So if you don't trust the scientists, how do you know if climate change is true or false? Even if the scientists aren't to be trusted, that doesn't prove it is false. At this point, you can observe that the weather has gotten warmer, as many of the past several years have been record warm. You can also see that there is pollution. You can also see that the greenhouse effect is a scientific fact, just by going into a hot car. So the conclusion that pollution is causing the temperature to rise due to the greenhouse doesn't depend solely on trust in scientific studies. You can also observe that the higher the temperature gets, it causes ice to melt. You can observe this by watching an ice cube. And you can also see that ice floats. So if the temperature rises, the ice will melt and become part of the mass of the ocean, which will cause the sea level to rise.
Also, curious why LGBT is a deviant lobby.

I challenge you not to exclude the case of forced impregnation, as it is a good test of your other two arguments. If it would be an exception, where abortion should be permitted, then it contradicts your argument that the fetus is a human life entitled to human rights, and that therefore, abortion is killing. After all, why should a human being be killed as a result of their father's actions? This would surely be immoral.
However, if non-consensual conception is not an exception, then it contradicts your argument that a pregnant person has to carry because they are at fault for the situation.
To the first part of your argument, yes it is an organism, there's no debate for that. But as it still does not have any consciousness, is the fact that is an organism enough to qualify it as a human being?
And since it is depending on the pregnant person for food, for example, via her blood supply, why should the woman be forced to produce that against her will? If someone, even if they are an adult human being, is in the hospital and can only be saved with an organ donation from a unique person, is that person obligated to go through with it because the hospitalized person's life depends on it?
As for your personal responsibility argument, it seems you're essentially framing pregnancy and birth as a consequence to irresponsible actions. When it comes to contraception, it is not a guarantee and can fail. And is going through the pain of pregnancy and childbirth and postpartum, and the financial burden of raising a kid, or, even in the case of adoption, the burden of medical expenses and missing work, potentially losing your job a fitting punishment for making a mistake? Especially when most women who have abortions are already parents, and carrying another child can be detrimental to the child that's already born? It seems too harsh of a consequence, if your reasoning is that their own fault in the situation contributes to the immorality of abortion.
And in your final sentence, did you mean to say adoption or abortion?

@onthecontrary you've stated the only relevant question in the entire abortion debate:
What makes a human, human?
Until you can answer that with some non-arbitrary, detectable trait that uniquely, conclusively, and universally identifies an organism as human; you have no rational or empirical basis upon which to conclude that a fetus isn't one... yet. Just wishful thinking.
The only thing we have that even approximates that marker, is the presence of its own unique human DNA; which a zygote has from the very moment of conception.

Humans are only capable of reproducing one thing: other humans.

@onthecontrary and @rway Thankyou for your thoughtful responses, let me perhaps clarify my position, and respond to your thoughts.

Firstly I did mean abortion in my final sentence thanks for picking that up.

There is a lot to get to in your responses, so I'll try and respond with some sort of structure:

1. The reason that I exclude forced impregnation is that I myself am still unsure as to my position in this regard. My instinct is to denounce abortion of any kind but, to me this question falls into a broader discussion of situations where we humans condone the taking of human life (or even life in general).

e.g. "A woman's right to choose is taken and she decides to abort the child", is that wrong?, "A man decides to protect himself in a bar fight and kills the aggressor", Murder or self defense?. "A person's right to life is taken, so we decide to kill the murderer", is that wrong?, "we reserve the right to use deadly force to protect our property", is that wrong?

My instinct is to say that none of those are wrong except the abortion, but that doesn't seem at all rational and so I am as yet undecided.

2. Your consciousness argument is an interesting one and probably a good topic for a separate debate, but In this instance I think that it is largely a distraction. I mean we cannot yet conclusively prove that humans are conscious at all (at least scientifically), and what we call un(not)-conscious is too broad a term to have relevancy, I mean if an athlete is knocked un-conscious on a sporting field, do they cease to have value as a human? So I would argue, yes, it is a living organism, with the DNA profile of a human, and that that is the best definition we currently have as to what constitutes a human.

3. With regard to personal responsibility, to me it all comes down to this, so I guess my position is better stated as being against abortion as a means of birth control.

While I do accept you claim that most contraception is not 100% effective, in reality the chance of pregnancy's if both the woman and man are using birth control is minute, and today there are so many options that unplanned pregnancy's are more an act of will than chance.

So while I am not placing any judgement about the "responsibility" of someone's actions, I guess I am saying that, be it due to lack of preparedness, irresponsibility, or just plain bad luck, the situation is entirely due to your choices, not the child's. So carry the child to term and surrender the child for adoption if that's what you want. But the child doesn't deserve to die for your choices.

Thanks again for the discussion, you have helped me to better work through exactly what my position is

@Ausi Thank you for being open minded and willing to discuss your beliefs.

1. Again, if your opposition to abortion is based on the fetus being a human with rights, there can't be exceptions in the case of rape. But you seem to admit that in the case where the pregnant person didn't give consent, it doesn't seem morally consistent with other positions to say they're murderers. Also, what about in cases where the pregnant person is a minor? Same issue.

2. Someone who is unconscious still has a consciousness and when they wake up again, they will pick up from the same consciousness they once had. However, if someone is brain dead and their family wishes to take them off of life support, is that considered physician-assisted suicide?

3. Still, I don't think pregnancy is a fitting consequence for that sort of mistake, from the pregnant person's perspective. And a very irresponsible person is the last type of person who should be responsible for a baby.

@onthecontrary Hey mate, in response to your comments above.

1. I agree with you that there shouldn't be an exception, but we make exceptions all the time. Especially where we believe our rights have been violated:

• If someone violates our right to safety, assaults us and the attacker dies, we call it self defense.
• If someone violates another's right to life, we execute them.
• If someone violates the sanctity of your home, we allow you to respond with deadly force.
• If someone violates our borders we respond with deadly force.
• Your constitution allows deadly force if you believe your government has become tyrannical.
• If a woman killed the man that raped her it would be self defense.
• If a woman's right to choose is violated, we say that she can't choose abortion??

I'm sorry but it doesn't feel consistent to me, and so until I can rationalise the above in my own mind I'm not prepared to take a firm position on abortion in the case of rape.

2. I'm sorry but I disagree; excluding the metaphysical concept of consciousness, an unconscious person exhibits none of the characteristics we associate with consciousness.

• They cannot perceive their surroundings.
• They cannot interact with their surroundings.
• They cannot defend themselves.
• They cannot make choices.
• They cannot communicate
• They do not have what we call higher brain activity.

What they do have is autonomic systems that keep them alive while they recover, and hopefully the ability to regain consciousness if cared for.

3. I agree with you that pregnancy does seem a harsh outcome for the decision to have vaginal sex, but unfortunately this is a fact that every conscious creature on the planet must face. Decisions often have unforeseen and harsh consequences.

• Death or Permanent disability seems a harsh result for driving too fast ..... but!
• Death seems a harsh penalty for eating too much fatty food ..... but!
• Cancer seems a harsh penalty for choosing to smoke .... but!
• etc.etc.etc.

And lets face it, if a woman is on oral contraception, the man wears protection and woman takes the morning after pill, the chance of all of these failing simultaneously, at exactly to right time to cause pregnancy is so remote, that you have more chance to take innocent life every-time you choose to drive.

That's without considering that there are many alternatives today other than unprotected vaginal sex.

While I'm not exactly old, maybe its because I can remember when contraception was much more rare, un-reliable and expensive, that I do not think that allowing the child to be born, and then keeping or giving up the child as they choose , is too much to ask someone to bare as a result of their choices.

Hi @Ausi, let me take a stab at a couple of these points:

Self-defense is tricky.
Accidentally taking your assailant's life is one thing, that falls under "stuff happens". There's no question of whether you had the right... your rights had nothing to do with it. He initiated the altercation, and he died as a result of his own actions.
But, purposefully taking your assailant's life... even if you were probably not in lethal danger?
I would say Yes, you have that right.
Clearly, you have the right to defend your own rights.
And, a right to do so with minimal risk to your own safety, and with a maximal chance of being successful.
You should probably be expected to use the minimum amount of force necessary, and indeed I think you are in many jurisdictions. But that's not a standard to which you can hold somebody accountable; it's undefined and subjective, and will always look different in retrospect than it did at the time. And how are you supposed to know, anyway?
If the only option you felt confident with in the heat of the moment, was to just shoot him in the face before you got overpowered... then that's what he gets; as a consequence of his own actions.
In my opinion, anything that happens to you while you're in the process of breaking the law is just too bad, you lose. If you're robbing a store, and the store owner has some Wile E. Coyote booby trap in there that chops off your legs... you lose. Can't hold him responsible, because you abdicated protection of your rights by violating his. You broke the deal... violated "the pact" (see below.)
I think robberies would be significantly less common.

Capital punishment is a whole different topic.
The State doesn't execute someone because it has a "right".
The State doesn't have rights. It does so purely by force, at our invocation.
Remember that Government is Force.
That's literally all that it is. It has one mechanism through which it works: Laws. And laws are enforced with... well... force. That's the root of the word "enforcement."
I don't think that can be overstated, especially whenever people try to use the government inappropriately:
Government is Force.
Invoke it sparingly, only when it's both justified, and absolutely necessary; and NEVER let it act on its own initiative.
The sovereignty that the Government is exercising when it executes a prisoner, is that prisoner's sovereignty over his own life; which we're all presumed to have conceded to the gov't, under very specific terms, in a pact with the collective. Otherwise, the gov't would have no authority at all with which to protect your rights from others.
That's why we chartered a government, to protect our rights from one another. Our end of that deal is to not abuse those rights. If you break that pact, then you can lose those protections through due process... and ONLY through due process, that part's important.
That due process is rightfully invoked only as a response to your own actions, actions that the collective has determined to be unacceptable and has previously encoded into existing Law through our elected representatives; to reflect the "consent of the governed".
Regarding capital punishment, the right to life is no different than the right to liberty, property, or the catch-all: "pursuit of happiness"... except that Life is commonly accepted to be of the highest precedence.
Some abuses have been deemed by the collective, and accordingly encoded into Law, to warrant the loss of their protection for your right to property (fines), or liberty (prison); or for some, even your life.
That protection is suspended only to the extent required for the government to exact the duly determined penalty, exercising that tiny portion of your rightful sovereignty over yourself, that was necessarily conceded to the government for just this purpose.
Besides that specific debt to society, all of your rights remain untouchable.
Still, the executioner has no natural right to take your life. He is merely acting as an agent of the collective, through which you opted-in to this whole arrangement as one of "the governed." That's why "consent of the governed" is such an immensely important tenet of a just society. Your sovereignty is not being violated, because it's your sovereignty that is being invoked.
Now, the concept of "opting-in" to the pact has fuzzy edges. You could point out that you, as an individual, never explicitly opted in to anything; especially if you've never voted or took any public resources. But, if you really wanted to opt out of any responsibility to the collective, there's still the other side of that coin. That is, the collective's responsibility to protect everyone else's rights from you. In which case, the death penalty is just a response from the collective to attack from an "outsider"; still justified, by the collective's responsibility and authority to protect their rights from you... whether you want to play or not.
Now, whether the death penalty is appropriate is a whole different question. I would say no, it doesn't seem to be. It seems more like a means of mob-revenge. The best excuse is that it's a deterrent, but I don't think it's effective; especially the way we allow it to drag out.

@rway Hi Mate, thanks for responding

Your response was inciteful and I agree with most of your commentary. IMHO your analysis backs up exactly how confusing and complex these sort of issues are, which is why I am uncomfortable for now taking an adamant position on abortion as a result of rape. Unfortunately we as a society are not consistent with how we deal with a gross violation of an individuals rights.

I am however comfortable with my position of being completely against abortion as a result of the personal choices of two consenting individuals. The outcome is 100% a result of the choices they made and therefore they have no right to kill the child. If they are not in a position to look after a child, the least they can do is carry the child to term, and give the child up for adoption.

With regard to the role of government, we do have some differences, however I am a person that views the world as a series of systems, patterns of behavior, patterns of thinking, patterns of physical laws (which is why school was hell for me) and its late here, and I'd be up for hours trying to type up my beliefs in the role of government.

So maybe a good subject for a separate discussion?

@Ausi sounds good, cheers

@Ausi if I may suggest, the issue of abortion in cases of rape is no different than any other homicide.
You don't have the right to initiate lethal force against another human.
So, if you concede that the baby is a human, then the reason you want to kill it is irrelevant, precisely because you don't have the right to in the first place.
That makes every "Well, what about..." completely moot. Even "Well, what about rape."
It may be a tragic choice, it may be all for the best... you could argue both... or neither; none of which matters, because it's not an option that you have a right to pursue anyway; no matter what you decide.

@rway I admire your both your certainty and your ethical viewpoint, but unfortunately I am not in a position to be as certain.

I know that there is really no justification for taking human life, but I also know myself well enough to realise that if faced with an armed invader who was a threat to my family, I would choose to end them, every day of the week.

That's illegal here and I would do time for it, but would make the same decision again and again.

I'm also self aware enough to realise that I will never understand the trauma of being violated in that way, and then being forced to carry the result of that trauma within my own body.

For these reasons, While I agree with your principals, I don't feel that I am in any position to judge the behavior of others in this regard.

@Ausi I understand. But I guess I'm mostly talking about what I think is right, not what is legal.
What I think that I'm likely to do does not change what is right.
Easy example: I would steal a loaf of bread to feed a starving child, like most people would. But, that doesn't mean I have a right to do it, by popular consent.
That's not where rights come from. It's still stealing.

Conversely, if you get arrested for defending your family, that doesn't mean you didn't have the right.
That just means that your government is failing to recognize it.

It also has nothing to do with empathy for the person who is affected. What's right is what's right.
I don't know what it's like to be a serial killer who eats hitchhikers... but I'm pretty comfortable taking the position that it is wrong, and should be illegal.

@Ausi

1. The difference is, in the case of abortion, the one violating your rights is not the one who made the choice to attack you, thus surrendering their own right, like in the case of an attacker. But the fetus is continually violating her right. If you can't morally rationalize why the woman should be forced to undergo such a traumatic thing, why do you disagree with abortion?
2. Exactly, the ability to "regain" consciousness. But a fetus is different, they are unconscious and never have been conscious. So they have no consciousness even to regain.
3. But are those really fair comparisons? If someone drives drunk and crashes and ends up in critical condition, do we treat them anyway or do we say, "well, dying is just the consequence of your reckless behavior?" As long as there is still the option to avoid any of these harsh consequences, don't we take those chances?
   And to your point that having the child is not too much to ask, I'll push back on that. Pregnancy, birth, and postpartum are extremely, extremely traumatic and dangerous. Not to mention the financial cost which can be in the tens of thousands, at least in America, it can have both temporary and lasting mental and physical effects on people.

@Ausi, @rway So you seem to be saying that you have the right to any kind of force, if you're using that force to protect your rights. How does abortion, which you're using to prevent yourself from undergoing pregnancy and birth, not fall into that categorization? Don't your rights still matter?

@rway I agree with you, killing is always wrong! But unfortunately the world is a complex place, and when we are faced with two wrongs we can either choose what we consider the lesser, or consent to both by our inaction.

While I absolutely have compassion for the victim of a rape, it wasn't my intent to show how compassionate I am , or how WOKE, my apologies if it can across that way.

What I was trying to express, was that while I understand the impact on the child, I really have no understanding as to the emotional impact on the mother. And so I find myself unable to choose the lesser evil, and I accept that by not making a choice, I have to accept either outcome.

@onthecontrary

1. To me this is simple, it comes down to free will. When given a choice the couple is weighing momentary pleasure, pleasing their partner, social esteem, whatever it may be, against the chance that they will create life.

You will never convince me that inconvenience, monetary cost, social costs or even opportunity cost is a greater evil than killing a child, As humans we have free will, but the flip side is that we are responsible for those choices!!

You don't get to jump off a building and stop halfway down and say "Shit man, didn't think I'd actually fall" and in my opinion you don't get to engage in sexual activities that might create life and say "Shit man that's inconvenient".

2. There is exactly zero moral difference between if looked after they will regain consciousness and if looked after they will gain consciousness.

3. Yes we treat them, but once able they face trial to account for their actions. The do not simply escape the outcome of their decisions. I also your extremely dangerous claim, according to your CDC less that 700 women die due to pregnancy complications each year in a country of 350 million. Obviously too many, but of those most are due to trying to have children at a late age, or trying home birth, etc. Again decisions made by people with free will.

I'm sorry your healthcare system sucks, you should really have a look at how Australia's works, ours is Medicare for all ... but not as you understand it, health insurance still plays a big part, as does pooling our populations buying power to force drug prices lower. Anyway maybe a topic for another day.

@onthecontrary You are responsible for your actions.
You have a right to protect your own rights, from another person who is taking an action to violate them. Whatever happens to that person in the process, was initiated by their own actions; for which they are responsible, not you.
The government is chartered to do that for you, but whenever government can't or won't protect you; you still have every right to do it yourself.
It is proportional. You shouldn't stab someone in the throat for trying to steal your pencil. You could make that argument, though, that if there really was no other way that you could possibly secure that pencil... then you technically had the "right". But, you'd probably be making that argument from prison. That's what juries are for, I guess.
Hiring the abortion doctor as a hit man, to kill your unborn child, is not protecting your rights from the actions of the baby. The baby took no action. The baby is in there "stealing" your resources as a result of YOUR actions.
You are responsible for your actions.
(Or, in an anomalous percentage of cases; the rapist is responsible. Still not the baby.)

@onthecontrary, @Ausi
Yes, unwanted pregnancy is traumatic and life-changing; sometimes tragic even.
Yet, we underestimate how tragic, traumatic and life-changing abortion can be.
I have some experience with both, obviously second-hand.

@Ausi

1. If you're saying it comes down to free will then aren't you saying that your argument depends on whether or not the pregnant person consented in the first place. If that's what it comes down to, then in the case of rape, you have no argument left.
   And losing your job, ruining your body, getting in debt, etc isn't just an inconvenience. You're basically sacrificing someone's life for that of an embryo. Most people that get abortions are already parents, you're also sacrificing their current child for an embryo.
2. Why not? If they haven't had a consciousness in the past, what makes them a person? If you did terminate that organism, you wouldn't be terminating any consciousness because they never had one. Yeah, they might in the future, but they didn't yet.
3. But doesn't the fact that we don't let them die show that even if someone's action leads to a particular consequence, we still mitigate the effect to the degree to which they have actually earned that consequence. So since the punishment for driving under the influence is less than death, we save that person from death and then give them the predetermined consequence. So if you aren't allowing someone to get an abortion, it means that your predetermined consequence to sex, consensual or otherwise, protected or otherwise, is pregnancy, birth, and postpartum. That seems extreme. If your predetermined consequence was, say, a fine or something, then you would allow the abortion and then take the fine, which would be consistent with the DUI example. Save them from the extreme consequence, because that's not what we predetermined to be fit. Then, administer the predetermined consequence.
4. Yes, maternal mortality is relatively low, but it's still a risk. But death isn't the only thing that can go wrong. many other complications can severely impact the health of a person. it can also cause them to get into extreme debt and unemployment which can be detrimental to their livelihood and the livelihood of their (born) children. Even if the pregnancy goes without complication and even ignoring the financial impact, pregnancy, birth, and postpartum are extremely painful mentally and physically.
   Medicare for all, love it. been debating @rway in a very long thread on this same post.

@rway

1. So if it is the rapist's actions and not your own, why would you still be responsible? If you are only responsible for your own actions?
2. So to make sure I understand your position, any action that you take that results in any consequence, you must accept, even if it is not proportional to the action you took in the first place?

   ---

   So for example, when discussing with @Ausi, he brought up the example of DUI, and how if you die, that's the consequence of your own action. But do we not step in and save the person from death even if they are at fault? yes, there is no other "life" involved in this case, but I'm addressing specifically your argument about responsibility.

   ---

   And for another thing, how is pregnancy, birth, and postpartum not a cruel and unusual punishment for a simple case of having sex, protected or otherwise, consensual or otherwise?

@Ausi, @rway Yeah, both options are bad. So why can't we let the pregnant person make the choice themselves? And if it comes down to responsibility, they are facing consequences either way. But how does the fact that both options are bad translate to you deciding which one other people choose?

@onthecontrary

1. The rapist is responsible. Person X can't kill person Y because of something person Z did.
2. It has nothing to do with the severity of the consequences. If you're not responsible for your own actions, then who is? And, you don't get to pick the consequence, nature does that.
   You don't have to accept anything... deal with it. Just don't violate other people's rights while you're dealing with it, that's not one of your options.

   ---

   People help other people deal with the consequences of their own actions all the time, like the ER doctors saving a DUI. But they do so at their own discretion, and without violating anybody else's rights.

   ---

   It's not a punishment at all, it's a natural consequence. Again, you don't get to pick; nature does that.

@onthecontrary @rway Sry Guys I went bush for a few days, I thought that the appropriate social distancing was 50km (or 35mls) from anyone else, but the fishing was OK. No Phone, No computer, No People .... Glorious!

@onthecontrary

Before I discuss your arguments, I have agreed with @rway that taking another human life is ALWAYS wrong. However I acknowledge that there are circumstances where we are forced to choose the lesser evil.

To your points.

1. Yes, I am 100% saying that it comes down to free will, and therefore in the case of a couple that have engaged in consensual sex, they are 100% responsible for the child. I understand that you can reduce the chances that pregnancy will occur, but if you roll the dice, you don't just get to kill the child if they come up snake-eyes.

As for the case of rape, I completely reject your arguments that are based on material hardships, I mean seriously [if I plucked a child from the street, gave you a gun and said kill this child or you will lose everything you own, lose your job, and there's a 1% chance you will die of a heart attack] are you suggesting that pulling the trigger would be the right thing to do? That it would be the lesser evil?

