As truncated as this thread has become, it would probably be easier to just get your hands on a copy of Das Kapital. ;-)

Greetings TWOBerry,
His original arguments are spread out over this thread. This thread is Boborobdos' introduction thread. He covered a lot of territory before he was encouraged to expand beyond with a new thread.
Happy hunting,
O.A.

Hello Rob,
As long as the courts can award damages and the science, facts, and law are on the side of the plaintiff, there is recourse. I cannot dispute that once there was certain need for unions. There was a time when people were knowingly asked to work in conditions detrimental to their health, without proper safety measures. However, in our litigious society today things have swung the opposite direction just as often and employers are paying just to make lawsuits go away or workman's comp claims that are fraudulent.
It is not in the self interest of any employer to bear the cost of injured workers.
O.A.

That's OSHA's job

Yes, US citizens are taking advantage of medical travel. But again, a not insignificant part of the cost is due to government regulation and intervention. Their decision is COST based. I disagree that only the very wealthy citizens of a socialized medicine country leave for treatment. It is a common practice in Canada, for example. In this case it is care OPTIONS and TIMELY delivery of medical services. apples and oranges

How about you come back and talk about bocare after it's fully implemented. Maybe THEN your kool aid colored glasses will have lost their utopian filters.

What is stopping anyone? I don't see any real barriers to getting higher education or formal training if one has the attitude. There are a plethora of scholarships and grants for all ages and backgrounds.

No, the real barrier is the low-skill worker thinking the value of their labor is higher than it actually is and being upset with this reality. So instead of getting better skills, they complain to elected representatives who try to boost the minimum wage, which only ends up putting these very same low-skill workers out of a job in the first place!

Want to have the power to negotiate your own salary? All that is required is self-discipline and hard work.

And if you got off of your premise that workers are incapable of thinking for themselves, and are shuffling through their work shifts in ball and chains, you might see that there isn't any problem.

You give no credit for any degree of self determination to low skilled workers...they have to be 'protected', and coddled by some union boss (who probably plays golf at the same country club that the CEO plays at).

Your posted impression of the helplessness (and mindlessness) of workers is so antithetical to what Ayn Rand believes, that you can only be here to phish for argument.

You've met your goal...what next?

Actually, maximizing profits is the entire purpose of business. Charity is not the point of business - one of Ayn Rand's points. The things is that you seem to think that is wrong because profits are derived solely through unscrupulous means - where one of the trading partners gets taken advantage of. On the contrary, that is how government works. In the free market, you only stay in business if you have a quality product that the consumer values. Like them or not, Apple is a great example of this. They haven't colluded with anyone to put out arguably the best personal computing device in decades - they simply did it and reaped the rewards as millions of consumers valued their products enough to purchase them over and over. Did Apple profit? Handsomely. Did the consumers get taken for a ride? No. Contrast that with government spending to see my point.

You also arrive at the mistaken conclusion that workers themselves have no power. Workers have as much power as their skills and training (and the market) allows and that power directly translates to earning potential and demand. There is a huge difference in earning power between a burger flipper and a doctor. The burger flipper has skills that will earn him/her about $8.50 in the market, while a doctor's skills will earn them 10x that much. Unions actually inhibit the free movement of labor and capital by artificially controlling the cost and mobility of labor - especially low-skilled labor.

Where the system doesn't work and people are being exploited, it isn't in a free market. Government rules and regulations and unions are the two biggest inhibitors of the free market and incur costs to everyone with their interference. Look at any example and you can ferret out the hand of government - either in reinforcing a monopoly or throwing up artificial barriers to the free flow of capital, goods, or services.

That's not what I was saying. It's a free market. From both sides, the employee and the employer. Employers should be able to pay what they can/will and employees should be free to work where they want and require what wages they want. Nobody bullied me into working at McDonald's. I was there for two weeks when I decided I'd rather work at Pizza Hut making $1 more per hour, and I was getting paid to drive around town in my own vehicle. No body is forcing anyone to work anywhere. It's your choice and always should be. If enough people chose to work elsewhere and there was a drought of employees, McDonald's would start paying more to attract employees. That's how the free market should work, and will if you leave it alone.

