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@Best.Korea
Maybe we should let our workforce shrink due to low birth rates and let migrants suffer in poverty by denying them of life in USA.
The US brings in more than enough immigrants to offset low birth rates. It's even growing our population.
Current fertility rate is around 1.7 births per woman.
If fertility rates around the globe keep dropping, then there won't be enough immigrants to offset our rapid population decline anyways.
Therefore, your point is kinda moot.
Lets hope that local American population can actually be as successful as migrants are. It sure can! Its not like migrants bring in knowledge, money, crime reduction and labor with them. Nuh uh!
Unskilled migrants bringing in new knowledge and money give me a break. Unskilled immigrants will not have superior knowledge regarding the workplace. Secondly, our population is multicultural already and the benfits to knowledge most likely overstated.
Skilled migrants could help in regards to knowledge a little bit. We aren't a backwards country after all.
Crime reduction statistics are suspicious.
I close to done with this topic. I'm getting tired of talking about it.
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Thats true. Its better if 1 person enjoys than if millions of people enjoy as long as GDP per person is higher. This makes sense.
Yes better to impoverish Americans than have a reasonable amount of immigration that doesn't harm anyone. The last 4 years have been great for American finances and the economy. Best time to have more immigration.
People vote in their best interests. It's not the US's job to take care of the whole world's population.
Reasonable immigration in good economic times is great for some of reasons you mentioned above, but it has a compounding bad effect with stagflation and low economic growth.
However, you won't listen to any of that because it's better that everyone in world be poor than for the current US population to be better off because of responsible social/economical policies. Envious much?
Let the rest of world lift itself out of poverty. The US will accept a limited number of immigrants because it benefits our country, but we shouldn't be a free handout to the rest of the world .
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@Best.Korea
Citizens as a whole become more productive when there is more of them.
Units of scale are taken advantage of by large populations anyway.
Increases in units of scale require reinvestment and time and its probably not as big as a boost to GDP as you think it is because we already take advantage of it in most industries when we can.
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Total GDP is more important than GDP per capita.
GDP is important from a government's perpective. GDP per capita is more important to a person.
Increases in GDP per capita coincide with higher standards of living. Decreases coincide with a lower standard of living.
GDP can rise and GDP per capita can fall.
For instance,
Extreme increases of people do not add to the productivity of capital. Fewer machines and resources per person.
Simple baby terms, if you double the number of people at your work you don't double the output. You need more equipment and machines. You get a fractional increase in production by adding more people.
If this is an economy, then your workforce must earn less because it's producing less per person.
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@Best.Korea
Do you prefer poor migrants coming into the country with no valuable skills over skilled migrants?Do you prefer illegal migrants over legal migrants?Both benefit a country.
Skilled migrants are better than unskilled migrants. They have higher productivity in monetary terms.
Legals are better than illegals because we can limit the number and exclude the criminals.
An excessive amount of unskilled migrant labor with the US's isn't benefeitificual. It's only benefeitificual to small group of people. The rich. The economy grows but the rich absorb the gains because the poor's wages can be kept down from continuous migration.
Also nice to be a corporation that gets cheap labor, but that's a different point.Yes, cheaper labor means cheaper goods and services.
Not as simple as you think. Capital per person drops making your citizens less productive, therefore poorer. Corporations benefit from cheap labor not the common man.
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@Best.Korea
Do you prefer poor migrants coming into the country with no valuable skills over skilled migrants?
Do you prefer illegal migrants over legal migrants?
Should we have so much immigration that it overwhelms the lower class by lowering wages and increasing the cost of housing and living? the cost living also impacts the middle class by way?
If your a young person and not born into a rich family, do want unskilled immigrant labor competing against your labor so fiercely that it reduces your social mobility and increases your country's income/wealth inequality?
If your family's rich, then who cares your going to college and you never needed to work a minimum wage job in your life. Nice to be an elite. Also, those unskilled immigrants help reduce the poor and lower middle class's social mobility which reduces competition for your elitist job.
Also nice to be a corporation that gets cheap labor, but that's a different point.
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@zedvictor4
The existence of transgenders in society doesn't bother me.
Allowing/mandating gender-affirming care to minors is troubling. Professionals recommending sex-reassignment surgery (sterilization) as a cure for depressed/anxious/lonely people is also problematic.
