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Well, then the protection of the courts, police, fire department and military are not a right. Quite contrary to "... the right to LIFE, liberty and the pursuit of happiness". Of course there's something called "shared responsibility" (it's not other who pay for you, it's a community that pays for everyone together, each a share), but if your mother didn't teach you to share I suppose the concept is really hard to grasp.
 


It's 30 million (1 in ten people around you should be illegal aliens by that count) when you believe Faux News (who probably confused illegal aliens with "brown people"), it's 12 million when you believe every other source. Britain, Spain and Italy all have more than 1 million illegal aliens. The number is usually in the 100.000s for the smaller Western European countries, so it's not like the problem doesn't exist here.
 


That's right and the trend is that less and less people want to share the cost of a bloated military and more and more people want to share the cost of health care.
 
Gulli - "the right to LIFE, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" Means that NO LAW shall be passed that Impedes that goal. NOT that a government can reach into the pocket of one individual to give to another.
I was raised to share, and do! But what I find objectionable is giving to a (example only) a women that is on welfare, has 6+ kids by unknown fathers so that she can collect more welfare money, or the person that drops out of school and EXPECTs me to contribute to his life style of doing nothing. I think jtt286 shares that philosophy.

One point we do agree on is the "bloated" militaty. What worked in WWI and II does NOT work now. We shoiuld have gone in a put them back to the stone age and LEFT.
The US should Cut overseas Contributions and redirect the money saved to our own needy - At least to thoes that deserve it.
 
You'll find that the growing masses who want the costs of healthcare "shared" are the ones who want others to pay for their care; they aren't asking for more of their own money to be taken for it.

Absolutely, RetiredChief. U.S. meddling so our elected parasites can feel powerful as they play with the lives and livelihoods of others needs to stop. Focus on "rights," not "interests." In a moral society, the latter may not be maintained by force, although sometimes the former absolutely require it. For example, U.N. members Syria and Iran openly support organizations defined by the U.N. as terrorists (e.g. groups that blatantly target civilians as prime targets, not merely as unavoidable collateral damage). Give them a specific ultimatum to stop, and when (if? ha!) they don't, DESTROY terrorist targets within their borders without regard to collateral damage, until there is no place they are welcome.
 
But my big problem with a lot of conservative ideas is you leave so many people out in the cold because they "deserve" it? I agree people do abuse the system in terrible ways.

So whats the solution? We dont tax aggressively and let the rich control more and more resources, because they can?

Or do we start a welfare state and support those who need it, legitimately or not?

Can we keep this civil and enlightening please? There are ways to disagree without resorting to libel.
 
If the rich gain control of resources by honest means, there's no harm, no foul. It is when their control is gained by fraud, trickery, or other compulsion that they need to be stripped to penury; not in taxes, which just legalizes their methods (and lets government parasites in on the loot), but by executing willful wrongdoers and confiscating their ill-gotten gains.
 



Who would do that the government? And I know what Oldman has said about getting something legally and honestly doesn't always mean morally(A legal loophole). If the system provides a way for wealthy persons to exploit it how could we change it? If the state regulates the markets then its just a competition to make your state more business friendly. On the other hand if the government enforces we are introducing more bureaucracy and giving the government more power ( which doesn't always have its finger on Americas pulse)?

It seems like a catch 22.
 


“Con" is the opposite of "pro," so "congress" must be the opposite of "progress."
 


Agreed, a culture of civil responsibility is needed to keep even the most well designed system from slowly crumbling. This is why laws have to change over time to cope with a changing world. Deeply rooted corruption can destroy any system. The thing is, however, that civil responsibility can't be forced and businesses are unlikely to self-regulate (numerous economic crises are prove that businesses always go for short term gain, even when it hurts them in the long term). This leaves government to force change through laws. Unfortunately the rest of society is not isolated from whatever decisions businesses make: when they screw up it's everyone's problem (pollution, lacking safety regulations and lay offs literally kill people), therefore governments "interfere" with businesses.
 
