Hugo

That is debatable. I won't get into it now, but suffice it to say that I know someone who decided they were gay and then changed their mind a year later and decided they were straight again. It is not clear-cut. No, it is not "stupid". You are falling into exactly the same kind of trap here. Because a person makes different choices and has different values to you does not make them stupid. The "stupid" campaign is an attempt to label one value-set as stupid and another, by inference, as intelligent. This is exactly the kind of mistake that MS and ndpnic are making: eating fast-food is not stupid, it's just a choice, and because you would not make that choice does not make those who do make it stupid. Amen. Give people freedom of choice, but let them bear the consequences of those choices. If a person wants to eat junk food and sit on the couch all day long, that's fine, but should they have a right to appropriate my tax dollars to cure their heart disease?

There's a new TV ad campaign in Ontario right now which labels smokers as "stupid." Do you think they'd support a campaign to label homosexuals as "stupid"? Why not? Either statistically risky behaviour is stupid or it isn't, no? Exactly. They tried to market healthy food before, and it failed, so they dropped it. Now there is a shift in market demand and they're trying it again. If there is a demand, there will arise a supply, in the free market. Why would it? If they were altering their behaviour due to state sanctions, then all that proves is that the threat of violence tends to influence behaviour - hardly big news. I believe everything I said about the negative aspects of both homosexuality and marijuana. I also believe that it is absolutely none of my business what consensual acts other people get up to. Therefore, I believe passing laws against consensual acts is unethical no matter how destructive those acts may be. This means that I support people being allowed to do whatever they want, including homosexuality, drug abuse, fast-food binging, skydiving, Russian roulette or any darn fool thing they feel like. I just don't think there is any consistency in trying to outlaw some consensual yet self-destructive acts while turning a blind eye to others.

I "got lost" at the point where you started with things like: Now, this is true. It does mean that marijuana should be legal. I never claimed anything different. In fact, I already said that advocating the legalisation of marijuana is tantamount to advocating lack of regulation of the fast-food industry, and not to do so is inconsistent, which means that MS and ndpnic are being inconsistent, and I attacked them for holding a logically fallacious viewpoint. Basically, what you have said is, "Your argument is your argument." And my answer is, "Yes, it is. Your point being?" You've basically lead the argument in a circle back to the third post in the thread.

I'm sorry, daniel, you've completely lost me. Congratulations on your expansion of the human rights issue, but I must ask: so what? As far as I can tell you're telling me that, to be consistent, I must support all of the things you list. I already do. That's why I wonder what your point is.

Is there a point to this? I'm not going to get into the abortion debate right now, but suffice it to say that a fetus is biologically distinct from the mother and is human, therefore, it doesn't fall into the category of one's own body. As to euthanasia, self-mutilation, suicide, sado-masochism, yes, it does open up the right to that. Once again, what is your point? If consumers want their food labelled, it will be labelled. But information assymetry, like gravity, is a fact of life and no amount of wishful thinking will negate it.

That is just speculation on your part. If you claim that they're looking to avoid lawsuits and the turning of public opinion against them, I must remark that there's nothing like bolting the barn door after the horses have gone! They are selling these new, healthy items because they believe they will be profitable. I don't know if you've noticed but there has been quite the craze for healthy eating lately. Litigation and government action raises the possibility of going out of business, however, selling unprofitable products makes it a near-certainty. In any case, I think that it does not matter how many salads and sandwiches they sell, as long as they sell foods rich in saturated fat they are still as open for litigation and government action as ever. I don't believe there is any foundation to your claim. Your question cannot be answered as posed because there are too many unknown variables. How old is the child and what is his level of maturity? How responsible is he? How responsible and mature are the parents? How independent is the child? Does he have freedom of movement and his own money? How many choices is he being given by his parents?