"Seems to me that you are saying corporations are entitled to maximize profits, but workers have to go along with what the employer wants"


Yes and yes.

Without union thugs and government coercion the people would go to the highest bidder and the abusive corporation would shut down. and the corporations would have no choice but to meet the demands of the workers.

As it is now , the companies are forced to accept unskilled workers and pay heavily for laziness. Everyone loses.

Without coercion from the government. Everyone wins.

Hello Rob,
I think you have misunderstood khalling's intent.
She is not trying to stifle you. She is suggesting that you expand your presence by starting a new thread on this site. You have touched upon many subjects in your introduction thread and it becomes cumbersome. Pick a particular subject of interest to you and create a new thread. It will appear on the first page and remain there where others will see it and perhaps participate until it is crowded out by new entries.
Respectfully,
O.A.

You seem to place an awful lot of emphasis on compromise. Do you not realize that compromise is the enemy of principles? If I tell you that 2+2=4 but you insist that 2+2=6, why should I compromise with you and agree that 2+2=5? Then we are BOTH wrong.

Do you really believe that taxpayers are adequately represented at the bargaining table in negotiations with public unions? Let's try an experiment: next time you want to buy a car, send someone on your behalf to do your negotiating and see if you walk away feeling like you got the best deal possible. When negotiating with someone else's money and there is no financial harm for doing a bad job, there is quite literally zero incentive to pursue the best deal. The point has been thoroughly demonstrated - public sector unions negotiating against politicians over taxpayer money serves to benefit everyone BUT the taxpayer.

Tho I agree with much that you say, I have to disagree EXTREMELY with your idea that "EXTREMISTS rarely get the job done."

Virtually every important "job" of human history was accomplished by extremists.

The Founding Fathers of this nation, which was the first to put certain genuinely radical, “extremist” new ideas of political and moral philosophy into practice, would have been called extremists today, and indeed were opposed by a MAJORITY of the colonists at first, not just by King George.

Galileo, who proved the earth was not flat *along with many other important things), was considered a heretic not merely by the Church, but by his peers (and competitors?) in academia. Indeed, history erroneously assigns to the Church most of the blame for Galileo's persecution when the Church really didn't give two hoots about him UNTIL a huge contingent of academia kept push, push, pushing the Church hierarchy to act against him. These academics would have no more qualifications to teach their students than the students did to teach them if Galileo's new theories were permitted to obsolete every bit of "expert" knowledge the current academics could claim as "expertise" in an area that others should be willing to pay them for imparting. Given the Church's power in those days, the academics were the equivalent of modern day “establishment, status quo” lobbyists using their great power and influence in an aggressive way to influence the political power-holders (Church authorities) to protect the lobbyists’ interests by persecuting an individual with an obviously superior product in order to prevent him from competing with them. In accord with Rob’s expressed view or philosophy, they managed to do quite a bit of damage to a real “extremist” hero of history, enabling them to continue their (now proven false) "advertising" until, finally, history gave credit where it was due. But that was long after Rob’s philosophy had inflicted massive, unmitigated injustice on yet another brilliant extremist who had nothing but good to offer mankind, while delaying and obstruction the delivery of something valuable to mankind’s progress. Galileo’s was just one more amongst many similar chapters in the long history of mankind's attempt to make progress despite obstruction by so many people who see the world the way Rob does..

You probably know several people (virtually everyone does, even infants) who are alive today (whether they or you realize it or not) only because of the work of Nobel Chemistry winner Dr. Bruce Merrifield, recently deceased. A true "extremist" maverick, ALL of whose peers not only disagreed with him, but actually ridiculed him. He was the first man to figure out how to synthesize an enzyme, and he "followed his truth" to win the Nobel.