Right and wrong. In America, the protection of the courts and the military are Rights, as defined by the Constitution. Police and fire on the other hand are not rights. In early American history and prior to establishing professional and unionized police and fire departments, many towns and cities throughout America did share responsibility for policing themselves and volunteering for the fire brigade. Shared responsibility in America was born of the people and based on community need. Shared responsibility was never intended to be within the purview of the American government, there are thousands of private charities that operate outside of government that are more adept to providing those in need than the government could ever be.
 
So we all agree that corruptions are the biggest issue facing this and any other economy.

So whats the root cause of corruption? Being thinking rational human beings why cant people do whats best for all?
 


(Most) people do what's best for themselves and usually in the short term too. It's just the way our brains are hardwired after millions of years of evolution in the wilderness, this has been thoroughly studied in psychology and sociology. It takes quite an education and life experience to realize you also have to think about the greater good and the long term future, on top of that it takes character to actually act on that knowledge.
 
There is no implication that a thinking, rational being would do what's best for all, only for himself. That in and of itself is NOT a problem, provided he acts honestly, respecting the rights of others as equal to his own. Government's job is to see that that happens, by HARSHLY punishing those who violate the rights of others in furtherance of their own goals. That is what no longer happens. For example, arguably I have a right to clean air, but companies can pay the parasites for permission to foul the air we breathe. Only when it gets bad enough for enough people is that changed. Or, the parasites make rules about what people may not do, for example listing a hundred things you may not dump into the water. The 101st isn't on the list, so if it makes someone money to do it, he will until / unless it gets added to the list. Same thing with all kinds of unethical, immoral, or dishonest behavior. Until it's on some list, it remains legal. "Don't be dishonest. Don't lie, don't cheat, and don't steal" are apparently too hard to understand, so more and more lists need to be enumerated, creating a "shell game" that the dishonest and their parasites can use to their advantage.
At this point I would highly recommend the collection of essays entitled "The Virtue of Selfishness," which is a part of the Ayn Rand library. The topics, covered by numerous authors, address a wide variety of circumstances and explain how a rational individual would determine how to act. Hint: it doesn't involve checking a list somewhere, and it doesn't involve getting permission from parasites.
 
Maybe Darwinian evolution isn't capable of creating life that wont destroy itself when it becomes technologically advanced.

All we'll ever be is just hairless monkeys grunting at each other.......
 
If I want something, I have to earn it. Suppose Gulli has a freezer full of hot dogs, and I have none. That does NOT give me the right to steal some of Gulli's hot dogs, nor to send a squad of goons to take a few (plus some for themselves, of course). Gulli busted his tail chopping down trees and sawing logs for people's houses to earn those hot dogs, and I'm not entitled to them. All Government needs to do in this case is make sure that when I start sawing wood too, Gulli doesn't send a goon to break my tools or burn down my sawmill.
 


If you study some game theory you'll see that statement is generally incorrect for many economic situations and business models.
 
So, it turns out that helping one another, by providing products and services of value, is how rational individuals conduct their lives. A piece of paper money then essentially becomes a certificate of human service; you don't get any unless you've done something for someone.
Sure there's luck involved, no one ever said that life is fair. Not everyone gets to have an IQ of 140, or find gold nuggets in their back yard, or be exceptionally strong or fast; that's just how it is.
 


In the real world people don't get paid proportionally to their effort, skill, responsibility or education. A more realistic model would be one of us getting 10 hot dogs for chopping 10 trees a day and the other one getting 2000 hot dogs for chopping 11 trees a day. What's more: the one who chops 11 trees can only do so because he has a device that helps him chop faster, this device costs 1 million hot dogs and needs materials that are so scarce on Earth that only a handful of these devices can exist (say 1 for every 100 lumberjacks society has need of). The device is passed down from father to son and that's how the person chopping 11 trees got it (15 generations ago one of his ancestors stole 1 million hot dogs in a robbery murder and then bought the device).
 
In such cases, you will find other factors involved. If, as a rational individual, I'd pay you 10 hot dogs for chopping 10 trees, why in hell would I pay someone 1990 hot dogs for chopping the 11th tree? There may be a rational explanation, or more likely there will be some kind of fraud or deception to explain it. That's what needs to be found and stopped.
 
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