Anyone Feel a Draft?

[KrazyHorse]

Originally posted by David Floyd


The issue, to me, is not one of intellectual property, but rather one of government intervention. In principle, I have no problem with someone developing a similar, generic drug for half the price, however, it seems rather like stealing when you take something that someone else made, reverse-engineer it, and market it as your own.

Why? You're not taking anything from them. "Intellectual property" is a rather recent idea, y'know...

[Rufus T. Firefly]

Originally posted by Spec


What did you not get about my post. IT IS NOT FREE!!! WE PAY FOR IT!!! Only, everybody pays for everybody, thus making us almost free of debt when we end our studies. Is that clear enough?!!?


Spec.

Spec, what's really ironic here is that, if memory serves, Floyd is at the University of Texas -- a school with low tuition (by US standards) precisely because it's subsidized by taxes. Without those subsidies, UT would probably cost him $10-15k more per year than it does now. One wonders what he would do then.

[MikeH]

Originally posted by David Floyd No, but corporations being able to charge what they want to for their own products is more important than senior citizens being able to afford drugs they have no legal or moral entitlement to.

I don't know about you but personally my grandmother still being alive is more important than the bonuses of some multimillionaire drug company chairman, especially when what they want to charge is completely unfair.

Originally posted by David Floyd MikeH,

Unless the number of supporters is 100%, the system remains unfair and tyrannical.

Anyway, back in the real world.

[David Floyd]

Spec,

Only, everybody pays for everybody, thus making us almost free of debt when we end our studies. Is that clear enough?!!?

What isn't clear is how it is fair for someone who doesn't want to participate in this system to be forced to participate anyway.

KH,

I don't actually have a real opinion on intellectual property at this point - haven't thought about it too much. You could well be correct, but then again maybe not.

Again, though, intellectual property is a side issue - the real issue, to me, is the issue of the government deciding what you can and can't charge for products and services.

Rufus,

Spec, what's really ironic here is that, if memory serves, Floyd is at the University of Texas -- a school with low tuition (by US standards) precisely because it's subsidized by taxes. Without those subsidies, UT would probably cost him $10-15k more per year than it does now. One wonders what he would do then.

Obviously, go somewhere else, work more, or take out more student loans. What I would NOT do is expect some rich guy to subsidize it for me.

Mike,

I don't know about you but personally my grandmother still being alive is more important than the bonuses of some multimillionaire drug company chairman

So, to you personally, the life of your relatives takes precedence over the property of other people, and their right to contract freely. And I agree that the right to life is very important.

However, you aren't talking about the right to life, because the right to life, as properly defined, can't conflict with any other right. All the right to life means is that you have the right to your own life. You don't have the right to extend your own life at the expense of others - that would infringe on their property rights, in this case.

However, you might object that withholding life-saving drugs, or charging a lot for them, infringes upon your right to life. But this couldn't be further from the truth. You have no claim on the drugs of pharmacy companies - in fact, by providing them, they are doing you a favor. Of course you should have to compensate them for these drugs - and the compensation should be an amount agreed upon by you and the corporation, not subject to government approval. If the two of you disagree on the price, the corporation can either refuse to sell, or you can refuse to buy. If you die as a result of refusing to buy, that's regrettable, but surely it isn't the fault of the drug companies. They didn't cause your death, or any of the factors leading up to your death. Their drug could have saved your life, but they are under no moral obligation to give their drug away for free, or to lose money on it, or, for that matter, to sell it at all.

especially when what they want to charge is completely unfair.

Unfair? Sorry, but the concept of value is totally relative. What is unfair to you might be totally fair to me. What it comes down to is that the corporations should be able to charge what they want, then we, as consumers, can choose to either buy or not. If we don't buy, they'll have to lower their prices or go out of business. There's nothing unfair about us forcing this decision on the corporation, any more than it is unfair for the corporation to put us in the position of either paying a large sum of money for their product, or suffering the NATURAL consequences.

[Ramo]

however, it seems rather like stealing when you take something that someone else made, reverse-engineer it, and market it as your own.

So state coercion is ok when the people who get ****ed over are poor?

[MrFun]

Originally posted by DinoDoc

Anyone Feel a Draft?

No. Don't be stupid che.

So you're saying the source from which he got this information is not reliable??

[Ramo]

Again, though, intellectual property is a side issue - the real issue, to me, is the issue of the government deciding what you can and can't charge for products and services.

The drug companies benefit immensely from the state enforced monopolies. They come out ahead in the end.

[MikeH]

David, you seem to be coming at society from an odd angle.

