I think that is a more clear framing of what the OP was saying, and if they had written it that way I probably wouldn't have bothered replying. It just had a very fatalistic tone I didn't agree with.
I still disagree though, the relationship between scarcity and generosity is very complex.
And as an aside, homeless shelters and socialized medicine are cheaper than the alternatives in developed nations, so I would argue those are the sign of good governance rather than excess value. Although that depends on your definition of value...
This comment defines value as what people pay for things, then comes to the conclusion that they way to value people must be based on what people will pay for them.
That's not insightful, that's just circular reasoning, and it fails to explain normal human behavior.
Does a child have no value to it's parents because it's "easily produced"[1] and "disposable and replaceable"?
You and the parent both made good points. In Germany a swastika might be seen as more of a direct threat of specific action than other places. That makes it more sensible to classify as a threat.
> I'm not. You come to my house, you follow my rules, you come to our country you follow our values, simple
I wish it was this simple, so badly, but that strategy has been tried many times before and it always ends in violence. First off, who is "our"? Is it the majority? That leaves every minority group vulnerable. Is it the most powerful (it usually is)? That leave everyone screwed. It all seems great, until you end up as a target. This is why we base our systems of rights to more universal, and not based on our ethnicity.
For example, some of the historical opinions of my fairly recent ancestors: All Jewish people should be dead; ditto for Homo/Tran-sexual; also the Irish; black people aren't humans; the middle east should be owned by Western Europeans, and if not, designed to minimize the chances of them forming successful nations; same for Africa
Seeing this as bad assumes you think hurting other people is bad, which I do. If you don't agree, then there isn't much to discuss, you are entirely correct withing your framework
> Otherwise if you allow one flavor of imported oppressive culture so you don't ":force yurt values on other people" why not allow domestic oppressive cultures too, like fascism? Why only tolerate imported ones?
Where I'm from being a Nazi is completely legal. We tolerate both. There is still an ongoing discussion about where to draw the line, but the standards are always higher than wearing clothes that you don't like. Germany may not tolerate Nazi's for obvious historical reasons.
I would recommend "They Thought They Were Free" for a more of a look into this. It's an interesting book.
Edit: This is not true, almost all laws are passed to deal with a situation that is already occurring.
> Welcome to the real world where a lot of laws are made to cover things that could happen precisely so that when they do happen, there's a law ready to enforce.
You're throwing a bunch of straw man arguments out, which makes it a lot of work to actually respond to this whole post.
Rights are always on a spectrum with a large amount of grey area.
> burkas are a security risk in public since people could hide and smuggle weapons under that
This is silly. Everyone wears coats in the winter.
> there could be men hiding underneath using it to enter female only spaces like bathrooms and changing rooms
Is this actually a concern? AFAICT this isn't happening, it's just something that could theoretically happen, which doesn't make it a reason to decrease people rights. That would be another standard tactic for pushing authoritarian laws.
> Then on top of that, you also have the cultural and optics aspect, that burkas are a symbol of a backwards oppressive culture that's incompatible with western progressive liberal and feminist values that the west cherishes or at least pretends to.
This seems valid, but I'm pretty hesitant to force my cultural values on people. It hasn't gone well historically.
Controlling how people dress sounds pretty authoritarian to me. The fact that it's currently not acceptable to enter a bank with a covered face would indicate a law banning it in all public locations is not needed.
Taking rights away from people labelled as terrorists is a pretty standard way for governments to control viewpoints. It gives them the power to add any group they don't like to a list, and deport/imprison them with minimal judicial process.
I don't know enough about surveillance of minors to comment on that one.
While I 100% agree that there are wage issues, the question with housing is why it's growing faster than general inflation.
House prices seem to be increasing fastest in places with high incomes. This leads me to believe increasing incomes wouldn't solve this particular problem.
This opinion sets up corporate consolidation as the cause of all issue in the US. I don't think it makes sense for that to be the null hypothesis that needs to be disproven.
For this specific issue, homebuilding, and construction in general, are very regional businesses. There just aren't a few giant homebuilders controlling the industry across the nation.
There are certainly some antitrust issues with rentals, but they don't seem to be nearly as widespread as the housing issue in general.
I don't think the punching down vs up lense is a particularly effective way to analyz this issue. Nor do I think its easy to figure out who's "down" and who's "up".
> Claiming that not getting sunlight is the same as smoking is pure garbage.
So you're throwing out a whole study because it didn't cover a specific confounding variable you thought of, than stating a claim with no evidence backing it up?
That's pure garbage.
They specifically call this out in the abstract.
> We obtained detailed information at baseline on their sun exposure habits and potential confounders.