posted
Can't be bigger than the holes in his logic. . .
quote:We can name a government which HAD the al-encompassing power to do whatever it chose, and the resources to do it with, and nevertheless manifestly failed to feed its people, and whose policies actually DID make the situation worse.
Or have the Friends of Marx now so completely rewritten history that the numerous famines of the former USSR (for which the US supplied them grain, even in the midst of the Cold War) never happened?
Funny, maybe I'm not reading this right. There's nothing there about the USSR choosing not to feed its people. The key word being "failed" - they can't have failed to do something they never actually did.
Then again, maybe you feel the USSR was justified in not feeding its people, and spending the money instead on ICBMs that didn't work. After all, the serfs would only have cashed in their gruel rations to buy DVDs, wouldn't they?
quote:The key word being "failed" - they can't have failed to do something they never actually did.
"Do, or do not. There is no 'try.'"
The point is, putting greater or absolute power in the hands of the government is no guarantee that it will do what it should. The person to whom I responded seemed to believe that the duty of government was to feed everyone, and the only thing that was preventing that was that they lacked the power to do so.
If the USSR's government had not been in sole control of the means of production, transportation, and distribution, the grain that was exported during the famine (for political reasons, to show how GREAT it was in the USSR) could have been redirected and used to feed the people who were actually starving. Therefore the famine's effect would have been less. Therefore, the lauded all-powerful government made the problem worse.
Can you grasp that concept?
[ May 28, 2002, 19:16: Message edited by: First of Two ]
-------------------- "The best defense is not a good offense. The best defense is a terrifyingly accurate and devastatingly powerful offense, with multiply-overlapping kill zones and time-on-target artillery strikes." -- Laurence, Archangel of the Sword
Registered: Mar 1999
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posted
Oh, yes, I understand what you're saying NOW - but it's not what you said the first time. Back then you quite clearly said that a government with absolute power tried and failed to prevent famine. Now you're saying that they didn't try.
And yet you continue to use the USSR as proof of your twisted litle worldview, that certain people - "them" - don't deserve any sort of charity because they only waste it, and governments shouldn't try to help "them" because it doesn't work.
So what's it going to be? Should the very idea of a government taking responsibility be set aside because it wouldn't work, or are you just going to console yourself with the knowledge that any self-respecting government - even an evil Commie one - wouldn't actually try?
posted
And yet you continue to use the USSR as proof of your twisted litle worldview, that certain people - "them" - don't deserve any sort of charity because they only waste it, and governments shouldn't try to help "them" because it doesn't work.
It's not the people receiving the help that's the problem, it's the government trying to help them. The government is the absolutely least efficient way to do ANYTHING unless your goal is to destroy something.
-------------------- "This is why you people think I'm so unknowable. You don't listen!" - God, "God, the Devil and Bob"
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Right now, we have people going to bed hungry in the US... and the US government is (and has been, for decades) spending huge amounts of money to pay food producers NOT to produce, transport, and distribute food. In effect, to create artificial shortages.
It's the same exact problem, on a smaller scale.
-------------------- "The best defense is not a good offense. The best defense is a terrifyingly accurate and devastatingly powerful offense, with multiply-overlapping kill zones and time-on-target artillery strikes." -- Laurence, Archangel of the Sword
Registered: Mar 1999
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posted
Well, given we've had EU food mountains cropping up for about 20 years, I know how that goes. But I'm still not sure how it ties in to governments not being 'meant' to interfere, apart from they're generally hypocritical in just the whole people starving - farm subsidies thing; but then, hello? They're a govenrment? They're all hypocritical!
quote:The government is the absolutely least efficient way to do ANYTHING unless your goal is to destroy something.
Interesting wording, Omeychops. It's simultaneously criticising government defense spending since they're bound to cock it up, and implying that since the whole point of defense is to destroy things, the government is the ideal organisation to the job! 8)
posted
In the 'guns or butter' debate, I'm going to have to say "guns" every time. If you pick butter, you're just asking for someone else to rob you at gunpoint. If we waste more money on welfare, we encourage more parasites and simultaneously show other countries that we are weak. That's how things like Iraq's invasion of Kuwait happen. When the cat's away, the mice will play, and when the world thinks the US is asleep at the wheel, all the little busybodies act up. It's called the "peace dividend". Every time things start to look like the threat is receding, idiots want to carve up the military budget to feed their own pork-barrels. Then, when something happens, the military is not ready, and we spend way too much getting back up to par. Bad idea. The most expensive military is the second-best one. I hope this space bomber research actually gets conducted - the Pentagon has a habit of starting up r&d on something, then bogging it down in politics. If nothing else, whether it successfully builds a bomber or not, it will result in spin-off technology with widespread applications - previous military r&d, combined w/ space program r&d created most of the toys we take for granted, including these little bundles of electronics y'all are using to share your opinions on. What new r&d would you do to feed poor people? Genetech seems to be a sore spot for too many crybabies. Oh,no, we must stamp out Frankenfoods! Evil, twisted mad scientists must be making it to do horrible things to poor innocent masses of citizenry! BTW, according to the Institute for Food Development Policy, every nation in the world has, within it's own borders, all the resource necessary to feed their population 2000 calories a day or more. We don't have a food shortage, we have a distribution problem. Darkwing
-------------------- Darkwing If you don't drink the kool-aid, you're a *baaad* person - Rev Jim Jones It is useless for sheep to pass resolutions in favor of vegetarianism while wolves remain of a different opinion - William Ralph Inge Almond kool-aid, anyone? - DW [email protected]
Registered: May 2002
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Butter is responsible for more deaths than nuclear bombs. Why, just the other day, I read an article that outlined how butter clogs up your heart if you eat it!
I envision a war where warm butter sticks are dropped from planes on a starving populace. I see them grabbing them out of the air, and eating them. I see their hearts palpatating, and arresting, and then stopping...
Operation Heart Attack. Yeah. The Bigger Guns/Butter debate is reduced to simple pragmatism when you formulate such a devious plan.
Registered: Jan 2001
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posted
Kuwait spent all it's money on trying to implement a socialist healthcare system and forgot to give guns to its hick population. Simple.
-------------------- Yes, you're despicable, and... and picable... and... and you're definitely, definitely despicable. How a person can get so despicable in one lifetime is beyond me. It isn't as though I haven't met a lot of people. Goodness knows it isn't that. It isn't just that... it isn't... it's... it's despicable.
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quote:Originally posted by PsyLiam: Kuwait spent all it's money on trying to implement a socialist healthcare system and forgot to give guns to its hick population. Simple.
Kuwait had a well equiped military, actually, the best money can buy from the Americans. Too bad the people operating those high-tech systems didn't hold up under fire.
-------------------- "God's in his heaven. All's right with the world."
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-------------------- Yes, you're despicable, and... and picable... and... and you're definitely, definitely despicable. How a person can get so despicable in one lifetime is beyond me. It isn't as though I haven't met a lot of people. Goodness knows it isn't that. It isn't just that... it isn't... it's... it's despicable.
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