Far Right Presidential Candidate Wins in Argentina

[Foxi4]

For the benefit of everyone, the context of the quote, which has very little to do with freedom but has been endlessly misquoted: https://www.google.com/amp/s/techcr...n-franklins-quote-on-liberty-vs-security/amp/

The quote is pretty self-explanatory. Anyone interested in the context can Google it, as you have.

But people are not islands, forever isolated from anything or anyone else. Our actions impact others, and selfishly imperil others during pandemics, nullifying THEIR liberties. Rather, we are all part of an interdependent whole, dependent not only upon each other, but our entire ecosystem. Focusing solely on individual rights loses sight of the forest, the sky, the ocean, and our situatedness in the manifestation of life playing out over deep time... But think small if you must.

Other people’s decision on whether or not they undergo a medical procedure does not impact you. You have to perform your own cost/benefit analysis yourself. This is particularly relevant considering vaccines are not force fields - they do not prevent infection and they do not eliminate the risk of transmission, they’re designed to allow one to better fight a pathogen inside their own body. You should take the exact same safety precautions regardless of another person’s vaccination status. It is their body, not yours - it is incumbent on you to ensure your own safety. You are not entitled to make healthcare decisions on behalf of other people and force those decisions upon them. Human rights are individual rights, not collective rights. Once you violate individual rights, the collective doesn’t have any either.

 

[RetroGen]

Again, myopic. Hospitals, healthcare, etc... are finite, shared, public, resources. During the pandemic, wards were overflowing with unvaccinated COVID-19 patients, causing cancellation and delays to critical medical procedures required by others. Due to the overload, many of these unvaccinated people had to be flown out-of-province at great expense to the general public, likely in the millions, when vaccination would have only cost a few dollars each. Those selfish unvaccinated people did not impact only themselves. They directly impacted the well being of others, causing others a great deal of unnecessary suffering and many preventable deaths because their libertarian selfishness.

Expand your cognitive models.

Post automatically merged: Dec 18, 2023

Almost Dawin Award-winning right libertarian candidate who illustrates the idiocy and selfishness of the ideology: https://www.vice.com/en/article/akvw9b/mark-friesen-anti-vax-canadian-politician-intubated-covid

 

[Foxi4]

Again, myopic. Hospitals, healthcare, etc... are finite, shared, public, resources. During the pandemic, wards were overflowing with unvaccinated COVID-19 patients, causing cancellation and delays to critical medical procedures required by others. Due to the overload, many of these unvaccinated people had to be flown out-of-province at great expense to the general public, likely in the millions, when vaccination would have only cost a few dollars each. Those selfish unvaccinated people did not impact only themselves. They directly impacted the well being of others, causing many preventable deaths because their libertarian selfishness.

The mental hurdle you’re dealing with is conflating people who are unvaccinated with people who necessarily need hospital care. You’re treating them as severely sick preemptively. In fact, you’re even assuming that those patients wouldn’t require hospital care had they received a shot, which you can’t possibly know for certain - it would’ve reduced the odds, but those are just odds. I’m sure many people *did* catch COVID and *did* require care as a result of their choices, that’s what personal responsibility is. Hospitals were packed because there was a pandemic going on - the rest is conjecture on your part. “Tying up resources” is not an argument that speaks to me - hospitals exist to treat patients. That’s what they’re for. I’m sure knocking a Big Mac out of an obese person’s hands would improve their odds of not suffering from cardiovascular issues and thus alleviate their risk of hospitalisation, but what they eat is still none of your business - it’s not your body. Nothing you’ve said negates the people’s right to make their own decisions regarding their health. I’m sorry that you want to uproot a fundamental human right because of a perceived notion that it would’ve contributed to some kind of imaginary collective good, but personal liberty trumps your premise. You are more than welcome to advocate for healthy life choices, but you cannot force them on people. Freedom is not limited to being free to make good decisions, it encompasses decisions you consider to be bad. You could do a great many things to improve collective safety by way of violating people’s rights - I’m sure people would be very safe if you placed each and every one of them in comfortable padded cells, but I’d wager most would prefer to die free than to live as slaves to your whim. Naturally, this is an exaggeration, but it illustrates the point.

 

[RetroGen]

"Thems pretty good odds..." - The scientific and medical community.

Slippery slopes, unknown unknowns... whatever... talk about Argentina.

 

[Foxi4]

"Thems pretty good odds..." - The scientific and medical community.

