sophistication, killing this creature is unacceptable." I think capacity for pain is a reasonable place to draw that line. Cows and chickens are clearly well beyond that point.
As for the precise meaning of the word "sentient", I'm not interested in semantic quibbling. If you have a better term for "more cognitive capabilities than a rock" we can use that instead.
In reality sentience is not black and white. There is a gradient going from completely non-sentient to completely sentient. You have rocks on one end, and humans on the other. The farther along this spectrum an organism is, the more wrong it is to kill it.
As for how sentient the animals we eat are, well, that question is far from settled. I will say my judgment based on watching pigs, cows, etc, is that they are sufficiently sophisticated to make their slaughter wrong. You can watch them interact with one another. You can watch them exhibit fear. I think anyone who approaches this question from an unbiased perspective can't help but make the same call.
The debate description doesn't make much sense.
Especially this last sentence:
"If justice is immutable then justice cannot be subject to democracy and yet we assert that democracy is a just form of government."
You seem to think there's a contradiction there, but there isn't one. It's like saying:
"If apples are red then they cannot be blue and yet we assert that apples are tasty."
We can assert that democracy is just without implying that justice is mutable.
Also, is it really necessary to use obscure phrases like "de jure mutable"? Couldn't you phrase that in plain English? Maybe something like "If the legal concept of justice can change..."
Another thought: It's probably impossible to know about how things might have been different. Seems like even small changes could have had big impacts via the butterfly effect. The world is just too complex; it would be like trying to predict the value of the stock market a hundred years from now.
I'm not sure there's much we can do about Iran obtaining nuclear weapons. There's the economic sanctions option, but I doubt that will be effective. They didn't work against India when they were working on nukes.
The US military is too overextended to be able to pull off another regime change. The rest of the world is probably not going to do what's necessary to stop them.
I really don't see a good solution here.
Carbon taxes. Simple and straightforward. And if any countries fail to cut emissions sufficiently, other countries should impose carbon tariffs on goods imported from those countries. It'll be bad for the global economy in the short term but it will eventually lead to clean energy solutions.
Let's assign a value of 1 to my current productivity level. Now let's say I spend a year developing tools that allow me to work more efficiently. By the end of that year these tools have improved my productivity by 30%, giving me a productivity level of 1.3.
Now let's say I spend the next year using those tools to develop better tools. At the end of that year I have again increased my productivity by 30%, giving me a productivity level of 1.69. (30% of 1.3 = .39; 1.3 + .39 = 1.69)
Repeat the process again and I have a productivity level of 2.197 by the end of the third year.
If I were able repeat this 30% a year growth in productivity every year for 60 years, then by the end of it my productivity level would be... almost 7 million (1.3^60=6,864,377). In other words I would be 7 million times more productive then I was when I started.
I think that when it comes to computers this kind of exponential increase in productivity may be within the realm of possibility. It's one of the reasons I have spent the last year or two working on tools to make myself more productive.
What do you think? Am I full of crap?
Hmm, I would say history would've gravitated to more or less the current state of things regardless of how a few historical events turned out.
We can see all the countries of the world gravitating toward a similar blend of democracy with regulated capitalism. I believe this is because this system is the one that works best given human nature. So no matter what course history took, people would always have drifted in this direction, because it would always have been the logical thing to do.
In other words, I don't know enough about world history to say anything interesting :)
I had always assumed that the point of Democracy was that having the entire population making decisions through votes resulted in better decisions being made. But certain things about our system seem to fly in the face of this notion. The independence of the Federal Reserve, for instance. Monetary policy is not something you want in the hands of the masses, because history has shown they will not use it wisely.
So if we want elites controlling our monetary policy, why don't we want elites controlling every aspect of society? I think it's because of the general principle that imbalances in power tend to lead to injustice. Democracy gives everybody a small lever they can use to promote their own interests, and that is usually enough to prevent the conflict endemic to mankind from spilling into violence.
Or, in the words of Leonard Cohen:
It's coming from the sorrow in the street,
the holy places where the races meet;
from the homicidal bitchin'
that goes down in every kitchen
to determine who will serve and who will eat.
From the wells of disappointment
where the women kneel to pray
for the grace of God in the desert here
and the desert far away:
Democracy is coming to the U.S.A.
Judging from the speech, Obama is making adjustments to HR 3200. This is what I'm referring to as the "new plan." One of these adjustments is the addition of a fine on insurance companies who offer extremely expensive plans. This adjustment will help keep costs down.
The numbers you're quoting came from HR 3200, the House bill. Obama has made some concessions with this new plan (mainly keeping costs down by fining insurance companies who sell very expensive plans) and this new plan has not yet been reviewed by the CBO.
