Question for Liberals/Leftists and Libertarians:

I'm from the US and of the libertarian persuasion, though not so propertarian as most US libertarians.

Liberals here seem to want to help the poor and less financially fortunate.

But it seems to me that the means selected to help them always tends to be a paternalistic welfare state - more power and control for the government. I think that's just bad market economics and political economics - the regulatory state tends to hamper production and destroy wealth, and the rich are much better able to navigate and manipulate the regulatory state. So it's just a bad prescription for the stated goal.

For the liberals, whatever happened to good old expropriation and redistribution of wealth as the leftist solution? Why not that instead of the paternalistic regulatory state?

The problem with being poor is you don't have money. Take money from A, and give it to B. I think there are decent arguments for this going back to Thomas Paine and Agrarian Justice, things that even a Bill Oreilly could get on board with (It was amusing and surprising to see Oreilly defending Alaska's redistribution of oil fees directly to Alaskan citizens - "It's our oil!" Ha! What a commie!).

I was watching William Buckley debate Milton Friedman on welfare policy, with Friedman in favor of negative income taxes (the problem with poverty is you don't have money), and Buckley making one paternalistic argument after another why you couldn't just give the poor money, arguing for a paternalistic regulatory state for those on state assistance.

It occurred to me that the difference between Buckley and Liberals was how many people they thought warranted this kind of paternalistic aid and interference, while Friedman much preferred to let people run their own lives.

For the libertarians, wouldn't you, like Friedman, prefer a basic income guarantee to the paternalistic regulatory state?

The most obvious example of trolls right now is this post and some of its comments, although as far as trolling goes, neither are very effective.

So, an action by itself is not assault, but if you do the same action but make sure it doesn't hurt the patient, it is assault?

Off-topic, but why is it illegal to use anesthetic?

Sarver was trying a technique he learned in the military to block out the pain, since it was illegal to administer anesthetic for his procedure.

Anybody had success in dealing with acne?

People who are pro-life in the abortion debate should also be pro- free birth control pills (those not requiring a co-pay).

If pro-lifers were more pragmatic, they would rank the issues that they care about from least-bad to worst. Most would agree that abortion is worse than pre-marital sex. Therefore, they should support efforts to eliminate the need for abortions (not just seek to eliminate the ability to have an abortion). As access to birth control reduces the likelihood of the need to have an abortion, free birth control pills would reduce the overall number of abortions, thus supporting the pro-life stance.

Also, if you agree with the analysis done by Steven Levitt in the book Freakonomics (availability of abortion services led to a drastic decrease in crime), by the same logic, free birth control should lead to a decrease in the crime rate as well.

The catch: That pro-lifers have to believe that they will not be able to get everything that they want politically, and must prioritize their goals.

Government controlled healthcare is generally superior to private systems. *

Argument: The incentives of a government body that knows it will have to pay for the costs of future healthcare is radically different from private companies. They are more likely to take preventative measures to prevent future harms to a patient rather than waiting until the point where a condition is considered serious enough to be covered by insurance or bring people to an emergency room. They have incentives to make procedures cheaper and more efficient, and they also lack the perverse incentives to increase number and cost of procedures in order to maximise profit.

*[I'm basing this on knowledge of the UK system (free to all at the point of delivery, paid for by taxes, private healthcare/insurance can also be bought as a supplement.) I don't know enough about alternatives such as individual mandate to comment helpfully on them.]

I want to give my 13 year old cousin a book on atheism for teenagers. Her mom has been raising her Catholic and had also sent her to a locally well-regarded Jewish preschool, saying things about "heritage" and such. (Her father is a non-believer but apparently hasn't objected to this religious upbringing.)

My parents say that doing so is a bad idea because it will offend my aunt. I feel strongly about my atheism and want to do something in this vein. Any advice?

I think it might be better to have both options be vote up. Seems the first voter was confused. If I vote now it will look as if nobody has voted.

There's also the problem of the vote down option being hidden.

We aren't trying to kill an enemy. We are trying to persuade other humans.

The former is the most powerful method I know of for the latter. As elspood mentioned, it obviously isn't the victims in particular that will be persuaded.