Re: Time for a Crash
 

We don't. We should be "leisuring" more as we decrease the need for labor. But we're not.

No. There are no savings. There are just people spending on fewer things. When all of your entertainment is in a computer in your hand, you don't need to spend as much.

I'm not advocating it. Tech removes various forms of economic transactions and activities without replacing them. That's just a reality.
That's not anywhere near the total picture. But yes, what you've cited has contributed to rentier capitalism.

Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
 

Exaggerated for effect: Roe v. Wade was a wee bit of oppression of women who seek abortion on demand in the third trimester.

Exaggerated for effect: The military draft which sent me to kill people, mandatory vaccinations, and speed limits, oppress people.

Abortion is the epitome of the oppression dilemma. Viability has outstripped Roe v. Wade. Drawing lines in this situation is excruciating. Just recognizing that the opposing side is not a satanic cult out to either (depending on where you stand) kill babies or force women into sexual and childbearing slavery would be progress.

The absolutists on both sides are wrong. Find a sliver of common ground and we'd all be better off.

.

Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
 

The idea that there are pro-choice absolutists and that they are in any way a problem is the sort of High Broderist pipe dream that stands in the way of people better understanding what is really happening in this country.

Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
 

No offense, but at first I thought this was Adder.

Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
 

Ow

Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
 

I respectfully disagree.

There are some things that people should not compromise on. Surely you, and I, have some principles that we would never surrender. I think there are a not insubstantial number of people who believe that abortion on demand is an absolute fundamental right.

And so tell me how my view of this dilemma stands in my way of understanding what is really happening in this country?

I suspect that you and I would agree on most things significant public issues and agree on which political party bears the brunt of blame for the fetid atmosphere that pervades the body politic. Do you have a way to solve the abortion issue, so that we could move on to other common issues, other than what I've proposed?

Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
 

You're trying to make this rational when it's not. There are literally kids who do anal so they'll still be a "virgin" when they get married. This shit ain't rational.

Re: Time for a Crash
 

Right, because you and Keynes are wrong about the degree, magnitude and rapidity of change due to technological progress. Most importantly because our list of needs and wants expands just as quickly.

What happens to the money people aren't spending?

Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
 

I'll grant it's not a satanic cult, but the "no abortion" or 20 week crowd. How are they not trying to force women into forcible childbirth?

We've already laid out the potential common ground - readily available contraception to avoid pregnancy in the first place so that abortions can be made as rare as possible. We know which side says no to that. What now?

Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
 

It's not "oppression" for people to bear the logical and natural consequences of their actions. Pro-lifers are generally willing to concede that abortion should be permissible for those who were impregnated involuntarily.

If someone does a bunch of drugs, is society "forcing them into forcibly" being high?

Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
 

Everyone agrees that there is a point at which abortion is wrong, and I really think that everyone agrees that abortion is a difficult decision which no one wants to have to make. I'm not sure what you have in mind when you say that people believe "abortion on demand" is an "absolute fundamental right," but I am pretty sure that just about no one thinks that anyone should be able to have an abortion any time for any reason. Pretty much anyone would condemn the abortion of a viable fetus carried to term and about to be delivered as murder. So no one is an absolutist on that side of the issue.

When you lump together the people with the most extreme views on either side of the issue and treat them as if their somehow comparable, you obscure the differences between them. There are a great many people who believe abortion is categorically wrong. They are politically organized and they vote on the issue. They have succeeded in curtail access to both abortions and other health care to a great many people. If you can find an absolutist on the other side (per the above), you are talking about someone who is notable for having unusual views that are not shared and have no political influence.

Sometimes it's correct that there are two sides to an issue and that the truth is in the middle. But sometimes it's false. For various reasons, the media is particularly prone to describing things this way.

I don't have a solution, and I don't think you have suggested one either. The absolutists who oppose abortion care deeply about the issue and are really committed to preventing other people from having abortions. They are not interested in finding common ground, much as you and I think it's a fine idea. What I don't understand is why you think that acknowledging that it's a hard issue with no obvious solution is going to appease them at all.

Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
 

There are a lot of logical and natural consequences that we all work very hard to prevent. Do we ban tow trucks so that people who fail to keep their cars maintained can bear the consequences? Do we prevent people from going to the dentist if they ever fail to floss? Of course not.

Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
 

I can take NArcan. I can sleep. I don't have to stay high for 9 months, and be responsible for an unwanted and unneeded child for 18 years. I can and am allowed to mitigate. That analogy is specious. The world needs more abortions, even forced abortions, and the right to abort until a child is 3.

Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
 

I'm probably an absolutist. I trust other women. I trust other women to make their own choices based on their own circumstances. I am not in their shoes, and I don't want anyone to make a choice for me. I may make different decisions, but I'm not living their lives. I've been in this battle long enough to know that I'm not going to change any minds, and I don't really care. But I've also spent an entire career in healthcare and have seen some pretty horrific circumstances, and I know that the overwhelming majority of abortions after 20 weeks are not done on a whim. I believe that the decisions regarding reproduction, especially late in a pregnancy, are hard enough for the people making them that they don't need an entire society peering in and being part of it.

Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
 

A better analogy would be if I step in front of a speeding train. You say I have to stand there and accept the logical consequence - death (or worse, a child). But I can take another step and avoid that consequence.

Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
 

See, my own view is that I'm a moderate on the issue because I completely agree with both you and SEC; yes, people should take responsibility, but no, we shouldn't legislate it.

I've also seen a lot of tragedies, and ones that could have worse.

We also have some umbrage in the family. My wife had a number of miscarriages, and a couple of those get referenced in the abortion numbers even though the fetus had died. That really undermines our faith in the horror stats that get thrown out on abortions.

Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
 

Or maybe not in front of a train. Maybe you have a switch that will cause the train to go on to a siding....

Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
 

not Catholics.

Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
 

And the next follow up question is, if the Church was seriously committed to atoning for the grievous sins it committed in facilitating and then covering up and actively obstructing the investigation of the largest pedophilia ring in recorded history, why was Cardinal Law promoted to an honorary position in Rome, instead of being excommunicated as he should have been? It was my church, too, although I left it well before I had any knowledge of the rampant pedophilia. I simply thought it was a crock of shit. I understand brushing off outdated and universally ignored doctrine on birth control, but do you really feel that the church has done enough to to move on from that issue? I say this as one who knows many people, including my father, who still attend Catholic church in or around Boston, so I'm not condemning you, but genuinely mystified about how so many people were able to get past this issue.

On the topic of horrible men using religion as a cover for their own serious criminal and moral failings, I hope that piece of shit Roy Moore burns at the stake.

Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
 

Now is a particularly strange time to gloss over issues of coercion or less than full consent that seem to come up pretty frequently.

Also, if the condom broke, is pregnancy a natural and logical outcome? How about if the fetus is medically unviable? What if circumstances changed, like the father has turned out to be manipulative and abusive?

Oh, and who gets to decide whether it was involuntary? The woman or some dude who thinks the body "has ways of shutting that down?"

If you assume away all of the complexity in the world - and make contraceptives readily available - it's pretty easy to assume away a woman's interest. That's nothing like reality.

Society is usually happy, if not legally required, to help that person become un-high.

Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
 

That's really it. Leaving aside the right to control your own body, the woman in question is also just so much better positioned to make the right decisions than literally anyone else.

Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
 

Serious flower is worst flower.

Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
 

You're right. Forget I asked. I don't even really care -- people have their own reasons for things. I would like to see Moore go down hard, NPI, though. I'm sorry again about the belt ordeal you had. Except that I'm not sorry. True story, I almost changed my signature line because that whole sorry no sorry thing became so intolerably omnipresent. But I didn't. Because I remain uncontrite.

Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
 

"I guess it comes down to a simple choice, really. Get busy living or get busy dying."

Andy Dupree

Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
 

Donate to Doug Jones, and tell your friends.

Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
 

What's really amazing is that this lawyers talking politics board has completely ignored the insane Rand Paul assault story.