Yes. The homosexual who is monogamous and practices safe sex is unlikely to contract an STD. The fast-food diner who has a McChicken sandwich once a week is unlikely to have a heart attack. The homosexual who sleeps with fifty men in a year without protection is likely to get an STD, and the fast-food diner who eats 8 Big Macs a day is likely to have a heart attack. Yes, a heterosexual could get an STD. A person who eats twenty pounds of vegetables a day might have a heart attack too. But we are discussing odds and probability here. This is why there are no grounds for outlawing fast-food and not homosexuality - or any other possibly dangerous pursuit, either. It violates the right of people to use their own property (money) and their own bodies, and the right to make decisions for themselves about their lives. To ban fast-food presumes to tell individuals that another person - the bureaucrat - has more right to control their body and their wallet than they do.

No, I wouldn't agree at all. It doesn't particularly matter. The link between homosexuals and STDs is as strong as the link between fast-food customers and heart attacks. You are completely missing the point. Unless you are telling me that marijuana is absolutely 100% risk-free and does no harm to health whatsoever, my point stands. The argument that fast-food should be banned while marijuana and homosexuality should be legalised is invalid and inconsistent. Maybe you should try actually going into McDonalds before you pass judgement! I went in there the other day and had a very tasty turkey, lettuce and tomato sandwich in whole-wheat bread. If you go into any fast-food outlet now they are all offering salads, sandwiches, low-carb and low-fat meals. I think Wendy's is offering real fruit juice to drink now. Which proves that the free market works. People are demanding healthier food and vendors are providing it. There is no role for the usual leftist demands to violate human rights on a large scale for the "common good" (as if such a thing could even exist).

You two have obviously not thought about this at all. Your ideas are self-contradictory, inconsistent, and lack any kind of moral grounding. I assume from your previous posts that you think homosexuality is OK, despite the fact that it is clearly statistically linked to vastly increased rates of disease and early death, but you nevertheless believe that the law should not exclude homosexuality. I also assume from your previous posts that you think marijuana should be legalised, despite the fact that it causes brain damage, cancer and respiratory diseases. So why do you want to ban fast-food and, of all things, religion? On some matters you are permissive, on others not. There is no consistency in your beliefs. Fast-food and even religion may be harmful, but you have already demonstrated that harmfulness is not a criterion for banning anything, so what is? It makes no sense. You clearly don't value the intelligence of other people enough to allow them to exercise their own judgement in regard to their own lives, and yet you plainly believe that your own judgement is wiser and superior, and that you should use the law and violence to enforce your judgement upon others regardless of what they actually want, like Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot and all the others of your kind. You only differ in degree, not in principle. I therefore ask that you two should prove to us all how it is that you are of superior intelligence and moral judgement to everybody else on the planet and therefore should have the power to use violence to make others conform with your ideas. You rail against the Pope and then demand powers far in excess of the Papacy. You are utterly ridiculous. I think you two should go away, read some decent books on moral theory rather than hysteria-laden pamphlets, and maybe think about what the heck it is you actually believe and whether or not it even makes sense before you start spouting foolhardy nonsense in a public forum.

Not entirely true. Borrowing is not a problem as long as the ability to repay is not a problem. At this time, the ability of the US to repay is being called into question. This is evidenced by the declining US dollar, showing that foreign investors increasingly believe, with the current state of the US economy, the government would be unable to repay debt. This in and of itself is not a problem, much as when an individual reaches their credit limit it is not a problem. It becomes a problem when a substantial part of income comes from borrowed money and the source of that borrowing dries up, as is beginning to happen to the US. It also becomes a problem when creditors begin to panic and call in loans early, fearing that if they leave it too late, there won't be enough money to repay everybody, and they don't want to be left high and dry. Then a run starts on US investments, and the US economy is really in trouble. Yes. Government spending is by definition malinvestment since it cannot be aligned according to consumer demand. Therefore, all government spending represents too much opportunity cost, or as Bastiat would say, that which is not seen. I'm curious as to why you think that only government can protect children. I suppose you think that parents, communities, fraternal societies, charities and so forth never do anything for children? Did all children die before the welfare state? Massive taxes make it a lot harder to have children. Look at the declining birth rate and higher ages of motherhood in the Nordic countries. A high-tax welfare state is a vicious attack upon the family and upon children.

