The Government Screws Up Everything It Gets Involved In?

[Gary Freedman]

Are you looking for the logical fallacy in the statement "the government screws up everything it gets involved in?"

The logical fallacy is that there are major screw ups in the private sector. Look at the banking crisis. Lehman Brothers was privately owned. It no longer exists because of faulty investment practices. Lehman Brothers was a case of private capitalists screwing up everything without any intervention by the government. How do conservatives explain that? What about the housing crisis? That was a result of private capitalism running amok.

Why is the American auto industry in deep trouble?

Conservatives say that health reform will lead to rationing of health care. There already is rationing of care by private insurance companies. Private insurance companies will not cover people with pre-existing conditions. Isn't that rationing of health care by private companies?

I learned a long time ago to be cynical about most things Republicans say. It seems that consistently, since the end of World War I, the Republicans have rejected every major progressive idea. The campaign against health care reminds me of Republican opposition to President Wilson's campaign for U.S. membership in the League of Nations. Spiders have been building the same type of spider webs for the last two million years. Republicans remind me of spiders. They don't evolve. And they oppose anybody who proposes that society evolve and improve.

[Gary Freedman]

I have a Facebook friend who asked me for an argument to rebut Rebublican claims that "the government screws up everything it gets involved in." Here's what I wrote in response:

There's nothing you can say to a Republican to convince him or her of anything. I wouldn't try. My father used to say, "Never argue with a communist. You'll never win. They have a prefabricated argument to rebut anything you say." I think the best argument against Communism is the Soviet regime in Russia, which were 70 wasted years. I think the best argument against Republicans is--and will always remain--the presidency of George W. Bush, which were eight wasted years. If the presidency of George Bush doesn't convince Republicans that their ideas are defective, what will?

[ZenDog]

Suffering most certainly has been studied. There were physicians among the Jewish population trapped within the walls of the Warsaw Ghetto, and they for instance, documented the specific effects of starvation in minute detail. There have been a multitude of experiments conducted, buy the Nazis, the Russians, by us, revealing tremendous amounts of data regarding the human condition.

We know, for example, with a high degree of precision, the effects of stress on brain chemistry. How could such knowledge have been gained but by the induction of stress? To induce it demanded intimate knowledge of how and why stress is or becomes a physical manifestation of human experience within the human body.

We know a tremendous amount about human suffering.

What we do not know is how to meet each individual need for safety and security. For food. Shelter. And yes. For medical care.

What repelicans fail to understand is that they place their own security at risk when the needs of others go continually unmet; and it doesn't matter if the motive is simple profit, or a callous indifference.

[Alendar]

I can't see people in groups, it seems to paint individual characteristics in a swath across completely distinct individuals. Their are patterns of behavior in people who call themselves Republicans. They see the functions of capitalism as being beneficial to the whole society, and are possibly dismissive of those who fall outside the scope of benevolence. They see the increasing of the envelope to include more and more people who aren't able to support themselves through capitalistic efforts as a risk to the entire system. To enjoy the fruits of one's labor is not a sin. To work hard and want to keep what you've earned is not a crime. It is sad that many suffer, but what is the solution? Are there those that cannot be brought into functioning condition no matter how many resources are expended? How much of the labor of the effective be redirected to support the ineffective. I don't sense that there is any limit on what some would expend to save every suffering soul. What if suffering is inherent in some humans? Perhaps we should seek for a cure, but what if no amount of bandaging and support can remove all human suffering? Or is the goal that all suffer equally?
I fear those who, if they spoke freely, would admit that the goal of their social reconfiguration is to remove all suffering? If a redneck was suffering, would their urgency be so high? I really don't think so. I think we see suffering in people most like ourselves, or if we feel guilty for a crime that took place long ago by people much like ourselves.

Suffering has not been scientifically studied, which makes me distrust blind attempts to alleviate it. I could ask six soft-hearted people what the solution was, and I would get six different solutions, each one from a point of view of absolute certainty. "If we just..." would always be present. No thought for why the world is the way it is, that perhaps there is more to the functioning of society than the greed of evil men, enslaving the weak.