However I do accept that while I do understand what it takes to work for 40 years to build a home for your family, what it takes to get another job, raise children, etc. I have absolutely no understanding of the physical and mental pain a victim of rape endures, and therefore while I still believe that killing the child to be evil, I am prepared to admit that the situation of not of the woman's making, and I realise that I am not in the position to judge that it is in fact the greater evil.

2. I'm sorry, the argument that they never had consciousness makes no sense to me! I mean do you stop being a person when you are unconscious, they are not conscious in the moment, but might regain consciousness if cared for.

3. I think that you are making my argument for me, yes we do our best to mitigate the harm, but the person involved is not held blameless, once recovered the are made to answer for their actions!

4. I agree there is still a risk, but there is a risk crossing the road, driving a car, drinking heavily, etc, etc.

The more salient point is that this risk was forced upon her rather than by her choice, but to me this is an argument for increasing the penalty for rape, not for the death of the child.

btw. could one of you tag me in the medicare discussion, I'd love to participate.

@rway But if the rapist is responsible, how does the pregnant person protect their right to not be pregnant if they don't want to?

@rway, @Ausi

1. So if it is 100% down to whether or not you acted of free will, does that not mean that it's only bad if you consented in the first place?
   You should never shoot a child, but this example isn't really a great analogy. A better analogy, in my opinion, would be if you see a kid in the hospital and you can undergo an operation to donate your organs and maybe save that child. But you would be in pain for about a year, and you would go through the worst pain there is. You would probably miss work and maybe lose your job and you would lose a lot of money. Yes, money isn't as important as the kid in the hospital, but you have a spouse and kids to feed and shelter.
   This analogy is closer, I think, even though i don't believe an embryo to be equal to a child. But even if it was a child, it would still be morally acceptable to have a choice.
2. I must have explained incorrectly, because this is not a representation of my argument. It's not about being conscious in the moment, it's about whether or not you are a sentient being. If you aren't a sentient being, what makes you a person? @rway has said that it's a unique set of human DNA. A sperm cell is also a unique set of human DNA. Is a zygote more human than a sperm cell because it's a diploid cell? It still doesn't have any awareness, sentience, consciousness, whatever you want to call it. It cannot think or feel. What, in your opinion, makes an embryo a human being, and thus able to be murdered?
3. Yes, but the point is that if we are able to, we make the punishment fit the crime. I don't really think getting pregnant is a crime, but if you think that it is, fine. But that doesn't mean we're not going to intervene if the punishment for the crime is not fitting, and we are able to stop it from happening.
4. You can choose whether or not you want to do those things, crossing the road, etc. And even if you get hit by a car, we don't say "oh, well, you decided to cross the road and you're responsible for your actions, so you aren't allowed to try to fix your bones and undo the damage, because it was a result of your actions."
   How does increasing the penalty for rape help the person who is already pregnant? You can do it to deter people in the future, but the person who is pregnant right now still needs help.
   Will do in the medicare debate.

@onthecontrary @Ausi

"Going bush" sounds like fun, hope it was a good time. I had a chance to move to Alice Springs once long ago, but it never came to be.

[otc] "But if the rapist is responsible, how does the pregnant person protect their right to not be pregnant if they don't want to?"
She doesn't, that 'right' has already been violated. It's too late. We keep circling around the realization that rape is bad, and it traps the victim in a tragic situation.
Yes... it is, and it does. But if your only way out of a bad situation is homicide, then you're stuck; because you don't have a right to do that.

1. Before you can choose a "lesser evil", you'll want to eliminate from consideration any options that you don't have a right to pursue in the first place.
   That greatly simplifies the dilemma.

2. A sperm cell doesn't have a complete set of DNA, neither does the egg. A zygote does, and it's unique to that new organism. And since it is human DNA... the new organism is a human, and is currently engaged in the human life-cycle; which you have no natural right to cut short, for any reason whatsoever.
   That's the very foundation of Western Civilization: Individual Sovereignty and the implication of natural human rights, which apply to every human being. No caveats.

3. True, getting pregnant is not a crime. But also, being pregnant is not a punishment; it's just a natural consequence.

4. You can do anything you want to help someone else deal with consequences in their life, as long as you can do it without violating anybody else's rights.
   You have a right to fix their bones if they get hit by a car. You also have a right not to if you don't want to. But you don't have a right to kill an innocent bystander to help them out of a bind, whether it was their "fault" or not.

@onthecontrary @rway

1. Yes this has been my contention for this entire discussion, pregnancy as a result of consensual sex is 100% your responsibility, and therefore you have a responsibility to the child. Sure if you believe that you are not capable of raising the child, the give the child up for adoption, but in my book you don't get to use abortion as a form of contraception.

I'm sorry but I don't buy the other arguments at all! Yes it IS possible to die during pregnancy's, and it IS possible to be bankrupted, and if they occur they are as a result of your decisions. To put things in perspective in the USA roughly 5000 people die from crossing the road each year, 10's of thousands are injured, about 32,000 people die each year from catching the flu, and again many more have difficulties paying medical bills, 10's of thousands of work injuries and fatalities, 70'000 odd alcohol related deaths

Many of these cause financial hardship, pain and suffering, etc. Some of these are not even a result of the individuals actions, but NONE of these are seen as being justifications for killing someone who has become an inconvenience.

2. Science defines a fertilsed egg as : an animal organism in the early stages of growth and differentiation that in higher forms merge into fetal stages but in lower forms terminate in commencement of larval life.

Yes there are political or special interests debating as to whether an embryo is human yet, but very, very little debate within the scientific community.

As for sentience, I think that this is a mere distraction. We still argue as to both the meaning of the word and in some circles whether we are even sentient or simply following some sort of embedded programming.

However in the long run it is completely irrelevant, none of our laws, morals, etc talk about sentient life, we talk about HUMAN life, cows are sentient by our current definition, as are sheep, fish, birds, some scientists argue plants are sentient.

So in the case of an embryo, the science is in, once ferlilised it is an animal organism (in this case a human one) and there for subject to our laws and moral imperatives.

3. No I am not suggesting that pregnancy is a crime, I am saying that the person who committed the crime is the rapist, not the child! Yes what the rapist did to the woman is unfair, and he deserves to be punished (in my opinion harshly), but the child is also an innocent victim, and does not deserve to be unjustly sentenced to death.

However as I have said, it is an unfortunate fact that we are often called upon to to make a call between two unpalatable choices. And I accept that the choice between the physical and metal harm caused to the mother vs the life of the child is one of these. In this case I feel unqualified to make that choice, this is the only consideration that I begrudgingly accept for abortion.

4. Unfortunately punishing the rapist doesn't help the victim (maybe a little emotionally), but neither does punishing a murderer bring back the dead, punishing a thief guarantee the return of your property, etc. Once an event has occurred it can't be undone, it can only be redressed. Punishment is intended to prevent future occurrences.

@rway

1. But you're admitting that her right has been violated in this situation. But you're saying she doesn't have the right to terminate the pregnancy. So basically the embryo's right to be sustained and born is being put over her right which has already been violated. So she can't protect her right by undoing the violation because that would violate the embryo's right. I'm having a hard time understanding how you don't consider this putting the embryo's right above the pregnant person's.
2. Why is it that a complete set of DNA constitutes a human being? Why is it not an arbitrary distinction?
3. What does it matter if it is natural or not? We can either let her go through the pregnancy or give the option to terminate it. So if we aren't allowing the choice because we're holding her responsible for her actions (which is the argument i was responding to) that sounds quite like a punishment.
4. This particular argument was in response to the personal responsibility argument. But you're responding with the argument of whether the fetus has human rights. So aside from that, do you agree with my rebuttal of the argument that the pregnant person has to deal with the consequences specifically because they are responsible for their actions?
   To reiterate, my example was to show that we don't normally leave people to deal with natural consequences if we can help them specifically for the reason that they are responsible for taking an action associated with the risk of that consequence. I'm addressing only that reason in this example.

@Ausi

1. You haven't really engaged with my analogy that i gave in response to the analogy you presented. Do you think you are obligated to undergo that process to save another person, even if the person will die if you choose not to go through with it? Don't people have the right to decide whether or not to undergo these kinds of procedures, regardless of the consequence it has on somebody else?
2. There is no debate in the scientific community because the status of someone as a human being has nothing to do with science. The definition you provided doesn't say that a fertilized egg is a human being, it says that it is an organism, which no one was arguing.
   Of course I don't think just being sentient makes you humans. As you said, a cow is sentient, etc. But that's a strawman of my argument. clearly I'm proposing that you would have to be both sentient and human, not just sentient.
   The laws don't say anything about organism life either.
3. But when you say that abortion has to do with taking responsibility for your actions as the person who is pregnant, and I'm using the phrase "let the punishment fit the crime," the crime in that case IS pregnancy.
   yes, i think most can agree that we are choosing between two not good choices here. Whether or not you believe abortion is permitted perhaps depends on how bad you consider each option. I personally consider the unwilling pregnancy to be a very very bad consequence because I'm well aware that pregnancy, birth, and postpartum have very extreme effects on a person's life and the lives of those around them. These effects are physical, mental, financial, emotional, and can be long-lasting.
   The other option, however, i consider to be not ideal, but not really that terrible, because the embryo isn't experiencing any pain, the embryo has never seen the world. it is quite literally a clump of cells in the early stages. And even if you do consider this option to be more bad than i consider it, i would still think it is less bad comparatively than the first option, if the person who is pregnant decides to terminate the pregnancy.
4. But if the return of your property is possible, then you do go after it. Of course we should seek to punish those who have committed wrongdoing, but that is in no way a replacement for undoing the wrong that was done if it is possible.

@onthecontrary

1. Her rights have not been violated by the embryo.
2. It's not arbitrary. Humans are only capable of reproducing one thing: other humans; there's nothing else it can be.
   Therefore, it is a human. QED
   Your proposal, sentience, is arbitrary. It's also undefined, undetectable, not necessarily universal to humans (e.g., catatonia), nor unique to them. It is consequently useless as a standard.
3. Nobody is "holding her responsible" for anything unless/until she takes some action. If that action is homicide, it's wrong. The options before her are limited by other people's rights, just like every other potential action in everybody else's lives.
4. You lost me. We're not leaving her to deal with it on her own, nor preventing her from dealing with it on her own. Just holding her to the same constraints that apply to all of us every single time we consider taking any action to deal with our own issues.

@onthecontrary @rway

1. Sorry I probably haven't been clear in my explanations, I didn't engage with your analogy because I believed it to be off topic. My argument has always been about, the responsibility that you bear as a result of your actions, my analogy was about directly acting to take a life, so as to avoid material consequences.

Your response was an analogy about whether we bear responsibility for our in-actions.

In your analogy I made no decisions that resulted in the unfortunate circumstances the child finds themselves in, I didn't contribute to their condition, and so I am not responsible for it. But that said I'd like to think that I'd help if I could.

2. I'm not sure how you can take that position and at the same time, make a scientific argument (i.e. that it is simply a clump of cells) rather than, say a moral or religious one.

Additionally it feels as if you splitting hairs here, in an attempt to avoid the substance of the argument. Science or perhaps I should just say we define and egg as a collection of genetic material capable of creating life if fertilized, and sperm as a collection of genetic material capable of fertilizing an egg.

I could accept "a collection of cells" as a crude definition of either of these, however a fertilized egg is a defined as a juvenile animal (in this case human), it also defines you and me as animals, of type mammal, of type human.

3. I sorry but I can't accept your argument here either. The pregnancy is the result of your actions, not the consequence. I have no experience with the US health system, so I'll concede that pregnancy is the nightmarish experience you describe.

However my argument still stands, the ONLY truly innocent involved is the child. The parents chose to risk pregnancy, your institutions (both Financial and Medical) make the burden of that choice unreasonable, but the child has done nothing except exist.

If you believe that the burden is too high, fix the institutions, don't punish the child.

4. I completely agree with a slight clarification.

You should always seek to undo a wrong if possible, as long as you don't wrong another in the process.

@rway

1. Not intentionally. But why does she no longer have the right to protect that right?
2. Obviously i agree it's part of the human species, it's not a lizard or anything. But why does that make it entitled to rights. Sure, it has DNA, but so did the haploid cell, yeah, now it has a complete set, but it's still just a single microscopic cell.
3. The action i was referring to was sex. I was responding to the argument that she has to deal with the consequences of having sex.
4. My point was referring only to one argument alone. And that's the argument that because her actions caused the situation, she has to deal with whatever consequences come from it, when that isn't always the case. Sometimes there are options of consequences, and people are still allowed to choose which one they go through. Whether abortion is an option or not is a separate argument.

@rway, @Ausi

1. What difference does it make if it's technically an action or an inaction, if the result is the same? If the pregnant person was able to just cease to do the bodily activities of being pregnant, would it then be permitted? The embryo would be terminated that way too, so i see it as morally identical to an abortion, the technicality doesn't concern me.
   "In your analogy I made no decisions that resulted in the unfortunate circumstances the child finds themselves in, I didn't contribute to their condition, and so I am not responsible for it. But that said I'd like to think that I'd help if I could." Does this not apply to a pregnant person, particularly in the case of underage sex or rape? So does that not mean the person is not responsible for it?
2. Do you agree that the scientific classification is not relevant here? I can't tell if you're agreeing or disagreeing. Scientifically, it can be classified as a human specimen, an animal, and a clump of cells simultaneously. Are we in agreement these aren't what give it rights or lack thereof?
3. it's a result, but when you say, "you're responsible and therefore you have to deal with this," you're describing, essentially, a punishment. As it is something you have to do because of an action.
   But regardless of that, i still disagree with the rest of this paragraph. The US health system and other institutions only contribute to part of the experience. Mentally and physically, it would be extremely taxing regardless of those institutions, to an unimaginable extent.
   And as for innocence, the pregnant person is also innocent if they did not consent to sex in the first place. And if they did consent, does that make them not innocent? If their non-innocence is at all relevant, that again makes me believe the ordeal is something of a punishment, as guilt is only relevant in the case of some type of crime and punishment.
4. Right, so we agree that regardless if the rapist is punished, we should still try to undo the damage if possible. So now do we not reach the question of which damage is worse, the abortion or the pregnancy/birth/postpartum?

@onthecontrary
4. "...because her actions caused the situation, she has to deal with whatever consequences come from it,..."
That's not an argument that I am making.
You have to deal with the consequences of other people's actions all the time.
How you deal with those consequences, is limited by other people's rights... just like every other action you take.

@onthecontrary
2. What makes you entitled to rights?

@rway 4. That was an argument, made, maybe not by you as there are others in this debate, but that's what i was originally responding to if you scroll up.

@rway 2. I don't know, and I don't think anybody does. But I know that I'm a person, and i have thoughts and feelings and emotions and a microscopic cell just doesn't seem like a person to me, and I've never seen proof that it is one.
And what about my point for 1?

@onthecontrary "doesn't seem like a person" is not a very useful standard.

#1. It makes all the difference in the world. Rights constrain your actions, not your "inactions", we've been through all that already.

@onthecontrary @rway

1. I'm not sure if your are deliberately missing the point to improve my debating skills, In previous examples you were arguing that a list of material or temporary considerations could quality as a greater evil. My obviously ill-thought example meant to clarify that thinking by making it a simple choice between the material and a human life.

I'll try and re-state my position without confusion.

• All of our religious, moral and societal rules hold you responsible for your actions.
• None hold you responsible for the actions of another.

or

• If you make the mess, you must either clean it up and / or be punished.
• If someone else's mess is between you and your goals, you either clean it up, or give up on your goals. Hopefully the perpetrator is also held to account for their actions
• If no-one created the mess, we don't hold anyone to account. Hopefully civic minded people will come together and help-out.

2. Seriously I think that you are deliberately missing the point on this one. Your entire argument through our discussion intended to counter my position that the embryo is a child is your belief that it is merely a clump of cells.

This is without doubt a scientific position, yet when I point out that science does classify a fertilised egg as a juvenile animal, your response is that the scientific classification is not relevant.

That's OK I agree with you, so if you would like to make a religious or moral case that the embryo is not an infant human life, and therefore disposable. I'll be happy to engage with it.

3. No it is not a punishment it is a responsibility .... maybe I can clarify?

• If you choose to borrow money you have a responsibility to pay it back, that is not a punishment, it is the result of your decision to borrow money.

Punishment would come if you do not do the responsible thing.

4. Nope again you are twisting the response. My reply was:

"I completely agree with a slight clarification.

You should always seek to undo a wrong if possible, AS LONG AS YOU DON'T WRONG ANOTHER IN THE PROCESS".

Unless you are claiming that the child in not wronged?

@Ausi @onthecontrary We are also "clumps of cells".
It's not a scientific argument to claim that one clump is or is not a human, when you can't say what the determining factor is.

@rway @onthecontrary

I'm sorry but I must disagree. There is no mention of "Cells" in legitimate Moral, Religious, Legal or Philosophical arguments, it is a scientific argument meant to deny the humanity of the child.

And while It is "technically" true that we are a collection of cells; really that is the sort of reductive argument that reduces climate to a simple discussion on CO2 alone while completely ignoring the complexity of the climate argument, or the economy to a simple discussion of tax rates.

@rway But it doesn't seem like a person. My point is that there's no inherent reason why human rights apply to a zygote.
We've been through it, but that doesn't mean you're right. I still disagree.

@rway, @Ausi

1. To me, it seems that calling the pain of the unwanted pregnancy temporary and material is a huge understatement and calling the embryo a human life is a bit of an overstatement. You haven't really proven why the latter is actually a greater evil. What makes something more or less evil?
   The reason why i disagreed with your analogy is because of the above, you're understating that there is a great problem in choosing to continue the pregnancy, or rather being forced. Even if I concede that the embryo is a human life, which i did in my version of the analogy, i think i more accurately described a situation analogous to abortion. Do we agree that when put that way, it's more morally ambiguous?
   In other words, I don't think material vs. life is the distinction we should be paying attention to. Maybe something like which one causes the most suffering, or something like that.
2. My point wasn't that the embryo is not a child because it is a clump of cells. My point was that the scientific classification is irrelevant. For example, clump of cells is also an accurate classification, but it's not relevant.
3. But that's not a reason to not permit abortion, is it? People have to deal with the consequences of their actions, but that doesn't limit their options of how to go about dealing with it.
   Also, if the pregnant person didn't consent in the first place, then they aren't responsible. If someone totals your car at their fault, they are responsible for paying for it. In this case, it's impossible to transfer the cost to the perpetrator, but why should that be a reason to not relieve the victim?
4. That is what I'm claiming. What gives it the right to be born? As of now, it's not really a person, why is it entitled to the pregnant person's body?
   By your logic, and I'm really not trying to strawman here, doesn't that mean that if someone steals from you you shouldn't get it back, because it would be committing a wrong of letting the thief go hungry? And if the distinction is that the perpetrator is not the same as the fetus, what if the thief was stealing in order to provide food for a separate child? Are you not entitled to getting your property back because you are wronging that child that would have been fed by the property that was stolen?

@Ausi, @rway That was my point. The scientific status of the embryo isn't relevant here, because we're discussing ethics. I'm not the one who started talking about human DNA, i was rebutting it.

@onthecontrary I can see that you still disagree, but you continue to avoid the only relevant question.
What makes a human, a human?
Until you can answer that, and you can't, then you have no logical or empirical basis upon which to declare that the embryo is not one; just wishful thinking. That's not science.

@rway
Like I said in the other thread, I'm not avoiding the question, but I won't pretend I have an answer when I don't. because I don't think there is an objective answer. Like I said, at some point you get back to the very first premise on which the rest of your logic is based. What makes me entitled to human rights? What makes you entitled to them? Really nothing, except the agreement of civilization that we think we are entitled to rights.
So whether or not an embryo is entitled to the same rights as us is not a matter of science or objectivity, because our rights aren't a matter of objectivity in the first place.
however, there are certainly axioms, if that's the word you prefer, that we both already agree on. For example, human beings don't have the right to take each other's lives. But where is the axiom that states that a human starts being a human at conception? It doesn't seem evident, which is the only reason we regard each other as humans to begin with, it's evident. But if a sperm cell isn't a person, it doesn't make much sense that a zygote would be.
We don't count our age dating back to our gestation, we date it back to the day of our birth. Because that's the first day of our life, is it not? Zygotes don't have much in common with humans. I perfectly understand that it goes back to the question of what makes a human a human? And my answer is, nothing. nothing makes us human. But we have accepted that we are. That doesn't necessarily translate to a zygote. because who ever said the reason we're human is our DNA?

@onthecontrary
"Human beings don't have the right to take each other's lives" is not an axiom, it's an implication.
The question is: an implication of what?
Why don't they have that right? What's preventing it?
The answer is: the victim's own right to live; which is inviolable by anybody else, just like all of their other rights.
It is implied by this axiom, or principle: You don't have the right to do anything that would impede anybody else's rights.
ok... so what are their rights?
Same as yours... you can do literally anything you want, only constrained by the principle above.
There's no enumerated "list" of your rights. Life, Liberty, Speech, Property, are examples of your rights; the list is infinite, only constrained by your imagination and other people's rights.

Any list of your rights, would necessarily have to come from somebody else. That violates the very premise of natural rights. Natural rights don't come from anybody, if they did... then whoever made the list could take them away just as easily. And, they wouldn't be your natural rights at all; they'd just be privileges that you exercise at their discretion, not your own.

That is a purely objective approach to the question of rights. It only becomes subjective when people try to inject exceptions with no logical foundation, simply because it "seems" ok to them.

I never claimed that DNA is what makes us human. What I said was, that's the only objective and useful marker available to us. Otherwise, we're left with your answer: "nothing makes us human."
And if there is nothing that makes you human, then you have no natural human rights.

