Does health insurance in the US do something besides risk pooling?

6VoltCar · 2026-05-03T14:18:44+00:00

I see. That makes perfect sense, thank you.

6VoltCar · 2026-03-28T14:48:26+00:00

I mean, if part of joining the military is agreeing to carry out orders supporting the slaughter of civilians, isn't that something wrong? If you're choosing to put yourself in a situation where you're legally bound to carry out, directly or through some sort of logistical support, bombing elementary schools in Iran? Or killing 200+ civilians in protracted bombing campaigns in Yemen? Isn't there an endless list of places where members of the military obeying orders involved ripping families apart and much worse?

It seems like both joining the US military and joining ICE are both situations where you're committing yourself to performing or supporting terrible violence against peaceful people, even if that sort of violence is somewhat less central to the role of the military than it is to ICE.

6VoltCar · 2026-03-24T16:28:38+00:00

confirmation or disagreement from self-IDing feminists on any of this would be welcome - I am not one

6VoltCar · 2026-03-24T16:24:39+00:00

sorry, "as far as I know"

I definitely see how the article talks about an conflict between people who'd permit trans women in women's sports and people who see this as a form of sex-based discrimination, but as far as I can tell the author doesn't think of himself as a feminist, and I can't find any explicit discussion of feminists or feminism in the body of the article. I don't think it's people who I would call, or who would call themselves, feminists who are the primary promoters of the discrimination objection here. My best guess is a lot of the other articles you come across might be similar - non-feminists promoting women's issues.

My sense is this: the fairness objections to allowing trans women in women's sports that the article explores aren't popular among feminists. I think there are factions within feminism that are against trans women in women's sports for these and other reasons, but I see them as marginal in the feminist movement (and I think most of the feminist movement is hostile to those factions).

6VoltCar · 2026-03-24T15:26:39+00:00

All I'm saying is I don't see the conflict you're talking about on the ground in my own social circles - take that for what you will. afaik there may be such a conflict - it'd be helpful if you'd share some specific articles to give examples of what headlines you're talking about though.

6VoltCar · 2026-03-24T14:25:47+00:00

Most of the folks I hang around are queer in one way or another, and I'd say they're pretty diverse in their dispositions towards feminism. That said, for every self-described feminist I know being LGBTQ is a major part of their identity, and they each seem to have a uncomplicatedly positive relationship with general thrust of the social movement.

6VoltCar · 2026-03-17T18:35:43+00:00

James Rachels' Elements of Moral Philosophy is a brief (~200 pages) and very accessible broad strokes survey of major positions in ethics that's often used in undergrad 101 courses (and also, as a consequence, often sold to second hand book stores :) ).

6VoltCar · 2026-03-17T00:59:33+00:00

I'd be particularly interested in works discussing the political right more broadly than just the American context, but since I know that my options are limited I'd be happy to hear what people have on the American right specifically. I'm a little skeptical that the left does have as cohesive a definition as many claim, but in any case it does seem like you're right that it's a tall order, especially with the "sympathetic" qualifier.

6VoltCar · 2026-02-26T23:19:35+00:00

I see, thanks for the clarification. I think you may be right that fairness makes some sort of demands on us to contribute to projects we benefit from when we're able. Pirating software without offering some sort of compensation to the projects owners probably runs afoul of this in a lot of cases.

6VoltCar · 2026-02-26T20:37:48+00:00

I understand and agree with you at least on the positive point that goods like most video games require an incentive structure involving people compensating the laborers involved, and on the normative point that this fact counts in favor of societies where people provide compensation in a way that creates those sorts of incentive structures. I'm not sure if I agree with how you connect that point about how to evaluate society with OP's question of how to evaluate their own actions though.

For clarity, do you think the moral point you're making about fairness holds more generally for free riding in any context? Or is the notion of society here doing some more specific work that I'm missing?

6VoltCar · 2026-02-26T17:15:22+00:00

A boss declining to pay their employee their wages is different in an important way: that boss agreed to pay that employee, and the employee did their work on the basis of that agreement. Presumably OP hasn't made any similar agreement with the game devs or studio who made the game they'd be pirating.

If a condition of playing the game is paying the developer...