This might be a point if it were true. The fact, however, is that Bush's tax cuts are an illusion. The Bush administration has increased expenditures while, on paper, decreasing income. For government as for individuals, this isn't possible in any long-term way. What Bush is doing is borrowing money, which is taxation hidden in the future. Eventually, taxes will have to pay back that debt ("eventually" being the operative word, since the federal government still has debts on the books from the Civil War). However, this borrowing does have a noticeable effect in the here and now. As the US government borrows more and more and the increasing size of the government slows the economy, investors lose faith in American ability to repay loans. This is visible in the decline of the US dollar: it reflects a foreign distrust for American investments and a preference for Euros instead. The second thing to be done is to inflate the currency, i.e. to have the Federal Reserve print more money. The Fed will happily do this, as they have for every President since FDR. This, too, is a tax that is not only hidden in the future, but a tax levied in an unpredictable way. Inflation causes economic crashes and slumps, but because of human involvement in the economy it is not possible to predict when these crashes or slumps will occur, how deep they will be, how much they will affect people and so on. Inflation is essentially a loan of money with an uncertain rate of interest and an uncertain maturity date. However, the effects of inflation are also possible to see. They cause a rise in prices because the value of currency is dropping against commodities (which means more money must be exchanged for a set amount of any commodity - higher prices). The indices of consumer prices in the USA are indeed rising, so it isn't hard to see what Bush is actually doing, and it isn't cutting taxes.

Reductio creep. By which I mean a newly coined term illustrating how the previously ridiculous is increasingly becoming reality.

Those who prefer to keep marijuana production, possession and use illegal state that they do so for the benefit of other people. Nobody should be permitted to smoke marijuana, because it is bad for them. In reductio ad absurdum, it therefore must also be their belief that diets should be carefully regimented. Doctors and dieticians should specify meal regimes for people, and law should prevent them from buying, eating or producing foodstuffs that aren't on their prescribed lists. Perhaps to save time and money, we could just come up with a few diets according to weight, gender and age group, and then issue food coupons to people according to their scientifically determined diet so that they could not buy food that was less than optimal for their health. Of course, a black market would probably arise in the production and sale of illegal foodstuffs, like burgers and french fries containing plenty of saturated fats, or chocolate and other candies, and so forth. The government would obviously have to spend billions of dollars busting people involved in this black market, then prosecuting them and imprisoning them. They could call it the "War on Fat" or whatever, and conduct a furious media campaign to show how evil, sick and twisted these purveyors of burgers and chocolate are, preying on schoolchildren and so forth. Right?

The whole reason why healthcare is expensive and people cannot afford it on their own is because of government intervention. There used to be mutual-aid societies, which working people would join for benefits, paying an annual fee. The Shriners and Freemasons are descendants of these societies. In 1930, 18 million Americans were members of one of these societies, which provided unemployment and sick benefits, burial services, death benefits, education and job training, and medical care. The society would hire a doctor or doctors, paying them a lump sum for one year. The doctor would agree to see any of the society members without charge and to treat them without charge, his cost being the annual fee. The cost to society members was as low as $1 per year and usually covered a members family (30% of American males in the workforce were members in 1930). The system was mutually beneficial. Ordinary, working folk could afford doctors, a doctor could get a guaranteed patient base and a guaranteed income, and the service provided had to be very good or the society would simply find another doctor when the year was up. However, some doctors got discontented with this situation. It made them providers and ordinary people their customers, and the customer is always right. They didn't like it that working-class people were getting to name terms to them, when they had years of expensive schooling. On the grounds that mutual-aid societies were "a threat to traditional fee-for-service medicine" they lobbied the government to artifically raise medical fees and prevent mutual-aid-provided medical care, which was largely complete by the end of the 1920s. Then very few could afford medical care. Ordinary people became quite upset and lobbied for government to provide medical care itself, which was largely completed two to three decades later. Of course, the tax burden for this was borne by the rich (including the doctors), and increasingly now by the middle classes and the poor, so in the end the only people who benefitted at all from this process were government bureaucrats. But competition in all other markets has led to rising standards. Cars, computers, food, you name it: it's all more plentiful, cheaper and higher quality than ever before. In fact, the only fields in which there is a true worry about decline in levels of service are those under government control: healthcare, the postal service, the police, etc. Health is a business. Food is essential to health (if you don't eat, you die), but food provision has been provided by a free market for a long time now, and last I checked, famine was unheard of in capitalist nations and the availability of foodstuffs is unprecedented. The only countries that routinely suffer famines these days are those that allow the state to provide food (Cuba, North Korea) or that allow governments to otherwise interfere in the food supply (Somalia, Ethiopia).