The entire premise of Western civilization, individual sovereignty, rests on the notion that that there is something that makes you human.
Humans are different than other mammals, that is the very basis for the idea of "human rights".
So, what makes you a human? If you don't know, then you cannot say that any member of the homo sapiens species doesn't have it... because you don't even know what it is.
The human embryo is a unique member of the human species, just as the Danaus plexippus caterpillar is a monarch butterfly... even though it doesn't "seem" like a butterfly at all.

You can't reasonably argue that the embryo not a human, without at least attempting to address the obvious next-question: "ok... then, what is it?"

@rway People had to have come into existence at some point. Saying that that point is when an egg becomes fertilized is arbitrary. A zygote is just that, a zygote. It's a cell containing human DNA. It could potentially grow into a human being, but only if a person with a uterus provides it with the environment and resources to grow into a fetus and then a baby.
Also, if your rights are anything that doesn't infringe upon someone else's rights, you're going to run into a problem very quickly. What if your right and someone else's rights are at odds. You're going to have to decide which right is more important. Surely, a person has a right to decide whether they want to provide their own body to a zygote to inhabit and feed off of, no?

@onthecontrary Rights conflict all the time. When they do, life wins, every time.

@rway But why? You just said that there's no list of rights, that rights are infinite. So who decided that certain rights, such as the right to life, are superior to other rights?

@onthecontrary Judges, and/or juries. When you violate somebody's rights, and get caught, then you can try to convince "your peers" that it was justified.

@rway Which judges and juries said that life wins every time?
Out of curiosity, what is your opinion on people who are currently protesting the lockdown due to the covid-19 situation?

@onthecontrary Each judge/jury has to assess the situation before them and use their own judgment. That's where it helps to have objective standards to guide their subjective judgment.

You want to introduce another rabbit-hole to explore?
The Government operates solely by our consent, solely through due process, and solely to protect our rights from one another; using that specific measure of our own sovereignty that we abdicate to it for just that purpose.
We never gave it the charter to keep us from getting sick, or the authority to force us to button-up our sweaters so we don't catch cold.
That's what moms are for, not politicians.

@rway But the supreme court has decided abortion is legal.
The reason I asked is that you said "life wins, every time." The reason the government is enacting these rules is not to keep you from getting sick. It's to keep you from spreading the disease to others. That violates their right.

@onthecontrary
Yes, "life should win every time" is probably more accurate.
What's legal and what's right are two different topics. But generally, if you shoot someone in the face for stealing your sandwich... you're probably going to jail, even though one of your rights was violated first. That implies a de facto "hierarchy" of rights, with Life at the top. People often point to Jefferson's ordering of Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness (or... "All others" ) as an example.
When the State decides that it's legal to violate your rights, that doesn't mean you no longer have that right. Rights are immutable attributes.
All it means is that the State has abdicated its chartered duty to protect that right; which is unconstitutional by definition.

"...keep you from getting sick" and "...keep you from spreading the disease to others" are the same activity from the State's perspective. The Government is trying to keep you from getting sick by keeping others from spreading the disease to you... and vice versa.
That's not the Government's job.

Does it violate their right? Do they have a right to "not get sick"?
Getting sick is essential for your immune system. "Not getting sick" actually makes you less healthy.
So why don't I have an obligation to get you sick?
The short answer is: You don't have a right to anything that somebody else must provide.
If I have to take some action against my will, to preserve your perceived right to continue not being sick... then you lose.
You can take any action you believe is necessary to avoid exposure, as long as you don't violate my rights in the process.

@rway I'm only responding to your claim that we know life comes first because that's what judges decided. That's just not true, so you need to find a different answer.

Okay, yes, we do have a right to not get sick. Because that's a threat to life. Here's my general proof:

1. You do not have the right to take an action that threatens someone else's life.
2. Gathering in public without a mask is an action.
3. Gathering in public without a mask contributes to the spread of covid 19.
4. The spread of covid 19 threatens many others' lives.
5. You do not have the right to gather in public without a mask.

And no, getting sick does not make you more healthy. Germs are essential to your immune system, but that has nothing to do with getting this illness. Technically, you will possibly have an immunity to this specific coronavirus after you get it, but that doesn't mean you're healthier. In fact, there is a chance you will die. And there is a chance you will have permanent lung damage. No medical doctor would agree that getting sick is more healthy. And if you spread it to somebody, they will spread it to at least one person and so forth, and at least one of those people will probably die or suffer permanent damage.

@onthecontrary that's not my claim

1. You do it all the time, especially "flu season".
   You cannot be, and are not, obligated to stop participating in the ecosystem of which you are a part because someone else is trying (in vain) to hide from it.
   The only thing that will protect vulnerable people from it, is if enough non-vulnerable people get it to establish herd-immunity before it reaches them.
   In my opinion, that gives healthy people a moral responsibility to grow a pair and get outside. But they still have the right to cower indoors if they want to.

@rway Then what was your claim? You said life always come first. I said, who decided that? You said, a judge and jury.

This is different for two reasons

1. The likelihood that your going out during flu season will kill somebody is very low. You are unlikely to have it in the first place. If you do have it, you're not likely to spread it to a large pool of people, who will infect more people, and so on. With covid-19, you will end up infecting many, many people exponentially, and at least one of them will probably be very negatively infected. And with the flu, the people you do infect are not very likely to die as a result.
2. We have vaccinations for the flu. We don't always get it right, but when we do, of course you aren't obligated to "stop participating in the ecosystem" because you can simply get a vaccination.

Your argument is just inaccurate scientifically. What makes you think people are hiding in vain?

What will prevent vulnerable people from it is not spreading it around in the first place. What makes herd immunity effective is that people are less likely to get and spread it if they are immune. But if you have to get and spread it in order to be immune, it completely defeats the purpose.

@onthecontrary
No.... I said: "Each judge/jury has to assess the situation before them and use their own judgment. That's where it helps to have objective standards to guide their subjective judgment."
You are saying that doesn't happen?

What plays out in the courtroom is merely the revelation of a tacit natural hierarchy.
When your rights are violated, you have the recognized natural "authority" to prevent that from happening. You have dominion over that other person's rights, abdicated by their actions, only to the extent necessary to preserve your own. You have no natural right to exceed what is necessary and continue to violate their rights once your own have been restored. At that point, you would be acting outside your rights, and merely violating theirs.
That plays out in the escalation of force by the State, and the escalation of punishments by the Court, as well as everyday life.
If someone steals your sandwich, you have a right to take it back. You don't have a right to shoot them in the face. That implies a hierarchy.

1. The death rate of COVID-19 is comparable to that of the flu, and that's with a vaccine for the flu. The only thing that makes COVID-19 more contagious right now, is the fact that it's "novel"; and we have no herd-immunity.
   We're doing everything we can to postpone that herd-immunity, and that's literally stupid.

2. Flu vaccinations are somewhere around 50% effective, or less. And yet, we still go outside and live our lives.

That's how herd-immunity is established in nature. There's no magic wand, this is how it works.
The only way we can get around that, is by mimicking the process ourselves with a vaccine.
We don't have a vaccine.

@rway Okay, so my original question was, who says life is the most important right? If your answer isn't a judge, what's the answer?

1. The only people that the death rate is as low as the flu got that from a study that has been debunked because it took the percentage of people that had COVID-19 in an ER, and assumed that it was the same percentage of people that have it in the general population, which we may not be true.
2. The point of herd immunity is for fewer people to get the virus. What is the purpose of everyone getting the virus, just so fewer people get the virus?
3. We may have a vaccine in 2021. Currently, only a tiny percentage of the population has had the virus. Which solution is more effective, giving the virus to everyone when only a small percentage had it, or trying to limit the spread until we get the vaccine?

@onthecontrary I wrote like 3 paragraphs explaining that. If you disagree, defend your position; I'll listen.

You can't Google all the answers in life, sometimes you gotta think for yourself.
Simply asking the question "who says?", is an appeal to authority... another one of those rhetorical fallacies.
If some "authority" makes an assertion, it's often accepted on the assumption that the recognized authority understands why it's correct, and you don't. That's just lazy, and it's not an argument.
Their assertion is not the proof... the why is the proof.

1. The CDC says the COVID-19 death rate is about .4% overall.
   It's 1.3% if you're over 65, and .05% if you're under 50.
   According to Fauci, Director of the NIAID, the flu's death rate is about .1%.
   [wcnc.com]

2. Herd immunity is only established when enough people have had the virus to prevent it from continuing to propagate through the population by infecting new hosts. That should happen at around 30% infection, and that would be easily accomplished if healthy people under 50 would just go back to work, and back to living their lives instead of hiding indoors with the old people.
   Most of them won't even know they ever had the infection, they're just being cowards; to the detriment of the vulnerable.
   It's a cold. Literally... a novel mutation of the common cold.
   And old people, who actually are facing a more significant risk, can't go back to their normal lives until the younger folks man-up and get herd-immunity established.

3. We still don't have a SARS vaccine, and it's been almost 20 years.
   But let's pretend we might actually have a COVID-19 vaccine next year... we'll say mid-2021, and then about 6-months to mass-produce, distribute, and deploy globally to 7 Billion patients or so... which puts us at the beginning of 2022.
   We'll probably be near herd-immunity by then anyway, in many regions... which makes the whole "lockdown" exercise a huge waste. But let's say we stayed locked-down anyway, for TWO YEARS until we (possibly) had a vaccine... 2-years of businesses closing and raising the actual unemployment rate, supply-lines broken, mortgages defaulting, increased disease and mortality from depleted immune systems and the shutdown of routine and preventive medical care, skyrocketing public debt used to "pay" people to hide indoors while the economy burns, remarkable increase in ALL domestic issues, including violence, rape, suicides, substance abuse, etc.
   And pretty much ALL of these issues are long-term problems, from which it will take years to recover.
   AND, they have all been self-inflicted to boot.
   And that's without even going into to the abdication of personal liberty, in a society founded on personal liberty, and the myriad ramifications of epic-loss that represents to all future generations.

Some people die from vaccination, too. Don't forget about them... they "count".
Let's say they were able to inoculate half the people on the planet. The Swine Flu vaccine itself gave Guillain-Barré syndrome to .001% of patients, and killed 53 of them out of about 45 Million patients; so a comparable expectation would be that an experimental COVID vaccine could kill about 4,122 people out of 3.5 Billion; and cause myriad unforeseen health complications, some of them permanent, in thousands more.

...all so you can avoid catching a cold.

If you intend to compare the two options... you have to actually compare the two options.
Pretending that going back to work will cost "thousands of lives...", and that Locking down won't, is simply incorrect.

@rway Can you copy and paste them then? I really don't remember any other answer specifically to the question of why the right to life comes before other rights, which you said.
What are you talking about? Who's googling anything?
No, it's not. An appeal to authority is when you say, well this expert agrees with me so i must be right. I'm not asking you to do that. I'm simply asking how you know that the right to life comes objectively before any other right.

1. It's hard to pinpoint because we don't really know how many asymptomatic people had it. But 0.4% is a lot more than 0.1%. I'm personally not okay with letting 0.4% of our population die when there's another way.
2. For one thing, being younger is not a guarantee that you will live. But even if the healthy below-50s go back to work now, how are older folks supposed to survive if they can't have ANY contact with anybody, because everybody has the virus? This is a highly infectious disease we're talking about, there's no way we can let a hundred million young people getting it without spreading it to many many older folks as well.
3. I literally cannot help but see so so much irony in this. I'm going to copy and paste your argument but alter a few parts, and please please please explain why you believe in your argument, but not my altered one:
   But let's say we stayed pregnant/postpartum anyway, for OVER A YEAR until we (possibly) had a baby so we were no longer pregnant... 2-years of being out of work and unemployed supply-lines broken, mortgages defaulting, increased disease and mortality from depleted immune systems and other complications skyrocketing personal debt, remarkable increase in ALL domestic issues, including violence, rape, suicides, substance abuse, etc.
   And pretty much ALL of these issues are long-term problems, from which it will take years to recover.
   AND, they have all been self-inflicted to boot.
   And that's without even going into to the abdication of personal liberty, in a society founded on personal liberty, and the myriad ramifications of epic-loss that represents to all future generations.

Some people die from birth, too. Don't forget about them... they "count".
The global maternal mortality rate is 211 deaths per 100,000 live births; and cause myriad unforeseen health complications, some of them permanent, in thousands more.

...all so you can avoid terminating a zygote

If you intend to compare the two options... you have to actually compare the two options.
Pretending that having an abortion will cost "a life", and that being pregnant won't, is simply incorrect.

@onthecontrary
"Who says..." is an appeal to authority.
I says... in this very thread. If you disagree, I welcome your rebuttal. What does onthecontrary say?
If you believe that all rights are equal... simply support that assertion. Why do you think that?
It does not appear to be reflected in practice.
The example I used before was this:
What plays out in the courtroom is merely the revelation of a tacit natural hierarchy.
When your rights are violated, you have the recognized natural "authority" to prevent that from happening. You have dominion over that other person's rights, abdicated by their actions, only to the extent necessary to preserve your own. You have no natural right to exceed what is necessary and continue to violate their rights once your own have been restored. At that point, you would be acting outside your rights, and merely violating theirs.
That plays out in the escalation of force by the State, and the escalation of punishments by the Court, as well as everyday life.
If someone steals your sandwich, you have a right to take it back. You don't have a right to shoot them in the face. That implies a hierarchy.

1. "a lot more" is relative. .3% is probably within the margin of error. And COVID-19 is a novel virus, once herd-immunity is established it won't be novel any more. And there's only one way for that to happen.
   This is how it epidemiology works, apparently... we don't get a vote.
   Nature doesn't really care if you are "ok" with it or not; it's going to do its thing regardless. All the lockdown does is drag it out and make it worse.

2. Not getting COVID-19 is not a guarantee that you will live, either.
   99.95% is just about the best odds you're going to get.
   It's not up to you to solve everybody's problems for them, you don't have the ability and you don't have the authority. Neither does the government.
   Your only obligation is to stay within your own rights, if you decide you have to "do something." Same with the Government.
   "Yes, but... this time it's different..." is, ironically, the same argument we hear every time from control freaks who just want to ignore your rights "this one time only", because your rights are in the way of doing what they want to do. Which is exactly what rights are for. Your rights don't matter when nobody wants to violate them anyway... they only matter when they matter.
   After you get it, and establish immunity, you're not going to be contagious forever, permanently preventing old people from ever coming outside again...
   This is just how the virosphere works. Once it propagates to the extent that we've established herd-immunity, it won't be "novel" any more. It will just join the other corona mutations as another strain of the Common Cold.
   30 or 40,000 people died of "flu-related" illness last year in the U.S. and nobody gave a shit.
   Nature happens.

3. Live birth has a fatality rate of .2%... abortion: 100%, minus a few mutilated survivors.
   But that's not the relevant difference, anyway.
   The difference is simply whether you have the right... or not.
   And the answer is the same, for both the COVID Lockdown and abortion: you don't.

@rway It would be an appeal to authority if I said, "I'll only believe you if you can provide an example of an authority figure supporting your claim," but you know that when I said "who says" I didn't mean that. Rather, what I'm asking is, how do you know that your claim that the right to life is important to other rights came from. (especially considering your stance on the pandemic) I never said all rights are equal, I'm simply trying to understand your positions.

1. 0.4 is 4 times as much as 0.1. Relatively speaking, that's a lot more. Only a small percentage of the population has gotten it so far, and 100,000 people have already died. And you still haven't answered, what is the point of herd immunity if everyone has to be exposed to the virus in order to achieve that? Genuinely asking.
2. At least get your subtraction correct. It's a 99.5% chance, I think a valid distinction.And if you're at risk, it's even lower. And if everyone in your family gets it, there's a decent chance one of them will not survive. Many have already died.
   You don't have to solve other people's problems, but you don't have the right to give them a life-threatening problem, and going outside is. You keep saying you have rights as long as they don't violate someone else's rights. yes, you have the right to go outside, but if it's going to kill someone else, then no, you don't have that right.
   And really, I am finding it difficult to see how, morally, it's "up to" a pregnant person to protect the zygote, but not in this case, without appealing to some irrelevant technicality.
   People DID give a shit. We're doing everything we can to stop those 30,000 flu deaths. It would have been a lot more if not for precautions that we take to prevent the flu. And likewise, we are doing everything we can to stop 400,000 dying in just a few months, which is quite a lot more.
3. Come on, that part was just an alteration of your argument about vaccine deaths, which is a much smaller percentage!
   how is the rest of the argument different? Why do you agree with your argument, but when I swap it out for an extremely similar situation, you no longer agree? Did your own arguments not hold up when simply applied to a different situation. So far, the only part you disagreed with was a part that was directly taken from your argument. Why is a negligible death rate a valid point when you bring it up about vaccines, but it's not a valid point when I bring it up about births?
   Likewise, why is it frustrating when you perceive me putting certain lives above the livelihoods of many others ("If you intend to compare the two options... you have to actually compare the two options.
   Pretending that going back to work will cost "thousands of lives...", and that Locking down won't, is simply incorrect." ) but it's perfectly okay when you do that very thing? Please answer the questions I'm asking instead of or in addition to your perceived distinctions.

@onthecontrary

1. Everyone doesn't need to get it, the transmission ratio should fall below 1:1 at around 30%.
2. lol... 100 - .05 = 99.95
3. What? .2% vs 100% is not a negligible difference. And I literally said that's not the point anyway.
   The point is which option you have a right to pursue in the first place.

@rway

1. But what's the point of establishing herd immunity?
2. The death rate isn't 0.05.
3. Fine, a very low death rate, is that better? You're only addressing minor word choices and not answering my questions. Why was it a valid point when you said it about vaccine deaths, but you pushed back when I used your same argument word for word?
   So what if it's not the point? Why can't you just answer. Do you have the right to take an action that will kill somebody if it is to protect your livelihood? If there's more nuance, go ahead and explain it.

@onthecontrary because of the reason I stated quite clearly, no nuance:
"The difference is simply whether you have the right... or not.
And the answer is the same, for both the COVID Lockdown and abortion: you don't."

You have the right to take an action that will kill somebody, if it is to prevent them from taking an action that might kill you.
If you would just say what you mean, then we could discuss it. If you are trying to wiggle your way around to the assertion that the fetus is threatening the mother's livelihood, that is a dead-end.
This fetus is taking no action. The fetus has never taken an action in its life.

@rway
Who said anything about them killing you? I'm talking about your livelihood, not your life.
The question was "Do you have the right to take an action that will kill somebody if it is to protect your livelihood? If there's more nuance, go ahead and explain it." If the answer is no, then you don't have the right to violate a stay-at-home order.

@onthecontrary
well... if it is to "protect your livelihood" then that clearly does not meet the standard of "to prevent them from taking an action that might kill you."
Suggesting that principle was intended to be the answer to your question... no nuance: does it meet that standard, or not?
You could argue that it does, by the very definition of the term "livelihood"... it's what keeps you "alive" over the long-term. But I would still not make that argument. If somebody's in your way, making you late for work... for which you might lose your job: you still can't justifiably shoot him in the face just to make it to work on time. Should've left the house earlier.
Neither does going outside during an outbreak violate that standard. It's not tantamount to shooting someone in the face... it's more closely analogous to shooting in the woods when you think you're alone. You still could kill somebody... and you know it, too... happens every hunting season.
If you sincerely believe that it might happen to you... stay out of the woods.

@rway What are you quoting? I never said it was "to prevent them from taking an action that might kill you" I was asking about livelihood all along. Whether it be the livelihood of workers in 2020, or of pregnant people.
But I am curious, if the embryo was a threat to the pregnant person's life, then would it be okay to abort?

@onthecontrary I quoted my answer to your question for the third time.

I don't know why I'm trying, if you're not even reading this; but anyway....
"[I]f the embryo was a threat to the pregnant person's life...":
That would mean that there was a problem with the pregnancy. That is a medical situation that is threatening both of their lives.
What to do about it, is up to the doctor. The doctor has always had that discretion as far as I know. We didn't need to legalize homicide for those situations.

1- Owning your body doesn't mean you can do whatever you want. But that doesn't mean you have to use it for things you didn't consent to doing.
2- Where do you get your "real science" and how do you know that it's accurate? From what I understand, the evidence pretty clearly shows that the biggest factor contributing the warming is that the CO2 levels have gone from 200-300 up to 410. You say deforestation is a big part of it, but the reason that's detrimental is that forests help control the CO2 levels, so is the excess of CO2 in the atmosphere bad or not?
3- I'm all for healthier food and clean water, so I don't know who you're referring to when you say universal healthcare proponents don't advocate for those as well.
Are you trying to say that people with medical debt can get away with just not paying it? where did you get that information?
I think we do have a lot of common ground, though. i agree that the problems come from corporations unfairly controlling the markets with monopolies and price gouging, and the government allows that. These corporations lobby and pay off politicians to ensure they keep their profits safe. If we could simply eliminate those monopolies and have a purely free market, that would be the best solution. But looking at the reality of the situation, that would not work practically. It seems the only practical course of action at this moment that would eliminate the ridiculous costs of the current healthcare system would be for the government to step in and take over as payer, with the hospitals kept privately owned and run.
With education as well, the problem is that corrupt politicians are contracting private companies that pocket most of the money. if you just regulated that part of the industry, I think we could have a much more cost-effective public school system with better education. I understand the argument that if the politicians are corrupt, it doesn't make sense to give them more control. but really it's the fact that they're able to profit off of it that's causing the issue. If we eliminated those issues up at the top, the hospitals and schools at the bottom would be the ones really in control, not the politicians themselves.

A lot of good stuff here, but the bit about Nixon is false. The definition of what an HMO is has morphed a bit over time. But essentially it’s a company that blends insurance functions and health care functions, said Daniel Polsky, a health economics professor at Johns Hopkins University.