There is only a small chance of the public option leading to a government takeover, and that would only happen if the government plan works really well. What Obama, Frank, and all of them are saying in that YouTube video is that if we had a public option and it worked better than private insurance companies, then we would have proof that government involvement in healthcare is not a bad thing. The public option can be seen as a sort of pilot program for government run healthcare. If it's true that government is incompetent then the public option won't be able to compete with the private insurance industry and it will not lead to a takeover.
Obama has repeatedly said that the government plan would not be financed by taxes, but by premiums collected from those insured. He has repeatedly said that it would compete fairly with private insurance companies. You say that he wants to "Penalize private business 8% if they decide to keep their current plan" but you don't offer any evidence for this. I think you're just lying again.
Finally, I challenge you to name one lie in Obama's speech.
The entirety of the healthcare debate is too complicated for just one speech. If you want more information, then it's not hard to find:
http://www.whitehouse.gov/issues/health_care/plan/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
I myself don't really care about the shouting. It was bad, but mostly just a distraction from the real issues.
Democrats aren't one unified block. Unlike Republicans they tend to have minds of their own. Some want to tax the wealthy to pay for full-scale government run health care. Some are conservatives who want to leave everything to the insurance companies. It shouldn't be surprising that there has been considerable disagreement over the bill.
Despite this, a reform package will be passed, in fact it's almost done. The only question is how much it will get watered down in the process.
As for not reading the bill, that's a load of crap. Senators have their staff read the bill. They know what's in it.
And the cyber security bill has nothing to do with Obama.
Are you kidding me? Haven't you ever heard of a Blue Dog Democrat? There aren't enough votes to get the public option through the Senate.
Singlepayer healthcare simply would not make it through Congress. Like it or not we live in a Democracy.
Many Republicans are suddenly all horrified at the idea of congressmen "not reading bills." As if that's not the way every major bill in recent history has been passed. Legislation is created by committees and reviewed by several people on a legislator's staff. I agree that we should make bills smaller and easier to understand, but that's an issue for another day. This debate is about health care.
No one is proposing a government take over of health care. If you actually listened to the speech, or looked at a summary of what's been proposed you would know that. All we want to do is mandate that everyone purchase their own health insurance, and provide some form of aid to those who can't afford it.
The "Government plan", or public option, that you mention would be a good idea for many reasons, but it doesn't matter because it won't make it into the final bill.
America needs healthcare reform. We can provide it without increasing the deficit.
Failing to act will allow costs to pile up due to inefficiencies in the system. Failing to act will allow Americans to continue going bankrupt due to an inability to pay for reform. As the President has said, "The time for bickering is over."
I hope this speech will give healthcare reform the push it needs to get through the door.
It's not capitalism which is using up our resources, it's individuals. People want stuff. They trade stuff they have for stuff they want more. People build machines to extract oil from the ground in order to trade that oil for other stuff they want. This is the natural state of things.
Saying you want to do away with all that is like saying you want to do away with human greed. Sure that might sound nice, but there's no practical way to make that happen. I know you've suggested some kind of educational program or something like that to try and teach people not to be greedy, but I really don't think that would work. If there's an advantage to be gained by behaving selfishly, some people will always take it, even if they know it's immoral. If you disagree, I suggest you spend some more time chatting with the likes of Pyg or JoeCavalry.
So, if we can't get rid of selfishness, we do the next best thing -- we regulate it. Pigovian taxes, antitrust laws, environmental regulations, these are all ways of dealing with the fundamental problem of people pursuing their own short term interests at the expense of society's collective long term interests.
On a side note, I'm far from conviced that elimination of human greed would be a good thing. Greed is a powerful motivator, which capitalism harnesses in order to benefit society. You see, while free trade does promote inequality, it still leaves everyone better off than they would have been without it -- even those at the bottom. In the words of John F. Kennedy, "A rising tide lifts all boats."
I believe that treating the problem more objectively with the use of the scientific method is the best way to find a proper way of organizing scarce resources at the moment
You've just described the field of study known as Economics.
Have you ever talked with a Canadian or a Brit asking them their honest truth about the health care? I have and they hate it.
I think you're lying. Even if you aren't, you're wrong. See this Gallup poll.
Percent "very satisfied" with healthcare:
US: 6%, Britain: 7%, Canada: 16%
Percent "very dissatisfied" with healthcare:
US: 44%, Britain: 25%, Canada: 17%
Have you even taken a look at what taxes would be if Obama got what he wanted? Last estimate I saw was $37,000 for each American. That would be a Marxist economy taking over 70% of every paycheck that is made.