As I said before:
There haven't been any rigorous studies to prove that gender reassignment surgery improves the mental health of transgender people.
Long term observations of suicide rates between transgenders and sex-reassigned transgenders would be a decent non-subjective measure for this.
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@zedvictor4
Emile Durkheim noticed the rise of suicide rates with the modernization of society.
He suggested the breakdown of social organizations and norms (standards) makes it harder for individuals to find the pursuit of anything meaningful.
Being conditioned to accept a new normal is the norm.
I argue this is simply heading us towards normlessness.
I'm not sure who or what works it all out.
But it just seems to happen.
Perhaps not. Civilization may collapse eventually because of the failure of our culture.
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@Critical-Tim
I don't think there have been any rigorous studies to prove that gender reassignment surgery improves the mental health of transgender people, yet we're supposed to believe that individuals with gender dysphoria suffer needlessly without gender affirming care.
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@Best.Korea
SidewalkerHow can you explain the existence of God?B.K.He created himself, obviously.
Your making speculations. Perhaps, God popped into existence and hasn't changed since?
If God is a simple fact of nature, then Atheists are not far from claiming the universe popped into existence from a state of low entropy.
Either argument assumes something existed to cause the universe to exist.
I tend to think God needs to be made of similar stuff as the rest of universe. This might not be the case. However, if two things are completely unrelated how do they interact?
(1) If this true, then the start of existence began with a complex entity (God).
Or
(2) If this is false, then the start of existence began with something simple (energy).
Occam's razor suggests we should believe proposition (2).
The existence of the universe or God doesn't make a lot of sense. Although, I'm still a theist.
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@IwantRooseveltagain
Different sources slightly different numbers. I could call you liar for not having numbers consistent with me. However, it's literally tenths of a percent your talking about here.
Biden already beat Trump’s best unemployment rate of 3.67%. Loser!
2021 - 3.61% and 2019 - 3.67% so a 0.06% difference. Dam Biden.
Trump oversaw a 22 trillion dollar GDP in 2019Biden had a 25 trillion dollar GDP in 2022. Loser!
Do you understand the difference between GDP and real GDP?
My Source: FRED. Look up the dam site. The data is from the federal reserve. If you can't figure out how to use the site that's your fault.
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@IwantRooseveltagain
I made a mistake. The aforementioned numbers were annually averaged over the year, so they're smoother than they should be.
Here are the numbers based on Q4 percent change from a year ago. No averages involved.
Real GDP Growth (Inflation Adjusted)
Biden
measuring end of Q4
2021 5.42%
2022 0.65%
Trump
2017 2.99%
2018 2.13%
2019 3.18%
2020 -1.08%
The economy is larger today than pre-Covid
GDP fell during Q1 in 2020 because of Covid. 2019 Q4 was pre-covid. Lets calculate percent change of Real GDP from 2019 to 2021.
Q4
2019 20,951 (2017 Billions dollars)
2021 21,847 (2017 Billions dollars)
2019-2021 4.28% (Real GDP growth from pre-Covid to a year after covid)
Biden performed 1.10% better than the typical 3.18% Real GDP average. He grew the economy 0% in 2022. It looks like 2023 will end with 2.1% growth and 2024 a recession. Go Brandon.
Notice Biden added more jobs in his first 30 months than Trump did in his first 30 months?
Unemployment rate pre-covid 3.6%. Unemployment rate now 3.8%. Amazing, people went back to work after Covid.
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@IwantRooseveltagain
Real GDP growth inflation adjusted
Its not impressive the economy grew 5.8% when everyone went back to work after covid. Any president in office could of achieved that.
Notice Biden's second year is worse than Trump's first three years.
Biden
2021-2022 5.8%
2022-2023 1.93%
Trump
2017-2018 2.46
2018-2019 2.97
2019-2020 2.47
2020-2021 -2.21
Source Fred (federal reserve economic data)
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@Barney
Since I don't believe every sperm is sacred, I prioritize personhood as measured by a mind.
Pro-life side in general does not think a sperm or ovum is a person.
Granted, people on the pro-life side don't think a mind should matter
Well yes. This is a logical necessity for pro-lifers who believe a person begins at conception.