"The HMO act of 1973 promoted the development of HMOs," Polsky said. "After the act, these types of organizations became easier to form and operate."

The early prepaid group practice plans — the prototypes for HMOs — were all nonprofit. But the 1973 legislation unleashed the development of for-profit HMOs, said Paul Starr, a sociology professor at Princeton University.

"Many of the early HMOs were subsequently bought by for-profit insurers," said Starr, who authored a Pulitzer Prize-winning book about the history of American health care. "So the industry as a whole has changed quite dramatically."

Also you argue that Washington DC is inept and should not be in charge of healthcare. Maybe, but ask yourself why do we pay a middleman to determine our insurance rates. Insurance companies are equally corrupt as anyone in DC. Single payer healthcare is the only answer. Think of the buying power of every citizen in the US. Why is stuff cheap at Costco? Because they can buy in bulk and there is no middleman.

@onthecontrary I was saying owning ones body is a fallacy, and can point to several circumstances, where by law. You have no right to self ownership. So the my body my rights, is a flawed argument. Especially when the babies body isn't even considered.

The climate, 33,000 scientist now aim CO2 is not bad for the climate. Yes it can make temperatures go up a bit, but that's not totally bad. The more CO2, the bigger plants will get.
So in some ways it's great for the planet. Sure it makes the coastlines change. Evidence all around the globe points to this. It also points to a natural process
The degree of how fast we are pushing the market is still up for debate.
We know the levels of CO2 have flucuated throughout our history. For many various reasons periods where we were not using fossil fuels, and experienced massive swings in climate
We are changing things. Just like we have always done, but the scare tactic of what they are doing is just blown out of proportion.
Many cities have been lost to the sea. Many civilizations have been wiped out overnight on this planet.
Hearthcare is to regulated, and burdened with red tape.
In my experience, only free markets, and fair competition will drive costs down.
The numbers don't lie. Since government has been involved with healthcarem costs have risen way faster than cost of living. It's a money scheme. With who has the most hands waiting on checks, and sadly they only make money when they have patients. So many of our medicines are designed to mask the symptom. Instead of curing what ails.
I was also not advocating people not paying their bills. That's the basis of personal responsibility. I was lett ing people know they don't have to go bankrupt. They is a choice

@Kheare I didn't make the argument of my body, my rights with no further specification, did I? You responded to that before I even made any claims.
Where is your source for any of this information? Why would plants be bigger if there's more CO2? Is the world not so delicate a small change in temperature could send the whole thing off balance? Would a rise in temperature not cause glaciers to melt, in turn causing sea levels to rise, contributing to more temperature rise and a snowball effect?
As for healthcare, a free market would theoretically drive costs down, but how do you expect to implement or maintain a free market? Corporate greed will always exploit the system. You say that the costs have been rising ever since the government has been involved, but correlation is not equal to causation. How do you know government involvement is actually the cause and not corporate greed or corruption?
If someone has hundreds of thousands of dollars in medical debt and no way to pay it off, how are they supposed to stop that from ruining them financially, in one way or another?

OMG another hemper!!!!!

@johnlondon so by advocating another cleaner better way. It has to have a dogma. I don't get it.

if humans aren't responsible enough for democracy, what makes you think they'll be responsible as the sole authority?

@rway
Well, monarchies can be great if the leader is humanitarian and Horrible if not. I feel a leader (no matter how he gets there) needs to be more Authoritarian and be able to make changes swiftly. But, if we are gonna do democracy - let’s force everyone to vote instead a a small percentage making the decision. I also think that the Highest IQ should be leaders . Genius-ocracy

@SocialDarwin ah... do you think that IQ and benevolence are directly corelated?

@rway
I would rather take chances on a genius and her benevolence than chances on a low IQ leader

That’s just me

** But there should be a minimum IQ requirement to run for elections

1. Pregnancy is the process in which a human is created, off of the resources of the pregnant person. If that person, before most of that process has occurred, chooses to opt out of providing those resources, that shouldn't be an issue.
2. Science is pretty clearly showing that we're destroying this planet and it will make the earth uninhabitable in a century if we don't completely transition our energy system in this decade. The green new deal seems to be the only way to accomplish that, and I don't think that contradicts the rights of individuals. We are collectively living here and it would be a gross infringement of rights to continue ruining the planet for others.
3. Our healthcare system, and I mean the United States one, is built to benefit the insurance and pharmaceutical industries and it's literally killing people. 500,000 families go bankrupt due to medical costs. Anywhere from 30,000 to 100,000 die due to not having health insurance or being denied treatment by insurance providers. Many Americans are paying absurd amounts for drugs, like diabetics who pay hundreds for insulin that costs a dollar or two to manufacture. How is it fair that corporations can place this unnecessary and undeserved debt and illness on people?
   On average, families are paying twice as much per capita for worse healthcare than other countries. Corporations are free to charge whatever premiums and deductibles they like. A single-payer system would save the average family money and would save tens of thousands of lives each year. Medicare for All is popular with a large majority of Americans. People would be much freer to go to any hospital or doctor they choose, instead of navigating in networks. And they would be free to leave their employer without being tied down by the fact that leaving their job means having no healthcare.

@onthecontrary Every one of those fails the sovereignty test at first glance.

1. She can't opt out of providing those resources without actively killing another individual, thereby violating that individual's right to live. Around 50% of the population is living off of resources provided by somebody else. Are they all expendable for the same reason?

2. Your premise is incorrect. But, if you can pursue that fantasy without infringing on anybody else, go for it. If your plan includes me, then that makes it my business... and the answer is no.

3. Our healthcare system has lots of problems, most of which boil down to government involvement. More government involvement won't fix that. Free market competition will.
   Again... if you think you have a better idea and can pursue it without reaching into my pocket, go for it.

@rway

1. Why do we only value the sovereignty of individuals only for the fetus and not the pregnant person? And this is a bit of an incorrect understanding of my argument. it's not that the fetus is living off of someone else's resources, it's that they will only become a human being by using a resource that is literally another human being. I think people have a right to decide whether to provide themselves as a resource for creating another person.
2. Why do you think that the premise is incorrect? The scientific community has a consensus and there is no shortage of observable evidence.
3. I disagree it boils down to government involvement, but rather corporate interests and the government being complicit in that. I do agree that free-market competition would solve the problem, but there's no way to apply that to the reality of the situation. How do you propose we stop the monopolies and price gouging without government involvement?
   I'm also curious, if you're so opposed to the government using your pocket to fund programs, even if it's for the common good and saves money, do you oppose the universal law enforcement system and fire department?

@onthecontrary

1. I see. So, you think that the fetus is "not yet" a human being? So, prove it.
   The right to live is a natural human right, which of course applies to all human beings by definition.
   It is inviolable by other humans, no matter the reason.
   If you claim the right to kill me, based on the premise that I'm not a human being quite yet... then I would argue that the onus is on you to prove that conclusively before proceeding; not the other way around.

2. Consensus means nothing in science, if that were even true; which it's not. Observable evidence that supports a conclusion, does not necessarily prove the conclusion. One fact can refute an entire library of supportive "evidence".
   You'd have to start by making an assertion, and then supporting it logically, if we are to assess whether your conclusion is sound.
   And you've got quite a hill to climb, if you intend to convince me that CO2 is bad for the environment; which seems to be the popular "consensus".
   Carbon, water & light are what life is made of. The entire biosphere thrives with higher levels of atmospheric CO2. We've observed noticeable reforestation just with the slight increases that we've recorded recently.
   And, the associated temperature increase is logarithmic, not linear. The doomsday projections are literally ludicrous.
   The climate crisis before us is one of too little CO2, not too much. Atmospheric CO2 has declined steadily and linearly since the dawn of sea life, as ocean critters tend to use it to make shells, and then end up sequestered in sedimentary rock. We have an estimated 1.3 million years or so, until the level drops below the threshold required to sustain the biosphere. At which point the entire withering food chain, which of course includes us, will simply cease to exist.
   We should be making SUVs mandatory!

3. No monopoly has ever emerged and sustained itself in a (mostly)free market, without the government's help. And, I would challenge you to find a single example where government involvement did not, in fact, end up doing more harm than good; if it did any good at all.
   Government doesn't "fix" things. It can't. In fact, it's not incentivized to even try. Bureaucracy feeds on problems, not solutions... and loopholes, not efficiencies.
   I'm not opposed to funding social programs. Government has a role in society, obviously, and requires public revenue to fulfill that role. The only question is: what is that role?
   The federal government in the U.S. has a very short, finite list of enumerated functions for which it is responsible. Those things comprise the public sector. Everything else is private sector, in which government literally has no business meddling.
   Generally speaking, if you are not violating somebody else's rights... the government has no role in your life. That's why they are there... to protect our rights from one another, and to otherwise stay out of the way while we go about our business as free individuals.
   Law enforcement is arguably the only legitimate domestic function of government.
   Fire protection is a community service, that you opt into when you join that community; along with all the other ordinances that the community has put in place. If you don't like it, you're free to live somewhere else.
   That's fundamental to the whole notion of "rights":
   No other human on the planet has the right to compel you to take any action against your will.
   You don't have a right to like your options, you just have a right to have options.
   In each instance, the only question is: who's discretion is being exercised?
   If it's not yours, then you're not free.

@rway

1. A fetus at, say, 8 weeks does not think, see, or experience anything. There is no consciousness or feeling. Even regardless of those facts, it is the pregnant person that is giving that fetus life constantly. The fetus feeds directly off of that person, not their resources, but themselves. So even if the fetus was a human, which i don't think it is, I don't think a person is obligated to provide themselves to continue making it into a baby. Even if there was a fully grown adult on their death bed, and you are the only one who can save their life, say by donating an organ, you still have the autonomy to decide whether or not to do so, even if they'll die if you choose to opt out.
2. I would really like to know where these facts you're referring to came from. The CO2 level is over 400 parts per million, when it had been between 200 and 300 for our entire existence up until the last century. The trend temperature increase is certainly not logarithmic. As the sea levels rise and the permafrost starts to melt, the rate of change will increase exponentially.
3. The notion that the current healthcare marketplace has options and a medicare for all system does not is simply not true. I'm not talking about a purely free market where everything is paid for by consumers for consumers and there are no monopolies. That is not going to happen in the US and there aren't many examples of places that has been managed. A medicare for all system will ensure that people have the care they need and the choice to go to providers that aren't decided by their employer or their insurance plan.

I think the bottom line on healthcare is that the insurance companies' bottom line is profit not healthcare. As long as that is a fact we will always hava flawed system.

@FOTD13 I think you're right. But, more generally: anybody who is not you, has their own priorities.

The only one who cares about you is you, and that's the only one who should be making decisions about your healthcare.
Now, you're naturally limited by your own resources; just like every single other facet of your life.
If you want someone else to pick up the tab, then they'll be making the decisions.
That's not a good trade, because healthcare is not their bottom line, either.

@onthecontrary

1. You're right, you're not obligated by somebody else's right to life, to take any action to save them; under any circumstance. That's not how rights work. If someone else has to provide it to you... you don't have a right to it.
   Now... if you, yourself put them in that situation against their will, that's your fault.
   You are responsible for the results of your own actions.
   But, you don't have a right to purposefully take any action to end another person's life; under any circumstance.
   There a million ways that other people's existence can intrude on your life... none of them give you the right to just kill them to make it stop.

2. 400ppm is nothing. We purposefully pump greenhouses up to 1200 just because it makes the plants grow bigger and more productive.
   Globally, if it gets down below 150ppm or so, the whole biosphere dies.
   This chart (below) plots the level from as high as 8,000ppm before the Cambrian era, when the biosphere was literally thriving.
   I wouldn't listen to me, if I were you. Check out Dr. Patrick Moore on YouTube if you're sincerely interested.
   He's a PhD Ecologist and cofounder of GreenPeace. He was the only scientist among the founders, and he quit when he saw what they were turning into; which is just a bunch of political activists.
   The temperature increase is logarithmic. You're not considering the saturation of atmospheric CO2 diminishing the impact of the greenhouse effect. Or, any of the natural cooling mechanisms triggered by increase in temperature.
   The earth has been doing this for a long time without our help.

3. No, they'll just be decided by some bureaucrat with a clipboard, whose biggest concern in life is whether it's 5:00pm yet.
   If you think that allocation methodology will be driven solely by what care you need; then I'm sorry, I just think you're wrong. Bureaucracies have numerous, predictable incentives that drive their behavior; and efficiency and effectiveness are not among them.
   Your medical care should be determined by 3 things:
   Your medical needs.
   Your choices, among options to address those needs.
   Your financial ability to execute those choices.
   That all describes the Free Market

@rway @rway 1. But if they put them in that situation by conceiving them, they didn't put them in more danger than before, they didn't exist before. And if the prohibition on abortion is dependant on the woman being responsible, then is it permitted in the case of rape? If not, then this paragraph no longer stands. If yes, then it can't possibly be a human life, or else abortion would still be murder.
2. As for greenhouses, yes, a lot of CO2 is fine, but the temperature in greenhouses is very hot, which is fine for a greenhouse, not great for an entire planet. The atmosphere is delicate, and a slight change will cause the entire environment to change.
I just watched a bit of Patrick Moore, he was actually presenting the same chart you just sent. He is one scientist among many, and the is in a very small minority of people who disagree humans are causing climate change. I'll admit, i only watched one talk, but that's all i have time for. I'll have to do more research later. The fact that he is in the minority doesn't prove that he is wrong, but it also doesn't prove that he's right.
My goal isn't for the biosphere to thrive, it's for the human race to be able to continue. yes, we had more CO2 back in the Cambrian times, but we want to keep CO2 and temperature within levels they've been for all of human history, that we can withstand, not the levels they've been in the history of the earth, when we wouldn't have been able to live.
Just because there isn't a strong correlation across history between CO2 and temperature, doesn't mean CO2 isn't causing the temperature to change this time. It just proves that CO2 isn't the only thing that can cause the temperature to change. But if you look at the past few thousand years only, when humans were around, there is a strong correlation between CO2 and temperature. It's not a coincidence that the temperature is changing now, or do you think that it is?
You say the earth has natural cooling mechanisms, but what are you referring to? You say the earth has been doing this for a long time without our help, but the chart you sent indicates the earth does not maintain a single temperature, but rather changes wildly at certain points, at which points many species go extinct due to the changes.
3. A bureaucrat with a clipboard? 5:00? what do you mean? A medicare for all system would have politicians in the hospital making your decisions based on that they want to go home? The hospitals would be run the same, by the same people, the only difference is that they bill somebody else, and they don't have to withhold care to people without insurance.
As for your final point, A) So if people don't have finances, they shouldn't be treated? This seems a bit cruel, especially for someone who is pro life. If a fetus that hasn't been born has the right to be born at the expense of the mother, who may or may not have consented to conceive them, surely a poor child or adult could be saved too? B) We don't have a free market though, and that's probably not going to happen. Whether or not we should implement Medicare for All doesn't depend on comparing it to free market, but comparing it to the current system. Is it better or worse than the current system? should we implement it?

@onthecontrary - I appreciate the conversation.

1. You don't have a right to purposefully take any action to end another person's life; under any circumstance.
   That clear principle answers all of those questions.
   And it clearly includes rape-babies; many of whom are people alive today with friends, jobs, families, etc.
   Rape is a terrible crime, especially when it results in pregnancy. Arguably, the only worse thing you can do to a person is to kill them... which is what abortion doctors do routinely for a living; and by some pretty horrific and tortuous means incidentally.
   In those cases, the mother was victimized by the rapist. Blame him, not the baby. Punish him, not the baby. It's so much easier just to rip it apart and flush it down the toilet before it "looks like" someone... but what's easy isn't always what's right. Seldom is, actually.
   Murder is a legal term. As long as the law allows it, it's not murder. But it is, by definition, homicide; in every case.

2. Greenhouses aren't hot from the CO2, they're hot from the sun, and lack of a breeze.
   The earth's climate is quite delicate, and quite complex.
   It's ludicrous to believe that we can control the "thermostat" by turning a single knob (CO2), without hopelessly screwing up the larger system.
   Besides, more CO2 in the atmosphere is a good thing. The entire quest is misguided, driven by unrelated incentives such as power and greed; two of the most reliable and consuming motivations that humans have.
   When the biosphere thrives, humans thrive.
   The point of the chart isn't that CO2 used to be higher. It's that CO2 is in a steady decline, due to sequestration as ocean sediment over millions of years. Decline is bad. That ends with us being dead. Any effort to speed that up by reducing our release of CO2 is just about the stupidest thing ever.
   There has never been a period, nor will there ever be, in which the climate was not changing one way or another.
   Species go extinct all the time for myriad reasons. Humans are very adaptable. We are far more likely to blow ourselves up than to die off because it's warm outside.
   One simple example of a cooling mechanism, is clouds. The temperature goes up, more water evaporates, more clouds form... blocking the sun, the temperature is regulated.
   That's just one of a zillion moving parts that we literally don't fully understand. It would be foolish and almost certainly catastrophic to blindly tinker with it.

3. Whoever has the checkbook is the one running the hospital.
   And yes, if you can't afford something, you don't get it. That is cruel, yes. Reality's a bitch, who ever told you otherwise?
   The alternative, is to force someone else to get it for you. If you don't think that's cruel, then I would suggest you haven't thought it all the way through.
   However, you are literally free to do anything you can imagine to help alleviate that cruelty for your fellow man. You can set up an NGO, operate a service like the Shriner's hospitals, collect donations door-to-door... anything you want, limited only by your imagination and other people's rights.
   A truly free market doesn't exist. But, more free = better. Medicare for All goes in the opposite direction.

@rway Likewise.

1. I have no problem with this argument. Clearly, the classification of homicide hinges on the notion that the fetus is a human, which we clearly disagree on. However, I'm only addressing one argument at a time. So right now, I'm addressing your claim that the reason why this is a unique case where you are obligated to provide for someone else is because "you, yourself put them in that situation against their will." How does this argument stand if there are cases of rape?
2. Yes, they're hot from the sun. That's the same thing for global warming. It wouldn't be hotter because of the CO2, but because of the effect that the CO2 has on the heat from the sun.
   "The earth's climate is quite delicate, and quite complex.
   It's ludicrous to believe that we can control the "thermostat" by turning a single knob (CO2), without hopelessly screwing up the larger system." I agree with this entire paragraph. It is delicate and complex, and we cannot just control the thermostat. Which is why when we do increase the CO2, it WILL hopelessly screw up the larger system. That's climate change.
   Why do you believe that power and greed would cause people to believe in climate change? Why wouldn't it also encourage people to continue propping up the energy industry?
   When the biosphere thrives, humans thrive? Why do you believe this? The biosphere thrives at very high temperatures, humans don't.
   CO2 decline is not inherently bad. Perhaps yes, in the long term it's not good that the CO2 is dropping. But A) That is only by looking at a time span of millions of years, we don't need to be worrying about that. B) Our CO2 emissions are a lot looking at the span of human history, but in the history of earth, won't be much of a difference or do anything to stop the general trend down that's happened over trillions of years, which again, we don't need to be worrying about.
   Yes of course, the climate is always changing, but as the human race, we don't want that to happen as it will result in our extinction. And we are the ones causing it.
   It won't just be warm outside. And yes, the climate being a few degrees hotter will cause a lot of problems especially in warmer countries like India where certain places will become uninhabitable. It also will create a snowball effect where it continues to get hotter. It also will cause sea levels to rise and coastal cities to be uninhabitable. it also will cause mass crop failure which will lead to high food prices and famines. These things will possibly cause human extinction and even if they don't, they will change the world as we know it and it is something we should definitely be avoiding at all costs.
   Yes, we have clouds but that won't stop the climate from changing. How would your chart demonstrate such drastic changes in the global temperature across time if the clouds stop the temperature from changing?
   We can't continue using fossil fuels that are most likely dangerous, just because we "don't know enough." Stopping the use of fossil fuels is much more natural than continuing it. It's not blindly tinkering if we're just ceasing to do what we only started to do in the past century.
3. So doesn't that mean the insurance corporations are running them now? How do they have your interests in mind even less than the government?
   But the reason people can't afford it is because the prices are ridiculously inflated and predatory.
   Why are food and water rights but not healthcare? I think i remember you said food and water are.
   So think it through for me. Is that really more cruel than letting people die unnecessarily? Why we don't have enough sympathy to save people who can't afford treatments, but we do have enough sympathy to save a fetus with no consciousness?
   But have donations ever been enough to make enough change on that scale? Are just helping who we can, or helping everybody?
   Why is Medicare for all less free? It would give you the freedom to switch employers, whereas the current system makes it pretty much impossible to do so in many situations, because people don't have the choice to go without healthcare and their employer is the only way to get it. It would give you the freedom to go to whichever doctor and hospital is best, instead of wherever the insurance monopolies tell you. It would give smaller pharmaceutical companies the freedom to make versions of patented products, which gives consumers the freedom to pick where to buy.

@onthecontrary Hi, good talk.

1. The rapist did it.
   Pregnancy is sometimes one of the (many) tragic consequences of rape; all of which the victim is forced to deal with in the aftermath.
   That's why it's such a heinous crime. There's nothing "just" about it... it's victimization.
   But, the fact that you've been victimized by one person, does not confer to you the sovereignty over life-or-death for a third party, who bears no culpability whatsoever... for anything, in fact.
   That doesn't even make any sense.
   The entire purpose of recognizing and protecting rights, is to defend the relatively helpless and innocent, from the more powerful who wish to do them harm; regardless of the reason.
   The only reason some of us even accept abortion as a viable "choice", is because they really, really just want to pretend it's not homicide and to have the ability to just make it go away. There is no logical or empirical basis for that pretense, it's pure wishful-thinking.