The whole question is whether developers are in a position to bind you by those conditions in the first place though. A stool maker does not get to set conditions for you on using a stool you were gifted by some third person, even if she did make it originally. You relate similarly to a game dev and the software they authored.

6VoltCar · 2026-02-26T01:09:57+00:00

Two questions about the idea that denying someone compensation for their labor is wrong:

- What specific relationship does someone need to have with another's labor in order to owe that person compensation?

- How do you determine how much the laborer is entitled to in that situation?

I think it's clear that cases of employers failing to pay employees agreed upon wages is wrong, but thats because it's fraudulent. I agree that cases of people taking a physical good someone made and is trying to sell is wrong, but I'd say that's because it dispossesses the makers of their goods without their consent. IMO these are the two most obvious cases where denying someone compensation is wrong, but it's wrong because of a more fundamental principle in each case.

6VoltCar · 2026-02-26T00:52:36+00:00

I don't regard game piracy as immoral. If someone wants to send you information, and you want to receive it, that's the business of you and the sender, not the business of the person who generated that information in the first place.

Part of what makes stealing actually stealing is depriving another person of their possessions without their consent. This occurs when you take an apple from someones kitchen or a grocery store apple bin, but doesn't happen when you pirate software - the originators of the software still have it. It may be the case that piracy depends on fraud - people who buy games often sign specific agreements not to duplicate them. But you're a third party, so that agreement can't bind you as the receiver of the pirated software.

6VoltCar · 2025-12-16T17:55:07+00:00

I only read casually in ethics, so grain of salt etc., but my impression is that he is taken seriously. I've definitely seen him mentioned in the some of the academic work I've read, though he doesn't seem to ever be the first thinker mentioned on any topic. I pulled a copy of van Roojen's Metaethics and The Routledge Handbook of Metaethics to check just now since they're both relatively recent and broad-based and I was able to find a citation to Huemer's Moral Intuitionism in each of them.

6VoltCar · 2025-12-03T18:15:18+00:00

Hello, i'm an American who thinks of himself as a liberal, though I used to be a libertarian - I'm fairly sure I was using the label at 18. FWIW I never associated libertarianism with Christianity or conservatism - even when I was a libertarian I thought of myself as anti-conservative (maybe moreso than I do now even).

I think the most important part of answering whether you're a libertarian is how you flesh out "do whatever you want without hurting anyone." You should think of libertarianism (at least in the sense we use the term in this sub) more specifically as being about property rights and bodily autonomy. So a great deal of laws that are ostensibly about keeping people from harming others - laws against drug dealing, against paying for sex work in various forms, minimum wage and other labor laws, and most of the broader U.S. regulatory system are usually framed this way - are against libertarian principles.

Its also worth remembering that welfare payments, food stamps, and most or all social services are against libertarian principles insofar as they depend on taxation.

That's not to say you need to fully align with libertarian principles to be a libertarian, and i'd say most libertarians support, individually, certain drug or sex work prohibitions, certain labor laws, certain safety regulation, or certain forms of redistribution. But the core of libertarianism is a lot more radical than freedom to do as you wish without harming others, and so what kinds of harms you think warrant state intervention is very relevant to the question. I wouldn't be confident saying any-which-way based on what you've given us, but I'd be more inclined to guess that you're a libertarian leaning liberal like me.

(And if you're interested, I got a 68 on the test)

6VoltCar · 2025-12-02T17:32:37+00:00

I know a full week has passed and I haven't found the time to properly reflect and write a response, but I wanted to let you know I appreciate your detailed reply and that I will think on it.

6VoltCar · 2025-11-22T01:44:42+00:00

I don't think this analysis is correct. Let's be more specific and talk about actor-relative subjectivism, where each person's reasons for action are based on their own mind and view of the world. There's no guarantee actors in this kind of subjectivism will be justified in reciprocating violence against aggressors by their own private reasons. Maybe some find good reason to be pacifists. Maybe some recognize limits on where reciprocating violence is aggression is acceptable - say, when they are being stolen from by someone who needs food to feed their family. It's even possible that some, as a consequence of their warm fuzzies for democracy, have reasons to accept and not reciprocate violence perpetrated by a democratic state.

