O noes! The theme is gone!

Yeah. My poor attempt at a segue.

The thing is, we have the technology, and in this country, the overall wealth, to create a world where people don't need to suffer. And it doesn't really come at the expense of those who are well off. And trust me, I'm really well off. If I paid more in taxes to lift others out of poverty, it wouldn't change my lifestyle. If crazy rich billionaires paid more, it wouldn't change their lifestyle. And would some people try to take advantage of that sort of system? Of course they would. But so what? It's not a zero-sum system. That so many kids were lifted out of poverty during the pandemic credits says an awful lot about what's possible. The people who seem the most against it are the folks who wouldn't actually be subject to that burden, which only makes it more odd.

Is that socialism? I dunno, maybe, but we have that weird stigma attached to the word when our public schools, military protection, police, fire, libraries, social security are already socialism. We're too busy trying to blame the boogey man for whatever ails us that we're unwilling to look at reality.

Then again, basic equality, where people are not discriminated for race, gender, sexuality, religion, etc., is clearly something people are against. They do believe it's zero-sum.

Jeff:

The people who seem the most against it are the folks who wouldn't actually be subject to that burden, which only makes it more odd.

The US is a country full of temporarily displaced millionaires.

Jeff:
Is that socialism?

Probably, but so are PPP loans and government bailouts. Socialism is only acceptable when the rich are the beneficiaries. Insurance is also socialism, but that’s acceptable because again, lots of room for profits.

We can have so much more, if only people simply banded together en masse and said no to the current societal structure. Not just a protest, but no, we won’t participate anymore until things are changed, you know sort of like unions do in the workplace.

We COULD have so much more if people got together and demanded it, but there are forces who are influenced by money who create the narrative that making our government work for the people is bad. Right now, our government works for anyone who has enough money to bribe them. Elon Musk is a great example. He gave Trump a lot of money, and effectively bought his way into working for our government. It's a conflict of interest that he got the job, and it's going to be a conflict of interest that he has the power to use that job to his benefit. And that's out in the open. And it happens on both side.

Get the money influence out of politics and the problem would be solved quickly. Both democrats and republicans are sick and tired of the 1% having so much influence over our country, while the rest of us have zero influence. All the lies and deception have to stop. But I doubt it ever will at this point.

Maybe when the pendulum swings the other way, it will go as high on the Left as it came from on the Right this time.

I doubt anything will ever change until we handle things like the French did with Marie Antoinette. People just accept it for what it is and say “we just have to figure it out and get through this”. Instead the narrative should be we aren’t dealing with this anymore, and it isn’t how things should work.

You don't like cake?

Well, red velvet is quite awesome.

It's weird to me to suggest paying more taxes to help people in poverty when the government mishandles so much. I feel like there's so many departments and bureaucracies that have outlived themselves that could be dismantled and funds allocated elsewhere that we could even lower taxes and still take care of the poor...and maybe even start chipping away at the $36 billion in debt. No one talks about cutting federal spending, but I'm supposed to be cool with being forced to pay more to help my fellow man instead of electing to do so on my own via charities/donations. And socialism is great because fire and police and roads.

I wouldn't say that no one talks about cutting spending, I would say that no one talks about cutting the thing that we spend the most on, which is defense. I mean, $900+ billion, we spend more than the next nine countries combined, and most of those are allies. It's 37% of global military spending total. It's 3.4% of our GDP. What are we actually getting for that? There is zero scrutiny.

It's also worth noting that, on a percentage basis, Reagan, Bush, Bush and Trump increased debt more than Clinton, Carter and Biden. Just pointing that out because Republicans used to talk about fiscal conservative budgets, but didn't actually enact them.

Yeah, this is not a Republican vs. Democrat thing, neither party has done anything to decrease the debt in my lifetime. It's also why I'm not a registered Republican, because despite all their talk, conservatism isn't their mantra and hasn't been for decades. I'm not opposed to cutting military spending, but lets not ignore the fact that that's the only area that Democrats talk about cutting. I'd like to see discussion around cutting other waste that can be given back to the states where it belongs...in fact DOGE, as ridiculous as it probably looks to anyone who voted for Harris or thinks Elon is a comic book supervillain, is the first I've heard of any real effort to actually revert the overspending crisis. Whether anything comes of it remains to be seen, because they have no power to actually cut things, but I'm interested in seeing some ideas.

Vater:

I'd like to see discussion around cutting other waste that can be given back to the states where it belongs

Which items can we move back?

Jeff:
I would say that no one talks about cutting the thing that we spend the most on, which is defense. I mean, $900+ billion,

Probably the easiest place to cut, I promise you, there is plenty of fat to trim here. Also, this movie quote comes to mind, "You didn't think they actually spent ten thousand dollars for a hammer and thirty thousand for a toilet seat, did you?"

Vater:
neither party has done anything to decrease the debt in my lifetime

Clinton balanced the budget, don't recall now if he started paying down debt or not.