2. The temperature in an actual greenhouse is not controlled by the level of CO2, that's just for the plants to thrive. The temperature is controlled by opening a window.
   Your comment: "...when we do increase the CO2, it WILL hopelessly screw up the larger system."
   This is an assertion that has no empirical foundation. More CO2 is good. It used to be much higher, so that has already been confirmed by experiment.
   Lower is bad... and it's falling all by itself over the long-term. So if we were to purposefully tinker with it at all, it should be with the goal of replenishment, not further depletion.
   I see your point. If we'd just stop adding to it, that's not really tinkering with nature; it's actually desisting from inadvertent tinkering with nature.
   But we, and our activities, are part of nature too. Let's try to keep some perspective on our impact:
   Anthropogenic CO2 accounts for .0012% of the atmosphere, based on estimates of averaged regionalized outputs.
   That doesn't even move the needle.
   Logically, we must concede that humans are contributing to the greenhouse effect. It's purely anecdotal evidence... but that's all the climate alarmists have got.
   Statistically, that contribution is 0%.
   Empirically, we have no idea. You can't measure an estimate, with hundreds of poorly-understood interactive variables affecting climate, and at least hundreds more that haven't even occurred to us yet.
   If humans immediately ceased ALL carbon output, globally... at immeasurable cost to lives and livelihoods; it would have literally NO predictable, measurable effect on the progress or the ultimate end-state of the recent natural warming trend.
   And that trend appears to be over anyway, at least for the next couple decades. Time will tell. Like you said, the sun is the primary driver of temperature, obviously (and empirically.) And we've just come out of a solar maximum; the "crisis" is over. The U.N. missed their chance.
   The only predictable known impact that significantly reducing anthropogenic CO2 would have, is economic.
   You're correct, the energy industry is driven by greed just like every other enterprise; which includes the Climate Change industry. The fanatical attempt to funnel literally trillions of dollars every year through credit exchanges and the UN as a redistribution clearinghouse has one primary motivation: those trillions of dollars.
   As is often the case: the means is the goal.
   Another side-benefit would be to stop third-world nations in their tracks. Most of the poorest developing nations are presently at the cusp of prosperity and self-reliance; thanks to global capitalism. That's not good, from the perspective of the first-world nations who have made dependents out of them, and consequently enjoy control over their vast human and natural resources.
   All they need now, is to establish affordable energy infrastructures... just like we did to advance our own societies. It's the IPCC's job to keep that from happening.
   Greed is the predictable, ubiquitous, and immutable part of human nature that is the engine of capitalism, it's why capitalism works... predictably... every time.
   Greed is only a problem when it's allowed to run out of control; and it does that, just as predictably, when we ignore it and pretend it's not a factor at all.
   Which is why collectivism fails to work... predictably... every time.

3. Yes, it does.
   Nobody has your interest in mind, except you.
   The prices are out of control because the government is involved.
   I never said food and water were rights, that may have been somebody else.
   Things cannot be rights.
   Rights are implications of being... they're just attributes of your existence as a sovereign individual.
   You have a right to do (whatever...), because nobody has a right to prevent you from doing it; not because you deserve to do it, or you need to do it.
   If you need food, go get some. Don't take mine, that's a violation of my rights.
   That includes healthcare; which comprises products and services that belong to somebody else. If you need them, then you access them at their discretion... and on their terms; not yours... and not the Government's.
   Why are you suggesting letting people die unnecessarily?
   Do something about it. Why do you expect other people to do everything, through the government? That's not what the government is for.
   I would already have the freedom to negotiate medical care from anybody I want, for any price we both agreed to; if it weren't for the government stepping in to "help out."
   How's that working out....?

@rway

1. But even before we get to whether it's homicide or not, my problem now is that I gave an example where someone is dying (so an adult we all agree is a human being, even though i don't think a fetus is) and the only way they can live is if you donate your organ to them. If you do it, they live. If you don't they die. So does that obligate you to do it? Are you a killer if you don't? And you said that the difference with abortion is that it is the pregnant person's actions that have led to the scenario. But in the case of rape, that response does not stand. So in the case of rape, what is your response to my example?
2. But the "greenhouse effect" is an effect that occurs in greenhouses that makes it warmer. The CO2 creates an environment where the plant thrives, but a byproduct of that is that the temperature is warmer.
   "This is an assertion that has no empirical foundation. More CO2 is good. It used to be much higher, so that has already been confirmed by experiment." You admitted you can't just control the temperature like a thermostat, without it screwing up the whole system. And that's what will happen. Just because CO2 used to be higher and it was good for the planet back then, doesn't mean that it's good for us as a human race. Are you classifying CO2 as good because it's good for the planet itself? Is it not more important for us as humans to look at not what it is good for the planet, but what will keep the planet able to sustain us? And has the CO2 not been between 200 and 300 since we've been around? So are the CO2 levels from before we were here even relevant to what levels we need to be maintaining?
   "Lower is bad... and it's falling all by itself over the long-term. So if we were to purposefully tinker with it at all, it should be with the goal of replenishment, not further depletion." Again, lower is only bad if you're looking out for the interest of plants and not humans. We shouldn't be pumping CO2 in the air to help the plants and kill ourselves.
   "That doesn't even move the needle.
   Logically, we must concede that humans are contributing to the greenhouse effect. It's purely anecdotal evidence... but that's all the climate alarmists have got.
   Statistically, that contribution is 0%." Before we started burning fossil fuels, CO2 levels were between 200 and 300 ppm, now they're gotten to over 400 in just the past 50 or so years. that seems pretty significant.
   "If humans immediately ceased ALL carbon output, globally... at immeasurable cost to lives and livelihoods; it would have literally NO predictable, measurable effect on the progress or the ultimate end-state of the recent natural warming trend." How do you know? The evidence shows the temperature has gotten suddenly warmer right at the time the CO2 levels went up because we started burning fossil fuels. Is this a coincidence?
   "And that trend appears to be over anyway, at least for the next couple decades." We can't tell. Trends don't go in a straight line. There may be downward blips here and there but the overall trend is most likely continue.
   "You're correct, the energy industry is driven by greed just like every other enterprise; which includes the Climate Change industry." So is there really any evidence that belief in climate change is more of a scheme than climate change denial? The very first scientists that discovered evidence that the energy industry was causing climate change were researchers at Exxon. It was certainly in their interest to have not made that discovery, and yet they did. Greed can't have factored into that, because it was greed that caused them to ultimately cover up their findings.
3. "Yes, it does.
   Nobody has your interest in mind, except you." but why is the government so terrible and bureaucratic but the corporations making the decisions now aren't? They aren't you either.
   Again, not to mix debates, but then what gives a fetus the right to a woman's body if they don't want to provide it? Especially in cases where the pregnant person didn't consent in the first place?
   "I would already have the freedom to negotiate medical care from anybody I want, for any price we both agreed to; if it weren't for the government stepping in to "help out." How do you know what things would be like? Aren't you just guessing? For all you know, the corporations would have the same monopolies and there would be the same price gouging and lack of choice. But a hypothetical perfectly free market is not what we have. So why is it that the current system would be better than medicare for all? You previously said it's because it would be less free, but I gave examples why it would be much more freedom. So why is it that the current system is better than a universal program?

Hi @onthecontrary

1. No, you have no obligation to provide for other people's rights, only to not interfere with them.
   If someone else has to provide it to you, you don't have a right to it.
   (That is axiomatic, as far as I can tell.)
   No other human has the right to force you to take any action that you don't want to take. For any reason.
   e.g., donating a kidney.
   The collective does have the right, in fact it has the chartered obligation, to prevent you from taking action that would violate someone else's rights. No matter the reason.
   e.g., abortion.

2. Not really. CO2 in a greenhouse probably traps some heat, theoretically speaking; but not measurably. (Actually, the same can be said for the minuscule anthropogenic contribution to atmospheric CO2.)
   A greenhouse is hot for the same reason your car is hot in the summertime, even though it has ambient CO2 levels.
   Carbon is one of the building-blocks of the biosphere... of which we are a part. More atmospheric CO2 makes the whole biosphere thrive. What makes you think that humans would be an exception... in what way?
   We're just mammals. Mammals have been around for 200 Million years or so; during times of much higher CO2 and times of much higher average temperature.
   What's good for plants is good for humans, we're mutually dependent.
   Lower CO2 is bad, because as it approaches the bottom threshold of 150ppm or so the entire biosphere collapses, taking us with it.
   And, there is no "high" threshold with regard to the greenhouse effect. CO2 is likely at-or-near its saturation point for affecting temperature already; the point where adding more has diminishing impact as it approaches zero.
   The "greenhouse effect" is far more influenced by other greenhouse gasses. Of which, I think simple water vapor accounts for about 70%.
   CO2 fluctuates naturally, our contribution is lost in the noise of that variance.
   Anthro-CO2 makes up about 3% of total atmospheric CO2, which itself is only about .04% of the atmosphere.
   (see link below)
   And, natural sources vary in magnitude and distribution much more than human sources do. If it's gone from 250ppm to 400, then anthropogenic CO2 now accounts for about 12ppm... not the additional 150ppm.
   12ppm is not very significant.
   You can't measure any improvement when your theoretical impact is already below the noise threshold... especially when the single factor you're measuring is far outweighed by other factors with better correlation; like solar activity.
   Everybody acts in their own (perceived) self-interest. That's why we look at data.

3. Corporations are expected to act in their own self-interest. They do so predictably, reliably; and to whatever extent we successfully constrain them: they do so without violating anybody's rights.
   Now, combine that with lethal force, and the legal authority to act against your interests in the name of the "common good", and you have Government; pursuing its own interests, and quite routinely in violation of your rights. e.g., Income Tax.
   No, I'm not guessing. What constraint would there be on my ability to freely negotiate any transaction, if it weren't for those imposed by government?
   Again, monopolies do not exist in the wild; not for long. They sustain themselves solely by partnering with government. I've heard two questionable (and trivial) counterexamples suggested, out of the past couple hundred years, but I don't remember what they were.
   Medicare for All is not free. If I'm paying for your contact lenses, then I am being forced to take an action against my will. That's not free, by definition.
   It just so happens that it's also not good economic practice, either. Any time you separate the consumer from the payer, quality goes down and price goes up, with no opposing force to limit that divergence. That's a simple matter of incentives. (see: the entire Education industry)

[wattsupwiththat.com]

@rway

1. A) Why doesn't pregnancy fall into the category of providing for someone else? That's quite literally what it is. And abortion is the only alternative to providing. So which comes first, your first claim that you have no obligation to provide, or your second, that you can't violate the rights of the fetus.
   B) So if there was a way to remove the fetus without terminating it immediately, so you would simply be removing it from your body, would that be okay? The fetus would die after a minute that way too, so it makes no difference to me if it dies in the removal or afterwards.
2. yes, the car is also hot because of the greenhouse effect. It doesn't necessarily mean it's warm because of CO2. other materials like glass can also trap heat.
   Humans are an "exception" because the CO2 has been between 200 and 300 for our entire history, and we've been fine. If we change the CO2 levels, it will throw our entire climate off balance. Again, this doesn't mean the planet is in danger. It means the planet will change, like it does all the time, and it will make the planet uninhabitable or at least cause a lot of damage to our habitat.
   Not all mammals are the same, and many have gone extinct in the past. Even if we weren't going to go extinct, just the moving of the coastlines and the rendering of certain areas too warm to live would be catastrophic to our society.
   What's good for plants is good for humans? Why do you believe this? If there was very little oxygen, plants would be fine but we would be in big trouble. There's just no scientific basis for saying that what is good for plants is automatically good for us. Yes, we need plants, but that doesn't mean everything good for them is good for us.
   Again, you're looking at it from the basis of the history of the entire world. Even if it approaching 150, it is going at such a low rate we don't need to be worried about it. Let's just worry about keeping the planet the way it is so we can maintain our society.
   Water vapor is staying at the levels it's always been, which is why we aren't as worried about it as CO2.And didn't you just say the clouds are going to keep the earth cool and so the warming curve is logarithmic?
   Ok, i clicked the link and right on the page, it says how the authors of the very study sourced told a different site to take down their post because they're presenting the information in a misleading way.
   By single factor, do you mean warming? you're saying the whole thing is caused by solar activity?
   If everyone acts in their own self interest, why did Exxon discover climate change first?
   You say we look at the data to avoid subjectivity but you're only looking at a tiny fraction of the data from questionable sources that support your position. And the rest of the data you dismiss as political posturing or whatever you would call it.
3. "Corporations are expected to act in their own self-interest. They do so predictably, reliably; and to whatever extent we successfully constrain them: they do so without violating anybody's rights." So if not the government, who exactly is supposed to do the constraining? Are you admitting that we can't allow corporations to do whatever they want with no regulations?
   "What constraint would there be on my ability to freely negotiate any transaction, if it weren't for those imposed by government?" Monopolies, price gouging, etc.
   "I've heard two questionable (and trivial) counterexamples suggested, out of the past couple hundred years, but I don't remember what they were." Most countries have had their governments regulating trade for the past 200 years, so to exclude instances out of that time frame seems disingenuous.

" If I'm paying for your contact lenses, then I am being forced to take an action against my will. That's not free, by definition." This is gonna be a bit of a tangent, but i challenge you to examine why it is that you believe freedom is such an end all be all, and pretty much nothing else can be weighed against it. We already agree that More Free = More Good. but wouldn't we also agree More Humane = More Good and More Just = More Good and Less Suffering = More Good, etc. Why is it that a large increase in humanity and justice and a decrease in suffering is not worth a slight perceived restriction of freedom. At risk of anticipating what you say before you say it, I ask why you assume the perceived restriction automatically causes more injustice, suffering, and inhumanity. Yes, freedom is important, but it's interesting how you're so adamant that it is the end all be all when there are other things that improve society as well. I also think it's interesting that you ignored (as far as i could tell) my points about comparing your position on healthcare to your position on abortion. Abortion seems the only subject, especially in contrast with this one, where you put freedom below other things, such as morality. I understand that you believe the fetus is a person with rights and freedoms as well, but surely you'll concede that the mother's free will and autonomy is being constricted in some way. Come to think of it, this makes me curious also if you have any opinions in regard to forced quarantine right now.

"It just so happens that it's also not good economic practice, either. Any time you separate the consumer from the payer, quality goes down and price goes up, with no opposing force to limit that divergence. That's a simple matter of incentives" I certainly agree. But what I'm saying is the consumer is already separated from the payer, as well as the provider. There is even an additional degree of separation if you include the employer, who is involved in the current system but wouldn't be an a Medicare for All system.
Over the course of this conversation, you have mostly argued for a completely free market against Medicare for all, and not of our current system against Medicare for all. According to my recollection, and i apologize if I'm forgetting anything, you've only said that medicare for all would be less free, which i attempted to rebut but i don't remember you responding to my rebuttal.

@onthecontrary I figured out how to make lines

1. A) Pregnancy does fall into the category of providing for someone else... obviously. That's an intrusion on the rights of the mother. That's one of the reasons that rape is bad. Her rights were violated, by the rapist.
   B) You don't have the right to take any action that will purposefully end the life of another human being.

2. Yes, so we're in agreement.
   A greenhouse is not hot because of the CO2.
   Which was my response to your assertion, that "[t]he CO2 creates an environment where the plant thrives, but a byproduct of that is that the temperature is warmer."

   ---

   The biosphere's "normal" operating range for atmospheric CO2 has already been demonstrated to extend into the thousands of ppm; demonstrated by nature. The climate will be fine, and it will still be habitable. The population of Europe doubled during the Medieval Warm Period... they loved it. And it wasn't a result of their irresponsible carbon footprints anyway. It happens.

   ---

   Water vapor varies naturally, as does CO2. And again, our contribution to that variance amounts to about .0012% of the atmosphere; not even measurable. We could boost our output by 100% and it wouldn't even move the needle.
   If you don't trust the link, just look at the data.
   It's only there as a citation for my claim that Anthropogenic CO2 is 3% of atmospheric CO2, which it shows quite clearly.
   The source is the EPA, using data from the IPCC.
   I don't blame you for not trusting them, but do you suspect that the number is higher? If so, why?
   It would have to be considerably higher to matter, anyway.

3. Yes, Government regulation is the way that "we" constrain corporations to protect our rights. That's just another word for Law. That's what the government is for... that's all it's for actually, to protect our rights. And the only mechanism it has to do that, is by Force.
   The Law, which includes regulations, empowers and directs that force, which is why over-regulation is oppressive and stifling, and generally... just wrong.
   Any law that isn't crafted specifically to protect somebody's rights, without inadvertently interfering with someone else's (including the corporation) is an unjust law.
   By definition, because it exceeds the government's authority.

   ---

   ok... so look back further than 200 years.
   Do you know an example of a monopoly sustaining itself in a mostly-free market without government's help... from any time period at all?

   ---

   It's easy to argue that:
   Less Unnecessary Suffering equals More Good.
   It's not so easy to make a coherent argument that:
   Less Free would equal Less Unnecessary Suffering.
   There's some pretty dramatic historical evidence to the contrary.

   ---

   There's no such thing as a slight restriction of freedom.
   You're either free, or you're not.
   The collective has exactly zero sovereignty over you.
   The U.S. Government exercises OUR rightful sovereignty, not its own. It doesn't have any.
   And, it exercises only that portion of it that we've conceded specifically for the purpose of protecting our rights from one another.
   Further, it does so only by OUR recurring consent, and only through the constraints of due process that WE put on it through our representatives.
   And even further... that due process can only be initiated by YOU, by violating a law; which implies that you've violated someone else's rights, since that's the only function of legitimate law in the first place.
   The Government has no authority to initiate force against you... for any reason.
   Unless you're breaking a legitimate Law, the Government has literally no legitimate interest in your life or in your actions, whatsoever.
   And if it takes an interest anyway, then you're not free.
   And it doesn't matter how "slight" the tyranny, because you've just set the precedent that it can take more any time it wants.
   And it wants.

   ---

   Less freedom does not only cause more injustice.
   Less freedom is more injustice.
   "...what gives a fetus the right to a woman's body...?: is that the point that you think I ignored?
   It's a Strawman... nothing gives the fetus that right. Again... the rapist put them both in that situation. The mother's autonomy has most certainly been violated, by the rapist.
   Now, what gives the abortion "doctor" the right to kill the fetus?
   Also nothing.

   ---

   So, we're agreed that the consumer and the payer need to be the same person, otherwise the natural incentives that constrain the system are nullified.
   That eliminates "single-payer" as a viable option, conclusively and by definition.
   The next logical step is to let it go.
   There's no wisdom in the endless exploration of non-viable options, all that does is impede real progress.
   The proposal should have been DOA in the first place, as that option doesn't exist within the purview of government anyway.
   That's what Principles are for... so we can tell at first glance, axiomatically, for each newly-resurrected bad idea; whether we even have the right to pursue it in the first place. Or... do we have to prove it all over and over again each time through the irony of epic misery, suffering and death, because we thought it sounded "nice" to want to take care of people.
   If you don't use your Principles, then you don't have any.

   ---

   You offered three examples of expanded freedoms from Medicare for All:
   Changing your employer with less hassle, choosing your medical provider, and more choices for pharmaceuticals.
   Those are all great arguments for getting both the employer and the Government out of the healthcare business; not just the employer.
   If you accept my contention that there are not degrees of freedom, freedom is absolute; then all the obfuscation falls away, and you're left with a single, obvious choice: Free Market.
   Now you could describe the market as "less free" than it should be; but that's really just a concession that it's not free at all.
   Even we, ourselves, are less than absolutely free, which would just be Anarchy. What matters, is where the constraints are coming from... whose discretion is being exercised. That's why the U.S. gov't has authority solely by consent of the governed; preserving the idea that it's our discretion that is being exercised.
   That simple realization, that freedom is absolute, dispels the entire illusion that one system can be "more free" than the other. You're not free to choose if someone else controls your options. Either the system operates at your discretion, or somebody else's.
   Medicare for All operates at somebody else's.
   e.g., you can choose any doctor you like... any doctor from Medicare's approved list, that is.
   That list represents a control lever, and the entire bureaucratic nightmare that feeds into managing that list can consist of whatever they decide to throw in there.
   Your "choice" is an illusion.

@rway

1. A) If it's an intrusion of the mother's rights, why are we allowing it? Why can't she opt out?
   B) So if someone is drowning, you don't have the right to walk away?

2. The planet has never been past these ppm in our history though. We both agree the earth would be fine in 1000 ppm of CO2, but I'm saying people wouldn't be. The Medieval Warm Period is not a good comparison, because the global temperatures were still normal, some areas were warmer and some areas were cooler. And scientists have shown that we are getting warmer temperatures now than there were back then.

   ---

   The data does not say what you think it does. Do you think it's just a coincidence that in the past 30 years, we have emitted more CO2 than ever before and coincidentally the atmosphere has gone up to 400 ppm, which it never has before in human history?

   ---

   Also, could you respond to my response to you saying that more CO2 is not bad?

3. But are healthcare corporations being over-regulated right now? What with the ridiculous insurance pharmaceutical prices?

   ---

   But in this example, the freedom is just to choose whether or not to buy affordable healthcare, which most people want anyways. And with that cost, you get ~60,000 lives saved per year and you lift a massive financial burden off millions of families. Seems like a lot of unnecessary suffering avoided and very little freedom sacrificed.
   Also, is any suffering necessary?

   ---

   But the collective does want universal healthcare. Medicare for all is overwhelmingly popular. Living in a country means that you aren't free to violate the laws, whether you agree with them or not. You have to pay taxes to pay for the military budget, even if you don't agree with it, for example. You have to stop at a red light whether you want to or not.
   To go along with your theory, fine, those things are only laws because they protect other citizens' rights. So does everyone have the right to the military that is forcibly funded by taxpayers? Why don't they have a right to healthcare then? What about life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness? Don't those require health?