I'm sorry, but you have clearly pulled those numbers from the depths of your rectum. There's no way in hell Obama wants to tax $37,000 from each American. I assume you got that from some dumb YouTube video that didn't account for progressive taxation or something like that.
Obviously we can pay for universal health care, we'd just need to raise taxes or cut other spending to do it. It's just a question of priorities. Are we willing to take a little bit from everybody in order to keep poor people from going bankrupt if they get hit by a bus?
We can and will pay down our national debt. It's getting high but is far from unpayable. Republican strategists know this, but are choosing just to yell and scream apocalyptic nonsense in order to score political points. It's pretty disgusting really. We need to be having a constructive debate about how best to improve the lives of the American people, but all we're seeing is bullshit like this ad which says little more than, "We're all gonna die!!!"
I believe the ad is below (YouTube search does suck, just use Google, then you can click on the video to jump to the YouTube link).
I agree with their refusal to air it. It's just one blatant deception after another designed for the sole purpose of scaring the American people. Shit like this should be illegal.
Well maybe he doesn't have a concrete plan right now, but he's the freakin' head of the Fed. If anyone knows how to put together a program to do what he's talking about it's him. I guarantee you that we'll be seeing concrete plans before long.
I think you may have misunderstood the term "mixed economies"... A mixed economy is an economy that mixes socialism and capitalism. All the first world countries have mixed economies. I wasn't referring to an intermingling of economies.
Also I don't think we can completely eliminate scarcity with our current technology. I was just wondering if we could organize what we do have in a way that made everyone better off.
That said, I think I agree with you that a global government could help things substantially. Although I disagree that socialism is a better way of organizing resources.
Politicians encouraging sub-prime loans was only one of several causes of the housing bubble. And, in turn, the housing bubble was only one of several problems that caused the recession. Even if politicians didn't encourage companies to behave benevolently, the larger systemic problems still would've bitten us eventually. Again, I suggest you watch that interview with Bernanke.
I think government saving companies from themselves is a bad idea. Government should set the rules of the game, but it shouldn't be one of the players.
Not sure what you're saying. You want government to more aggressively regulate large corporations?
I think a better answer is just to create a system that will allow big companies to fail without destroying the economy. This is the solution proposed by Ben Bernanke.
Below is a clip, you can watch the whole interview here.
I think the way things are organized in most first world countries is fairly close to optimal given the state of things. That is, a regulated free-market for most things, and government run programs for those situations where the market doesn't work. I hear intelligent people complain about our current system from time to time, but I've never heard of any reasonable alternative.
Because we were running out of space, I've decided to stick my response to your latest argument up here.
the government was given by others the right to imprison us, kill us
The government is given those rights by the majority of the people. If enough people decided to do away with government, then we could do that.
You have been defending the idea that no, we are totally free
No I haven't. The two positions you offered in this debate create a false dichotomy. I don't think people are human livestock, but that doesn't mean I think we're totally free.
governments will arrange their laws in order to have better productivity, the same way as farmers managing their cattle
Cattle don't have human rights. Cattle don't get to vote.
Governments don’t want to die
A government is not a sentient creature, it doesn't make sense to say it "wants" something.
Sometimes, however, they have to compromise their nation’s well being for the economy, and they have been doing so, if they think that the end justifies the means and that benefits will come on the long run.
Right, but if the end truly justifies the means, then this is a good thing.
to pollute the air they breathe
Government does not pollute. That's corporations. Government prevents excessive pollution.
We are all slaves to capitalism
Slaves don't get human rights. Slaves can't vote.
My point of view is that the market and the economy ruthlessly rule us all.
Maybe, but the market and the economy emerge from the inescapable tension between selfishness and cooperation.
yes, I believe it’s totally possible for us to see the advantages in not being selfish
Sure we can see the advantages. But we'll never be able to eliminate selfishness. Certainly not while scarcity remains a problem.
Capitalism’s assumption that, for example, people need incentive to do something productive, ignore the success of initiatives such as Wikipedia and Couch surfing
Yes, this is a good point. People can be altruistic. A few things though:
1) How are these organizations funded? By voluntary donations. People donate resources they have obtained while working within the capitalistic framework. These organizations don't address the fundamental problem of allocating scarce resources.
2) Not everything can be done voluntarily. Who would do the unpleasant jobs if they didn't have to? Yes someday technology will eliminate those jobs, but that day is not yet here.
3) These are both examples of public goods. Couch surfing pulled in $779,538 in donations last year. The Wikimedia Foundation pulled in $7 million in that same year. Compare that to the National Science Foundation which had an operating budget of over $6 billion for the same year. We have here an excellent example of the free rider problem in action. Our power to do good vastly increases when we take a small amount of money from everybody through taxes.