Everyone knew there'd be a Nobel for whoever accomplished this feat, and all the major pharmaceutical and other biochemical research firms had TEAMS of TOP PhD research chemists 'round the world working on the problem, including previous Nobel winners. Merrifield was a true scientist, humble before nature, and respectful of the logic of truth and the truth of logic. Almost childlike in his trust of everyone he met, he actually TOLD anyone who asked, at conferences and in correspondence, exactly how he thought the feat could be accomplished -- and everyone laughed. But he continued despite the whole world laughing at him and he eventually succeeded.

Because of the specific characteristics of the new idea(s) Dr Merrifield had to invent to accomplish his feat, he (both directly and incidentally) opened up (ie, gave birth to) about 8 ENTIRELY SEPARATE branches of biochemistry research which the various aspects of the techniques he invented had made possible. Much of the outpouring of knowledge in recent decades about the details of various processes INSIDE our living cell tissues was made possible by Dr Merrifield’s EXTREME convictions and commitment to his own conclusions about what was right and wrong – and BY HIS REFUSAL TO COMPROMISE WHAT HE THOUGHT WAS RIGHT, WITH WHAT HE THOUGHT WAS WRONG, NO MATTER HOW MANY OTHERS DISAGREED. Things like EXACTLY how various nutrients work in the body, and the ratification of or disproof of much of the previous "common wisdom" about COUNTLESS aspects of nutrition, of diseases etc -- and this is from only ONE of the several DIFFERENT entirely new FIELDS of inquiry at new frontiers of knowledge which Dr Merrifield's accomplishment made possible.

This extremist not only got the job done, but he got COUNTLESS jobs done, while the non-extremists of the status quo of current thinking were NOT ONLY total failures at accomplishing even one of the thousands of invaluable tasks the extremist performed, but they actually rejected the solution that Dr Merrifield had freely handed them on a silver platter.

So much for the extremists versus the compromisers of the status quo.

Study history. Such stories are not unusual, but actually closer to the norm in the case of the most fundamental and most valuable contributions to mankind throughout history.

MOST of the greatest advances in MOST fields of endeavor in human history have been made by "extremist" individuals with views opposed to the views then currently popular amongst the status quo of "recognized experts" of the day. At any specific time in human history, there existed a particular state of human knowledge, technological capabilities, etc. ALMOST BY DEFINITION, it REQUIRED an extremist to come along and lift mankind upward to the next rung on the ladder of progress. Progress is an advance from the previous state of things, and if the knowledge to move to the next higher rung had been common wisdom, that step would already have been attained. The fact that it was a new addition to the status quo, means that someone somewhere had to come up with something that was DIFFERENT from what EVERYONE else was thinking or using or doing. A man with a “maverick” idea. A man who stood apart from everyone else on earth for a moment in history, regarding a certain piece of knowledge that he alone had uncovered or developed. He was, in at least some small respect, EXTREMELY alone and unique amongst men, for at least a while.

This applies not only to technological advances but in politics, moral philosophy, and every other area of human endeavor. For instance: as Barry Goldwater said in his acceptance speech at the 1964 Republican convention: "Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice; moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue." Even in political and moral philosophy, extremism is often the highest virtue, and the ONLY means for getting the job done right..

INTEGRITY is nothing more than an EXTREMELY principled, uncompromising, and incorruptible commitment to ones own beliefs about what's right, or about what is the right way to act.

INTEGRITY, in other words, is the result of applying extremism to human character.

