Picture your idealized society (a society which you'd most like to live in), its governmental structure, most importanly, its domestic policies. In this society you can choose if it would have a single-payer health care system, affirmative action, gay marriage, school lunch programs, universal access to post-secondary education, no income tax, no social welfare programs, no financial support for disabled peoples, and so on. Just everything your little heart desires.


Now that you've done that, lose all perceptions of yourself. By that, I mean all the things that make you you, e.g. your race, innate intellect and other natural abilities, gender, social status, sexual orientation, etc. Would you like to enter that society you've just created if you were a single black woman with an IQ of 70 and three kids? Would that society you've imagined be fair or a just one if you were an orphaned seventeen year old gay hispanic male? What if you were a fourteen year old kid suffering from cerebral palsy or were stricken with leukemia and being raise by a single mother that couldn't provide you health insurance? Did you truly envision a just society?


This is basically John Rawls' theory of justice and concepts of orginal position and veil of ignorance.

If your a person with a 70 IQ
it doesn't matter what world your living in.
It isn't fair. It isn't Just. It just is.
In my world at least she would be free.

Government isn't needed for every thing you just mentioned.
We have Charity hospitals that take care of kids right now.
Just think what we would have if people kept their money
and could give even more.

Insurance is just a way for people to charge the most they can.
For various reasons, instead of medicine being a
deal between the doctor and the patiant.
Supplying goods and services at a FAIR market price.
Until the 60s we didn't have government involved with medicine.
We were the envy of the world.
Government gets involved and bamm!! It sucks.

In my world you would keep the fruits of your labor.
No one has the right to take what is yours.
No one has the right to initiate violence.
The governments roll would be to prevent violence.
They would protect the Border (gotta keep cuba from invading us, right)
Arbitrate and enforce contract disputes. (Drug deal gone wrong or unarbitrated contract dispute?)

The only think I would want run like the post office is banking.
I want that run with no new fancy bull crap.
Every time we have a big economic problem,
its because the banks screwed the pooch one way or another.
In a missguilded effort to make the most loot off of other peoples money.
I got nothing against making money
but banking can royally F*** up the system.
I want it run in a safe stable steady but profitable way.
Or totaly get government out of the money buisness alltogether.

To me Freedom is the only Just responce to this post.

I think Ilkhan's response about sums it up.

Trying to make the world fair is full of failure, the world will never be fair to a person with an IQ of 70 (mentally retarded) or to some one that is orphaned (the key term in the lack of fairness is orphaned, which means they don't have their parents.)

No amount of pity is going to help them, but first and foremost...

Charity Begins by protecting those that have money from the government.

Charity is voluntary giving.

Besides, a perfectly just world is not going to care whether a person's IQ is 70 or if they an orphaned homosexual Mexican, or a well educated black person that has an IQ of 130. It is going to let everyone achieve the maximum they can, because punishing the excellent to reward the mediocre and worse is not just, it is not fair, and it is most assuredly not logical.

Justice, as the ancient Romans would remind us, is, and should be, blind.

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Libertas inaestimabilis res est - Liberty is a thing beyond all price. | Sic Semper Tyrannis

You know that movie 300? Where if the child was born with a defect it was cast off a cliff to its death? Seems cruel, but to me it seems very logical and its like euthanasia, you don't feel a thing. At least they were blessed with physically capable people and no one had to be cared for their whole lives by the state. The world isn't fair, it never will be no matter how much the gubbermint gets involved. Every time the gubbermint gets involved you may as well throw it in the crapper and flush it.

You CAN create a good banking system, but you will have to go back to a gold standard that is TRULY 100% backed by gold with 100% reserves, no fractional banking shit like it is now. History repeats itself over and over and over, every time government takes over more and more duties you see that country become weaker and weaker until finally it collapses, we are on that path IMO.

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It is far easier to ignorantly control others than it is to wisely control yourself.

Government isn't needed for every thing you just mentioned.
We have Charity hospitals that take care of kids right now.
Just think what we would have if people kept their money
and could give even more.

People with money to give, real money, start thinking about their family and what they can leave for them, charity would never replace the social programs already in place.

Insurance is just a way for people to charge the most they can.
For various reasons,

The main reason being profit.

instead of medicine being a
deal between the doctor and the patiant.
Supplying goods and services at a FAIR market price.

The doctors and the insurance companies have dictated prices based on not what the people can afford, but on how much a new porsche costs

Until the 60s we didn't have government involved with medicine.
We were the envy of the world.
Government gets involved and bamm!! It sucks.

The problem is the government only got partially involved. Lobbied by the special interests, they have allowed the cost of medical to spiral out of control while CEOs and greedy doctors are reaping billions in profit. The only good medical is not for profit medical. The majority of bankruptcies are caused by excessive medical costs. Single payer medical would free the corporations from medical costs. The only involvement Government should have is the disbersment of funds. Even my VA healthcare allows me to choose my Dr. Profit and medical do not do well together, the greed factor kicks in and here's how it ends up Profit<medical care. IE the quest for profit lessens the integrity of the medical care exponentially. This is a proven fact.

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Life is good, the water is sweet. The ground keeps moving beneath my feet.

You're advocating the killing of anyone with that happens to be born with a birth defect? Wow...

the world wont be fair for a long ass time, if someone is making money somewhere that means someone is losing it somewhere else,
face it, the world fucked us, what do you think the recession is? too many people got fucked and now there asses are sore, gotta wait it out, learn from your mistakes and try to make a change not just fucking sit there going to work at 9 everyday coming home at 3 or 6 or w/e seriously fuck society, you have to rebel and stand up for yourself be independent, not make money for some fucking corporation that just tries to make even more money and then what? look at it? fucking noobs.

I don't know how this was missed, but the point wasn't if you were that woman or child. It's if you would view that hypothetical society as just, if you were to enter not knowing certain key components that make you you; if you were forced to be objective in order to see what's an ideal society.

I don't know how to break it to you, but somewhere in the neighborhood of 20,000 people die each year due to being uninsured; quite a few children are reflected in that number. That's around six times the number than those that died on 9/11, which is viewed as a national tragedy.

There are also somewhere in the neighborhood of 1.5 million bankruptices stemming from medical bills each year as well. They consitute the majority of bankruptcies, too.

MacDonald and all those fast food places kill so much people its an epidemic or w/e that word is for 30 million dieing in 10 years cause more than 3 million die a year from obesity.

EDIT: tops cigarettes, alcohol, aspirin, all that shit combined.

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"When the power of love overcomes the love of power, the world will know peace." --- Jimi Hendrix

I doubt that's actually measurable.