Firstly, this is a long post, and I'm exhausted, so I will probably miss something, but hey I'm trying.AvroLancaster said:
On to the good stuff. Governments don't need to be feared, but any objective look at history shows that governments will eventually start exploiting their people, it begins with corruption and it ends at tyranny. They need to be watched, "The price of Freedom is Constant Vigilance" and all that. At the same time, you are one hundred percent correct in that no government in the west is anywhere close to tyranny at this moment.
I was a little unclear it seems. I didn't mean to imply that the McDonald's/Box scenario is always or even usually the fault of the person involved, sometimes bad stuff happens and you end up in a bad situation. But I don't think it's as bad as people make it out to be. I know people who made enough of a living on minimum wage to eventually get an education and good job.
And there are plenty of jobs that pay well that require no connections or education. I can name 2 right off the top of my head that people I know got without any connections or education, that pay better money than most people make with college degree level jobs. Still, most times these people do need help for one reason or another, but if you drop out of high school in the 10th grade because "you just don't see the point" (I know several people who said exactly that, and weren't even failing) then you reap what you sow.
On a slightly less relevant, but very important(IMO) note: Talent has nothing to do with opportunity. Talent is mostly made up of practice anyway, if you work hard enough you really can get good at just about anything. and even skill has nothing to do with equal opportunity. That said, i agree with you, equal opportunity in the sense that it's used today is complete bull, but i dont' think that's a problem. The world needs janitors as much as it needs engineers(more probably) and if they can live off their wage(I know that's a big if in the current state of affairs, but that's more of a comment on the economy than the fairness of human inequality) than they should be left where they are, life is what you make it.
The comment about the government swooping in has more to do with my observations of the current trends in our society, most notable "No(Every)child left behind" style of education, and frivolous lawsuits among others, which I believe are leading towards a society with no accountability and no real freedom.(very long term). Not really anything to do with your comments, a bit of a projection on my part, but I'm exhausted and I guess I did a little of "seeing what I expected to see."
Another tangent: I'm against universal healthcare. I think it's stupid simply because federal level governments are horribly inefficient and corrupt. We would be much better off if we took steps to reduce the cost of healthcare. it has skyrocketed in the past 30-40 years(both my parents and one of my aunts and 2 of my cousins work in healthcare) mostly because of ludicrous malpractice lawsuits and over-regulation. Over-regulation makes it so that a small doctors office that should only need one doctor, one or two nurses, and a receptionist now requires 2 doctors, 5 or more nurses, and 3 secretaries to fill out all of the paperwork and to meet all the procedure requirments. If we cut healthcare costs by reducing regulation(within reason), reducing or preventing frivolous malpractice lawsuits, than it would be much more successful than giving a mandatory universal health insurance. In places where it's particularly bad(like America) you could even pay some operating costs with the federal government, like utilities and healthcare and pensions for employees, than you could make health insurance affordable for more people at a lower cost than by nationalizing health insurance(IMHO)
Ur last 3 paragraphs are a little unclear to me in my current state, so feel free to point out if you think i misunderstood you.
Point of Fact: I would consider myself a reform liberal as well(well, technically I consider myself an independent, but my personal beliefs and philosophy are almost identical to John Stuart Mill, which is very close to what you are describing) so I'm not disagreeing with you on any major points, just pointing out some places where I believe this type of liberal thought requires some closer examination.
Beyond that, "Your freedom ends where mine begins. Mine ends where yours begins." sounds really pretty, but it's not nearly so simple as that. To take an extreme example that my philosophy professor used in my class last semester: If the government makes it illegal for one man to punch another in the face for no reason, is that government protecting a person's right to not get punched in the face, or infringing a person's right to punch someone in the face?"
Like I said, it's a very moral statement, "your freedom ends where mine begins. Mine ends where yours begins," but it is functionally useless, because it does nothing to define that line in any real sense, because protecting someone from another person is inherently taking away the other person's right to harm them.
To put an example, of my own creation, on the other side of things. Children are abused all the time, by their parents, or through their parent's ineptitude. Therefore, to protect the right's of those children not to be abused, shouldn't we prevent felon's from keeping children, or take it one step further, shouldn't we just create boarding/school-esk facilities where all children must be raised by law, so that they cannot be abused by family members? It would also do away with many of the inequalities you mentioned earlier. But while it would protect the right's of the children, it would remove, or at least heavily limit, the rights of the parents.
Or perhaps something a little more realistic, like the abortion debate. Do you unilaterally protect the unborn child's right to life, or do you protect the mother's right to decide the fate of her own body? Or let's talk about many penal codes which regulate how high your grass can grow. Should we force someone to keep their lawn at a low height to encourage high property values, or should we protect that person's right to decide what he does with his own property?
The line is not simple to draw, and that is really where most political debates spring from, where to draw that line. I doubt you will find many people who would disagree with the statement that "your freedom ends where mine begins. Mine ends where yours begins." and yet there are as many different opinions on law, philosophy, and politics as there are people.
I can even apply your reasoning to create something of a logical paradox. If a person should always be free, unless it interferes with the freedom of another, than shouldn't that person be free to give up that freedom?
Finally, you don't come off as confrontational at all, and I apologize if I do. If I attack flaws in ur logic, it's not because i think that you're wrong, but because i think that every philosophy has some flaws in it, and the only way we can fix that is by thinking about it.
As for us already working out who will watch the watchers, I think you would be surprised. In my opinion, the US government is already something of a circus to create the illusion of an illusion of choice(God that's confusing, i will try to clarify tomorrow if you want) rather than a true meaningful representational government, and i think this happened because our founding fathers chose the wrong people to watch the watchers. Still, It has been a pretty damn good compromise, and will continue to be for a long time yet to come.