The whole idea that people face tradeoffs, and therefore they must have something to offer, also needs to catch up with technology.
Even with technology we still face tradeoffs. Wikipedia's servers consume a share of the world's resources. Also, time is a finite resource. If you read Wikipedia for an hour, you have given up the possibility of using that hour for something else.
Personally, I believe it’s a matter of time until capitalism collapses.
Maybe. As scarcity is reduced there is less of a need for capitalism.
It’s just not sustainable, simple as that.
Government regulations can make it sustainable.
I think we have to start looking towards sustainable ways of producing goods for everyone, without destroying the planet and, why not, without human intervention so we can be free to do other things.
I agree. And regulated capitalism provides us with a platform atop which we can achieve this.
You say people like me annoy you for just complaining without providing an alternative.
Let me be clear. You don't annoy me at all. I have nothing but love and admiration for you and people like you. Manipulative videos which do nothing but turn people cynical toward their most promising source of salvation are what annoy me.
I know it doesn’t work, you know it doesn’t work
It obviously works quite well. The fact that you and I are able to have this conversation is a testament to that.
We have to start making people aware that we are living in an unsustainable and unfair world
I don't think this will be a big revelation for most people.
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Here are a few relevant links I would like you to take a look at:
I say economics is the study of how scarcity can be profitable, and of how to create artificial needs (artificial scarcity) on people
I think you do not understand Economics very well. Check out these ten basic principles, which have been established through many years of rigorous study. It's not about right and wrong, it's just about explaining the way things are.
It's true that in some cases corporations create artificial scarcity. In economics this is an example of market failure and the best way to fix it is through government intervention. Despite what the conspiracy-theorists like to claim, government is a friend of the people, not the enemy. It is through government that we can collectively work toward a better future. Take the U.S. National Science Foudation, for example, which carries out scientific research financed by taxpayers.
Can the market be sustainable in a global level?
With proper government regulation, yes.
one of the most evil ideas supported by the market is that of supply and demand
The laws of supply and demand follow logically given the fundamental assumption of economics: rational self-interested actors exchanging goods and services. Yes this is an over-simplification of humanity, but simplifying problems makes them easier to study. It's like solving physics problems without considering friction.
We can forget about regulating marriage, regulating what people consume, what they wear, where they can go
Ok, these all sound mostly reasonable to me. However, none of these are the critical functions of government that I listed in my initial argument.
Why can a bird go wherever it wants without answering to anyone, whereas me, just another animal born in this planet, have to play by rules made up by people who were here before me?
Well, technically you could. You could wander around, living like a hunter-gatherer if you chose to. I think we can agree though that the benefits of society provide us with a more attractive alternative.
I agree that we should try and make the world better. But regulated capitalism is the best way of organizing society. No, it's not perfect, but there's really no point in criticizing our current system without offering a viable alternative. Without exchanging resources in a free market, how are we going to divide them up?
Personally, I think that the idea of government we have today, centralized in other people's hands, does suck.
The modern idea of government does suck, but it sucks less than any of the historical social arrangements.
And I also think market sucks.
The market is good. It has historically proven itself to be the most effective way of organizing scare resources.
A system which requires competitiveness so people can have access to the basic necessities of life
There are no first world countries like this. Basic necessities are provided through various welfare programs.
I read your blog post about evolution and whatnot. I agree that we can and should restrain our primitive impulses. But we will never escape the fundamental truth that behaving selfishly can be very profitable.
I do think regulations could be much less than now,
Which ones would you get rid of?
Like it or not, people left to their own devices will very often make lowsy decisions. I favor the soft paternalistic approach to government advocated by these guys. Guidance without overreach.
Can food, for example, be a public good?
Food is far from a public good. In fact supplies are not keeping up with the growth in population.
Vertical farming looks cool and promising, but it's very pie-in-the-sky at the moment. From the Wikipedia article: "The detailed analytical work needed to establish the feasibility of vertical farming has not yet been done." "the energy needed for artificial lighting and other vertical farming operations might outweigh the benefit"
Economics is based on scarcity, on creating scarcity, on exclusion.
Economics is the study of how people deal with scarcity, not of creating it.
"Avarice and usury and precaution must be our gods for a little longer still. For only they can lead us out of the tunnel of economic necessity into daylight."
- Keynes
Monetary policy is about keeping the economy growing at a stable rate. A growing economy is good for everyone. The intent is not to erode workers' earning power, that's just an unfortunate side effect. We can mitigate that effect by redistributing some of the wealth through progressive taxation.
