https://www.cgdev.org/blog/update-lives-lost-usaid-cuts
"lives lost based on the decline in outlays (current spending) may be in the range of 500,000 to 1,000,000 and potential lives lost based on the decline in obligations (commitments to future spending) are between 670,000 and 1,600,000."
What is your best estimate of deaths due to "woke" or whatever you consider the scourge of the "past decade" to be?
How many visas revoked due to the holder being not woke enough? How many people were deported from the US for being insufficiently woke? And so on. "Woke" may not be what you meant. Whatever you meant, present your measure and data.
Sure. People only lost their jobs and what not ( which in US means.. well, slow, and without health insurance, likely unpleasant demise ). Totally different. On this very forum, I had someone tell me in a very subtle way that it is a good idea that I stay quiet if I know what is good to me. But pendulum swings. It always does. Only difference is,we are forcing people to live up to the world they have ushered in. I hope you said thank you, because wokeness got you to this very spot.
On the one hand ~1,000,000 deaths and on the other hand some people lost their jobs and you got a mean comment online?
> lost their jobs ... which in US means ... slow, and without health insurance, likely unpleasant demise
Those you would label "woke" are famously supporters of universal health care. Universal as in would cover everyone including every single Jan 6 participant. On the one hand people striving for health care for all. On the other hand https://www.theguardian.com/business/2025/nov/20/hospitals-s...
> we are forcing people to live up to the world they have ushered in
No, wht you are doing is supporting an administration killing ~1,000,000 people and taking away health care from everyone, including people in the group you identify with.
<< Those you would label "woke" are famously supporters of universal health care.
Here is a problem of sorts. Some of us happen to live in the real world. Our lives do not exactly depend on some imaginary future state we advocate for. As such, a threat to alter my habitat now is of bigger import as opposed to some potential future benefit. Can you understand that perspective?
And that is before I remember that 'your' ( quotation very much intended, because we both know it is not yours; you may not even know why you aligned with it ) side would not exactly be above, say, denying said universal healthcare to republicans..
<< No, wht you are doing is supporting an administration killing ~1,000,000 people
<< On the one hand ~1,000,000 deaths and on the other hand some people lost their jobs and you got a mean comment online?
Eh.. hyperbole will not get you far here. May I refer to you site FAQ? I can't tell if I am wasting my time with you or not.
> denying said universal healthcare to republicans
How many do you claim hold that view? Can you cite some prominent examples? I want health care for all, including you.
> hyperbole
I posted https://www.cgdev.org/blog/update-lives-lost-usaid-cuts "lives lost based on the decline in outlays (current spending) may be in the range of 500,000 to 1,000,000 and potential lives lost based on the decline in obligations (commitments to future spending) are between 670,000 and 1,600,000."
and asked for data on the original "balancing out claim". You jumped in with mumblings of some unspecified number of lost jobs and vague claims about said job losers demise and then one mean online comment to you. That's where we're at, that's the tally based on the data you provided.
You posted a blog of some organization unhappy about the cuts. Not exactly a gold standard for unbiased opinions. YOu want to convince me? Do your own calculations. Show me your work. Show that you can think critically. Am I not seeing that now.
<< You jumped in with mumblings of some unspecified number of lost jobs and vague claims about said job losers demise and then one mean online comment to you.
So ... you can understand my perspective, but choose to minimize it. I guess its ok. At least you are honest about effectively saying 'anyone who complains about it is a loser'. I will admit that it does not sound like the best way to win hearts and minds, but what do I know.
I would like to say that you have achieved nothing by not convincing me, but you did manage to do something remarkable. You actually motivated me to vote for a republican this election cycle. I suppose I am no longer center.
Yes: the definition of "coercive" used in those texts is an example of what I described at the end of my post, the inability to imagine any concept of "liberty" that is not "do whatever I feel like"--or in this case, "grab whatever external resource I feel like".
Legal rights can be seen as especially strong claims, with implications and interactions to be further specified in laws and regulation. What alternative do you think would be more useful arrange human relations, if not literally appeals to the God of Thunder?
> protecting the basic rights that everyone has to have to have a free, civil society, and stopping there. A government that has more power than that has too much power.
What's your empirical evidence for thinking that such a setup is better and that going further than that brings "eternal conflict"? Since all prosperous democratic countries in e.g. north america and europe combine private property with taxation for public provision that goes beyond what you desire. Furthermore in empirical studies of life satisfaction and happiness the top of the list is consistently held by countries with extensive welfare states funded by taxes[0]. How does that square with your claim?
What if you gave the same happiness survey to people in Saga period Iceland, which had no government at all?
Or to people in some of the American colonies in the late 1600s and early 1700s, such as Pennsylvania, which had governments, but those governments did virtually nothing?
The fact that all first world countries today have governments with vastly more power is no evidence at all that such a system is the best. All it means is that that's the only kind of system that's being evaluated for first world countries. It's easy to place first if you're the only one in the race.