Yes, thankfully these unelected bureaucrats are here to save us from the problem that was, in their own words, "promulgated by unelected bureaucrats," with completely new and totally novel proposals such as cutting funding for Planned Parenthood!

It's like they don't understand how government works. Congress passes legislation with a budget (typically working with the president), and then the president signs it. Those are, in fact, all elected people.

A lot of the things that people want to cut are politically "exciting" but virtual rounding errors in cost. And then you have big statutory spending like social security, which does not come from the general fund, and frankly is money that belongs to the people who paid into it.

Vater:

DOGE, as ridiculous as it probably looks to anyone who voted for Harris or thinks Elon is a comic book supervillain

Suspicion predictably confirmed.

djDaemon:
cutting funding for Planned Parenthood!

My taxes won't help fund 400,000 abortions a year anymore? In keeping to the original thread subject, "O noes!"

Like I mentioned before, I think defense spending can be cut, and as a former contractor who worked at a DOD college on an Army base, I've seen the waste first hand. Half the government employees were useless fixtures and the year-end spending spree on absolute horse**** to ensure they got their budget the following year would have been laughable if it wasn't so infuriating. Anyone should be able to see this is likely the norm in other agencies as well, many of them I'm sure have outlived their usefulness.

I ran out of steam for the whole morality discussion last week, but now, after a long weekend, I'm feeling rejuvenated. I'm back, baby!

Lord Gonchar:

At $6.99, the book can be complete horse**** and who cares, right?

Well. It came today:

I gotta say, it's pretty surreal seeing you holding that book. Is this how book clubs get started? Should we each read one chapter a week and come back on here to discuss? Living in a household with my wife and two teenage daughters, I guess I've become accustomed to no one caring what I have to say. God bless CoasterBuzz.

But I think I just figured out the disconnect.

Morality can't be objective in his sense because he claims it's about the well being of conscious creatures. (on page 1)

Individual outcomes are a completely subjective thing. Your reality is different from mine.

I don't see how this is a knock-down argument against the central thesis, that morality is about the well-being and suffering of conscious creatures. Part of the argument that is made in the book is that it's theoretically possible to link one's subjective experience to their brain activity, and thus if you could read someone's brain activity real time, there's a high likelihood that you could accurately attest to their subjective experience in that moment. Therefore, one's subjective experience could become a fact that the rest of us could grapple with.

But even if we don't have access to the brain, I still think you could take a person's reporting of their experience as a fact about that person. Frankly, I think the whole objective/subjective debate is a bit pointless. I planted my morality-is-objective flag in the ground earlier in this thread because the alternative seems to be a slippery slope to pretending that we don't know anything about human well-being and therefore who's to say what's right and wrong? Enter: God.

The same action could affect our well being in completely different ways. Different strokes for different folks. What may be right for you may not be right some. So on and so forth.

Really, though? This is certainly not true in the extremes. I get that there are some people that practice the self-infliction of severe pain as part of worship, or kink, or protest, etc., but this is all voluntary; I doubt there's a single person in the world that would report a strong sense of well-being if a stranger came up and broke their shins with a baseball bat. Does that person's suffering matter any less because it's "subjective"?

As you move away from the extremes and more toward mundane, every-day life, then sure, well-being can mean different things to different people. Some may feel satisfied and content with loafing around watching TV all day, while others can reach the same contentment through rigorous exercise. But so what? We're still talking about well-being, aren't we? Different strokes for different folks only applies in a limited region on the slider (BINGO!); the farther out you get, the less it applies. But if you accept as a blanket rule that morality is subjective, hence what's good for one could be bad for the other, hence who's to say what's right and wrong, hence this whole morality business is kind of fake, isn't it.

TheMillenniumRider:

So maybe the suffering is just fine as long as it isn't right up in the forefront of your existence, or affecting those immediately around you.

Not at all. Distance from the suffering does not make the suffering less immoral; it just makes the immorality easier to cope with or ignore altogether.

GoBucks89:
Does the magnitude/scope of the harm or the cost of avoiding it come into play in the determination of right and wrong?

Yes it does. But here, we're talking about weighing goods and bads to make the best moral decision. The right thing to do doesn't always end up being a good thing to do. Was it good that we nuked Japan at the end of WWII? Well, no, of course not. Tens of thousands of people died horribly, many of them civilians, women and children. I don't think that's debatable. But was it the right thing to do? That is debatable. It has been argued that the bombings brought about a quicker end to the war, and without them the devastation and bloodshed would've ultimately been worse over time.

So does saying that the right decision in the face of a legitimate moral quandary is debatable mean that morality is subjective? Or does it mean that morality is difficult? I prefer to think of it as difficult, because that's what it is. Two people may arrive at different conclusions, but they are still weighing the same set of facts. Saying that morality is subjective in the purest sense would mean that the two people couldn't even agree on what goes on the good side of the scale and what goes on the bad side.