I think mind argument works well. I don't think most people consider disconnecting brain-dead patients murder, nor do they consider them as living "persons" anymore.
A fetus's brain likely has some brain activity going on, so it can't be classified as brain dead. Prior stages with no brain development of the sort should be considered brain dead.
To me a newborn is not a person.
This I believe is wrong, but I won't go into it.
Semantically speaking though, I think its fine to refer to any stage of development as a person. People do this kind of thing when they call their pregnancy a baby. A human being's life also starts at conception. It doesn't make sense to stop referring to someone's initial beginning as human being. (Note baby, human being all imply person).
However, I don't think semantics necessarily wins all arguments.
The fetus/embryo/(input early stage) is a clump of cells and not a human beingI've never actually used that one. See above the the personhood discussion... I don't consider the coincidence of human DNA to be important without a mind.I didn't have enough characters, but I attempted a little discussion of this in a recent debate.
Yeah. The banned TWS member made arguments like this without placing emphasize on the mind, so I decided to bring this up.
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@zedvictor4
And we can also apply logical rhetoric. Whereby we do not attribute a bundle of cellular tissue with sentience.
Definition of sentience: the quality of being able to experience feelings or sensations.
The pregnancy will have sentience for certain in nine months.
Analogy
A comatose patient does not have sentience in a typical sense.
However, if you knew the comatose person would recover in nine months and the family had resources to support the patient, then wouldn't most people think it was the right thing to save the patient.
Being a homo sapien with a definite chance of sentience in the future is a good reason to protect the pregnancy like a person.
Some people will define personhood to be more extensive than others, and therefore come to different moral conclusions.
Abortion is perhaps an arbitrary moral matter. However, it still good to dismantle bad arguments in general and individually examine one's morals to others.
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@FLRW
I have always been a monotheist but not religious in the typical sense and I'm biblically ignorant, so I don't have an answer for your religious question.
However, murdering an innocent appears objectively wrong regardless of the circumstances (excluding extreme medical cases).
How do you justify to a child that abortion is not the termination/murder of human being's life when they know the pregnancy has a possible future like them?
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@Best.Korea
I guess simply suggesting the possibility of having a little responsibility and moral values is offensive to some people. I'm not even that religious, so baiting me with religion won't work.
I care about debating not this back forth pointless remarks.
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@FLRW
If we killed criminals who committed theft, perhaps there would less theft. However, it doesn't make it moral to do so or reasonable to most people.
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@Best.Korea
When you do, then creating human life becomes mandatory and women become baby factories.
Never said I was against birth control.
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@Greyparrot
Californians must be playing mental gymnastics with their law.
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Legal Argument
(1) Murder is the taking of an innocent person’s life.
(2) According to the law, a pregnancy is not recognized as a person.
(3) Therefore, abortion is not murder.
Premise 2 is arbitrary. What if the law is wrong? Then, the conclusion must also be wrong.
If everyone wants a good argument with this reasoning, then debaters should agree on a specific definition of personhood that the law can recognize.
The law argument is circular reasoning and irrelevant until the debaters agree on a logical definition of personhood.
Personhood Argument
It's easier said than done to come up with a good concept of personhood. Finding a coherent concept of personhood is a philosophical exercise and a rabbit hole.
Some people think viability is the answer, which I’m unconvinced about.
Many premature births require medical assistance to survive. Requiring medical assistance isn’t the typical idea of viability, which one thinks.
A healthy, full-term baby fits this ideal concept of viability since it can survive without medical assistance. However, most people couldn’t agree with this extreme case of viability since many consider abortion in the third-trimester murder.
However, medical viability depends on the capabilities of advanced medical care, which once didn’t exist and could improve in the future.
The fetus/embryo/(input early stage) is a clump of cells and not a human being
Many people think that a pregnancy is a group of cells that is no more a human being than a foot or hand. However, the pregnancy at conception is a human organism and continues to be the same human organism when it dies. On the other hand, a clump of cells does not constitute a human organism and can’t grow into one.
Therefore, it seems reasonable to say that pregnancy is a human being at the initial stage of their life and continues to be for their existence.
I have tackled what I perceive as implausible arguments for abortion. These are some sources for arguments against abortion that have influenced me.
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@Best.Korea
I'd rather have greedy, self-interested entrepreneurs controlling the means of production than greedy, inept politicians.
