I Support The Truckers

[Shadow Wolf]

- No need to condemn property owners' land for new rail lines.

They do with roads. Indiana it was outrageous when it built a bypass and took a bunch of homes to clear room when they had an empty car dealership they could have taken out instead.
Eminent domain has got to have higher standards and criteria to meet than what it does.

 

[amorphous_constellation]

They'd probably still have the plague masks and cities would probably still have shut down. It's super contagious, it kills a lot of people, and especially back then if the disease doesn't outright kill you the chronic illness would likely lead to an ultimate death anyways.

Fair enough, but I just wonder if people at that time would connect the dots as much. I assume that their chronic impediments were often multiplied to the point where, it blurred the lines to ultimate causation. Also, given certain timeframes in that large era of the 'dark ages,' superstition must have been hyper paramount. I can cite parts of bede, where a woman's cancerous tumor is attributed to wearing a jewel. Or where ailments are cured by physical contact with a wet piece of wood, from the scraps of an old church.. or some such.

Somewhere in there, they make a leap to proto-science, when the black plague kicked it

 

[Shadow Wolf]

The purpose of government is to force individuals to act in the best interest of the whole of society,

Uhh, no. For the most part the government has no business or right dictating what people do. Forcing people to behave in ways outside a very narrow scope (like prohibitions against drunk driving or keeping lead out of paint) is not the duty or role of the state.

 

[Revoltingest]

They do with roads.

Aye, & this too should be avoided if possible.
And it's still difficult & spendy to condemn
corridors of land.

 

[F1fan]

Yet I don't see the same level of insanity and paranoia over those things.

Covid is weaponized for power and control purposes and it's clearly a tool for those reasons.

The disinformation and vilification of public health experts, like Fauci, is excellent evidence of that.

 

[Shadow Wolf]

Fair enough, but I just wonder if people at that time would connect the dots as much. I assume that their chronic impediments were often multiplied to the point where, it blurred the lines to ultimate causation. Also, given certain timeframes in that large era of the 'dark ages,' superstition must have been hyper paramount. I can cite parts of bede, where a woman's cancerous tumor is attributed to wearing a jewel. Or where ailments are cured by physical contact with a wet piece of wood, from the scraps of an old church.. or some such.

Somewhere in there, they make a leap to proto-science, when the black plague kicked it

Most of the dark ages wasn't full of superstitiousness and utter stupidity. They weren't dumb, they weren't stupid. They may not have knew much about diseases, but even the church largely rejected the existence of witchcraft.
"Dark Ages" really is a bad misnomer.

 

[PureX]

Nonsense. The purpose of government, in a republic, is to represent the needs and wants of the people. It's not to force people to do anything.

People will act according to their own needs and wants. They need no 'representation' of that. The problem is that for a society of individuals to function, the individuals are going to have to curb some of their individual needs and wants and act to achieve the needs and wants of the society as a whole. And that's why we form governments: to determine those collective needs and wants and to force the individuals to act to achieve those collective needs and wants.

I am stunned that so few U.S. citizens have even the remotest understanding of this essential fact of governance.

 

[amorphous_constellation]

People will act according to their own needs and wants. They need no 'representation' of that. The problem is that for a society of individuals to function, the individuals are going to have to curb some of their individual needs and wants and act to achieve the needs and wants of the society as a whole. And that's why we form governments: to determine those collective needs and wants and to force the individuals to act to achieve those collective needs and wants.

I am stunned that so few U.S. citizens have even the remotest understanding of this essential fact of governance.

I tend to think that this idea of the 'individual,' is more of a fiction than its worth, and the term probably should be phased out. Conservatives like to claim the term for their block, but really, they are just as much of a 'block' as are the lefties.

 

[PureX]

Sounds like an insect colony.
I prefer a society that allows more
individual self interest & liberty.

We don't have to "allow for" individual self-interest. We all do that automatically. What we have to set up governments for is to CURB THAT self-interest, as necessary for the benefit of the collective best interest. Because we won't do that individually. I realize this shocks the overgrown toddlers that most US adults have become thanks to a century of commercial advertising treating them like spoiled babies, but it is nevertheless a fact of our existence. Of course you'd prefer more freedom than you have. Everyone would. But we can't live together in a collective, healthy society that way.

 

[Shadow Wolf]

I tend to think that this idea of the 'individual,' is more of a fiction than its worth, and the term probably should be phased out. Conservatives like to claim the term for their block, but really, they are just as much of a 'block' as are the lefties.