TheMillenniumRider:

Clinton balanced the budget, don't recall now if he started paying down debt or not.

Republicans say it wasn't Clinton, it was Newt Gingrich and GOP controlled Congress that did that. I don't really credit either. Baby boomers were in their highest earnings years pumping record amounts of taxes into the Treasury (both in terms of income and social security taxes). Social security surpluses (amount by which social security taxes exceeded social security benefit payments) were high (and used for general government spending (with US Treasury writing IOUs to social security trust fund). No wars meant defense spending was reduced. Of all the "surpluses" during the 90s, I think one or two would have existed without the social security surplus. This chart shows that the outstanding US debt increased every year during the 90s. I thought there was one year it went down though (one year in the chart shows it increasing by about 20 billion so maybe that was the year).

https://fiscaldata.treasury...utstanding

What they did with the social security surplus was similar to parents with young kids who are saving for college saying at the end of the year, we have a college savings "surplus" so lets use it to go on vacation. We will put IOUs in the kids' college funds for when they go to college. Those IOUs need to be funded with current revenues.

Reagan taught republicans that they only needed to pay lip service to balancing the budget (he ran on balancing the budget and proposed exactly zero balanced budgets in 8 years). Clinton got both parties thinking they could reduce deficits/balance budgets if they put their mind to it. Ignoring the significant tailwinds that got them there for which they were not responsible.

Ultimately at this point, neither really matters though. Pretty much no discussion of reducing deficits or balancing the budget in the recent election. Multiple proposals that would increase it with no real discussion of paying for any of them (other than I suppose the miracle of loves and fishes with making the "rich" pay "their fair share"). And social security surpluses have been replaced with social security deficits pretty much out to the horizon unless there are significant changes to the program. But talk about changes (to SS or Medicare) and you get voted out of office. Quickly. Solvency issues have been known for decades but all politicians have done is kick the can down the road.

Saying that morality is subjective in the purest sense would mean that the two people couldn't even agree on what goes on the good side of the scale and what goes on the bad side.

I think it is the case that two people can disagree on what goes on either side. At least in many, many instances. And if you say doing the "right" think may not be the "good" thing and those doing the "wrong" think is ok in those instances, I think effectively you are at subjective morality. To me, at that point, you are saying there are objective "rights" and "wrongs" but subjective reasons why its ok to go with the "wrong." Fine line to me that totally blurs the distinction.

When people talk about "making government more efficient" they mean one of two things:

1: Accomplishing the same things, but less expensively.
2: Accomplishing less by making government smaller.

If you mean Meaning One, it's very hard to do, because it is essentially hand-to-hand combat. You have to figure out what each office is doing, and how its procedures could be optimized. That is going to be almost unique to every office, and takes both time and at least some domain expertise.

If you mean Meaning Two, it's pretty easy to do, but it tends to piss off the electorate, because very few things the government does makes no difference to anyone. That includes defense by the way: Lots of people are employed--directly or indirectly--with the money spent on defense.

There is something else people sometimes intend: "Cut every office's budget by 10% (or more), and let local management figure out how to do the same job with less." The problem with that is that it might do exactly what it sets out to do. Or, it might just get some of the essential people fired, leaving the office with less capacity to do what it is intended to do. There's no way to know which it will end up being without implementing some form of Meaning One.

In the very worst case, the most competent people read the writing on the wall ("This is about to be a very shi**y place to work") and quit to look for better jobs elsewhere. The manager faced with the 10% budget cut realizes that cut can be made "painless" by not re-filling that position. So as a result, you lose the very best people instead of those least suited or even the average employee.

No matter what, I'm reminded of something a mentor once told me: "Whenever anyone anywhere talks about cutting costs, that ultimately boils down into taking money out of someone's paycheck somewhere." There is no way to shrink government spending without at least the pain of finding new jobs for people who are displaced/leave.

Of course, if you are in the position of employing people in the private sector, this is great news. It means more people competing for the same set of jobs, and you get to pay them less. Unfortunately, it also eventually means that consumers have less money to spend, and that means selling fewer widgets.

But what about WDW being De-themed???

De-Themeing creates jobs.

USA! USA! USA!

The_Orient_of_Express:

But what about WDW being De-themed???

The department of government efficiency has determined that theming is inefficient and a waste of money, thus theming is being removed.

Vater:

My taxes won't help fund 400,000 abortions a year anymore? In keeping to the original thread subject, "O noes!"

Sadly you may not agree, but this is a better use of your tax dollars than the outcome of these unwanted births. The pregnancies will be unwanted and uncared for regardless of the legality or assistance of abortions. If the kids are unwanted then they get subpar care, end up on Medicaid, end up in state care, end up being crims, or end up homeless on the street. This results in a far bigger cost to society. It is a far more efficient use of taxpayer money to handle it at the abortion level. It’s sort of like fixing bugs in the SDLC. I would rather handle it in development than in production because the cost becomes exponentially higher.