Perhaps the reason we seem to see such an abject LACK of integrity so much more often in public leaders, business, and throughout our culture today than in the not-too-long-past decades of our history, is the introduction of the idea that "extremism" per se is bad, which became a fad slogan about 2 or 3 generations ago amongst those who obviously (see below) were either incapable of using their own thought processes correctly, or who unfortunately did not possess even reasonable facsimiles of HUMAN brains. In fact, it was during the Goldwater campaign for the Presidency in 1964 that the use of “extremism” was first used by the moderates of the Republican party to discredit Goldwater in the public’s eyes. His ideas were overtaking their lack of anything but the monotonous, tried and failed ones of the moderates, and they were unable to answer them with better ideas OR with reasoned refutations. So they adopted “extremism,” as a smear worthy of the most unscrupulous debater who is out to win rather than to find the right answer. There were reasonable, common sense, rational arguments to explain and justify each of the Goldwater positions which were twisted by his desperate political opponents to make them appear fanatical and extremely dangerous. He was nominated anyway, but “extremism” was then adopted successfully by the opposing party in the election itself to unjustly demonize Goldwater and instill fear of him in the eyes of the electorate.

Any statement that puts a negative evaluation of any kind on "extremism" QUA EXTREMISM (IE, on extremism, per se) necessarily labels the person who consciously utters it as someone with a fatal flaw in his ability to think. That's because such a statement is automatically and irrefutably self-contradictory, so the assertion of it marks the person saying it as one whose thinking process is content to operate while consciously holding contradictions, and whose thinking and conclusions are therefore probably loaded with them, and/or follow from contradictory ideas. Why? Because such a statement places a negative EVALUATION on extremism, when extremism per se CANNOT BE EVALUATED ABSENT THE ISSUE TO WHICH IT IS BEING APPLIED. To make this self contradiction absolutely clear:

“Extremism” is ITSELF an evaluation – of SOMETHING (a thing, an idea, an action, a feeling, or a category of things, ideas, actions or feelings). It LITERALLY and ACTUALLY means that whatever it’s referring to contains an UNUSUALLY large or small degree or quantity of something, far from the typical or average or commonly found amount or degree of that quality or trait or substance. But the IMPLIED meaning of “extremist” when used as Rob uses it, is that it’s TOO much or TOO little to “to the job” or to “be acceptable” or to “be appropriate for its intended purpose” or … similar. IE, thatt it’s BEYOND any REASONABLE or ACCEPABLE limits which define a range of “what’s good” or “what’s right or proper.”

“Extreme” is an evaluation SPECIFICALLY WITH RESPECT TO QUANTITY. It means UNUSUALLY MUCH or UNUSUALLY LITTLE of something. To then place a GENERALLY APPLICABLE evaluation on ANOTHER evaluation which refers ONLY to a quantity of something WITHOUT SPECIFYING THAT SOMETHING, is just a floating assertion unattached to anything real or SPECIFIC. Such a statement can have no possible meaning because it cannot even BE related to anything specific.

If someone said “Joe’s behavior is bad” and you asked Rob why, he might answer “because it’s extreme” and he would think that’s an OK way to communicate, and that he’s actually given you an answer. But all he’s done is to repeat his original assertion with somewhat different words, which STILL convey NOTHING but an unbacked opinion relevant to NOTHING that provides you any information – other than the fact, repeated twice, that in Rob’s opinion there is something about Joe’s behavior that is not good, because there’s an unusual amount of an UNSPECIFIED SOMETHING in his behavior. What’s logically implied, is that THE MERE FACT THAT SOMETHING’S PRESENT TO AN UNUSUAL DEGREE – REGARDLESS OF WHAT IT IS – IS A LABEL OF UNDESIRABILITY. (In fact, of EXTREME undesirability – another self-contradiction inherent in this fuzzy method of pseudo-thinking.) With this “explanatory” answer to your request for elaboration he has simply added an adjective which is an EVALUATION of the DEGREE of some unspecified thing Joe is doing, WITHOUT EVEN SPECIFYING THE DEGREE OF IT, but just labeling it – whatever it might be – with an UNEXPLAINED ASSERTION that SOMETHING is present in his behavior to an unusual extent.. IE, by using “extreme” and letting it stand isolated on its own, as an implied IRREFUTABLY, SELF-EVIDENT negative merely for being unusual, all he has really said is “I think his behavior is bad because I think there’s something about it which is either too much or too little, and that’s bad in my opinion.” It sounds reasonable when it’s said, which is what’s so insidious about it. We read or hear it, it sounds kinda right, and we absorb the negative conclusion without really thinking it through, though there is almost never a shred of evidence or support for it provided.