   ---

   But let's not pretend like once the embryo is made, the damage is done. Abortion is still a thing. So the woman's autonomy is still being violated every day she is pregnant and postpartum. Why do we continue to allow this breach of freedom when there is an alternative? Why is it more important to protect the fetus's rights than the mother's rights?

   ---

   If the consumer and the payer are the same person it works best, but again, this debate should compare medicare for all to the current system, not an imaginary one. And we have other industries where the consumer is not the payer, like libraries, law enforcement, fire departments, and it works fine, as well as healthcare in other countries.
   So single-payer is the most practical option in reality, if not in theory.

   ---

   If freedom is absolute, you will always be not free. So why not accept being more free? To be absolutely free is unattainable.
   You have yet to provide any argument as to why Medicare for all, an actual bill that is proposed in reality, isn't better than what we have now. You're only comparing it to an imaginary free market, for which there is no proposal or bill.
   yes, you would have to pick from a list, but it would be a broader list than every health insurance network combined. So is it not better to pick from a longer list? Again, please debate my actual position, which is that medicare for all is better than what we have now and thus should be implemented.

   ---

   And why is it that freedom is absolute?

@onthecontrary

1. We seem to just be paraphrasing ourselves with the same arguments.
   A. She can't opt out of the pregnancy without violating someone else's rights, which she doesn't have the right to do. She's been put in that dilemma by the rapist.
   Rape is bad. Being victimized by one person, does not endow you with rights over another.
   B. Doing nothing is not taking an action.
   Like I said above: you have no obligation to provide for other people's rights, only to not interfere with them.

2. "Humanity will suffer at 1000ppm of CO2", is a claim. Convince me.
   I think it will be just the opposite.
   The computer models are literally bullshit, so don't bother with any of those. Models are only as good as the data you feed them. The same models that we use to predict a global average temperature increase of 1.5 degrees 100 years from now... can't tell you if it's going to rain next Wednesday with any real confidence. There are literally just too many variables that we don't fully understand, and likely many more of which we aren't even aware. They are, necessarily, simply "left out" of the calculations.

   ---

   Then what does it say?
   23,100,000,000 metric tons is 3% of 793,100,000,000 metric tons.
   That's 3rd-grade math.
   You're trying to dismiss empirical evidence anecdotally... to talk yourself out of believing your own eyes. That seems irrational.
   If the data doesn't fit your analysis, your analysis is wrong; not the data.
   Like I said before, if you think the IPCC's methodology was wrong, then how so?
   One coincident factor is the solar max that we've just come out of, heating the tundra and releasing CO2... stuff like that. That's over for now. We can expect to hear hysterical crying about "global cooling" (again) for the next couple decades like we did in the '70s... just wait.
   Actually, maybe not. That's why they switched to the noncommittal "Climate Change", so they don't have to keep making new picket signs & Powerpoint slides.

   ---

   What did I miss?

3. Yes. And they do it to themselves.
   Get the gov't out of the pharmaceutical business and those prices will drop from free competition.
   From 1998 to 2015, the Health industry spent almost $7 Billion, including $179 Million from big Pharma, lobbying Congress and contributing to their campaigns.
   (That's about 800 times the amount spent by the entire "gun lobby" by the way, including the NRA, whom people seem to think have an "iron grip" on legislators... because propaganda.)
   That money is an investment, they wouldn't spend it if they weren't getting more back in return. The way the government provides return on that investment, is through regulations. That's all government has to offer, and they do so liberally.
   All large corporations lobby to regulate themselves... because they can afford it, and their smaller competitors can't.
   That's where monopolies come from: Government intervention.

   ---

   "Affordable healthcare" is not a thing, it's an immense and nebulous category of things. One that we have zero chance of even defining with anything approaching consensus, let alone providing universally; which the government is neither capable, incentivized, nor chartered to do in the first place.
   We know of one way, and only one way, to maximize both availability and quality while minimizing cost into an optimum 3-way relationship: The Free Market.
   Is any suffering necessary? Do you lift weights?
   Most good, if not all good, comes from sacrifice or hardship of one sort or another.
   (I think I said, above, reality's a bitch isn't it? lol)
   Consider the implication... a world without suffering, is a world without good. Figure a way around that irony, and you'll be famous forever.
   Every attempt so far, has resulted in an exponential explosion of epic, unnecessary suffering. But... they got famous, too.

   ---

   "Overwhelmingly popular" has nothing to do with the government's responsibilities. The mob can't vote away your rights by outnumbering you.
   That's literally why we have a Constitution limiting the government.
   I don't understand the rest of this paragraph.
   The military protects your rights, by protecting the nation that protects your rights.
   Healthcare is not a right. Being healthy makes it easier to pursue happiness, sure it does, but that's your business. We covered that already:
   If someone else has to provide it to you, you don't have a right to it.

   ---

   Because the alternative is a violation of a sovereign individual's natural rights, and you simply do not have the right to do that. The reason is irrelevant.
   The fetus' rights are not more important than the mother's; you don't have a right to kill her, either.

   ---

   If we know that the Free Market works, why would we not pursue that? I don't understand the reluctance.
   Medicare for all is an imaginary system; any comparison is necessarily hypothetical.
   Social medicine most certainly does not work "fine" in other countries. It depends on who you ask. Some people liked communism, too, others were killed by the millions.
   The test of a system is its overall performance, not positive anecdotes; and we have no way to project, or reason to even suspect, that it would be just, desirable, or even possible to impose on an ostensibly-free and wildly diverse population.
   The debate is still theoretical, and the theoretical best-answer is free market.
   Whether public services work "fine" is debatable, but compared to what? They don't have competition, so we get what we get; like it or not. Volunteer fire departments are probably far more cost-effective, but I wouldn't know.

   ---

   Medicare for All is a government program. I've probably answered that several times already. Healthcare is not the government's job.
   It is not "more free" than seeking healthcare in a free market, or in the current market. And, as prices go up and availability & quality both go down, it will become less and less "free" until it is effectively worthless for the common patient; but he'll still be paying dearly for it. Against his will.
   That's not "free".
   You do not participate in government programs at your own discretion, you do so by the government's rules. That's not free, either. Government operates through a single mechanism, and by that mechanism only; and that mechanism is FORCE. (discussed above, I think)
   Free Market healthcare does not require a "Bill" to implement. We don't need more laws, we need fewer laws. The solution to an excess of government involvement... is simply to stop doing that. That's the entire proposal, there, it's written
   You could submit that Bill on a napkin, we just need the will to do it.

   ---

   Because if someone else can take your freedom at their discretion, you were never free in the first place.

Here's a look at how Canada's healthcare system is holding up under COVID-19:
[fee.org]

@rway

1. A. But we're on the same page that her rights are being violated. Why do the embryo's rights matter more than hers?
   B. But it's effectively the same. If it was possible for her to just stop supporting the embryo, then would it be morally acceptable? The result is the same.
   This is the trolley problem. By your logic, you shouldn't pull the lever because then you would be killing, but if you don't pull it you aren't taking an action, so it's not killing. The result is the same.
   Let's try an example: You have a button. If you do not press it, somebody will die. If you press it, they're okay. Notice how in my example, I'm using a person, even though i don't believe the embryo to be one.
   Anyways, do you have a moral obligation to press it?
   If yes, this seems to undermine the argument you just made, that an inaction can't be an obligation.
   If no, how is the button different from a pregnancy? You can "press the button" by giving the embryo your personal resources, or you could not press it, by terminating the pregnancy. Yes, technically this is an action and not an inaction but in practicality, what does it actually matter? That's the only way to not press the button.
   C. You said, "you have no obligation to provide for other people's rights." Isn't that what pregnancy is? Providing for an embryo?
2. But why do you "think" it will be the opposite? humans have only lived in 200-300, do you think that's arbitrary.
   My reasons for saying we can't survive in that CO2 ppm is because of the greenhouse effect. That much CO2 will trap heat and cause the temperature to rise. We have already seen this start to happen. This will cause the sea levels to rise and the permafrost to melt, and we will have even more temperature rise. The cycle will continue and continue and this will change our coastlines, the global temperature, and perhaps most importantly, our food supply.

   ---

   You're the one who is ignoring the data. You selectively take parts of IPCC research that can be twisted to support your claim. But when the IPCC says we need to reduce emissions by half in ten years or we will have no time left to reverse changes, it's a political stance to achieve their goal, which is....panic?

   ---

   Having a hard time even remembering, but i think i was referring to asking you to back up your claim that what is good for plants is automatically good for humans, when we clearly have different needs.

3. i agree with this. The companies are lobbying congress for laws that regulate them favorably and don't actually restrict them from unfair practices. But your conclusion is where you've lost me. Why do you blame government intervention of the corporations as a whole and not the corporations' intervention in our government? Curious, also, what your opinion is on Citizens United?
   But why is your solution to get rid of government and not to get rid of the corporations? Especially because you have not once proposed a practical path to doing so whatsoever, you're arguing out of pure theory.

   ---

   If affordable healthcare is not a thing, why does every country except the US have some version of it?
   This whole free market thing is not something we have a practical path to, nor is it something occurring anywhere in the world right now. In other words, i don't see how that's an option. So i really beg you to argue with medicare for all vs the current system.

   ---

   Your example of how suffering is necessary is just how it can reduce greater suffering. People needlessly dying and going bankrupt doesn't reduce greater suffering, only the profit margins of corporations.

   ---

   But you're saying government can't do what the individuals don't want them to. Individuals don't like what they're doing now. Individuals want Medicare for all, that's why it's popular.

   ---

   Ok, if it's a matter of the fetus's rights, how do you defend that against what you literally just said: "If someone else has to provide it to you, you don't have a right to it."

   ---

   So why debate an imaginary system against another? Medicare for all is outlined in several bills and while it is not exactly the same as other countries and it is similar. There may be issues but there are far more issues in the current system in America. It seems worthwhile to at least attempt to debate if it is better or worse than the current system. You haven't even tried to argue against Medicare for all at all, only in favor of a free market. So why shouldn't we implement medicare for all in America today, that's my question. Not what is the best healthcare model.

   ---

   This is a slippery slope fallacy. There is no reason to believe any of this will happen.
   The free market doesn't necessarily need a bill, but you do need some way of implementing it, and there simply is not one. Virtually nobody is pushing for that. I would really really like you to argue what we should actually do with our current options, single payer vs what we have now, instead of debating for the free market over and over when that's really not the situation. Theory is theory. Reality is reality.

   ---

   As for this article about Canada, there's no evidence in there that any of the shortages are actually a result of the structure. The US is wealthier than Canada, and is having similar problems. Just because Canada, a relatively more poor country, is also having shortages, doesn't prove that it's due to the universal healthcare system.

@onthecontrary
A. Again, the embryo's rights don't matter more than hers.
The abortion "doctor" has no right to kill either one of them.

B. If a mother with a 6-month old baby just stops feeding it and lets it die, is that morally acceptable? You incur obligations through your own actions.
The trolley problem is an exercise to discuss what you should do, not what you have a right to do. As an ethical dilemma, it has no objectively "correct" answer.
In an example I used earlier in a reply to @Ausi; I would steal a loaf of bread to feed a starving child, like most people would. But, that doesn't mean I have a right to do it, by popular consent... that's not where rights come from.
It's still stealing.
Deciding to "push the button" did not give me the right to push it, nor does the dilemma confer onto me an obligation to push it. It's my decision, and if I decide to take an action, then I'm responsible for the consequences of my action.
If you throw the trolley switch, you've purposefully taken an action to kill one person. You are responsible for that homicide.
If you don't throw the switch, more people die; but you are not responsible for that; because you didn't do anything.
You can try to argue that throwing the switch was the "best" decision, but first you'll need to argue that it was your decision to make. At no point, did you acquire the right to purposefully end someone else's life. You just decided to do it anyway, and are responsible for that decision.
It's important to remember: you are fallable. You will be wrong, frequently, and you will fuck things up. If you constrain your actions to only those things that you have a right to do in the first place, you will minimize the damage that you do to others when you are wrong. If you ignore the rights of others, for whatever reason, there's no limit to the damage you can do.
The parents' obligation is incurred by the purposeful act of copulation, and the consequence of their action is their responsibility.
In the case of rape, only one of them is responsible; but the rest of the equation remains the same. If she decides to throw the switch, and kill the innocent bystander to avoid the alternative, then she is responsible for that decision.
(Actually, it's the "doctor" that's doing the killing, her action was hiring him as a hit-man.)

C. Again, you incur obligations through your actions.

I think humans will thrive, because I have no reason to suspect otherwise.
We can literally see the effect already on reforestation and crop-abundance.
Atmospheric CO2 is great for the food supply.
CO2 feeds the biosphere, which includes us.
And the greenhouse effect is logarithmic; all of those ludicrous IPCC projections assume that it's linear. That's the problem with all models, they purposefully exclude other factors and subsystems.
That's what modeling is for, to reduce complexity so you can wrap your head around specific details in a vacuum, to better understand those isolated relationships. But the next step is to re-integrate that new understanding back into the larger system from which it was extracted. You can't do that when you don't understand the larger system in the first place. And to draw conclusions about that system anyway, based solely on a few models of subsystems, is junk science.
Formulating policy based on junk science, yields bad policy.
And seriously, flipping out over 12ppm is senseless. That's below the noise level, statistically. We couldn't measure our impact even if we had any.
If you insist there's a "problem", then you'll want to look elsewhere to find it.
Try the sun.

I included the IPCC number to show that our contribution is 3%. That is not an endorsement of everything the IPCC has ever said.
23.1 / 793.1 = .029 - That's a mathematical fact.
"We need to reduce emissions by half" is an assertion - an unfounded assertion.

Yes, humans and plants have different needs. One of our needs, is plants.

I've described government intervention as a symbiotic relationship with the large corporations, maintained through lobbying and regulations. That obviously implicates both of them, not just government.
The solution is not to "get rid" of either government or corporations, but to minimize that corrupt relationship. The practical path is clear: pull back on the inappropriate power that we've abdicated to government. If they didn't have all that power, to most of which they have no legitimate claim, then nobody would be writing them big checks to abuse it.
Government regulation is theoretically necessary in some cases, sure... but should be allowed only with extreme reluctance and oversight; and only in pursuit of clearly protecting somebody's rights... since that is government's sole purpose. Otherwise, you get... this... what we have now.
The first unconstitutional power that we should eliminate, is the Income Tax, since more than half of the lobbyists on K St are tax lobbyists looking for favors for their clients; corporate or otherwise.
The FairTax (H.R. 25) bill solves that problem with one signature. It's already written and sitting in the inbox of Ways & Means.

You're missing the point, "affordable healthcare" is not a thing, it's a nebulous conglomerate of things. That's exactly why some other countries have "some version" of it... and not just: "it".
Before getting lost in irrelevant details, the first level of analysis for a new proposal is necessarily theoretical. You're trying to propose MfA as the right plan, but you've skipped right past the question of whether it's the right approach in the first place.
And, in a free country, it's not.
We don't have any practical path to socialized medicine. And the obstacle in this case, is far more formidable than inappropriate government regulations: that is, peoples' rights. The preservation of which, is that very same government's only raison d'etre in the first place.
I'll just reiterate my original response: if you think you have a better idea and can pursue it without reaching into my pocket, go for it.

The government does not exist to do what you want it to do. It exists to protect our rights from one another while we do what we want to do.

"You don't have the right to take any action to end the life of another human being."
The mother is not providing "life", she's providing sustenance. And, she's doing so passively, not by taking any action. If she can think of a way to stop that from happening without killing another human being, then she'd have every right in the world to pursue it.

"Outlined" doesn't cut it, MfA is still imaginary; and conceptually wrong to begin with.
It would be easier, faster, and more effective to eliminate some government regulations; and that would actually restore freedoms rather than erode them.

What makes you think "slippery slope" is a fallacy?
Once you set the precedent and align the incentives, it would be foolish to expect anything else.
Centralized Control vs Distributed Control, they're both theoretical models, and only one of them is applicable to a free society: Distributed Control.
Centralized Control is appropriate for top-down institutions where cost and efficiency are simply discarded in favor of effectiveness, out of perceived necessity; like the military in wartime. It's good for nothing else, especially in a free society.
Indeed, Individual Freedom and Distributed Control are synonymous, since it is the individuals among whom that control is rightfully distributed.

lol... well, apparently it didn't fix anything either.

@rway

1. A. Why does the embryo's right to be born matter more than the woman's right to have autonomy over her body and choose not to use her body to create a fetus by undergoing pregnancy, birth, and postpartum?
   B. So if the dilemma doesn't obligated you to push the button, doesn't that translate to a pregnant person not being obligated to carry the embryo to term?
   C. So in the trolley problem, you think throwing the switch does hold you responsible for homicide? It seems you're holding your hypothetical ethics over doing the most good in practice.
2. The reason to believe humans will not thrive is the greenhouse effect and countless scientific research saying we won't thrive. And you don't have a reason to believe that humans will thrive.

   ---

   It's not logarithmic or linear. As the planet warms, the effect will increase exponentially.

   ---

   If you think the problem is the sun, then is it a coincidence that the globe is warming more than we have ever seen in the exact same time period that we've started burning copious amounts of fossil fuels?

3. But why do you disagree with my claim that the solution would actually be to overturn Citizens United?

   ---

   I'm not saying get rid of everything private. Hospitals and providers are still private, unlike in many countries. But we don't need a corporate payer whose goal is the make profits off of our healthcare. What is the purpose of the middleman? I know, the free market has no middleman. But isn't one middleman, the government, better than two middlemen, who are profiting off of health?

   ---

   That bill would replace estate, gift, payroll, and income taxes with a sales tax. Its purpose is to save money for the wealthy and pass more losses onto the lower class.

   ---

   Yes, other countries have different versions, but they're closer to medicare for all than to what we have now. And they seem to be doing much better than we are. @Ausi asked me to tag them so they can give their perspective as someone from a country that does use this type of system.

   ---

   You're still approaching this entire argument with pure theory and now you're saying that since you theoretically disagree, there's no point in debating it against the current system. But at some point, you have to look at the reality of the situation, not hypotheticals. Why is single payer less good than what we have now?

   ---

   It's not passive, it's just automatic/involuntary. Throwing up every day, being in labor, going to doctors, giving birth, contracting, these seem pretty active to me.
   So if there was a way for the mother to simply stop providing her body, it would be okay? The embryo wouldn't be able to live that way so the result would be the same. The only difference is a technicality, an ethical loophole. And we're back to the trolley problem. This seems to be the root of our disagreement. You put so much value, perhaps all of it, into what is ethically permitted in your rules, and you're not even examining what is actually going to provide the most good.
   So the difference between stopping being pregnant which is medically impossible, and getting an abortion which is medically possible, but technically an action and not an inaction, makes a world of difference to you. But to me, the result is the same so I see them the same.

   ---

   Again, it's not imaginary. Studies have shown it would work, and it works in other countries, as @Ausi can perhaps attest to.
   Free market is more imaginary. but I'm not here to debate free market, because we're talking about the current system being worse than medicare for all, which you haven't argued against.

   ---

   Slippery slope is not necessary a fallacy, but the slippery slope fallacy is a type of fallacy, and you seem to be getting into that territory. Taking away one "right" that people don't all want and didn't have in the first place, isn't going to lead to an authoritarian regime with no individual control.

@onthecontrary
1A. The embryo's right to be born, and the woman's right to autonomy are not the issue. You don't have a right to interfere with either, that's the issue. If you had sovereignty over both of them, then you could pick which one was more important. You don't. So... you can't.
B. No. Pushing the button is an action. Other people's rights constrain your actions. Abortion is also an action. The embryo's rights constrain that action. Carrying it to term is not taking an action, it's the natural consequence of that immutable constraint.
C. You are under no obligation to "do the most good" in your life. Indeed, you're not obligated to do anything at all... ever.
Now, what you should do in any given situation is a matter of your own personal ethics. But if the goal is to do the "right" thing, then your options are necessarily limited to those things that you have a right to do in the first place; which does not include purposeful homicide.
Your only obligation, is to not violate anybody else's rights, if and when you do choose to do something.
That simple rule is expected to result in the "most good" over time, when you average out the actions of billions of people with fallible judgement and different priorities, each choosing actions with potential to impact other people's lives.
The road to Hell is paved with good intentions. Respecting other people's rights limits the damage you can do when it turns out you were wrong.

2. Exponentially? If that were true, we would all have been dead about a day and a half after the very first time it went up at all, millions of years ago. So the next question is, what prevented that from happening? What are those countering processes, how do they work, and what makes you believe that we've exceeded the limits of their effectiveness?
   If none of those questions has even occurred to you, then you can't really pretend that you've done anything resembling an objective scientific analysis.
   I think we've covered all this Doomsday ground already.
   Those are just unfounded assertions... I can't talk you out of an irrational fear. If you think their snake oil can "cure all that ails you...", then I can't stop you from buying it.
   But, I would suggest varying your sources, and a little less blind faith in people who call themselves "scientists." They've been at this for decades, keep changing their stories, and haven't been anything other than dramatically wrong yet; it's only the proposed solution that remains consistent: more control.
   Which just brings us back to my original response: if your plan includes me, the answer is no.
   If you hope to change my mind you've got a lot more convincing to do.

3. Did you claim that overturning Citizens United would fix something? What... and how? I'm not very familiar with that law.

   ---

   No. The existence of middlemen is the problem, not the number of middlemen. More options would probably be better, actually... at least then they would have to compete with one another.

   ---

   The "lower class" pays nothing under the FairTax.
   They get a monthly stipend to cover what they pay at the register.
   And the wealthy won't be able to hide their money offshore any more. They'll pay taxes every time they spend money, and they spend a lot of money.
   It also brings the entire "under the table" economy into the tax base. It's a good plan, you should actually read up on it if you're interested in taxes.