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to all, and my best wishes for 2005. May the Lord lift up his countenance upon thee, and give thee peace. And Halloween is the socialist/interventionist holiday: a bunch of monsters turn up on your doorstep and demand to be given a treat, lest they perform an unspecified but doubtless unpleasant trick on you. Hey, you started it.

The Soviet point is highly debatable. The Russians came perilously close to defeat. Put Hitler's offensive back six weeks when it was supposed to be launched, have somebody talk him out of sending all the troops to Stalingrad and refusing to let them leave, and take away Western supplies to Russia and you have a very different picture. Then you have the Germans at the Urals, with Siberian industry in range of the Luftwaffe and all major Soviet population centers in German control. Considering that Stalin refused to speak to anybody for weeks after the German assault it's fairly safe to assume that there would have been no Russian leadership either since everybody in the USSR was afraid to breathe without permission from Stalin by that point.

These are all what-if games. As I understand it, there are a few near-certainties. Firstly, although Britain might have been able to stave off German invasion there was no way that an invasion of the continent could have been launched without American resources. Therefore, the war in the West would have been, at best, a stalemate, which is hardly a win. One can quite possibly forsee a scenario in which Hitler bided his time until such time as Europe was entirely his and then amassed a force Britain could not possibly repulse. In the East, there are several factors. Had Hitler not launched his attack six weeks too late and allocated far too many resources to Stalingrad, combined with refusing to order a strategic retreat from the city, he would have most probably been at the Urals by the end of the campaigning season (which is relatively short, due to the spring rasputitsa and the harsh winter). At this point, given what we know of Stalin's tendency towards pessimism, mood swings and depression, the USSR probably would have sued for peace. Had there not been a Western front, Germany could have probably beaten back the Soviet forces even as it was. Before the invasion, German troops were required to be stationed in the West and the Luftwaffe had to keep up an air campaign and defend Germany from British and American air raids. The reallocation of these resources would have been significant. Indeed, the D-Day landings were performed not because it was the best time but because the Western allies felt that Stalin's patience was wearing too thin, and if they did not acquiesce to his demands to open a second front soon he might make a separate peace. Had there not been a Western front in 1944-45, it is probable that the Soviet advance would have been halted in the Ukraine or Poland. Soviet infrastructure was rudimentary at best and had been virtually destroyed by the German attack and the Soviet scorched-earth policy and then again by the German scorched-earth policy and the Soviet counter-attack. As the Soviets tried to maintain increasingly long supply lines over what in many cases were no more than dirt roads, while the German supply lines (with plenty of railroads) drew shorter, the counter-attack would have faltered had the substantial armies allocated to the Western front instead been fighting in Russia. Hence, my argument is that in all probability, the best-case scenario for a WWII fought without American involvement is a stalemate or standstill. I believe that the actual defeat and destruction of Nazi Germany was only possible with American intervention.