The idea of society isn't to allow the individual to prosper, it's to ensire that the society survives and prospers. Therefore there has to be a balance between the rights and needs of society and the rights and needs of the individual. Logically your argument ends in anarchy. If people are entirely responsible for themselves then, at best, we'd end up in a technologically advanced version of the Feudal system. Personally I think that'd suck more than some stuff that sucks a lot.

[Rufus T. Firefly]

Originally posted by David Floyd
Rufus,

Obviously, go somewhere else, work more, or take out more student loans. What I would NOT do is expect some rich guy to subsidize it for me.

Student loans? Why, isn't that another unfair government program, one that keeps banks from charging the rate they would like and doing so on their own terms?

My point, David, is that you might very well not be able to afford college on those terms; certainly lots of people wouldn't. But the State of Texas, like the other 49, has decided that it's in the common interest of the state as a whole and its citizenry to make college education achievable for a significant percentage of its population. If college were left to the market, relatively few of us would be able to afford it; the result would not only be diminished individuals lives, but a less dynamic society as a whole.

There is such a thing as the common good, and it is rarely, if ever, achieved by market forces.

[Kuciwalker]

There is such a thing as the common good, and it is rarely, if ever, achieved by market forces.

Actually, it is rarely NOT achieved by market forces. There are only a few cases - the military, the police and safety forces (such as firefighters), and a few other. The argument here is whether or not health care is one of those.

[Zylka]

I wrote this

Congress never got rid of the draft boards (i.e. Selective Service System). They kept the statutes that if you're between 18 and 25 and male, you have to register for the draft, but Congress simply stopped the actual lottery to draw people into the military. Even now, in the volunteer military, Congress sets the number of new recruits each year, and the authorized total strength of each branch of military service. If they want more bodies under the volunteer, all they have to do is raise the authorized numbers and the annual recruiting quota. Now, for example, they turn down about 50,000 a year, due to low test scores and lack of high school graduation, because the number of annual recruit slots is less than the number of applicants.

There are only a few exceptions, like they're currently paying recruiting bonuses for combat engineers because they can't get enough applicants for that MOS - all the risk of front line combat, plus the added risk of mine clearing and ordnance disposal, plus the hard work of heavy construction, and less fire support than any line combat unit. Plus if you do go for Combat Engineer (12B), you know exactly where they're going to get ready to ship your sorry ass.

The reason for that article is that draft board positions are unpaid, and there's tons of them all over the US, so there's a theoretical need for a large number of bodies. The job is unpaid because they don't do anything, since there's no draft, so nobody volunteers, but since nobody volunteers, most of the hundreds of draft boards are undermanned or unmanned.

Probably, some bureaucrat somewhere feels that his report to his boss on our national defense readiness in the war against heathen raghead terror won't look good if he candidly says "Well, we have 75% vacancies on our draft boards, because we don't pay 'em, and everybody knows there'll never be a draft anyway." So instead of saying that, they just can't live in bureaucratic peace without having the draft boards filled up. After all, if there's a government board, it must have full membership, right?

Anyway, the draft boards are the ones who grant exemptions and deferrals, not the ones who actually would draft you. That's done by a lotto ball machine that spits out numbers that map out to birthdays. It would take a specific act of Congress to start that **** up though, but it'll never happen, because the military doesn't want it, and we don't have personal weapons, equipment, training bases, or heavy equipment for that many bodies anyway. It's not like the days of 'Nam when we needed 1200 replacements a week on average.

[MichaeltheGreat]

What a joke.

So some bureaucrat in DoD or DHS noticed that most of the draft board positions are unfilled.

Gee, maybe because everyone knows there'll never be one, and the positions are unpaid, but you have to submit to a background check, do 12 hours of "training" and four hours of followon "training" each year, and thats' IT? It's a meaningless tits on a bull position, that's why they're never filled.

But in this era of cross every i and dot every t bureaucratic thoroughness when it comes to "national security," somebody probably had to report to his supervisor, so he could report to his supervisor, why are 75% of these "national security related community positions" unfilled?

You'd be amazed at some of the wasteful stuff DHS is doing, and there are study contracts out there for almost everything. Same with DoD. This is nothing more than bureaucratic nonsense so that somebody can fill out a report.

[Jack_www]

THis would be just great. I am still going to school and this would really mess things up if I got called up. Damn it. I hope the draft does not come to pass.

[MichaeltheGreat]

Re: I wrote this

Originally posted by Zylka

Yeah, if you call pasting my PM to you about the subject after I closed your thread "writing" that.

[Timexwatch]

Hey, guys, how about that Draft thing?