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Top 0.33%
29,014 words
I'm apparently Shakespeare too, and I know I'm definitely not in top 1% for vocabulary. Process of elimination and guessing on a few. Mostly lucky and I didn't know the meaning a good number of the words.
A real vocabulary test would probably show me only slightly above average. Got to enjoy tests that show 25% of population in the top 1%-5%
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All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
Statement is about a person's citizenship to the United States, not who has personhood.
All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
Second part protects the rights of citizens and non-citizens of the United States. If you consider a pregnancy a non-citizen, they are still protected by the Constitution and have legal rights.
Personhood is not established in 14th amendment. Some other legal precedence would need to be established to interpret personhood in the 14th Amendment.
Where did you read an unborn pregnancy is not a person protected by the law?
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@TWS1405_2
Since your legal expert
A few questions
Does the 14th Amendment protect Abortion?
Is this covered under original intent or not?
What do you think of States banning abortion? Constitutional/unconstitutional?
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@TWS1405_2
The 14th was not written just for former slaves and their offspring; but rather it provides due process and equal protection of the laws upon "All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof..."One must be BORN before they are FIRST, considered a "person," and SECOND, being a born "person," they are bestowed all the rights, privileges and equal protections of the law(s). NOT BEFORE BIRTH! The pregnancy, regardless of stage of development, has NO RIGHTS, legal or otherwise.
Excerpt above is your opinion about the constitution. Stupid to bold three words and say this is what the 14th amendment is all about. 14th Amendment is clearly about slavery and what counts as citizenship in the United States. The correct argument for abortion:
All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
Roe's argument is about the right to privacy and bodily autonomy, which is implied by the rights to life, liberty, or property.
The first three words of the 14th Amendment are in context with "are you born in the United States" and now you count as a citizen. Therefore, a prior slave born in the United States is counted as citizen by the constitution.
Roe convinced the Supreme court that the pregnancy has no constitutional rights because the women's right to bodily autonomy outweighs any other arguments.
Now that Roe V Wade is overturned, A new precedent is now being set that the States determine if pregnancy has a legal right to life to any extent. Depending on what a one implies by personhood, set of rights and how one ranks them, there can be contradictions and invalid interpretations due to insufficient information in the constitution.
This makes abortion right arguments just an opinion from a constitutional standpoint for lack of better information.
Best to leave it the States to decide an ambiguous and left out part of the constitution. Also, the federal government has no right to get involved in other States unless congress can codify abortion into law.
You can argue against personhood of pregnancy and support an argument about not including pregnancies' as people, so that they shouldn't be granted legal rights. The Constitution doesn't tell us if a pregnancy is person or not, so your definition will need to rely on different arguments. Faulty logic to say a person isn't a person until their born because the constitution implies it. It's because of Roe. The current law is fickle on personhood and depends on who is in power.
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@TheUnderdog
@TWS1405_2
I made this mistake above too. It doesn't make sense to talk about the rights of person until they're born, except for their right to life. A right to Abortion needs to be addressed in the Constitution.
Perhaps, the founders never wanted a federal constitutional right pro or con abortion.
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@TheUnderdog
@TWS1405_2
Precedence set by Roe v Wade
Then the Supreme Court overturned it.
Sounds like your more of a die hard personal autonomy/property rights libertarian.
Roe v Wade Argument
Personal autonomy outweighs right to life. Same old arguments for abortion repeated.
14th Amendment does not explicitly state anything about the rights of a person before they are born. Not stated elsewhere in the constitution, I believe.
The right of bodily autonomy is held higher by some than the right to life.
If you want the right to abortion, then make another constitution Amendment. Stop playing interpretation games. They're not very Constitutional if you ask me.
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Here some of my rambling thoughts.
An introduction. The austrian business cycle theory, besides what the name might suggest, is a theory related to all business cycles and not those particular only to Austria. Its name originates from Austrian School of Economics. The pioneers of the school were F.A. Hayek, Mises and Rothbard. The ideas pushed by the Austrian School of economics are mutually exclusive with Keynesians economics and differ with Milton Friedman. That's a brief history and more can be found on the internet.