There IS of course a proper way to use “extreme,” but this isn’t it. For instance, he might have answered “Joe spends 18 hours a day at work, which is obviously so extreme that it has many bad consequences. His health has obviously declined from lack of sleep and his moods are destroying his family life and his relations with former friends, and ironically his work is itself actually suffering because of his chronic exhaustion from trying to do good work. He has taken the value of conscientious work to an excessive extreme.” This DOES explain WHAT was extreme, and WHY it was extreme, and WHY its extremism’s consequences were bad. Nothing wrong with this. But to condemn “extreme” just for being extreme, is flat out false and “extremism” has been used to get away with creating false negative impressions in people’s minds ever since this trick was first used in 1964.

That’s my EXPLANATION of WHY saying “because it’s extreme (or extremist) tells you NOTHING more and is NOT a sentence with any meaning in this example. But you can also see why DIRECTLY by realizing that THE SAME ANSWER COULD HAVE BEEN GIVEN to a request for elaboration on why Joe’s behavior was GOOD:

I might have said “because it’s extreme,” to elaborate on my assertion that Joe’s behavior was GOOD, and thus say nothing at all just as easily as I did when asked to explain why his behavior was bad. What I might have PROPERLY answered instead, in this OPPOSITE case, might have been “Joe is EXTREMELY attentive in class – he never misses a word the Professor says, and he is EXTREMELY conscientious about asking questions when he doesn’t fully understand. This enables him to get a REALLY GOOD understanding of the subject and to earn REALLY GOOD grades on his tests, and by becoming so thoroughly knowledgeable on the subject, he will probably end up doing a VERY GOOD job in his profession and accomplish a lot of GOOD things for himself and others who deal with him in a professional capacity.”

In every case where ‘extreme’ is used without a context and/or without specifics, it by itself says nothing about the goodness or badness, or the desirability or undesirability of whatever’s being described as “extreme.” But when you turn it into a PERSONAL statement about someone as an “extremist” it becomes a slur. It is a way to say “he does something unusual, or is somebody unusual” IN A WAY THAT SOUNDS VERY VERY UNDESIRABLE.

“Extremist” is thus a means for the unscrupulous to instill a very negative impression of someone else without supplying any evidence, or making himself the target of a slander suit. It is a way of convincing the fuzzy thinkers, who will almost always find this word amongst others which are critical, that it is meant to be critical too, and create in their minds an image of a wild man unrestrained by the bounds of normal behavior or thinking – a fanatic, or a bully, or a liar, or a crook, or SOMETHING very EXTREME or OUTSIDE THE NORM which is VERY BAD.

It is, thus, a handy device for cowards who have no valid criticisms of the person or thing or group or event they wish to criticize or defeat. When I hear “extremist” used to describe someone in politics, my own reaction nowadays is to suspect the person using the word of having some despicable traits with more likelihood than the person he’s trying to label as despicable in such a cowardly and sleazy way.

So… to say “extremism is good” or “extremism is bad” would be a meaningless statement in either case, conveying zero information UNTIL THE CONTEXT is supplied. “Extremism” is NOT some stand-alone, specific thing which can be absolutely evaluated as being good or bad. It is merely a rough measure of quantity, meaning the presence of a VERY UNUSUAL quantity or degree of something, either a lot MORE than usual or a lot LESS..

What the sleazy amongst us have tried to do is equate EXTREMISM with FANATICISM in our minds, and erase from our minds any other possible meaning of the word, in order to pull a fast one on vague thinkers or cursory readers. The intent of those who intentionally turned this term into a pejorative one, was to enable them to dismiss out of hand ANYONE who sticks to his guns with INTEGRITY, thereby enabling them to disparage their most vocal, consistent, and impassioned opponents.

