Anchorman 2 (Page 2)

Acting on behalf of yourself does not necessarily negate your moral obligations to not harm your fellow man.  Those that due are ignoring the laws that society has set up to protect others.  And that is not bad.  It is when laws negatively impact the innocent.  Like (can't believe I'm bringing it up) gun laws, then we have a problem.

And example of how my civil liberties are being affected are the gun laws of Colorado.  And I don't even own a gun. Or the fact that now that pot is legal here, you really do smell it all over the place.  (I know the law prohibits smoking in public, but tell that to the stoners.  I don't smell alcohol everywhere...

Well looking at the recent chemical spills into the water table in West Virginia, I would assert that polluters are not paying to pollute, and that we do need more regulation. Specifically because people looking out for their own interests is NOT the best thing for everyone else. It is in fact, bad for everyone else.

A moral obligation is not to another.  It is your own knowing what is right and wrong.  We may disagree on some things, but doing something that would hurt others (say pouring toxic chemicals into an aquafir is easily recognized as bad.  Accidents happen, but when you do something that you know will hurt someone else, that is being immoral.  Yes there are gray areas, and I'm not going to argue those as people tend to like to nitpick things and try to put words in your mouth.  You know what is right and wrong.  Take a side and believe in it.

Well yes, if EVERYONE acted in a way that was good for EVERYONE, we would probably all be better or in the long run. However, this is not practical. Therefore we have to employ a system where people can act in their own interest, as long as it does not have too negative an impact on others. We especially need to regulate big businesses and heavy industry because they have a larger ability to negatively impact others. I.e. the WV chemical spills that polluted the drinking water of (not sure on the number) tens, maybe hundreds of thousands of innocent bystanders.

They only do this if it makes money. Boner pills and T-patches are gold mines, is that really the best pharm research for everyone? They pressure/bribe the doctors to prescribe, and overprescribe their drugs. Is that in the best interest of everyone? Do you really think that all these kids really need medication for ADD? Do you think that the Pharm companies have something to do with the overprescribing?

Also, if acting in your own self interest is good for everyone, what do we need guns for? surely not to protect ourselves.

finding a cure for a rare disease doesn't make money. in that case, the free market has decided that someone's life isn't that important. Capitalism should not be our moral compass.

I think you guys are just arguing past each other because it's not a good/evil, black/white, either/or situation.  Sometimes rational self interest is a good thing and sometimes it's a destructive thing.  Its great for allocating resources efficiently in markets for private goods like consumer products.  It's terrible for allocation of common-pool resources such as fisheries, the atmosphere or national defense where it not only encourages but requires unsustainable use (tragedy of the commons) and free-riding.  But some blanket statement that people acting in their self-interest is always good/right or bad/wrong is missing context and the bigger picture.

ETA - Heh, yeah, that clip makes Anchorman look like a documentary.

I never said it was always a bad thing, just that it is not always for the common good.

Your analogies would be true in an either or situation. In real life, there is money to develop the drug, but no company would ever develop a drug to help people and lose money doing it. Is that your moral? I only help people if it pays for me?

Our government funds research into things that are not profitable, and many times private industry benefits from this research. Yet, the GOP decries public funding and says no, the free market should do it.

I don't understand your question about where I derive my authority from.

Which millions lost insurance? Not sure where you are getting this.

Maybe you should read Hobbes.

X

if you have my size I'll take one. but really, when does a for profit pharm company release a drug for a rare disease?

In all seriousness I do agree with you on this one.  Purely from a business standpoint and taking the human side out of it, it wouldn't really be possible for a company to do this.  I don't know the numbers, but I'm going to WAG and say that it costs tens of millions of dollars to build a lab, hire scientists, and get through all of the regulation hurdles necessary to get a drug on the market for any disease (rare or common).  If the disease happens to be rare then you have to cover your costs somewhere so the drug would have to cost 100's of thousands of dollars per pill which of course wouldn't fly.

To get a little more into the tinfoil hat realm I've also wondered about drug companies being incented to truly cure diseases.  A company making a billion dollars a year selling a drug to treat disease X wouldn't exactly be incentivized to cure disease X permanently would they?  Especially if they have a patent protecting their "market".

yes! also why most of our medications control/treat symptoms, and we don't address the root problem. (which I believe should be through diet and lifestyle)

Probably the most significant, but not necessarily obvious one is the erosion of our 4th amendment rights.

With the new digital age the government has been effectively busting into everyone's house and rummaging through all their stuff without warrant.  However, they haven't been doing it in the traditional sense of going into somebodies house they've done it at the digital level.

Virtually everything we do in society today is tracked and recorded.  Even our cellphones have full time GPS tracking with Cameras and audio recording capabilities.  Is the government tracking and monitoring my cellphone?  Of course not, but I have no 4th amendment protection anymore from them doing it if they want to because our society has deemed that it's more important to give our government the power to "keep us safe" at all costs.

When we give the government this kind of power, the power will ultimately be abused.

There's no reason for the government to pick on me individually because I'm a nobody, but the simple fact that they have the power and the ability to connect to my computer or cellphone without any legal recourse is scary.  With intent gradually being removed from more and more of our laws, it becomes easier and easier for political targeting and abuse to occur.

Then I guess I'll ultimately be upset......but so far I don't feel abused, don't feel like my freedom is being infringed upon, and don't feel like it affects my life one bit......not even a small bit.

I can attest to to throwing a lot of garbage overboard when I was in the Navy.  

One of my favorite stories of how stupid our government is:

When my ship was in the gulf around 93/94 we couldn't throw anything overboard and had to keep all of our garbage on the ship because of how shallow the gulf was.  We didn't want to hurt the environment.
So, we're stinking like no tomorrow due to weeks of garbage being stacked in rooms and in the hallway.  It was so nasty I can't even explain.
We get to port and they hire a local garbage hauler who pulls a barge up next to our ship.  We spend several hours offloading all of our nasty rancid moldy garbage onto the barge.  I am looking at the barge and wondering how they unload it and start talking to one of the workers on the barge.  He says they take it about 50 miles out into the gulf and dump it out the bottom.  /facepalm

So, in order for the US to feel good about itself and not pollute we pay what is likely a large sum of money to a foreign country to go dump our garbage in the same place we could have just dumped it.

I guess this is an example of a cap and trade style system.  We still get to pollute, but we pay somebody else to feel better about it.