For long I've been suggesting that leeches should not be allowed to vote. They should be legally treated equal to children: having personal rights but no political ones. This idea is widely questioned and not just by moralists who come with nonsense like "people are equal just because".
There is a quick and dirty way to "prove" my statement. Many people agree that there are people who are too "dumb" or "immoral" to vote. However any kind of restriction could be abused by the ones in power to lock out their opposition. The "leeches can't vote" is the only non-abusable criteria, as you can only lock someone out by making him not pay tax, weakening the budget of your own government. Assuming that your opposition is not tiny (which case there is no need to lock them out), you decrease the tax income so much that your dictatorship goes bankrupt.
However I want to prove that it's not just a "necessary evil", which can be claimed to defend the "all can vote" system too. To do this I have to prove is that the leech vs "pulling his weight" is a crucial criteria itself and not a derivative or correlated one. I mean I can't say "leeches are dumb", regardless of its truth because then I want to actually remove the "dumb" from the voting and there can be much better ways to find a dumb one than his tax form. Also I have to prove that a taxpaying person permanently losing his income (via old age, disablement or simply long-term unemployment) loses his ability to make an informed political decision.
One votes for his (assumed) interest or according to his beliefs of morality. We can cut the morality voting out of the question as being pro life or pro choice has little correlation and absolutely no causality with taxpaying. A welfare leech can believe in God no less or more than a top earner. So we can safely assume that removing them from the voters will not change the outcome of the hypothetical vote "Is there a God?"
This leaves us with personal (assumed) interest. I'm not claiming that the selfish interest of the "leech" is less valuable than the selfish interest of a model citizen. The personal safety of the non-voting children is more strongly protected by laws, crimes against children are punished more harshly and I'd gladly extend this protection to "leeches". The problem with one who doesn't earn his own food is the lack of connection to the process of creation, therefore the lack of recognized interest protecting it.
Let me explain: my closest personal interest would be cutting taxes. My income would double in absence of taxes. However like every non-retarded people (which includes "leeches" but not investment brokers of 2000-2007) I know that things can't be paid with thin-air money, so I can only cut tax if I cut government spendings. For example I could cut the educational costs. However I was myself educated and without this education I couldn't fulfill my job. Also, I need educated coworkers every time one leaves, so if education would disappear, my workplace would be unable to continue operation and I'd be fired. I could cut the defense budget, but for my workplace to operate it needs stability. No one buys its product during a (civil) war. I could cut the health care system, but then what would happen if I or my coworkers get ill. We can't work, our income source goes away.
Being a productive person, I'm personally connected to practically every single government projects except direct social transfers (welfare, medicare, social security, medicaid and whatever name "money for nothing" has in your country). I couldn't cut any project without cutting myself. This connection is experienced by every single productive person, including the least intelligent ones. Even a barely-literal street-sweep travels on the city bus, protected by the cops, treated by the doctors. These things can and should be explained him on his level.
On the other hand leeches are connected only to social transfers. The collapse of transportation, electricity, education, home defense and all and every other systems would cause him no decrease of income, assuming that the welfare system keeps operating. If the magic unicorns keeps sending him his welfare check, he can't care less if his country is in total disarray. If he votes for less maintenance of the electrical system, he just has to suffer the nuisance of power outages a few times. For a working person it's much more than that, as machines stop and the current batch of products is lost. He directly experience the damage the wrong policy caused and can vote the next election to fix it before it becomes a fatal problem.
Of course a leech can understand intellectually that magic unicorns don't exists and if there is no government, there is no welfare check. However no one can tell how much weight the system can carry before breaking down and he can rightfully assume that it can carry a little bit more. The point is that until the situation comes to Mad Max riding his bike, the leech is rationally better off voting for more social transfers and more weight placed on the working people. The problem is that - as the Greeks will see soon - Mad Max isn't that far.
Mist of Pandaria is out and I'm playing, lvl 86, but not sure if there is anything to blog about it.
For EVE trade and industrial discussions join Goblinworks channel.
If you want to get into nullsec but don't know how, go to the official forum recruitment thread and type the name of the alliance you seek into the search and start reading. I'm in TEST by the way.