Re: Time for a Crash
 

The needs are shrinking. That was the whole point of the cell phone example I used.

There is no savings glut. Wages are following spending. Spending is going off Keynes' "cliff" because the cost of what people want is so small, as most of it's provided by tech.* It's deflationary.

___
* Think of it like an "experience" vs. goods economy. Only instead of you spending $$$ to experience a week in Utah powder, or $$ in Disney, or $ at some concert, it's .00$ to busy yourself with Angry Birds or Netflix.

Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
 

Mic drop. This ends the conversation. Except in 'Merica, of course.

When do we get the War on Logic? We've had the War on Facts. Isn't that next?

Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
 

Then those would be PLINOs. Because the pro-life stance is, Life Begins at Conception.

You don't get to make exceptions regarding when life begins if you believe there's a universally applicable start date. The difference between a rape and a broken condom is no difference at all to a true pro-lifer. A person believing in exceptions has kicked the door into the dread moral relativism.

But all that aside, let's address the Calivinist creepiness of the "acceptance of responsibility" argument, and abortion's comparison to drug abuse.

A person who consumes drugs retains the ability to regain control of his/her body. A woman who is impregnated has no such control if law precludes her from abortion. Outside rape, neither has been "forced" to their circumstance. These situations are indistinguishable, and to the extent so, they should be rectified. Why is the person who's taken drugs given the opportunity to retake control of his/her life, but the person who's found herself pregnant not allowed to do so?

There's nothing more debased and loathsome than a Calvinist. Not because these people are sexually frustrated creeps and control freaks. Because they're as shitty with logic as Catholics, but lacking any semblance of that mildly endearing Catholic forgiveness.

Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
 

I thought I said something about my suspicion that the "shrubbery" in issue might have recreational uses.

Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
 

Regarding Moore, I'm willing to light the fire.

I think the state of sin you see in the Church barring women from the priesthood, sheltering and even encouraging a bunch of pedophiles as Priests, and having twisted notions on birth control that contribute to the AIDs crisis (in Africa in particular) are all closely related. The choice we all have with broken institutions is whether we stick around and try to fix them or abandon them and let them burn (or even light the match to burn them).

Both are legitimate responses. I have no idea how one can stick with the Repubs, for example, and their broken institution, at this point, and I understand if someone feels the same way about the Catholic Church, though the Church as least has some kick-ass Maryknolls to point to as a redeeming feature, where the Repubs got... nothing.

Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
 

Best The Wire quote:

1 "All in the game, yo!"

2 "You come at the King, you best not miss!"

3 "you want it to be one way, you want it to be one way, you want it to be one way, but it's the other way!"

4 ???????

Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
 

Is you taking notes on a criminal fucking conspiracy?

Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
 

Who among us can't picture Rand Paul as the neighbor who is sufficiently insufferable to inspire an ass-whooping?

Re: Time for a Crash
 

Yes and it's wrong, which you'd realize if you'd stop for even a second to consider your own purchases.

Not only do you buy pretty much all the same stuff as you did 20 years ago, you buy stuff that didn't exist then. Like a new smartphone every few years.

Look, if we're going to have these conversations, could you at least pretend to to account for data?

ETA: Aggregate wages are not falling. Spending is not falling. Given the first fact, aggregate spending cannot fall without creating savings. This is not difficult.

Which is why sky resorts, Disney and concerts are all going out of business...

Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
 

Why not? It's a messy situation without clear answers. In other contexts, you can recognize that human lives are involved and yet not do every last thing necessary to save them. We could lower the national speed limit to 20 mph and save lives, but we don't.

Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
 

Hi. We should lower the national speed limit (okay, the state and local because we don't have a national one) on city surface streets to 20 mph.

Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
 

Pass, thanks.

Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
 

If you're driving 20 mph in Boston you are not from here.

Screw this.

Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
 

Minnesota drivers are awful in all the passive aggressive ways you would expect. Just terrible. Boston drivers are a little unhinged, but mostly in a predictable way.