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 Originally Posted by IowaSkinsFan
Actually, I would say yes. Maybe I wouldn't use the word desire, but to say they did not "want" those consequences I feel would be wrong. If by desire we mean consciously verbalized to themselves they they did not want "X" consequence of having a child, then of course they probably did not desire it. But to me, most people do not have the perspective to understand what they need, want, and feel, and I'd like to push them in a direction of better understanding that.
Okay, it appears that there is a disconnect of semantics. Even if there isn't, I can't really go much further without a clear definition of what we're discussing.
What I would like to say though is this: I want to have a wife, but I also don't want to have a wife. I want to have a family, but I also don't want a family. There are many things that I want, but many of them do not support each other, and I could go to great length explaining the reasons and pros/cons for my desires, yet I still have little clue as to what I 'really want' with regards to these decisions.
Now, since I clearly have conflicting desires, the decisions I make in these areas will provide me with conflicting feelings, but does that mean that I wanted those feelings and consequences? It doesn't, it means that I compromised for what I considered the greater good. Or it could mean that I just picked a decision and ran with it. It could mean a lot of things
On top of that, the argument that I originally thought you're making (now I'm beginning to think it's a little different) assumed complete information about the consequences of our actions. It's one thing to work with the information you have, but it's an entirely different thing to think that the information you have = all information; and really that was what I was originally arguing, even though I may have misinterpreted and accidentally straw manned your position
I think this is very hard to factually argue either way, but I'll agree to disagree on this point.
Within the context of biology, what I said is correct, especially from an evolutionary perspective. You cannot find a single complex biological organism on the planet that is made 'right' or 'designed optimally' or what have you. The phylogenic tree is made up entirely of genes that evolved only enough to survive. For example: as great as the human eye is, it's actually a shoddy piece of equipment with egregious flaws that cause assloads of problems, and its evolutionary path is nonsensical from an engineer's perspective.
Within the context of biology, which is absolutely relevant to anything about human behavior (which is basically a subset of biology, including other sciences), what we are is merely just how adapted our genes have been to our environments. Our entirely genome is a sort of vestigial organism. Now, I'm not sure exactly what you mean by 'right', but if you mean it in an abstract sense of how to optimally engage in something, biology doesn't operate under that paradigm
I think this was a very well structured argument and I can't really say I disagree with it. My question would be is it the government that truly needs to do this? Can a private organization do many of the things that you believe the government should be doing?
I'm glad you said this because it ties into a very important misunderstanding of government/regulation/public sector/etc.
Yes, the private organization can regulate, and it does, a lot. The problem with governance exclusively coming from a private organization (special interest) is that it governs in its own best interest, not the populous' best interests. Monarchies and corporatocracies and dictatorships and many others are all governments from the private sector. They are not made up of the people and are not for the benefit of the people, but instead the society is ran by the special individual for their special interests. In these kinds of governments the public sector is very weak. The populous has little power; they can revolt all they want but Supreme Leader Khamenei and the Guardian Council are the ruling private interest, and they naturally will do what they want most, and thus you have a totalitarian theocracy waterlogged in oppression and inhumanities called Iran
Or you could have places like Norway and Sweden which have governments with very strong public sector and public interests which means that the population as a whole benefits, and this directly benefits the individual within the public. Things like higher education, health care, basic shelter and food for all massively benefit the public but don't do much for the private/wealthy. This is seen simply by low crime rates, high literacy rates, etc.
However, private interests are very important for society as a whole. An example is the Federal Reserve, it's privatized and that's a damn good thing too because if monetary policy became whim to Congress then we're fucking fucked. But the Fed does not go without oversight and regulation from the public sector. It is currently quite weak oversight and regulation and we've actually seen this great void of public interests in the Fed and subsequently Wall Street jackknife the US public and global economy
Look at it this way. Modern society has a pretty great consumer kitchen appliance setup. We get workable and relatively affordable product from the private industry, the private industry makes nice profit, and the government regulates consumer protections to a pretty great degree. Our skillets aren't catching on fire, our toasters aren't electrocuting us, and our knives are not chipping off into our food. Now, while private industry does have some degree of self-correction due to competition, it's not nearly as much as they tell us, and history is littered with examples of private industry making a cash grab with a faulty product or not testing product well then lo n behold its consumers get cancer in 15 years.
Private industry is good at making a product and a profit, but they're not good at regulating themselves to make sure that product is safe because if they did they would make lower or negative profit. Definitively, private industry is not self-regulatory; that's why we need public sector governance.
When was the last time you heard of somebody in the US who died because of a contaminated product he purchased at the store? It happens, but do you also remember the ginormous backlash? Well, the extremely low numbers of problems with our food and drug products and the ginormous backlash with most serious problems is entirely because of government agencies like the FDA which are meant to be ran by the public, for the public. I mean we have shitload of agencies working for the public. The FBI, for one. Take a look at the history of serial killers or organized crime. Before the FBI and other agencies were well-established, those two things were pretty much mainstays. FBI beat the shit out of the Mob, which was its own authoritarian pseudo-regime, and it's now virtually impossible to be a successful serial killer due to public agencies like the FBI. These public agencies can be corrupted just like anything, but that's a different issue
Imagine a US without the FDA. A US where somebody could make a killing (literally) by putting Fen-Phen back on the market then running off with their moneybags when everybody realizes they got fucked. A US where a farmer can re-brand DDT and start using that because he needs to make ends meet.
They say in Thailand, if you go to McDonalds, don't eat the lettuce because their agricultural industry has such little oversight that it's not uncommon to get food poisoning from a simple vegetable. I'm very glad I live in a society with some public sector governance
I think this is where I radically differ from a lot of people: I don't think the fact that people are happy is necessarily a good thing. If a child throws a tantrum every time he doesn't get fed chocolate, so his mother gives him chocolate any time he wants, the kid will probably be happy given most scales. To me, happiness is something that is earned, not given. I would'nt want someone to be happy if they were not the ones creating it through a high level of understanding. Fuck, I'm sure a homeless man would be happy if he won 7 million dollars, but I don't think anyone is arguing this is something that is fantastic and should be praised. If you do think this, again, I'll agree to disagree.
I don't disagree with most of this, but you also can't compare happiness on the individual level with happiness of a society. The latter is a fantastic way to evaluate how well a society is running, and the former doesn't represent that at all
It's also not about benefiting individuals directly, but benefiting the populous which itself indirectly benefits the individuals who collectively make up the populous.
While I agree that happiness how you have described it isn't really something that anybody 'deserves', I do wholeheartedly believe that happiness on the collective level is a basic human right. Or at least the absence of unhappiness. I'm not interested in making the individual happy by giving him what he wants, I'm interested in making the collective happy by providing them with equal opportunity to make their lives what they want. Also, even though we've been told that a society ran by the special interests is what benefits equality the most, that notion becomes ridiculous if you simply just look up the definitions of 'special' and 'equal'
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