The theory explains the boom of a business cycle is the result of the expansion of bank credit, which is created by the federal reserve through quantitative easing. Artificially low interest rates cause entrepreneurs to malinvest. These malinvestments realize later as unprofitable because there was never enough savings to sustain them. Malinvestments also cause inflation in prices of physical capital, capital machines, intermediate goods and final consumer goods. Eventually, the inflation from the malinvestments runs high enough that the federal reserve raises interest rates. That is the end of boom period. Then the bust occurs. Easy money in the boom elevated asset prices and incomes. This comes crashing down with the rise in interest rates. An increase in interest rates lowers the prices for many assets types and it also makes business ventures unaffordable and unprofitable. The bust ends after the malinvestments emerge as bankruptcies and prices of various asset types bottom out.
End of Part 1)
Part 1) Background information
I might add more later of my thoughts while I thought through the theory, instead of merely background.
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@ebuc
What is this meta-space where you say mind, intellect and concepts comes from?
Is it similar to Plato's theory of knowledge and reality? Something to the effect that mind, knowledge, and abstract thought transcends physical reality.
You also talk about outer and inner geodesics, which you seem to think is related to how the universe is shaped.
Seems that also think the universe is shaped like a torus?
Some articles that I have read suggest that majority think the universe is flat. Some studies seem to think the universe is curved based on how light would travel differently on flat plane than on a curved surface.
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@RationalMadman
If your serious about programming, start with C.
Many high level programming languages like the ones you mentioned derive form C. It fundamental and basic and not obscured by the complexities of object oriented programming. The higher level languages hide from programmer what they're actually doing and tend be a lot slower than C.
Python is great for writing powerful programs, but not really meant to be used for applications where hardware and speed is crucial.
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@Shila
Shila, Can you tell me everything that is funny about this photo?
Sorry guys for derailing the thread a little.
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@zedvictor4
I'm assuming your using a 28 day embryo as a reference for when you think a difference exists between the entity at birth and the embryo.
If you believe the cut-off date is at 28 days, then this well before the point the point of viability and you have given up a lot of ground.
I strongly disagree that any date several weeks or a even a dozen weeks before viability makes a difference on the personhood of the prebirth.
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@TWS1405
OP
None of them (pro-lifers) have the requisite intellect to grasp the simple fact that potentiality ≠ actuality. Never has. Never will.At conception the very (very) basic biological criterion for cellular “life” is met. That cellular life (ie, zygote) ≠ [a] human being. Neither does a blastocyst, embryo, or an unviable fetus. That’s just a scientific fact of human physiology and biology.The ONLY stage of gestational development where the fetus can be equates to that of [a] human being is the point of fetal viability. It is at this point of development within the womb that the viable fetus can survive outside the womb without further gestational development. With ir without medical intervention.To call a zygote, blastocyst, embryo and unviable fetus the emotively charged term, “baby,” is an implicit misnomer. It’s factually inaccurate on all levels.
I think terminology is important here. The point of fertilization meets the criterion for cellular life, but calling it cellular life muddies the waters. I am cellular life and a malignant tumor is cellular life. There is a vast range of cellular life that exists. While the blank statement "a fertilized egg is cellular life" is a fact, we can infer that a fertilized is the beginning of human being. If say no its not, I ask you what is the "cellular life" of a fertilized ovum. It can't be some kind of living thing. It's identifiable and we know what it is. If it's not the beginning of a human being's existence, then I'd like to know what is.
While I think a human being is used more as biological term, I don't think the term actually implies personhood. For the sake of argument, I will agree with the notion that a human being in development isn't always a person. However, we now have the dilemma of drawing a line when a human becomes a person. I'm inclined not to make assumptions about when this happens, but I'll look at the game that others play.
Personhood begins at viability. The point of viability is not set in stone. Aforementioned, the viability of a birth can be assisted medically or not. Many births, especially premature births, require medical assistance. This means many births de facto are not viable, yet some want suggest that we should set the point of viability near 20-24 weeks. I think many people wouldn't like it if someone suggested that their unviable baby that died 10 minutes after birth was not a person. A good number of births in this range require continuous medical assistance. Besides that, we have had recent medical advances that have pushed back the point of viability.
There is the possibility of medical advances pushing back the point of viability even farther. Besides shedding more doubt on the moment of viability, it begs the question why should personhood be given to someone born and not to a pre-birth any points before.
