Quote:
Originally posted by Ustwo
I think it makes you a hippie, you expect the government to give you stuff and control everyone who works but don't want it to get in the way of free love and drugs 
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Ustwo: I apologize in advance if the above statement was meant as a specific observation about Mr Mephisto based on your knowledge of him and/or his posting history. It reads more like a generalization about the raw numerical scores he posted, and my reply treats it as such.
Speaking solely for myself (-5.25, -5.59), I would say that your blinders must make it hard to get around.
I don't expect the government to "give me stuff" or "control everyone who works"; I
do believe that there are things which are vitally important to the maintenance of a democratic society (roads, national defense, and good public schools, to name three off the top of my head), but for which no viable profit model exists. I also believe that any organization which explicitly claims 'make the most money possible' as its
sole criterion for decision making (cf. publicly-traded companies) requires some sort of oversight (e.g., I don't trust them
). Despite the fact that I think capitalism is far and away the best economic model we've come up with yet, I guess this makes me a "socialist".
And as for the "drugs and free love", again your characterization misses the point. What I personally feel about drug use or premarital sex or homosexuality has nothing to do with my conviction that none of these things are any of the government's damned business. So long as a person doesn't break any laws (property crime, murder, rape, etc.), what they put in their body, or what of their body they put in other people's, should not in any way be the subject of invasive, humiliating, not to mention *costly*, government oversight and interference. I guess that makes me a "hippie", in your eyes, but I certainly disagree.