   ---

   "they seem to be doing much better than we are." do they?
   I lived in Italy for a few years, they had horror stories and they had "seems ok" stories, as well.
   None of which matters to me. The approach is conceptually flawed. We didn't create a government to intervene in the private healthcare industry. They don't have the authority, and the abuse is just corrupting the whole thing.
   Always do the right thing, and accept the consequences. You'll come out ahead in the long run.

   ---

   "Single payer" is a hypothetical. It's the details that matter, for implementation and for comparison. You haven't proposed a single detail, just a generalized "single payer" model, and an admission that it severs the connection between the consumer and the producer; which is a fatal flaw.
   But, like I've said several times, the whole model is conceptually wrong in a free society. That assertion doesn't depend on the details, it eliminates the option right out of the gate... no need to wander around endlessly in a rabbit hole that doesn't go anywhere.
   Convince me that it's "right", and then we can talk about whether it's "less good."

   ---

   That's what passive means.
   You don't get to rearrange the distribution of "good" in the universe, at the expense of other people's rights; you don't have that right.
   You can't tell the difference between doing something and doing nothing?

   ---

   A wood-powered car works, too. That doesn't mean it's a good design. I'm not familiar enough with either the current system or whatever proposal you're calling "Medicare for All" to judge which one is worse. They're both wrong. I'm not interested in picking the one that's less-wrong.
   How about we just do what's right, instead. There's nothing imaginary or theoretical about removing government regulations.
   It's not even complicated.

   ---

   A system that gets predictably worse, with no corrective force to counter that Progressive degeneration, is not a fallacy; it's just a really, really bad proposal.
   You keep referring to Medicare for All as one of our real-world options. It's not an option. The only reason we don't have it already is because the Government doesn't have the authority to impose it on us. They didn't even have the authority to impose ObamaCare, but they barely got away with it by slow-rolling the SCOTUS while it grew roots. They're just continuing their progression of baby-steps to a totalitarian State that began way back with President Wilson.
   Now that is a slippery slope, and it's no fallacy. An American from 100 years ago wouldn't even recognize what we have now.
   I don't understand your statement about "taking away one right that people don't all want..." You don't choose your rights, and you certainly don't choose mine.
   The Government has no authority whatsoever to "take away" rights or to "give" rights to anybody. That's not where rights come from.
   And, to abandon that fundamental understanding of the very notion of sovereignty itself, is most certainly a slippery slope, because if you gather together enough willing serfs to allow the Government to act as if your rights exist at their discretion... then you effectively have no rights; and now neither do I.

@rway

1. A. Then who has sovereignty over the embryo? itself? The pregnant person hs sovereignty over their right to their own body, why can't they protect that right? If they can't protect it, it seems you are denying them that right in favor of the embryo's right.
   B. Why does it matter if it is an action or an inaction? Push the button, other person lives. Don't push the button, other person dies. Carry pregnancy to term, other person lives. Terminate pregnancy, other person dies. Why is the classification of active or passive more relevant that the result itself?
   C. Who made up these rules? Why is it so important to follow this rule even in cases where it doesn't do anyone any good?
2. It's exponential this time, up to a certain point. I never said it's been going up or will go up exponentially forever. That's a ludicrous strawman. But in the past, when it goes up, it does tend to go up a lot, and the same when it goes down.
   The story has not been changing.
   Things have been going wrong. It's May and it's 80 degrees today where I live in the northeast US. A few days ago, it was hailing hard. Yes, this is anecdotal, but you can see many examples in recent years from across the globe of increased temperatures, wildfires, hurricanes, etc.
3. If the problem is the flow of money from corporations to government, overturning citizens united, which classifies that money as free speech, seems to be a logical conclusion, no?

   ---

   it's not about options, it's about middlemen pocketing the money. Medicare for all gives you more options about which care to get. The current system gives you very little options of what plan to get and what doctors and clinics you can go to.

   ---

   I'm happy to read more into it, but I find it hard to believe this won't be a regressive cost passed onto consumers. I know there is a value added tax in many other countries and many people are advocating for that type of thing over here.

   ---

   Just because they have horror stories doesn't mean they have an inferior system, does it? Does the US not have horror stories galore?

   ---

   There are very many details, i just don't feel the need to type them all here. The plan I'm referring to is the bill proposed by bernie sanders and you can find it on his official government website.

   ---

   The difference between something and nothing really doesn't concern me if the result is the same. And i don't really feel you adequately addressed my response. Anyhow, active labor is not certainly not nothing.

   ---

   A wood powered car isn't a good design because it doesn't work as well. I don't think the way we power our cars right now is very efficient, but it's less bad and that's why we do it. If you can't choose the less bad option and just insist on picking the worse option because either option is not the "right" option, i don't see how you're gonna get anywhere. Sometimes in life the option you really want is just not there and you have to make a decision on how to proceed instead of just refusing to work with what you've got.

   ---

   Why do you say it's a system that would get predictably worse? I recognize this as a slippery slope fallacy because i don't really see a lot of logic between each step.

   ---

   So it isn't an option because you don't think the government has the authority to enact it? What about the majority of Americans that do want the government to enact this?

   ---

   Does the fact that someone from 100 years ago would be shocked to see the current situation mean that the current situation is incorrect?

   ---

   Did i ever say the government gives you rights? I'm talking about how the government can best protect the rights we already have.

@onthecontrary
At this point, I'll just restate my opening question: whether you can make a concise argument supporting any of these three beliefs, that doesn't sacrifice the very premise of Western Civilization; that being the sovereignty of the individual.
The answer seems to be: no.
So far, we've just been examining your reasons for wanting to ignore that sovereignty.
That can make for interesting discussion, but hasn't even begun to justify these ideas for imposition on a free society.

A. Yes, the embryo is a sovereign individual. Natural human rights apply to all humans.
You don't have the right to violate anybody else's rights. And if your excuse is that your victim is not a human, then it's up to you to prove it.
Here's an interesting exercise if you don't like DNA: try to prove that you are a human, without simply making up some arbitrary criteria.
You do have the right to protect your own rights, insofar as you can do so without violating anybody else's.
Killing them counts as violating their rights.
B. Because you're only responsible for things that you do, not for the theoretically infinite number of things that you don't do.
C. These "rules" are simply the inescapable implications of being a sovereign individual. You can't be obligated to "do good". Obligated by whom? What you choose to do is literally nobody else's business. That's what sovereign means. And "good" is subjective, what some people consider to be "good" can have disastrous consequences. Hitler thought that what he was doing was "good" for the Aryan race and for civilization itself in the long run. Most people disagree.
We've covered all this before. You are fallible, you will be wrong; that's why you don't get to tell other people what to do. They will be wrong, too... frequently. As long as they stay within their rights, the damage they do to other people's lives is minimized.
You don't follow the rule because "it's important"... you follow it because you have no natural right to do otherwise.

An exponential increase doesn't stop on its own without some countering force to interrupt the input and/or to suppress the reaction. So... what is it? And what makes you think that it's no longer a factor?

You're not going back far enough: overpopulation, global cooling, global warming, climate change, biodiversity; all different attempts to force, out of urgent necessity of course... the same misguided "solution": more centralized government control. Which would predictably do more harm than good, even if it wasn't all just bullshit.

Could be... what was the justification for Citizens United, and why was it incorrect?
Picture a pile of sugar on your kitchen floor. It's foolish to go after just one of many anthills to get rid of the ants in your kitchen. The right answer is to simply clean up the sugar. There's too much inappropriate power in government, and until we clean it up, we'll never get rid of the ants.

So... more options is the goal? If you're forced to pick cotton, that's wrong. But if you're allowed to choose between cotton or tobacco... then that's good?
The goal is freedom. Actual freedom, not the illusion of more options.
This statement seems to contradict the rest of your statement: "it's not about options, it's about middlemen pocketing the money."
That's actually correct. And the solution is to eliminate the middlemen.

Politicians and other control freaks love the VAT, because it's a hidden tax on productivity.
A consumption tax, like the FairTax, is the only "right" way to gather public revenue in a free society. i.e., without infringing on rights.
It's simple and transparent, universal, and more "progressive" than the current system.
The FairTax actually, and finally, un-taxes the poor the way they've been promised all along by lying politicians. It does so in two ways: a monthly reimbursement for sales taxes, and by eliminating the corporate tax; which comes directly out of their pockets every time they buy something. That also makes it good for business, which makes it good for the economy and for the cost of living that affects the poor disproportionately, as well.

There is a world of difference between doing something and doing nothing. If you fail to differentiate between the two, then you have no basis upon which to conclude whether somebody's rights are being violated.
Doing something is an action. Your actions are constrained by other people's rights. The only interest that they have in your actions at all, is whatever extent to which their own rights are affected. Where they are not affected... your actions are literally none of their business.
That has a crucial implication: other people have no right to compel you to take any action, under any circumstance, for any reason... ever.

You keep suggesting that freedom is not a viable option... so we should pick the "less oppressive" option. If we've given up on freedom, then we've given up on America.
Freedom is absolute, so is oppression; you only get to pick one.
Your options only have a single natural constraint: other people's rights. Any and every constraint imposed on you that doesn't satisfy that criterion, is tyranny.
And, "less tyranny" is a false bargain, there's no such thing. Your actions are either guided by your own discretion, or somebody else's... there's no in-between.
If there was no "right" option, I'd pick the "less bad" one... sure. Or, none at all. If you don't have that choice (opting out), then it's not a choice is it?

The idea that slippery slope is a fallacy... is a fallacy. They're real. Any system you can possibly conceive will progress according to the incentives that you've built into it, limited only by the constraints that you've also built-in. And once you've abdicated your discretion to somebody else, those mutable guides become instruments of their priorities, not yours. Every bureaucracy seeks perpetually to grow its power and its budget, that's built in to the very nature of bureaucracy... it's simply a function of how bureaucracy works. If you leave it up to the bureaucrats, it will never stop. There's no immutable constraint to stop it. There's no such thing as "enough" budget or control.
The only constraint was your rights, but you've been talked into abandoning the very notion of your rights, ironically for the "greater good."
You've already conceded the reality that severing the producer/consumer relationship simply untethers the constraints on cost and quality. That opens the gate to the "slippery slope", it's no fallacy. The next step is to actually accept the implications of that realization.

We've covered this already. What "the majority" wants, even if that were true... does not determine what the government can do.
"Majority rule" is democracy. We are a Constitutional Republic. In a democracy, minorities literally have no rights. If the majority decides that you should have to use a different public drinking fountain than everybody else, that doesn't give the government the right to enforce it. The government is limited by your rights. Indeed, the only reason it exists at all is to protect your rights from the mob... not to join the mob in violating them.
To abandon that notion, is merely to join the mob.

In this case, yes. It is evidence of the "slippery slope" that we've been on... that we're still on. It started the moment that some of us accepted the fallacy that it's the government's job to "take care of you." That is nothing more than a Faustian call to abdicate your rightful sovereignty.

Yes, that's exactly what you are saying, whether you realize it or not.
The very notion of "taking away one right that people don't all want..." implies the ability to do so, which government does not have; and that your rights exist at the discretion of the majority, which they don't.
What "right" is protected by imposing a mandatory health plan? And what rightful authority does the government have to do so?

@rway To your introductory argument, I disagree for three reasons. One, we haven't much debated whether the sovereignty of the individual extends to embryos. Two, even if the embryo is an individual, there are two sovereign individuals in the situation and I'm not convinced by your reasoning why only the embryo's is relevant. And three, I don't think the technicality of what falls under a blanket statement matters as much of the actual reality and what is possible in a situation. In other words, there are times when we have to make a decision that is not ideal, and it's more important to look at the realistic options rather than trying to decide according to your ideals which already don't work perfectly in this situation.

A. How do you know the embryo is a sovereign individual? Why are your arbitrary criteria less arbitrary than my arbitrary criteria? Why do you think that the pregnant person, in protecting their right to not be pregnant, is violating the embryo's right to be born, and not the other way around? That being that the embryo, in protecting their right to be born is violating the pregnant person's right to not be pregnant?
B. But is this not just a blanket rule? Shouldn't rules take into account the exceptions that can occur? Yes perhaps this is true that actions matter more than inactions, but surely you can make more in-depth rules taking into account the situation at hand. For example, in this situation, I don't see how terminating a pregnancy counts as an action morally, even if technically it is, and continuing with the pregnancy is not an action. Yes, technically, it's kind of not, but for all intents and purposes, it's quite active indeed.
C. But who made up the rule? If i understand correctly, you're saying people have to follow the rule, and also that people can't tell anyone else what they should do. But isn't that what the rule does? You're telling people to act according to the rule. And while i personally agree with the basis of the rule, I don't see why your interpretation of the rule is the one people should follow.

Are you denying that the world has gotten much warmer for periods and then eventually slowed and later began to get much cooler? In this case, it will get warmer, and then much warmer, and eventually certain environmental factors will allow it to go back down as they have in the past, but I'm not really interested in looking so far into the earth's future or past, I'm just concerned how this will affect the human race.
If the goal is more governmental control, why hasn't it happened yet? Why is half the government denying the existence of climate change, and why is almost all of the government particularly against a green new deal type plan? And why are they still in cahoots with the fossil fuel industry, is it in their interest to deny climate change or is it in their interest to believe it?
What is the difference between a consumption tax and a VAT?
If they're reimbursing the people, where does the revenue come from? What's stopping corporations from passing more costs to the consumer?
But why is there always a world of difference between doing something and doing nothing? In my opinion, the world is too complex for these one size fits all rules, there can be exceptions. If there was a way for the pregnant person to simply cease to continue the activities of being pregnant, that would make it okay? To me, the fact that it yields the same result puts it on an equal moral level as an abortion, am I wrong? Especially since it is not medically possible for someone to just cease to be pregnant.
This paragraph alone about freedom is just five blanket platitudes in a row, as is much of the other paragraphs. platitudes are just that. Why do you believe freedom is so absolute? If you have to pick two bad options, don't you pick the less bad one? you keep saying you don't, but then what do you do? if you don't pick at all, it could be even worse, no?
And I'm not saying freedom isn't viable, I'm saying that for the sake of this debate on whether or not medicare for all should be implemented, it would be helpful if you could provide any arguments of why it's not better than the current system.
Whether or not you believe your argument was an example of slippery slope fallacy, it still is a well-known and recognized fallacy. And you aren't really applying these blanket statements to the issue we're debating. Why is medicare for all more bureaucratic than what we have now?
When did i abandon my rights? And more importantly, what exactly are my rights?
It's not about majority rules, it's about our national healthcare system, which only works if we're all on the same page, that's why it's a national healthcare system. We can benefit the most people and violate the least amount of rights with this system, in my opinion.
I don't think they're taking away any rights, but i still don't know what rights you're even referring to? What rights do we have? I was merely saying that even if i accept your notion that they're taking a right away, it's still a bit of a slippery slope fallacy to get to your conclusion.

@onthecontrary
Which do you disagree with: that natural human rights apply to all humans, or that an embryo is a human?

@rway In this case, that an embryo is a human, or at least a human that human rights apply to.
I spent a hell of a time writing up that response btw.

@onthecontrary we've lost focus, and keep paraphrasing the same questions over and over.

You answered: "both"?
If it's not a human, prove it.
Or, if it is a human that rights do not apply to, then not all humans have rights.

@onthecontrary
"What is the difference between a consumption tax and a VAT?
If they're reimbursing the people, where does the revenue come from? What's stopping corporations from passing more costs to the consumer?"

Consumption tax is just a sales tax, paid at the retail register. VAT is an embedded tax imposed at intermediary stages of production, which raises the cost of the item at every stage.
The reimbursements come from the federal budget, which just means other people's taxes.
The only thing that stops corporations from raising prices is competition. If you're the only game in town you can charge whatever you want.

@onthecontrary
C. Nobody made up the rule. As I proposed above, it's simply an implication of sovereignty.
I'm not telling anybody to do anything, I'm just making an observation. In fact, I've described in some detail how I have no right to tell anybody to do anything.
If you disagree, and you believe that you can be obligated to "do good" by someone else; then... as I asked above: Obligated by whom? And, on what authority? And... using who's interpretation of "good"?

@rway I don't think anyone can prove if it is a human or not, neither you nor I. I'm not going to claim that i am proving it, because I'm not. And i don't think any of your proof is satisfactory at all. What it comes down to is that it seems like not a person. I know you've already rebutted this argument by saying it's "not a very useful standard" but once you get deep enough into an argument, there are no standards. Mathematically, your proof always goes back to the givens. And who gives the givens? A lot of times, we agree on the givens, like "stealing is wrong" or "killing is wrong" but i can't technically prove either because it is predicated on a given, even if you try to back it up saying "you can't infringe on the rights of others," it still comes down to that being a given. And i agree with that, but it's still technically subjective. I believe it, but I can't scientifically prove it. It's an opinion, not a fact.
In this argument, you're citing givens, like that human life is valuable. This is subjective, but i happen to agree. However, I do not agree with the detail that this rule includes all human specimens, dating back to a zygote. You're taking that as a given.
But you haven't explained why you take it as a given. It goes back to, correct me if I'm wrong, that a human specimen seems like a human being to you. So your argument is no more valid than mine.
I'm happy to explain why I don't take it as a given.

@rway So aren't you just moving the money around? People pay more at the register, and then get reimbursed. So theoretically, the tax is benefiting people. But a VAT tax, which i won't argue for or against, is also taxing the manufacturers who make the product, which will make the product cost more, so people will pay more at the register, which is pretty similar. The competition/free market ting applies to both models.

@rway I haven't said anything about obligations. In fact, you seem to think we are obligated not to infringe on the rights of others. Who is obligating in this case? Who gave people rights? What are the rights?

@onthecontrary
"givens" are also called axioms, they are the foundations of logical analysis. If you can't agree on the axioms, you'll never agree on the implications.
Western civilization has adopted the axiom that all humans have basic human rights, that's what makes it a "given". There are no qualifying criteria. Attempts to impose such criteria lead to things like slavery and the Holocaust.

@onthecontrary Not really, a VAT just makes everything more expensive, for everybody; which disproportionately impacts people with less disposable income to work with.
And it wouldn't replace the income tax, just add to it. The FairTax bill includes a provision to eliminate the income tax.

@onthecontrary Nobody "gave you" rights, they are implications of your existence.
If you were the only person on the planet, you could literally do just whatever you wanted.
Now, add a second person... they have the same natural claim; the ability to do whatever they want.
The only logical claim that second person has over your actions, is the extent to which their ability to do whatever they want is affected; otherwise it's none of their business what you do, and vice versa.
Their rights constrain some subset of your potential actions.
If they're bigger than you are, then they can ignore your rights and do whatever they want... you lose.
Or you can agree to respect each other's rights; we call that being "civilized".

@onthecontrary
I thought I provided a sound proof by elimination:
Humans are only capable of reproducing one thing: other humans; there's nothing else it can be.
Therefore, it must be a human.
QED
It's irrational to even "wonder" for a moment what it might possibly be... you already know what it is.

@rway Where does it say there are no qualifying criteria? Clearly, to have human rights you need to be human. What makes an embryo a human?
But before you talk about rights and protecting yours and not infringing upon others, what exactly are your rights?
Don't say QED after a fallacious argument, or even a logically sound one, it's a teeny bit insufferable. This is a black and white fallacy. Yeah, it's not some other species, but that doesn't mean it's a person.

@onthecontrary lol... if you can't show a flaw in the logic, then it is just irrational not to accept the implication.
That's what logic is for, to cut through dogmatism.
To dismiss sound logic as a "black and white" fallacy, is to denounce logic itself and to abandon reason altogether.

@rway A black or white fallacy is when you say something is true, because an alternative is not true. That's not logical, because you didn't first establish that it must be one of those two options. So when you say it's a human person because it isn't a member of any other species, you aren't proving that it's a person entitled to human rights. You're just proving that it's a human specimen. But why does that automatically mean it must be entitled to human rights? You haven't proven that people are entitled to human rights because we are human specimens with at least one cell.

@onthecontrary False dichotomy is a rhetorical fallacy. Logic doesn't have rhetorical fallacies, rhetoric has rhetorical fallacies.
That's why we use logic.
Logic is either sound, or it's not. If it's sound, then the implications are TRUE.

You are arguing that it's not sound, because you don't accept the axiom: "Human rights apply to all humans." Like I said before, that's the same argument used for slavery and the Holocaust. Which should not be surprising, because the Holocaust literally emerged from the same philosophy as Planned Parenthood (the American Birth Control League in the 1920's); that of Eugenics.

That axiom, is the entire premise of basic human rights, and the foundation of Individual Sovereignty.

We began this discussion on this condition:
"...if you can start by making a concise argument supporting any of those beliefs, that doesn't sacrifice the very premise of Western Civilization; that being the sovereignty of the individual."

And we end it with the realization that you cannot.

@rway
A. If the rhetoric contains a fallacy, then the logic is not sound. It isn't sound logic to say that it must be a person because it isn't a member of any other species. Because that is saying that every specimen is either a person, or a non-human specimen which you didn't ever establish.
B. Just because they're both saying that a certain group is not a person doesn't mean they're both wrong. Slavery and the Holocaust was wrong because the group they were putting in that less-that-human category were groups that are absolutely people. But if you say that you're allowed to rip up paper because "paper isn't people," I can't say, "well that's the same logic they used for slavery. Yeah, it's the same logic but that doesn't mean it's wrong.
C. Just to be clear, you began the discussion on that condition, and you're only looking at it through your opinion on what the sovereignty of the individual is, which isn't how debates work. Am i not allowed to disagree with your opinion in a debate?