"When the President does it that means that it is not illegal." -- Richard M. Nixon "It will be found an unjust and unwise jealousy to deprive a man of his natural liberty upon a supposition that he may abuse it." -- Oliver Cromwell

British and Canadian troops did do a remarkable job, as did their German counterparts, but that is irrelevant. The fact is that Britain came quite close to defeat and, had the Nazis not made some serious strategic blunders, would most probably have been starved into submission. Even allowing for German mistakes, Britain would not have been able to hang on without American shipments of war materiel and food. And even with those shipments, Britain still stood no chance of invading Europe without direct American military intervention. Without an invasion of Europe, Britain would have merely waited until Hitler consolidated his gains in the East and then have been beaten down by the resources of the entirety of continental Europe. The Soviets came extraordinarily close to defeat. Were it not for American aid they probably would have been defeated by Germany, and if Hitler had launched Barbarossa six weeks earlier their fate would have been sealed.

I would like to hear one valid argument as to why it is even reasonable. MS has offered us no evidence or studies to show that this would save lives or reduce traffic density. Trucks are indeed heavier and take longer to brake than cars. This is true at all speeds. The solution is perhaps for car drivers to be cautious around trucks, allow plenty of room and make sure the trucker can see you (i.e. you have to be able to see his cab windows or his mirrors), rather than cutting them off and dallying in their blind spots as I see idiots doing all the time. Just the other day, I watched someone evidently rather tired of life merge behind me and force the truck that was following me to brake sharply and swerve. Smart move. I think the statistics bear out this irresponsibility. In 2003, the Dept. of Transportation in the US found that 6% of truckers in fatal accidents had illegal blood-alcohol levels against 33% of car drivers. I think we have heard arguments as to why this proposal is wrongheaded anyway. Krusty has brought up the problem that restricting trucks to the left lane means that anyone joining or leaving the freeway is going to have to dodge trucks - or make trucks dodge them. Trucks also vary in their own speeds and a fully laden dump truck moving at 70km/h is going to cause a massive tail-back unless all other vehicles, not just cars but faster-moving trucks, can pass it.

I think, MS, that you were posting based upon ignorance and without thinking the ramifications of your proposal through. I'm sorry you think that actually trying to see what the consequences of an action would be is "getting carried away", and if you seriously think that this is a reasonable way to behave I invite you to be spontaneous and take a walk on an airport runway wearing a blindfold, try to fly off a cliff or some other act the consequences of which you wouldn't consider lest you get "carried away."

I'm sure this has been thought of. Doubtless MS will advocate price controls to prevent the rise in prices associated with this increased cost of transportation. Of course, these price caps will drive many companies out of business, and government will have to subsidize or nationalize them to ensure that needed consumer goods continue to be available. These costs will be borne by higher taxes, thus creating the effect whereby prices remain fixed and wages drop, creating a fall in real income. The rich will be able to afford these rises a little better than the poor. Single parents and other low-income folks will be hard-hit and their standard of living will drop noticeably. Of course, the lesser demand for consumer goods created by depressed real incomes will also cause many of them to become unemployed. Doubtless the government will create programmes to fix this, which will cost even more tax dollars, and the cycle will repeat itself while the ranks of the unemployed swell and swell. The government will raise the inflation rate to pay for all of these increased costs it is now bearing. Initially, this will lessen the problem, and then prices and wages will adjust to inflation and compensate for it, and all the gains will be undone unless the government creates further inflation. The rate of inflation will continue to rise until the dollar loses half of its value and more, further depressing real incomes and further stagnating the economy through fear and uncertainty over future prospects. But hey, it's all worth it if we can save just one life from those careless truckers. Setting in motion a chain of events that will reduce millions to misery is neither here nor there. The reason why there isn't such mass transit is because nobody demands it. It's impractical for most people. I have three sons and my usual grocery run results in my loading up my trunk with 60-80 lbs. of food. Are you suggesting that I try to use the bus service, in winter, with three small children and 60 lbs. of groceries? What are you, a sadist? Probably because nobody has explained basic economics to them and they don't realise that reducing profits also means reducing quality of life - less jobs, less money, less consumer goods, lower quality food, more cramped housing, etc. I'm curious, MS, to know how much food you think is grown in the Greater Toronto Area. It takes 3.25 acres to produce enough food to feed one person for a year. There are about 2.5 million people living in Toronto proper, who require 8.1 million acres of farmland. Toronto is about 158,400 acres in size. Do the math. I believe there are about 750,000 acres of farmland in the Greater Toronto Area. Perhaps MS will tell us how, without trucks, the produce of 750,000 acres of GTA farmland and 7.35 million acres of other Canadian and international farmland is supposed to be moved into Toronto. Perhaps he will suggest trains. I hope, then, that he has a solution for moving produce from railheads to grocery stores. Possibly MS will solve the unemployment problem by hiring people to move the produce on their backs. Of course, the massive rise in food prices will mean that most low and middle-income people won't be able to afford to eat anymore. Oh well, such is socialism - lofty goals that impoverish the people they want to help. Reading through the NDP platform, I was amazed at how many measures they were advocating to increase poverty and soak the poor.

