HCR Passes

[Ghoulish Delight]

Originally Posted by sleepyjeff

Are we wrong? Did we or did we not lose liberties today? Were our rights to our property expanded or contracted today? At what point would you say government has gone too far?

At the point when the net benefit is outweighed by the net detriment.

As for questions of liberty - while I value financial liberty to a degree, I do not value it to the degree I value liberties that are independent of money. Rights to everyone's life, freedom, expression et. al. take a back seat to the right to your dollar. Now, I happen to also think that preservation of many of the rights that I do consider essential are aided by preserving the right to private property. But given the choice between instituting something that I think preserves a more crucial right (in this case, the right for everyone to have the opportunity to maintain their health regardless of financial status) vs. preserving some incremental monetary rights, I will almost always choose the former.

[sleepyjeff]

Originally Posted by Ghoulish Delight

At the point when the net benefit is outweighed by the net detriment.

As for questions of liberty - while I value financial liberty to a degree, I do not value it to the degree I value liberties that are independent of money. Rights to everyone's life, freedom, expression et. al. take a back seat to the right to your dollar. Now, I happen to also think that preservation of many of the rights that I do consider essential are aided by preserving the right to private property. But given the choice between instituting something that I think preserves a more crucial right (in this case, the right for everyone to have the opportunity to maintain their health regardless of financial status) vs. preserving some incremental monetary rights, I will almost always choose the former.

Good answer but the "dollar" is not just a dollar....it represents my labor....replace the word "dollar" with labor and then read your paragraph again.

[Ghoulish Delight]

Originally Posted by sleepyjeff

Good answer but the "dollar" is not just a dollar....it represents my labor....replace the word "dollar" with labor and then read your paragraph again.

Doesn't change my stance, seeing as I disagree with the premise. A dollar can be exchanged for labor. It is not however labor. It doesn't represent labor. A dollar is an arbitrary thing. It's a immensely useful arbitrary thing, but it is fundamentally nothing. It exists only because we say it exists, it has value only because we say it has value.

But that's getting more philosophical than necessary. More concrete and to the point, I do not find it unreasonable to say, "As long as you are part of this society, you are required to share the responsibility of things that ensure the continued viability of this society." What that share is can be argued ad-nauseum, but as Alex said, unless you are truly arguing for absolute libertarian rule (hope you know a good asphalt contractor, or a mechanic who specializes in rebuilding suspensions), simply crying, "You're taking my liberty!" is an empty argument. It's already been agreed by our society that we're okay with "infringing" on that kind of liberty to some degree. We may draw the line at different places, but declaring "It's anti-freedom, and therefore wrong!" is a flawed place to be arguing from unless you're prepared to argue that ALL services that require monetary collection from citizens are equally wrong.