Hard to tell what those people would report if we had a time machine and could go and ask them. I sure as hell wouldn't want to switch position with them. Would you? On objective measures of health, nutrition, longevity and prevalence of violence they would score much worse.
> The fact that all first world countries today have governments with vastly more power is no evidence at all that such a system is the best.
It is some evidence. Since if a system with a less extensive state that offers less of public services like schooling, infrastructure and health care is what is really better for people, why haven't people made it happen already? See here also my previous point that gradual steps towards such system should, if they are really an improvement for people, show up as higher scores in happiness surveys. Absence of that trend is some evidence against your claim.
> Hard to tell what those people would report if we had a time machine and could go and ask them.
Yes. Which means it's impossible to use such reports to make general claims about what kind of government is better.
> if a system with a less extensive state that offers less of public services like schooling, infrastructure and health care is what is really better for people, why haven't people made it happen already?
Because "people" can't make it happen in societies where the government controls all those things. Governments have huge advantages over private providers in terms of protecting themselves from competition, without having to actually provide better service.
And even with all those advantages, people still do try to opt out. If government-run schools in the US, for example, were really so great, there wouldn't be so many people trying to get their kids into private schools, or home schooling. But because such people still have to pay taxes to support public schools, those options are only open to the affluent. And schemes like school vouchers to try to level the playing field somewhat never gain any real traction because politicians don't have to answer to the people as a whole, only to special interests--and teachers at government-run schools are a huge special interest.
> gradual steps towards such system should, if they are really an improvement for people, show up as higher scores in happiness surveys.
> it's impossible to use such reports to make general claims about what kind of government is better.
Across 1000 years of history, yes. But as already noted in those cases objective health/longevity differences can settle the issue. The report can then be used as a one source of evidence in comparison between the setup in countries today.
> Because "people" can't make it happen in societies where the government controls all those things.
People can vote for parties and candidates with an agenda to abolish public funding of education and infrastructure, but people choose not to. Very few vote for the libertarian party in the US for example.
> And even with all those advantages, people still do try to opt out.
In the countries that score best in terms of happiness and life satisfaction there is wide and strong popular support for an extensive welfare state with tax funding of schools, infrastructure and health care. Is your view that large majorities of people in those countries over decades are consistently mistaken about both their reported happiness and their support for their welfare state?
> If government-run schools in the US, for example, were really so great, there wouldn't be so many people trying to get their kids into private schools, or home schooling.
The US is not in the top of the report I cited and has many problems in the schooling system. One underpinning factor is segregation (ethnic and socioeconomic).
> school vouchers
... are tax funded, so is a variant of an extensive welfare state on the funding side. A drawback with such a mixed setup (public funding of private provision) for schooling is that it often requires even more regulation, oversight and middle men activities due to for profit and competition dynamics. The US health care system is a prime example of how cost-ineffective such systems can become compared to more straightforward public provision of health care in other countries.
> Only if they exist to be surveyed.
Are you saying you don't think there's any gradual differences in how extensive the welfare state is among the countries listed in the report?
> empirical studies of life satisfaction and happiness
Are subjective. People's responses will be relative to what they're used to and what possibilities they see for their lives. These studies give no evidence at all that you could not have people whose subjective satisfaction and happiness was just as high, or higher, in a country with a minimal government along the lines I've described. They also give no evidence that such a country could not do as well or better in objective terms.
> Are subjective. People's responses will be relative to what they're used to and what possibilities they see for their lives.
People report how well they experience their lives as going. Not perfect, people can be mistaken and you might now better than them how happy they really/objectively are I suppose. But then again, do you have any better empirical evidence in support of what you proposed? If not how confident can you really be about it?
> These studies give no evidence at all that you could not have people whose subjective satisfaction and happiness was just as high, or higher, in a country with a minimal government along the lines I've described.
They don't prove that it is impossible, true, but if your proposed setup really was so much better wouldn't gradual steps towards it also be somewhat better in ways that made people report greater life satisfaction and happiness? And wouldn't then that show up in the ranking so that the top scoring countries would be those that come closest to (or least far from) your ideal? But that's not what we're seeing, the top scorers have the most extensive welfare states. That's some evidence against your claim.
> They also give no evidence that such a country could not do as well or better in objective terms.
What's "objective terms"? Do you mean longevity? Health outcomes? The top scoring countries in terms of happiness score very high there too.
Note also that you claimed that all systems going further than what you suggested would have "eternal conflict", which sounds really serious and awful and thus would realistically affect how people report how well their lives are going. Isn't the report evidence against that claim of yours?
You say "childish" and "unrealistic" but such legal rights already exists. For example children have a right to education and the government has to see to it, in one way or other, that the child gets education (which could take the shape of public schools or funding, regulation and overseeing privately owned schools or some other arrangement). Similarly for other legal rights. a right in that sense means an especially strong claim that guides policy and is specified and updated through laws and regulations.