Many people are fuzzy thinkers, or cursory readers, or inattentive listeners, and they go by the vague impression they get from the wording and tone in which words are spoken rather than listening carefully to exactly what they mean. This is what the sleazes amongst us are counting on when they use the term ‘extremist’ to demonize someone whose actual arguments or personality or character are unimpeachable.

Furthermore, by conflating EXTREME with FANATIC, we lose the use of the REAL concept of “extreme” and gain an UN-NEEDED extra synonym for a concept we already have. We already know what a “fanatic”is. We also know what a man of integrity, or of impassioned ideals, or of committed purpose, is. But these can all be reasonably called UNUSUAL men, or men with VIRTUES at the EXTREME of what we find amongst the population of all men. So . . . we could justifiably call them “extremists” and lump them all together under that label. Then, if we can FOOL people into equating “extremist” with “fanatic,” our job is done. We can now convince people that certain good men who stand in our way are actually bad without having to provide any evidence or reasoned argument, and thereby increase our chances of being able to defeat him in a contest for the approval of a majority of the voters.

This is possible because fanatics do indeed share some visible traits with the best amongst our species. They are impassioned, they are often “activists.” They are firm believers in what they think is true and seem to be glued inseparably to their beliefs. But fanatics are BIASED and CLOSE MINDED to facts and arguments against their position – their fanatic position is based mostly on emotion, and they hold their beliefs for emotional reasons. They stick to their beliefs NOT from a loyalty to truth, but from an emotional fear of giving them up. The emotions come first for them, and their strong emotional NEED for attachment to their beliefs often appears, visually and vocally, very similar to an impassioned devotion to the truth. . A good scientist or other good man might be just as impassioned and glued to his beliefs, but it’s because he HAS considered all the arguments he could find against his beliefs and has been able to refute them all. He FEELS impassioned because his THINKING has convinced him of how valuable it is to understand the truth of his conclusions. His loyalty is to the truth, and that’s WHY he is impassioned. Should someone call attention to an error, he’ll alter his conclusions accordingly, because he’s devoted to the truth. His “extremism” is a high virtue, and the “demonization” of extremism as extremism, is a vile attempt to discredit such good men and label them in the minds of many as amongst the worst of men. – by those with personal agendas who relegate truth to a lower priority.

If I believed, as Rob certainly seems to,, that "extremism is ineffective" or that it is "not a good idea" or "to be shunned" then YOU might well say to me, Rob presumably would, by saying "YES!! Extremism is all that you mention. That is an extremely correct and perceptive statement with which I fully agree -- to the utmost extreme." IE, to adopt this statement and view it as accurate and correct, is to negate it, because FULL acceptance of its absolute condemnation of extremism itself, extremism of ANY unspecified nature,, would be itself the most extremist point of view you could have on the issue. IE, it is not a moderate position, but an EXTREMIST position, to claim or to believe that examples of EXTREMISM are ALWAYS AND WITHOUT EXCEPTION UNDESIRABLE AND INEFFECTIVE. Thus, the view that extremism is unremittingly bad, is of necessity ITSELF unremittingly bad, by its OWN admission!!

In short, the more certain your belief that “extremism” in and of itself, unqualified and out of any specific context, is inherently ineffective and counter-productive, the more you should REJECT YOUR OWN BELIEF, because its own logical advice to you is that you must reject it if you believe it. As your degree of certainty in its correctness approaches 100% absolute certainty, it become closer to its absolute extreme. And extremism in the belief of any supposed truth, is still extremism. And as such, it is to be rejected, shunned, dismissed as less than worthless – as, in effect, fanaticism. (Indeed, your absolute belief in ANYTHING is sufficient reason NOT to believe it, if you accept that “extremism is bad/wrong/ineffective.”).

THAT is another way of demonstrating the contradiction inherent in the (couldn’t be more wrong) opinion expressed by Rob. I will generously assume he has absorbed, by osmosis, this intentionally flawed self-contradictory slogan whose purpose is to fuzz up people’s thinking and thereby permit the widespread acceptance of the demonizing of others for unscrupulous motives.