@onthecontrary
A. "Every specimen is either a human or it's not."
Yes, that is an assumption of my assertion. It's also a Truism.
"Person" is a legal term. Whether it should legally be a "person", is the entire point of the discussion.
Here are some of my assumptions:

1. The embryo is a biological organism
2. All biological organisms are a member of some species
3. The embryo is the product of human reproduction
4. Humans are capable of reproducing other humans
5. Humans are not capable of reproducing anything other than other humans

P1. The embryo is human, by the assumptions above
P2. All humans have basic human rights, by definition of "basic human rights"
P3. A "natural person" is a human that has basic human rights, by legal definition
Therefore: The embryo is a person
QED

If you're attempting to argue that any of these are FALSE, then please do.
Simply paraphrasing the issue and repeating the claim that "It doesn't seem like it has rights..." is not a debate.

B. They weren't "absolutely" people to them, that's the whole point. They didn't "seem" like they deserved the same rights as regular people... It is exactly the same argument.

C. ...and you accepted the condition by engaging.
I'd be happy to consider your opinion on what the sovereignty of the individual is...
what is it?

@rway
A. You've proven that which was never a debate. The embryo is a human specimen. The last part of your argument is where I disagree. "Human rights" doesn't necessarily mean human specimen. My claim is that the "human" in human rights is a separate definition of humans. It refers, in my opinion to people, which can think and feel, etc. A single-celled human organism is indeed human in some capacity, as it is a member of our species. however, it is not a human in the sense that it is a person, an individual. Surely, if you had to choose to save an embryo or a child, you would choose a child. Surely, you count your age from the day of your birth, which we celebrate as birthdays because it is considered our first day on this planet. That is not perhaps in itself a proof, merely an example.
B. Pay attention to my point. I'm saying that just because you use the same argument as an incorrect claim doesn't mean your claim is incorrect. Of the following statements, at least one is true and at least one is false: black people are not people; embryos are not people; shoes are not people. Same argument, but that doesn't mean they are all false or all true.
C. I consider my position to be in perfect alignment with the sovereignty of the individual.

1. The pregnant person has the sovereignty to decide whether or not to employ their own body for the making of another being.
2. A zygote is not an individual.
   If either one of the above is true, then abortion is aligned with the sovereignty of the individual.

@onthecontrary
A. Exactly. Your argument still just boils down to your opening opinion, that it doesn't "seem" like a person to you.
I get it. Prove it.

B. Your point is another Strawman. The format of the statements don't have anything to do with it. They all rely on the same subjective rationale as a premise: that the object doesn't "seem" like a person.
"Shoes are not people" is obviously true... but never demonstrated to be true.
Obviously is not a useful objective standard.

C. That's just an incorrect assertion.
If both of the above were true, then abortion would be nobody else's business. I think I suggested that almost verbatim near the very beginning.
Whether "A zygote is not an individual" is exactly the point of the whole discussion.
You're begging the question, trying to use your subjectively derived conclusion that it's not... as proof that it's not.

@rway
A. Listen to my answer. I can't "prove" it, not because I'm wrong but because being a human that is entitled to human rights is a moral classification, not a scientific one. While it might seem to you that because you have a proof and I don't, it means you're more correct, it seems to me like you're just being dishonest and proving irrelevant ideas because none of us can really "prove" something that is subjective. You can't "prove" that ice cream is delicious, but that doesn't mean it's not. And I understand that it's not a one to one comparison, because it's totally fine if some people eat ice cream and not others and it doesn't have anything to do with violating anybody else's rights. But the only thing I'm comparing is not the consequence but the subjectivity of the claim. you can't prove it because it's not a scientific classification. I would be happy to discuss why I believe it's not a human being, but i won't claim to prove it, and you have to understand that first so you aren't just saying, "well that isn't a proof" because that's my whole point, I'm never trying to provide a proof.
B. See A. You can't demonstrate it. It's subjective.
The only thing I was trying to prove by this argument was that the fact that it's making the same point about emrbyos that slavery made against black people does not inherently disprove that my claim that embryos are not people is wrong.
C. Again, I'm not proving anything because the whole question is subjective. I could make stuff up to sound like I'm proving it, but that would be dishonest. And I wasn't using the fact that a zygote is not an individual as proof that it's not. I was using it as proof that abortion is not violating anyone's individual sovereignty. Do you agree that if my statements were true that it would be in alignment with the sovereignty of the individual? If so, we discuss the validity of the statements.

@onthecontrary
A. Got it. Now actually listen to my answer.
You can't prove it, precisely because it is incorrect. If your assertion were TRUE, you could prove it.
You are right that, "[A] human that is entitled to human rights [was] a moral classification...".
But, that classification has been made. It is the underlying premise of Western Civilization, which was my opening assertion: Individual Sovereignty, or the notion that "basic human rights" apply to ALL humans.

You can easily prove that "ice cream is delicious"... but first you have to define "ice cream" and "delicious." Otherwise you're not using logic at all, you're just stating an opinion.
The assertion that: "[The zygote is] a human that is entitled to human rights", can be determined objectively and irrefutably as either TRUE or FALSE with simple Set Theory.
The Sets are:
S1: "Humans that deserve rights"
S2: "Humans that don't deserve rights"
Our premises are:
P1: The zygote is human
P2: Human rights apply to all humans
S2 is defined as a null set, by P2.
You are arguing that the zygote is a member of a null set, which is objectively and irrefutably FALSE, by definition of a null set.

B. See A. I just did (again.)

C. I think your first assertion is TRUE.
Regarding your second assertion: "A zygote is not an individual."; again... if that were TRUE then it would be nobody else's business.
"sovereignty of the individual" only applies to individuals... by definition.
Now, let me emphasize that: "by definition." That's only true if you're talking about the same thing.
If you define "individual" as a banana sandwich, then your assertion is TRUE; a zygote is not a banana sandwich.
If you define "individual" as a human being, it's FALSE.
If you don't define it at all, it's your opinion.

@rway A. No, you can't prove that ice cream is delicious. But that doesn't make it incorrect. However, to the extent to which you can prove that ice cream is delicious, I can prove that the zygote is not human to the same extent.
In your proof, when you say human rights apply to all humans, meaning literal human specimens, including single-celled, there is no premise that says that human rights apply to every human specimen, including single cells.
B. It is not conducive to a productive debate to speak with the implication that you are already correct, and without the consideration that your logic may be flawed. If you already have the assumption that there is no possible way I can disprove your logic, why should I even try?
C. Right, but I don't define an individual as a human, meaning a single-celled human specimen. The dictionary definition is "a distinctive or original person." A single cell is not distinctive or original. Sure, it has distinctive and original DNA, but that DNA has not yet been constructed into a person, following the genetic pattern. The DNA simply shows that it has the potential to be distinctive and original. But the zygote in its current state has no thoughts, feelings, emotions. It does not have a personality. It does not have cognitive functionality. That, to me, falls outside of the definition of an individual.

@onthecontrary
A. Yes there is. It's the premise of Individual Sovereignty, and the stated premise of this discussion.
You can't defend your position, without sacrificing that premise... that was my initial contention, and it has held true.

B. If you didn't think you were correct, why would you be arguing the point?
Logic doesn't care about my assumptions. If you can disprove it, then it's incorrect. But you have to actually disprove it to demonstrate that.

C. We've already established that it doesn't "seem" like an individual, in your opinion.
My contention is, that your opinion is not sufficient justification to kill somebody.

@rway A. "Individual sovereignty" is an undefined term. Define it, then it can be a premise.
And if you can prove ice cream is delicious, go ahead and do it. By point is that you can't derive an objective fact from a subjective premise. We can agree on an axiomatic ought, just define it first. I disagree with your proof because i don't think we established an axiomatic ought that inherently includes zygotes in human rights.
B. I am correct. But arguing over the point to someone who has the assumption that their logic is flawless and without the possibility that there may be a flaw is simply pointless.
C. But why is your opinion justification to force someone to be pregnant? Just because I'm honest enough to admit that moral positions are not inherently objective doesn't mean my position is less valid or less correct.

@rway edited the message because i accidentally said "inherently objective" instead of "not inherently objective"

@onthecontrary
A. wait... what is Individual Sovereignty....? It's what we've been talking about this whole time.

Sovereignty is a measure of dominion. Historically, kings were often referred to as "The Sovereign", because they had absolute dominion over everything and everyone in their kingdom. It's a combination of the latin words for "supreme" and "reign".
Sovereignty in America is understood to reside in the Individual, absolutely, as a direct implication of your personal relationship with nature. It is why you have "natural rights".
No king, politburo, gov't agency, or any other individual has sovereignty over you.
Portions of your sovereignty are abdicated by your participatory consent to "the collective", only to the extent necessary for empowering it to protect your sovereign existence from being encroached upon by another equally sovereign individual; who, as your equal in every way, has no authority over you and no right to do so.
This was a pretty radical idea a few hundred years ago, and is pretty much the entire point of America.

You are correct: if you deny the axioms and/or assumptions of a logical proof; then you don't accept the context... so the "proof" is moot.
That's why I attempted to start with the assumption of Individual Sovereignty, the underlying theme of Western Civilization, and the umbrella under which you and I claim rights of our own every single day; because that is the crux of the entire issue.

My argument, from the beginning, is that your position denies that assumption.
If you cannot accept P2(above): "Human rights apply to all humans"; then that simply confirms my argument.

I have not proved that "all humans" includes zygotes. Neither have you proved that it doesn't.
You cannot prove that "all humans" includes YOU, so be careful with that approach. Again... that's how we got slavery and the Holocaust.
As I suggested before: if you wish to violate somebody's rights, with the justification that they're not "somebody" in the first place... then the onus is upon you to prove that; which you cannot do.

The assumption that "all humans" includes you, is a premise of your claim to basic human rights.
There are no caveats, no developmental thresholds, no tests you have to pass; just being a human.
That same assumption applies to a zygote as well, unless you can successfully and conclusively identify the event or the moment during its lifecycle at which it "becomes" human, transitioning from... whatever else you are claiming that it was before the mystery event.
There is no rational, logical, or empirical reason to believe that a human ceases to be "a human" at some point, as you trace it backwards through its lifecycle.
It is simply an unfounded article of faith, wishful thinking... delusion.
It's not just that it can't be proved conclusively... it doesn't even make any sense.
Now, you've conceded that the zygote is "human"... just not a human with rights. But if you simply follow that same thought process, trying to pinpoint when... and why, the fetus acquires its basic human rights... then you have exactly the same result; it's just a wishful declaration based on... nothing.

B. You missed the point: of course I think I'm correct, that should be inferred from the fact that I'm making the argument.
And of course it's possible that it's flawed... that's not a counterargument. If you think it actually is flawed, then simply demonstrate the flaw.
If you can't, then the conclusion holds true.

C. It's not my opinion, it's the foundation of our entire society.
And "it" is not forcing someone to be pregnant. She is already pregnant by her own actions, or by those of a rapist; not by "society".
All it would do, if we actually followed our own ideals; is to constrain her options in order to protect someone else's rights... which is exactly the same principle behind every single other legitimate law that we have on the books.

@onthecontrary I'm not really making a moral argument at all. We chartered a Government to protect our rights from one another. All of us... equally.
It's not doing that.
That's wrong, objectively.

@rway
A. Yes, but I needed you to define your terms because so far you haven't and that's how debate works. Whenever I make a point, instead of disproving it logically, you have said several times that you don't even have to debate it because it goes against the premise that YOU decided. So now, we can at last debate the premise.
I never said it was a moral human, I said it was a member of the human species. Which is irrelevant in moral classifications. It is not of my invention that there are different classifications when it comes to an embryo. It is first a zygote, then an embryo, then a fetus, then an infant. These are scientific classifications, as is the classification of species. So how do you know that the moral classification of human applies to all members of the species, including zygotes?
Yes, it is difficult to prove that anyone is a human. That is because morality is not objective, by definition. But just because it's uncomfortable to think about that doesn't mean it isn't true. Some things are people, some things are not. Just because a zygote is not a person doesn't mean certain races are going to be denied the classification as well. Just because we don't like the idea of certain people not being classified as such, does not mean that everything must be human. you could extend that argument to animals as well. You say a cow isn't a person? Well, that's the same argument they used for the Holocaust and slavery! the onus is on you to prove that a cow is not a person.
B. I'm happy to demonstrate the flaws, which is what I've been doing. But I couldn't help but add that saying things like "I just proved it" and "QED" is just irritating and does not display any level of open-mindedness or desire for discussion. It gives the appearance that you think you are always right and are not willing to have your mind changed.
C. This is a distinction without a difference. Not that I see much of a distinction anyways (they were already at home, we're just constraining their options to leave), but i digress. In both cases, you have people (pregnant person, workers under stay at home orders) being forced to do something that they don't want to do. In both cases, being forced to stay at home/pregnant will cause them a lot of pain because they will not be able to support their families. In the case of the pregnant person, this will come with immense physical pain as well. You seem to think the people under stay at home orders are also somehow in physical danger because of their immune system. In both cases, they are now at higher risk for mental health problems and abuse. In many cases, their children will suffer as well, because their parent doesn't have the means to support them. However, these people are being forced to remain in the situation in order to protect some other being. In the case of the pregnant person, this is a single embryo. In the case of the stay at home orders, it's hundreds of thousands of at-risk or even healthy Americans.
You expressed frustration about the Covid argument, saying that if I'm gonna talk about the loss of life because of covid, and not discussing the ramifications of people staying at home. Scroll up. This is the exact same frustration I've had all along. You're talking about loss of life, but not mentioning what would be the ramifications of the pregnancy, birth, and postpartum. And I'm not sure if it was you or just @Ausi, but there was pushback against me suggesting a "material" loss could be equal to loss of life.
So the question is this, are you allowed to take an action that could cause someone else to die, if it is for the sake of protecting yourself from unemployment, hunger, mental illness, physical pain, etc? Please answer.
D. Saying something is "wrong, objectively" is a moral argument.

@onthecontrary ok... so define "moral human"

@onthecontrary
B. I am right. Prove me wrong.
C. You can't see the difference, between being prevented from doing something that you have a right to do, and being prevented from doing something that you have no right to do?
That is the only relevant distinction.
You're asking a legal question. I'm not a lawyer. I can say that you should be allowed to do anything you want to do, the reason is not relevant; as long as you don't violate somebody else's rights, in which case: you don't have a right to do that. Regardless of the reason. Find another way.
There are a million actions that could cause someone else to die. Just driving to work could cause someone else to die.
You don't have a right to take any action to purposefully cause someone else to die. If you kill someone out of negligence, you may be held accountable... you may not, but that's a legal concern. Either way, you didn't kill them because you were exercising sovereignty over them; you were just being a dumbass.
D. Saying something is wrong is a moral argument. Saying something is wrong objectively is based on the very meaning of "wrong", not an opinion. Substitute it with "derelict" if you prefer.
The Government is not "morally" obligated to fulfill their charter, they are duty-bound to fulfill it. It is their raison d'etre.... if they abdicate that, they have no reason to exist at all.

@rway
A. instead of addressing my long paragraph or answering my questions, you're resorting to whataboutism, just asking, "well what about your definition." I'm happy to explain my position, but will you also explain yours?
B. You see what I mean? I'm sure you're overdoing it on purpose now, but I still don't think you're aware of how you sound. Obviously, I am trying to prove you wrong. But when you say "I am right. Prove me wrong," what you really mean is "I know that I am right and I am positive that you can't prove me wrong." I believe that I can, but if you're not even going to entertain any notion that you may be wrong, then what's the point? If i do prove you wrong, will you admit it?
C. But in the case of covid, if you do spread it, you're almost certain to contribute to someone dying at some point. You're avoiding the question, and I think it's because you see that you can't answer the question without conceding one of your positions, but you won't explain why the answer can possibly be different in different situations.
Which is it, should you be allowed to neglect someone else's right to life because you need to save your livelihood, or should you not?

@onthecontrary
A. I have.
B. I'm not positive that you can't prove me wrong, although I am pretty sure.
What I am positive about, is that you haven't.
C. You just keep pretending I haven't answered your questions... please scroll up.

@rway

1. So are you gonna stop using "that goes against the premise, which is that MY definition of individual sovereignty is correct, so your argument is invalid."
2. Then debate that way.
3. Would it be so hard to answer it again? I've read all your messages, you haven't answered the question, you've responded to the question. responded by explaining why you can't answer the question. or can you answer it?

I would love to hear the explanation for why you consider it killing. Is it not just opting out of creating a person in the first place?

@onthecontrary That's easy. A unique set of DNA (not RNA) that is growing. If you want to opt out, do it beforehand - keep the dicky out of the sticky.

Why does a unique set of DNA equal a living person that can be killed?
Also, to your second point, what is your opinion in the case of a non-consensual conception? Whether it is common or not shouldn't be relevant.

@onthecontrary OooooKay... Because the unique set of DNA isn't you? Yours is the only set that you have domain over. A non-consensual pregnancy does not change the fact that a life has been created. The actions of the rapist(s) have consequences but only apply to their dna not the baby's. Is it common? - No, not really. Is it relevant? Of course.

This is the ONLY reason why I think government should be involved. A person who has an abortion should not be prosecuted. A person who performs one should. A person profiting from the sale of abortions should be hung.

@cRaZyTMG So any organism that isn't the same organism as you is a human being? Not quite following the logic, why is it that's true?
So if a non-consensual pregnancy doesn't change anything, your dicky in the sticky argument doesn't stand anymore, does it?

@onthecontrary Logic? A <> B therefore A=B? I don't even see where your conclusion relates to what I said.
As for dickie/sticky, as smokey says, "you too can prevent unwanted pregnancies"

I'm remnded of an old Python bit...

@cRaZyTMG Just asking, why is it that a unique set of DNA constitutes a human being?
But the point is, sometimes you have no control over the pregnancy, and sometimes things happen. And what's your point, anyway? If people are too irresponsible, we should punish them with kids?

@onthecontrary I'm done with you. If you believe you have no control over pregnancy then you take no responsibility for any aspect of your life. I am not responsible for your fears or your actions. YOU ARE.

You can argue when life begins all day, but the fact is women are going to have abortions. They have been doing it since at least the Greco/Roman times. We need to keep it safe and legal. The contrary is unsafe and illegal. And if you do not have a uterus STFU.

@cRaZyTMG I'm simply asking your point and to explain why you believe what you believe. You haven't explained why a unique set of DNA constitutes a human life that can be killed, even if it is but a single cell.
And as for being responsible for the pregnancy, it depends on the situation. But even if someone is to blame for their own pregnancy, why is that a reason not to permit abortions? To me, it seems an irresponsible person seems like the last type of person we should give babies to.

@FOTD13 So we let them kill another person? That's seems to be the pinnacle of irresponsibility to me. Safe and Legal is not possible in an economic system that mandates profit above all else. Even if I didn't believe people are responsible for their actions, society itself needs to take responsibility for a lifestyle that encourages/celebrates murder as a useful solution to stupidity.

@FOTD13 crazy thought but if women gets to choose, can or should a man be able to opt out of being a father, being responsible. Does a father have any rights? Also could or should he then be able to sue for suffering due to the loss? If a father wanted custody for instance, would carrying the child without any of the responsibility after birth be acceptable?

@cRaZyTMG Whether or not it's a person is a separate thing. But you're saying that getting pregnant is just a consequence of your actions, and that you basically have to just deal with it, right? But why is it a fitting consequence to being irresponsible, that you should then be responsible for a whole person once they're born?

@cRaZyTMG, @RedDevil The pregnant person gets to choose, in my opinion, whether or not to provide their own body as an environment for an embryo to grow. Being a man or a woman doesn't have much to do with it.

What do you think is the solution to the situation with the climate?

@onthecontrary since there is no reasonable conclusion to climate debate I will give none. Greedy claim too much CO2 to argue for control, yet every green plant needs CO2 and NASA had a photo of Earth showing it is greener than anytime a photo has been taken. About everything a human does is related to a toxic procedure. You can't get everyone in the world to agree to do the same, greed and hypocrisy dominate so climate debate is null.

@MilesPurdue Is "anytime a photo of earth has been taken" a long enough period of time to really observe changes? And does the fact that the earth is green prove that there is a normal amount of CO2? If the debate is null, what does that mean for humanity if the planet really is in danger of becoming uninhabitable within the century?

So you believe climate change is not happening at all?

Banning doctors seems a bit counterproductive. Is that what you really think is the solution? If not, what do you believe is the solution?

I don't quite understand the first part. But as for whose choice it is, I would think a non-conscious being would be on not quite the same moral level as a developed person, and if you disagree, I'd like to hear why.

Please tell us about your Environmentalist endeavors before most. Please include certifications and degrees. And maybe you could elaborate on why you believe thousands of scientist to be liars. And how they benefit from this lie. Thanks.

For the abortion argument: Why is the fetus a baby in your opinion and at what point?
As for Medicare for All: What is the difference between the government having the power to choose who gets treatment for their illnesses and with private corporations having that power?

@onthecontrary if you really believe an unborn baby is not sacred human life then I pity you
Private corps are not making decisions to withhold treatment.

@iThink Just please explain why you believe that claim to be true. If it's true, it should be possible to explain.
But aren't they? 30,000 to 100,000 people die from not being insured. And insurance and pharmaceutical companies constantly overcharge people for situations they can't control and in many cases, withhold treatment. If you don't have the money to pay for it out of pocket, you don't get treatment. They are financially incentivized to do so. Medicare, on the other hand, has the incentive to provide the best quality care possible.
The fire department, controlled by the government and paid for with taxes, also has the power to decide whether or not to provide life-saving services, and I don't see government bureaucrats letting houses burn because the people living there are too old to live.

excellent response! Well played - very well played.

Debate, always. I'll assume it's the same for you as I have no reason to believe otherwise at this moment.