The notion of moral rights can be seen as a form of value and as such is about as workable as other notions of value e.g. virtue, duties, obligation and the good.
how the word "voluntary" is actually used by people is complex in interesting ways. People report (degrees and shades of) involuntariness and coercion in lots of different situations. For example "I hate this shitty job but I don't have a choice". So as a matter of language use there's lots of different kinds of involuntariness that doesn't cleanly map onto any libertarian-ish view. At which point libertarians tend to make the move of proposing their own, much more narrow definition of "voluntary". Which implicitly embeds normative assumptions that would need to be argued for, which libertarians fail to do.
> As a utilitarian, Mill got to dodge questions like "what is human flourishing?"
What do you mean? What is the thing that utilitarian founders like Mill wanted to promote in the world? How is that not connected to human flourishing?
Utilitarism says that we should maximize utility; it doesn't say we have to do so by focusing on "human flourishing" or that every individual must get the same capabilities as Nussbaum does. Moreover, utiliarians don't agree about what utility is, and not all of them would say "human flourishing" is a synonym.
Nussbaum's specific list of capabilities isn't anticipated by Mill, but that doesn't mean Mill dodges questions like what is human flourishing. Mill wrote a lot about politics and what makes human life go better, both in terms of what is ultimately valuable and what it is crucial to nurture in people for them to experience such value. His views on education, freedom of expression and more in political theory are in that way covering some of the same ground that Nussbaum does with here capabilities approach.
“The grand, leading principle, towards which every argument unfolded in these pages directly converges, is the absolute and essential importance of human development in its richest diversity.”
— Wilhelm Von Humboldt, Sphere and Duties of Government
> If you have "collective efforts" you want funded or built, you're free to ask people voluntarily to put their lives, children, families etc. on hold for whatever cause you think is important that I don't see that you have insight into.
Such collective efforts are already underway. One is called the United States, a system where the legal construct property is bounded and compatible with taxation for public provision. The US is a club of people who have banded together for common goals and with democracy as a tool for updating the system. If you don't want to be part of that club then leave.
I don’t think you will find any disagreement on either point.
“Democracy” is often used as a general term for governments that in some sense are a delegation of citizen power. Even though a pure democracy would remove the delegation.
As a practical matter, the US model has devolved into a party-duocracy. Power at all levels has nearly completely centralized at the national level of each majority party. Of which there are only two. The extreme minimum of choice even for a Republic.
Incorrect, it was founded with more goals than that. It also has the mechanism of democracy for updating over time, and such updates have added prosperity producing things like taxation for public provision of education, infrastructure and much more. Which means that the initial version of the technology called the United States have long since gotten various updates.
Every claim to property over any parcel of land is fundamentally a coercive taking in that it tries to forbid everyone else, billions of people, from using that piece of land. Any attempt to enforce that land claim is an initiation of aggression against other people freely moving about in the world. In that way any system of property, libertarian or not, has at its root coercion. Some coercion is table stakes for civilization and that is ok.
> Every claim to property over any parcel of land is fundamentally a coercive taking in that it tries to forbid everyone else,
Something can't be "taken" if it's not owned.
Property rights systems exist because people use property to achieve their life's values, and having billions of people argue over how to use land is not enactable (I hope that's obvious).
People's lives are not served by telling billions of people who want to use a plot of land to "fight it out", and thus governments have reasonably enacted systems that gives gives people both physical and intellectual property based off their. efforts.
This isn't to be said that property systems can't be improved, our intellectual rights property system obvious has many ways it could be improved (and it changes as we discover new knowledge). The end goal of these political policies though is to create social systems that allow individuals to maximally pursue their life.
Property systems goals are NOT to give everyone a certain quality of life.
Take a look at even the most communist/anarchist society you can imagine (the kind with people who hate those who own property), and you will see systems of an authority being grasped for that help coordinate use of material means in order to avoid violence. Reality cannot be escaped.
Sure it can, someone can take land in the plain everyday sense that they occupy it and tell others to stay out. But that act, and any attempts to enforce it, is coercive and aggressive. Which proves that any system with property rights, including every libertarian proposal ever made, is coercive. That's ok but it also means that your "is it voluntary?" complaints are futile and self-defeating.
> Property rights systems exist because people use property to achieve their life's values
What's your empirical evidence for that claim? The actually existing legal construct of property in countries around the world, and in international treaties, in fact serves a whole range of goals. In every prosperous country on earth there is room for both private property and taxation for public provision. In empirical studies of life satisfaction and happiness the top is consistently dominated by democratic countries with extensive welfare states funded by taxes
https://happiness-report.s3.amazonaws.com/2024/WHR+24.pdf#pa...
What measures and data do you base that claim on?
https://www.cgdev.org/blog/update-lives-lost-usaid-cuts "lives lost based on the decline in outlays (current spending) may be in the range of 500,000 to 1,000,000 and potential lives lost based on the decline in obligations (commitments to future spending) are between 670,000 and 1,600,000."
What is your best estimate of deaths due to "woke" or whatever you consider the scourge of the "past decade" to be?
How many visas revoked due to the holder being not woke enough? How many people were deported from the US for being insufficiently woke? And so on. "Woke" may not be what you meant. Whatever you meant, present your measure and data.