The problem leads us into a metaphysical question. What is it to be a person? How is a thing before its birth so different that it not the same thing after its birth?
I am not inclined to think an arbitrary point of viability tells us anything about personhood when I don't have explanation why a born person is any different than a pre-born.
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@oromagi
Internet does seem to a big factor in social dysfunction.
Millennials and Gen Zers also face more economic insecurity compared to older generations. They have less opportunities to make it with their careers and move away from home early on in life. I'd say that probably contributes to more sexless men and women.
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A study from Institute For Family Studies suggests main cause of involuntary celibacy is a decline in marriage.
This hard-core incel group is indeed growing as a share of the male population. The NSFG’s sample size, over 1,000 never-married men between the ages of 22 and 35 with sufficient questionnaire completion to estimate sexual behavior and reasons for virginity if they have not had sex, is large enough to be decently confident of these results.
But the 68% increase from 2002 to 2015 in the incel share of the male, never-married, 22-35-year-old population is mostly due to a decline in marriage, not never-married men having less sex. Rising involuntary virginity among never-marrieds accounts for around 27 percentage points of the increase, with the other 41 percentage points coming from a declining married share of the population. It may also be that some of these “incels” are males who were formerly, or would formerly have been, religious, and while they no longer abstain for religious reasons, nonetheless they may continue to hold some degree of religious norms regarding “high standards” for a first sexual encounter.
In other words, incels are right to see themselves as part of a novel and fairly extreme change in our society’s sexual behavior, with a growing share of sexless young men. But the big change isn’t a growing share of alpha males hoarding all the sex, nor women suddenly becoming far more choosey amid rising promiscuity; rather, it’s just that marriage is being delayed, which means that rates of marriage-status-controlled celibacy that aren’t historically extremely unusual result in very unusual rates of total population-wide sexlessness.
A few reasons for declines in marriage.
- decline in religiosity among people
- divorce rates and financial risk
- decline in economic opportunities
Rise in sexless men caused from people delaying marriage and people going to school
But whatever the direct effect of education on never-married men, the primary cause of the rise in sexlessness is simply the increasing delay of marriage. The delay in marriage has numerous causes, of course, but probably the most powerful driver of marital timing also relates to education. Men and women are much less likely to get married while attending school, and across times and countries, an increase in the years of schooling is associated with later age of marriage, though more-educated people do tend to get married eventually. Thus, as more and more schooling becomes necessary for a good middle-class job, marriage gets pushed later and later, leaving more young people (men and women!) companionless and lonely.
In general, people have obfuscated the term involuntary celibate with misogynist. While there is an overlap, they do not mean the same thing.
Societal factors drive involuntary celibacy. It not just a bunch of men that have hateful preconceptions of women.
This thread is probably banal to most you and doesn't apply.
Frankly, I don't have time to respond to people's comments, but I would enjoy to listen to what you have to say on the topic.
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@TWS1405
Infants, young children, and crippled geriatrics are all good examples of people who are unviable.
Is it ethical to euthanize infants, young children and crippled geriatrics because they can't survive on their own?
This is a debate about huma procreation, abortion, and "fetal viability" where gestational development is concerned.
Viability can not be the basis for being a human being. Otherwise, it is ethical to murder infants, young children and crippled geriatrics.
I think your circumventing my argument. Your wasting my time.
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@TWS1405
Obviously, I'm not talking about virtue of humanity. Wrong definition.
Humanity = the necessary characteristics of being part of human race or a human being.
Nowhere did I ever state that "human life only begins at viability," that's your strawman version.
Human being = human life
You don't think a fetus is a human being until the point of viability.
In fact, I have repeated stated it is human in origin, but being human in origin does not equate to being [a] human being. A decapitated head (or any removed body part) of a woman (or man) found at a crime scene with no body is clearly human in origin, but it doesn't make that human head = to [a] human being, now does it!! No, it does NOT!
Condescending, but yes. Something human in origin is not necessarily a human. Why does the preborn get the status of human being instantly when it becomes viable and not this status before 22 weeks? Viability can not be the only answer.
A person who is unviable still persists being a human being. You can't simply pull the plug on comatose patients.
The humanity (being a human being) of the unborn is in question.