Tuesday morning report: 160.6B (5.5 spent on main accounts, 4.8 spent on Logi/Carrier, 3.2 on Ragnarok, 2.6 on Rorqual, 2.4 on Nyx, 2.8 on Dread, 17.4 sent as gift)
There is a quick and dirty way to "prove" my statement. Many people agree that there are people who are too "dumb" or "immoral" to vote. However any kind of restriction could be abused by the ones in power to lock out their opposition. The "leeches can't vote" is the only non-abusable criteria, as you can only lock someone out by making him not pay tax, weakening the budget of your own government. Assuming that your opposition is not tiny (which case there is no need to lock them out), you decrease the tax income so much that your dictatorship goes bankrupt.
However I want to prove that it's not just a "necessary evil", which can be claimed to defend the "all can vote" system too. To do this I have to prove is that the leech vs "pulling his weight" is a crucial criteria itself and not a derivative or correlated one. I mean I can't say "leeches are dumb", regardless of its truth because then I want to actually remove the "dumb" from the voting and there can be much better ways to find a dumb one than his tax form. Also I have to prove that a taxpaying person permanently losing his income (via old age, disablement or simply long-term unemployment) loses his ability to make an informed political decision.
One votes for his (assumed) interest or according to his beliefs of morality. We can cut the morality voting out of the question as being pro life or pro choice has little correlation and absolutely no causality with taxpaying. A welfare leech can believe in God no less or more than a top earner. So we can safely assume that removing them from the voters will not change the outcome of the hypothetical vote "Is there a God?"
This leaves us with personal (assumed) interest. I'm not claiming that the selfish interest of the "leech" is less valuable than the selfish interest of a model citizen. The personal safety of the non-voting children is more strongly protected by laws, crimes against children are punished more harshly and I'd gladly extend this protection to "leeches". The problem with one who doesn't earn his own food is the lack of connection to the process of creation, therefore the lack of recognized interest protecting it.
Let me explain: my closest personal interest would be cutting taxes. My income would double in absence of taxes. However like every non-retarded people (which includes "leeches" but not investment brokers of 2000-2007) I know that things can't be paid with thin-air money, so I can only cut tax if I cut government spendings. For example I could cut the educational costs. However I was myself educated and without this education I couldn't fulfill my job. Also, I need educated coworkers every time one leaves, so if education would disappear, my workplace would be unable to continue operation and I'd be fired. I could cut the defense budget, but for my workplace to operate it needs stability. No one buys its product during a (civil) war. I could cut the health care system, but then what would happen if I or my coworkers get ill. We can't work, our income source goes away.
Being a productive person, I'm personally connected to practically every single government projects except direct social transfers (welfare, medicare, social security, medicaid and whatever name "money for nothing" has in your country). I couldn't cut any project without cutting myself. This connection is experienced by every single productive person, including the least intelligent ones. Even a barely-literal street-sweep travels on the city bus, protected by the cops, treated by the doctors. These things can and should be explained him on his level.
On the other hand leeches are connected only to social transfers. The collapse of transportation, electricity, education, home defense and all and every other systems would cause him no decrease of income, assuming that the welfare system keeps operating. If the magic unicorns keeps sending him his welfare check, he can't care less if his country is in total disarray. If he votes for less maintenance of the electrical system, he just has to suffer the nuisance of power outages a few times. For a working person it's much more than that, as machines stop and the current batch of products is lost. He directly experience the damage the wrong policy caused and can vote the next election to fix it before it becomes a fatal problem.
Of course a leech can understand intellectually that magic unicorns don't exists and if there is no government, there is no welfare check. However no one can tell how much weight the system can carry before breaking down and he can rightfully assume that it can carry a little bit more. The point is that until the situation comes to Mad Max riding his bike, the leech is rationally better off voting for more social transfers and more weight placed on the working people. The problem is that - as the Greeks will see soon - Mad Max isn't that far.
Mist of Pandaria is out and I'm playing, lvl 86, but not sure if there is anything to blog about it.
For EVE trade and industrial discussions join Goblinworks channel.
If you want to get into nullsec but don't know how, go to the official forum recruitment thread and type the name of the alliance you seek into the search and start reading. I'm in TEST by the way.
Tuesday morning report: 160.6B (5.5 spent on main accounts, 4.8 spent on Logi/Carrier, 3.2 on Ragnarok, 2.6 on Rorqual, 2.4 on Nyx, 2.8 on Dread, 17.4 sent as gift)
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