Slippery slopes, unknown unknowns... whatever... talk about Argentina.

I am dead serious in what I said, because it strikes at the heart of whether you’re actually a libertarian or not. The biggest killer in modern society by far is obesity. Heart disease, stroke and diabetes are in the top ten leading causes of death in the United States (with heart disease leading the charge by a country mile), nothing comes close to the negative effects of unhealthy eating habits, not even this pandemic. Are you, or are you not, going to punch the next hamburger out of a fat person’s hands? You said that the ends justify the means because hospitals and medicine are a limited resource that is collectively shared and that choosing not to make necessary steps to avoid tying up those resources is selfish. Nothing ties up those resources more than the results of having a bad diet. Are you going to force people to eat gruel to reduce their risk of hospitalisation? You can reduce the risk of heart disease right now by making the state interfere in what people put on their plates. I want to get a yes or no answer out of you before we proceed, because you sure don’t like liberty for someone who’s a purported libertarian.

EDIT: For the record, I completely understand your sentiment. I don’t want people to die en masse either. I would like them to make good decisions about their health. I would like hospitals to not be overburdened. My point is that it’s not up to me. Liberty is more important than what I may subjectively consider to be a good outcome. If people don’t want to make those good choices, that’s on them - everybody faces the consequences of their own actions. The best I can do is advocate for what I think is right, I can’t demand it at the point of a gun.

 

[Dark_Ansem]

The problem is that the liberty of others is impacted by the liberty of, say, nonvaxxed people. I'm no libertarian as it always ends up being gatekeeping for either far right or anarchy, but it's interesting to see where the line is drawn.

 

[Foxi4]

The problem is that the liberty of others is impacted by the liberty of, say, nonvaxxed people. I'm no libertarian as it always ends up being gatekeeping for either far right or anarchy, but it's interesting to see where the line is drawn.

We touched upon this earlier with the street protests debacle. If you walk in the middle of a road with a sign and prevent me from moving forwards, you are making a deliberate decision to stop me from exercising my right to travel. You’re doing that, on purpose - you chose to deprive me of my right to travel unimpeded. If you choose not to vaccinate, for whatever reason, that does not automatically translate into infecting me with anything - you’re not sick. Your odds of suffering more severe consequences of a given disease are greater, but that’s contingent on you actually contracting it. You’re not in control of that, and neither am I - we can only make reasonable choices to avoid it and improve our odds. Moreover, you can transmit the disease to me regardless of whether you’re vaccinated or not. I can’t rely on you in this instance - *I* have to make an effort to protect myself from the pathogen. The vaccine is like a seatbelt - it is designed to protect *you* in the event of a car crash. I’d still much rather not be a victim of a traffic accident at all, so please don’t drive drunk and try to be careful on the road. You flying through the front windshield or not has a very minor impact on my safety, the main concern is the hunk of steel barrelling in my direction.

 

[Dark_Ansem]

The vaccine is like a seatbelt - it is designed to protect *you* in the event of a car crash.

Herd immunity is a thing tho

 

[Foxi4]

Herd immunity is a thing tho

Sure, on a macro scale it is. It kicks in when a significant portion of the population becomes immune to a given pathogen. Vaccines help in speeding up that process, but they’re not the only way to achieve it, are they? There’s no shortage of people who never got vaccinated, caught COVID, recovered from it and became immune to it (or at least that particular strain) as a result. They’re part of herd immunity too, even though they did nothing to actively contribute to it. This is another aspect of the equation that we have *very* limited control over. If your point is that people should come together and unite when faced with a common danger, such as a deadly virus, then I agree. Will I put them in jail if they don’t want to, or banish them from civil society? No. Bodily autonomy trumps any collective concern - it’s not my body, I don’t live in it. I am not willing to sacrifice liberty on the altar of collective good - that’s a loaded gun that can very easily be aimed at many liberties we hold dear.

 

[september796]

So is he actually far right or is this another case of "Not socialist/communist therefore far right"?

He's a libertarian, therefore leftist.

 

[tabzer]

"Thems pretty good odds..." - The scientific and medical community.

Slippery slopes, unknown unknowns... whatever... talk about Argentina.

If a "pandemic" can validate the encroachment on liberties, I would like to assume that you'd violate the non-living entity's liberties first. Those lobby deals, trade secrets, and monopolies have some pretty amazing rights to life.