Pro-choicer logic
Killing an innocent human being is immoral and murder
The pregnancy is not a human being
Therefore, abortion is not the immoral killing of a human being.
Pro-lifer logic
Killing an innocent human being is immoral
The pregnancy contains a human being
Therefore, abortion is immoral and murder.
What is a human being has moral implications? The definition is important for both arguments.
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@TWS1405
The entire argument you make hinges on dehumanizing the preborn before the point of viability (22 weeks).
Human life only begins at viability is a simplistic argument and I don't buy it.
Define human life. Make the semantic distinctions and provide the prenatal evidence that supports not calling this thing human.
Pro-lifers base their argument on the humanity of the embryo/fetus/unborn. Pro-choicer denies the humanity of the unborn. Quite frankly, I'm not sure if there is a good measure. Nor do I think most people possess the qualifications to accurately answer the question.
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@Greyparrot
Too many people on the FDA have financial ties with pharmaceutical corporations.
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@Ramshutu
It’s a mature market and a relatively advanced product that’s going to take hundreds of millions of dollars to set up even if the FDA just ran minimal established safety tests - the alternative, is to go for perfectly fine 10 year old technology that is almost but not quite as good - which there will be almost no market for.
The companies given patents on the older technologies had huge advantages in the field. They all seem clock-stepped in producing the most expensive insulin possible. However, I wouldn't put too much doubt that there isn't any market for the older insulin. People aren't that picky when it comes to a life or death situation.
In this case, I think breaking the insulin monopolies apart into smaller companies is the best option. Having no large competitors in the field will make it easier for the smaller companies to use cheaper, older technologies.
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If only there were more regulations on patenting that prevented companies exploiting the valid patent system to protect incremental improvements on their products and use marketing to drive older products out of the market - glad you agree more regulation here is necessary.
The abuse of the patent system is the problem here. No company should have the exclusive right to produce a product to an eternity with the manipulation of its patents. We would be better off without the patent office.
Obviously, it should illegal for companies to steal information and backwards-engineer products, but a company shouldn't have an exclusive privilege to a thing's production.
The global insulin market is controlled completely by 3 companies. Imagine the price of insulin if all 3 of these companies lost their patents worldwide and prescriptions on all insulin drugs were removed. Not only would the price of insulin fall, but the quantity manufactured would increase everywhere. Monopolies primarily have pricing power because of their tight hold around production quantities. I'd prefer those patents stripped away from these companies. It makes more sense than the government putting price controls on insulin companies which benefit by their keeping supply tight.
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@TWS1405
A pregnancy has no legal rights. The female has legal rights. And no human willingly disposes of "her other body parts" willy nilly. Such an uneducated false equivalency fallacy that is. A pregnancy is NOT [a] person. A zygote is NOT [a] person. A blastocyst is NOT [a] person. A fetus is NOT [a] person. A birthed child = [a] person and upon birth are bestowed all the legal rights, privileges and equal protection of the law (14th A.). Which clearly means no birthed person can be killed, that would clearly be murder. Abortion is NOT murder.
I think your forgetting that women have bodily autonomy for many things involving their body parts. If she wants to treat her body (ergo her organs) like crap by smoking and/or drugs, she might as well be disposing her organs. She can have parts of her organs removed in medical procedures for health reasons or vanity (cosmetic surgery).
The distinction that I make is the zygote is half the DNA of the father and the mother. Therefore, the organism is not the mother even though it is inextricable from her body. It would be inaccurate to call the zygote her body.
The phrase "To be a human being is to be a person" is a tautology. If the argument is a person is an individual not subsistent on another, then the term can used for legal scrutiny. However, the argument is not the recognition of law.
A zygote is the beginning of a new life. Since a zygote is related to the development of a human life, it deserves to placed under the scrutiny of human morality, which supersedes the law. Human life is sacred. Life should be respected for being life and have the right to life. If you purport that the zygote or fetus is like a cancer or parasite attached to the women's body, then your foolish because it is human life. (question to TWS1405) How do pro-choice people justify having a stance against life?
(For anyone reading) How do liberals justify abortion when they have a ironic pro-life stance on animals and a conservationist stance on nature?
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In the case of consensual sex, both parents should have custody of the child regardless of their liking it. The state should enforce visitation of the father because fatherless children perform far below children with fathers. Forget child support. The state should force parents to live close to each other and make them both pay for the child. If the father and mother are irresponsible, they can pay for the consequences.