No, it is a fact. I'd offer a better argument, but I notice that you didn't make any argument at all, so why should I waste my time on you? Add von Ribbentrop, Sperrle, Himmler and so forth to your list. The problem in the Nazi regime was that the competent men were all lower down in the command chain, whereas the blunderers and yes-men were in prime positions. At the start of the war the Germans had many veterans of the Spanish Civil War. However, within a short period of time these veterans had all been killed and German training programmes were very sub-standard compared to Allied programmes. Germany had such a manpower shortage that pilots were sent into the air with only a few hours of flying time when Allied rookies had been training for months. Even winning the Battle of Britain would not have guaranteed success to Sealion due to the power of the Royal Navy.

I don't think you're correct. You're just playing word games. Physical laws might appear to describe the universe, but actually, they prescribe to the universe (and to men). The universe does not set the physical laws, it acts according to the physical laws. The physical laws set out by men are descriptions - but they describe the underlying, immutable rules of the universe. The laws of men are only prescriptive to some men i.e. those who don't get to make them. To lawmakers, law is descriptive. Thanks. I'm glad you guys appreciated it. Don't forget to mention me in the "favourite political quote" thread!

Exactly. The USA had plenty of idle factories and thousands of unemployed workers who could be harnessed for production of war materiel and soldiers. The German economy was already overheating by 1939, as evidenced by the drop in standards of living experienced under Hitler and so forth. German production was borne up in large part by slave labour and by gold confiscated from the treasuries of occupied countries. This gold alone gave Germany a massive advantage over the Allies, who only had their own gold reserves (although Roosevelt had already confiscated all privately-owned American gold), but they still could not come close to American production. Because the production capabilites of the East Indies and South East Asia were considerable compared to Japan, this is true. However, because the production capabilities of all three were miniscule compared to the USA, it did not make a difference. Germany had a serious shortage of trained pilots. The men in German fighter planes were grossly incompetent compared to Allied pilots. This alone seriously compromised their air defences. Unskilled men are only useful if you have millions of them, as Stalin did, but Hitler did not. Furthermore, German radar technology lagged well behind Allied radar throughout the war (in 1940, the Germans still did not have any radar capability) which meant that their air defences were far more inflexible and incapable of rapid response and accurate threat assessment. It depends on who you are talking about, soldiers or generals. When discussing soldiers, it's all about training. A German soldier who had spent his childhood hiking and firing rifles in the Hitler Youth and seen action in the Spanish Civil War or some other theater was a better soldier than a US soldier who had spent several weeks in boot camp, who in turn was a better soldier than a Russian infantryman drafted from his field, issued a rifle and told which direction to run in. But in the end, training and skill did not matter in WWII. It was an industrial-age war fought with industrial methods. He who could field the most men and the most tanks and planes would win, and the skill of the men did not matter so much. This is why Germany was never going to win. Although the German fighting man was highly skilled and brave, German industry could not back him up and German logistics could not keep him supplied. It is possible to envisage a scenario in which Germany could have won, but this can only involve a human factor, i.e. genius on the part of the German leadership (which all too often embodied stupidity instead) and stupidity on the part of the Allies.