The individual is the entire basis and reason for informed consent. In medicine we must treat the individual.
It's not a myth, and it's not political.

 

[Shadow Wolf]

We don't have to "allow for" individual self-interest. We all do that automatically. What we have to set up governments for is to CURB THAT self-interest, as necessary for the benefit of the collective best interest. Because we won't do that individually. I realize this shocks the overgrown toddlers that most US adults have become thanks to a century of commercial advertising treating them like spoiled babies, but it is nevertheless a fact of our existence. Of course you'd prefer more freedom than you have. Everyone would. But we can't live together in a collective, healthy society that way.

The "crisis of the commons" never really happened until the commons was privatized. We are social animals and will generally act in prosocial ways. If acting in our own self interest was all we ever did then we wouldn't have a concept of altruism.

 

[PureX]

I tend to think that this idea of the 'individual,' is more of a fiction than its worth, and the term probably should be phased out. Conservatives like to claim the term for their block, but really, they are just as much of a 'block' as are the lefties.

Well, selfishness is real, and it isn't going away. Neither is it bad in every manifestation. It's a big part of who we are.

But in terms of governance, lack of selfishness isn't the concern. We have that a-plenty. It's collectivism and cooperation that we lack, and sorely need, if we wish to live in collective societies. Which is how we humans live.

 

[Sand Dancer]

It really is fascinating all the ruckus over minor inconveniences. Like wearing a mask. Or getting a shot. And proudly they die on that hill, thinking opposing an inconvenience is fighting tyranny.

Some take their apparent power wherever they can. There have sadly been "Christian" leaders who have told "Christians" not to trust government. This is a very recent view, like many of them.

 

[stvdv]

Generally when a society is faced with a deadly and contagious virus they go into "lockdown mode." Some restrictions history has seen have been so restrictive that you can't even leave your house. One village even agreed that no one must leave the village to contain the spread of a plague. Some of this happened in what we call the "dark ages," but they better understood our actions and choices and decisions do not exist in an isolated bubble.

Thank you for you friendly reply

Indeed, we are lucky that we don't have the plague yet.

 

[Twilight Hue]

The disinformation and vilification of public health experts, like Fauci, is excellent evidence of that.

Fauci is a political hack.

 

[PureX]

The "crisis of the commons" never really happened until the commons was privatized. We are social animals and will generally act in prosocial ways. If acting in our own self interest was all we ever did then we wouldn't have a concept of altruism.

I agree. But our societies got too big for that sort of automatic altruism to be maintained. It became too easy to screw the other guy to advantage ourselves without having to live in close proximity to that other guy the rest of our life. Or for him to tell everyone else we live in close proximity to war we did. As our societies grew, we needed to create governing entities to protect us from each other. And that is still their main function.

And the pandemic response issue lands squarely under that purview of that governmental responsibility.

 

[Wildswanderer]

People will act according to their own needs and wants. They need no 'representation' of that. The problem is that for a society of individuals to function, the individuals are going to have to curb some of their individual needs and wants and act to achieve the needs and wants of the society as a whole. And that's why we form governments: to determine those collective needs and wants and to force the individuals to act to achieve those collective needs and wants.

I am stunned that so few U.S. citizens have even the remotest understanding of this essential fact of governance.

Sounds like an ad for socialism. We didn't for a socialistic government.

 

[stvdv]

A disease that has killed nearly 6 million people (that we know of, so far) is "unlethal"?

Lethal for me means:
IF e.g. Putin "creates" a missile that is lethal, it means it is lethal for everybody. No pick and choose.

IF you ask a doctor for a lethal injection, you die if you take it. They made it exactly that way, for that purpose (e.g. to kill death row criminals). At least it should be lethal to e.g. 99%, and not like covid, lethal to not even 1%

To be sure I googled it:

lethal
adjective

1. sufficient to cause death.
   "a lethal cocktail of drink and pills"

 

[PureX]

Sounds like an ad for socialism. We didn't for a socialistic government.

You live in a collective, cooperative society with your fellow humans, or you won't live for long. How is it that you can't seem to grasp this?

 

[Revoltingest]

We don't have to "allow for" individual self-interest. We all do that automatically. What we have to set up governments for is to CURB THAT self-interest ...

You might want to be a drone in a colony or hive.
I don't.