Acceptance of the pseudo-idea associated with this slogan or its variations, is to turn yourself into fodder for the worst charlatans amongst us, a sheep for them to shear, while it simultaneously insulates you from the truth espoused by the best among us: the intelligent men who are impassioned seekers of truth – men who are truly INTELLECTUAL, interested in finding the right IDEAS, and who love the truth so much that they often exhibit their love of it with a passion. Their virtue is what evil men have attempted to turn against them, by altering the common usage of language in such a way as to DESTROY the ability to distinguish INTELLECTUAL INTEGRITY from EMOTIONAL FANATICISM in the minds of many people – which means many voters – which means many votes – which means it is an attempt to gain political power by defeating truth and knowledge with larger voting numbers acquired through intentionally induced ignorance.

"Extremism" is neither an entity NOR an action. It is a MEASURE OF THE DEGREE of an action, whether a physical or mental or emotional one. The degree or extent to which someone does, believes, or feels something cannot be evaluated as an absolute, as inevitably and always good or bad thing, WITHOUT CONTEXT, ie without first considering and evaluating the action, belief, or feeling which is being carried to its extreme degree.

An extreme dedication to the pursuit of truth (an action), or to the value of knowing the truth (a belief) or to a love for the truth (a feeling) CANNOT be evaluated as good UNLESS/UNITL you have FIRST evaluated "truth" as the good. Extreme behavior in torturing innocent people to death slowly, the idea that one is so superior he has an inherent right to do so, and the pleasurable neurotic or psychotic feelings of positive personal power when inflicting such agony on other human beings, could not be evaluated as bad or evil or wrong, unless/until one FIRST understands that torture of innocents for no end but to satisfy another person's wishes and urges is wrong. IE, YOUR EVALUATION OF THE DEGREE OR AMOUNT OR EXTENT OF A PROCESS IS DEPENDENT ON YOUR EVALUATION OF THE OUTCOME WHICH THAT PROCESS IS EXPECTED TO ACHIEVE. You are not logically entitled to make the former evaluation until you have made the latter one. But this is PRECISELY what is being done with the “extremism is bad” idea.

Rob, for a great read on why government employee unions are a huge problem, I encourage you to check out Thomas Sowell (Nobel prize-winning economist) or Dan Mitchell. In a market negotiation, both parties have a value proposition and negotiate to achieve value for their respective side where each has a cost and benefit, The problem with government unions is that the wage negotiation process takes place between the government workers and elected officials, but the taxpayers - who actually foot the bill - are left out! This makes it very easy for the elected officials to collude with the government unions and promise them more money in exchange for votes even though the costs are being born by the unrepresented taxpayer. So I completely agree with Rocky_Road - government unions are a very bad idea.

One of the best examples of this are charter schools vs public schools. The charter schools are directly funded by the parents of the students and if their performance doesn't match up with the fees, the student goes elsewhere. Not so with public schools - thus the huge backlash in public debate on the issue. The teachers' unions don't want to be accountable for their results and haven't been since their inception - seeking only to guarantee jobs for teachers while ignoring the students' needs. This - and the drop in parental involvement - have directly contributed to the decline in education here in the United States.

If your criteria for success is saving money then we can just let all the old people die in the streets. That would save money but few lives.

The WHO...
http://www.cato.org/publications/comment...

"Your "opinion" pieces aren't supported by facts." Rob

You have obviously not had enough time to examine the links I have sent you; let alone determine that they are devoid of facts. The Cato institute is a libertarian think tank that does studies dealing with facts.
O.A.

No one is forcing you to survive man. If you can't you can't.

Don't be a jerk.

Your article did NOT address a single of my points.

Post an article that refutes my points, and we can go from there.

The ball is in your court.

It doesn't be have to be regulated. You have the ability to form a contract with your health provider to retain your privacy. If they don't sign than you don't have to do business with them.