In the case of nonconsensual sex, we hope the mother will still love the child. If she is incapable of loving the child, it's likely in the child’s best interest for the mother to give the child up for adoption. Seeking restitution from rapists is not feasible in most cases. Unless it's a wealthy rapist, the rapist will never make the income to support the child while serving his sentence or getting out of jail.
Lastly, abortion should be illegal in all cases unless it protects the mother's life. The fetus is not like an organ of a female body. She is not entitled to dispose of it or treat it like her other body parts. A fetus is a person and not a organ. It is a dependent person. However, we never kill a dependent child or person, nor do we kill a young child because it won’t have a good life.
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@Greyparrot
Still seems like an alright kind of guy to me.
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@FLRW
Those numbers seem misleading and exaggerated to the uneducated reader. Most Covid deaths are among the elderly and people with co-morbidities that is people who are at risk. If you account for that, then the proportion of morality rates between the vaccinated and unvaccinated is probably much lower than 5 times.
In addition, there are side effects from the vaccine that are going last much longer than the Covid pandemic. Those deaths will reported in the future. An uptick in new conditions isn't going kill everyone immediately.
The vaccine will lengthen the lives of those that are in the "at risk" category because they're in the demographic that is most likely to die from any illness. However, Covid is not the new black plague. People in the not-at-risk category should not be getting shots without knowledge of the potential side-effects.
Lastly, the video in question made no speculation on the cause of the new deaths. It was stating a fact that life-insurance companies paid out more money in the recent year for non-pandemic related morbidities than in years past.
Therefore, one might argue that recent upticks in non-pandemic morbidities is not from vaccines but something else like an ongoing public health issue. However, I think one can make a strong argument that the vaccination may induce the tendency to morbidities and maybe that's not the complete public health picture but a significant one.
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@zedvictor4
The productivity of the economy is dependent on having cheap and abundant energy. The amount of wealth a country produces is correlated with its energy consumption. The problem is that the viability of renewable energy depends on having fossil fuels that free up those resources that make them. Currently, renewables are not cheap enough to replace fossil fuels completely. If it was cheaper, it would of have already happened. Large scale profitability is the biggest determinate of economic sustainability. We can't simply ignore profit which determines in a lot of cases sustainable resource allocation. When I said "miraculous", I did not mean impossible but remote and futuristic. In twenty years, I think the probability of commercial fusion power and completely fossil free cars will exist. That is if don't in the meanwhile ruin the economy to the point that we can't do normal things.
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@Greyparrot
Energy is a speculative market, not a linear market. Immediate Prices reflect future supply uncertainty, not present stockpiles.
Do you think oil producers are speculating right now on oil prices? They're probably capturing the peak prices right now with the Russia-Ukrainian war going on.
Prices leading up to the Ukrainian-Russian war may of been in part caused by long-term supply speculation of oil producers anticipating less oil supply and higher oil prices due to Biden's policies. I am not sure how much it would increase the price of oil. First, American oil companies have oversees competitors without Biden's restrictions which would keep the price of oil down. Second, Oil companies might not anticipate Biden's policies to stay in effect after his term. It would really depend on how oil suppliers thought Biden's policies would increase the price of oil in the future and if it was worth restricting current production to capture future profits. Since foreign oil supply could increase and Biden may not be elected next term, oil companies might not want to restrict supply at all.
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@Double_R
Pipelines do make a difference. Oil suppliers can take advantage of more efficient infrastructure to transport oil. However, I concede that the immediate inflation is not caused by Biden's policies.
However, the democratic party's policies will cause inflation in the short to long run. The recent Fossil Free Finance Act, land leasing constraints and amongst other things will negatively impact the oil industry and inevitably shrink it in the United States. The left wants environmental change too rapidly and its going undermine the economy's ability to change. People can't transition away from fossil fuels completely or quickly right now. Only a miraculous technological breakthrough in clean energy will allow us to do that. Hurting the economy in the meanwhile (close future) is not going to bring us any closer to developing abundant cheap, clean energy. However, if we maintain a strong economy, then new technologies will likely emerge to curb emissions. Look at the advent of completely electric vehicles for instance.
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