 

[Foxi4]

If a "pandemic" can validate the encroachment on liberties, I would like to assume that you'd violate the non-living entity's liberties first. Those lobby deals, trade secrets, and monopolies have some pretty amazing rights to life.

In all fairness, a lot of those protections exist because nobody would be in the pharma business or develop vaccines otherwise. For instance, your ability to sue for vaccine-related injuries is heavily restricted by the state. It’s not because vaccine-related injuries are common (they’re not, they’re extremely rare) but rather because they’re unavoidable, and one lawsuit of this nature could completely dismantle a company that made a vaccine even though they haven’t done anything wrong. Not all negative reactions can be accounted for, it’s the name of the game and a known quantity. If you meant “liberties” in a more *kaching* kind of sense then sure, backroom deals with the government are always shady.

Edit: In case this is big news for anyone, manufacturers of vaccines are exempt from regular product liability lawsuits. If a product is defective and harms you, you can take the manufacturer to court and get restitution as it was not supposed to do that. The same does not apply to a vaccine - if you suffer any negative effects, it is the official position of the state that you made an educated decision regarding your health, consented to the injection and thus cannot sue. In lieu of regular liability lawsuits, the state established the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program and *it* foots the bill as a no-fault alternative. This was done in an effort to prevent vaccine shortages and mostly concerns mandatory vaccinations, but there are other programs for elective ones.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Childhood_Vaccine_Injury_Act
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Vaccine_Injury_Compensation_Program

In the case of the COVID vaccine, it’s covered by the Countermeasures Injury Compensation Program.

https://www.hrsa.gov/cicp

So… it would appear that the state agrees with me that vaccination is an individual’s choice and is not interested in litigating such cases at all.

 

[tabzer]

In all fairness, a lot of those protections exist because nobody would be in the pharma business or develop vaccines otherwise. For instance, your ability to sue for vaccine-related injuries is heavily restricted by the state. It’s not because vaccine-related injuries are common (they’re not, they’re extremely rare) but rather because they’re unavoidable, and one lawsuit of this nature could completely dismantle the company that made the vaccine even though they haven’t done anything wrong. Not all negative reactions can be accounted for, it’s the name of the game and a known quantity. If you meant “liberties” in a more *kaching* kind of way then sure, backroom deals with the government are always shady.

Yes, I get that, but if we are tossing liberties and protections out the window because of "emergency", it'd be more humanitarian to gut a company for its life-saving resources before going after the people.

 

[Foxi4]

Yes, I get that, but if we are tossing liberties and protections out the window because of "emergency", it'd be more humanitarian to gut a company for its life-saving resources before going after the people.

I added an edit above that addressed this, if only in part. Fearing that burdening pharma companies with liability would lead to vaccine shortages, the government established a special program for when their products cause boo-boo’s, the taxpayer is paying for it.

As for tossing liberties out the window in the event of an emergency, the Bill of Rights was written *during* an emergency and *with* an emergency in mind. Inalienable means inalienable. If rights are conditional then they’re not rights, they’re privileges.

 

[Dark_Ansem]

He's a libertarian, therefore leftist.

How can you say something so controversial yet so fake?

 

[Foxi4]

How can you say something so controversial yet so fake?

There are plenty of libertarian leftists. There’s a left-wing libertarian party in my area - I don’t vote for them because they’re left-wing. The political spectrum has two axes.



I guess it depends on how he defines the word “leftist”.

 

[Dark_Ansem]

There's no definition of leftist that fits Milei tho.

 

[Foxi4]

There's no definition of leftist that fits Milei tho.

Maybe we should ask @september796 what he meant. I too struggle to think of a way in which Milei could be considered leftist, besides currency manipulation, and that’s both a big “maybe” and a strategy that was embraced by the right at this point, if reluctantly.

 

[september796]

Maybe we should ask @september796 what he meant. I too struggle to think of a way in which Milei could be considered leftist, besides currency manipulation, and that’s both a big “maybe” and a strategy that was embraced by the right at this point, if reluctantly.

Libertarians are woke leftists regarding social policies, just with an economic scope, but besides that they still share the same philosophical roots, that is, neither good nor bad exist so whatever you wanna do is ok as long as you don't mess with other's privacy and/or properties, other than that i dont care about you, wanna promote su!cid4l lifestyle among people? go for it, as long as you don't restrict them.
That sort of thing.

 

[Dark_Ansem]

Libertarians are woke leftists regarding social policies

Yep he's literally threatening to shoot legitimate protesters, that's a joke leftist all right lmao