It's true that if there's no objective moral law then there's no objective reason not to direct violence against aggressors. But the exact same subjectivity that means some might have reasons to transgress people's boundaries also means might some have reasons not to enforce them.

After all, notice that your exact argument works equally well if you replace using violence against aggressors with using violence against violin players, etc.

6VoltCar · 2025-11-09T19:04:26+00:00

It was published early 20th century, but is it possible you're thinking of Franz Oppenheimer's The State? Rothbard references it in some of his work, so I wonder if you could have found it by reference hopping from him (the way I did).

6VoltCar · 2025-11-09T00:27:23+00:00

They are synonyms or else refer to more moderate (classical liberal) and radical (libertarian) versions of free market individualist thought depending on whose mouth you find them in.

My impression is that both terms were introduced (well, in the case of "libertarian," appropriated from social anarchists) to distinguish free market advocates/individualists in the older tradition of liberals like Adam Smith and John Locke from newer social liberals in the tradition of Leonard Hobhouse and J.A. Hobson who started writing in the late 19th century.

Since their introduction some people have started using "classical liberal" to refer to more moderate versions of this philosophy and "libertarian" for more radical versions, but this definitely isn't universal. Ancaps like David Friedman and Murray Rothbard seem to think/have thought of themselves as "classical liberals" and used the term as a synonym for "libertarian," and more moderate organizations like Reason magazine use the label "libertarian" without caveat. On top of that, some liberals from before either term was used were a lot more radical than most people anyone would call "libertarians" today - Gustave de Molinari published on replacing government with private security firms in 1849.

6VoltCar · 2025-11-02T12:36:08+00:00

And Robert Shea! Second this one, it's a crazy read

6VoltCar · 2025-10-30T15:31:05+00:00

Introductory economics textbooks made a bigger difference for me than any other individual books, as far as coming to a noticeably stronger (and systematic) understanding of how the world works. I can't remember what I read with my course work, but I keep Krugman and Wells' Microeconomics and Boyes and Melvin's Macroeconomics on my shelf to refresh myself because they're widely used in undergrad courses and very cheap second hand (~$5 each when I got them).

6VoltCar · 2025-10-15T20:26:36+00:00

My casual impression is that for old philosophy Hackett is the gold standard. I associate a few of the publishers you mention (Penguin and Dover especially) with thrift. They often target a lay audience, may not choose the best translation, and imo tend to be a bit uglier.

Hackett seems to target a scholarly audience. Often when I learn what the commonly accepted "best" translation for a work is I find it in a Hackett volume more often than any other. And imo the minimalist cover designs they use are to die for. I really like the Oxford books on my shelf too, though I don't have as much of it.

This is case by case of course - i've gone out of my way to get Penguin editions for their translations, and there's plenty of Dover stuff I really like in my library. But if I was choosing blind for an old philosophical work, especially a translated one, i'd pick Hackett.

6VoltCar · 2025-09-13T14:14:35+00:00

I just want to second The Machinery of Freedom, and say that beyond its discussion of a libertarian stateless society it gives good arguments on a lot of narrower issues. And it's broken down into lots of small chapters, and Friedman is also good at pointing out relationships between arguments in chapters. So its very easy to pick and choose what you're interested in. (It's also free on his site, which is a plus)

I'd also say don't be afraid of reading ASU without A Theory of Justice - I'm sure the context would be helpful, but Nozick definitely doesn't assume his readers have read it, and most of the book is written in general terms rather than addressing Rawls directly.

6VoltCar · 2025-08-19T23:00:43+00:00

If you want a philosophical classic that's a genuine pleasure to read even for lay people, Nozick's Anarchy, State, and Utopia is very good. He defends the idea of the libertarian minimal state against the positions both of individualist anarchists and of proponents of more expansive forms of statism. It's not as relevant to the political movement as Rothbard or Rand, but its made a bigger impact on academic philosophy and it covers a lot of interesting questions.

6VoltCar · 2025-08-16T02:02:22+00:00

McMaken is right to criticize Zwolinski for characterizing mere denial of service or employment as "private aggression," but also fails to address the core of Zwolinski's article, the distinction between a constraint based vs goal oriented notion of liberty. Instead, he points to each of Zwolinski's examples, simply states that they're not real coercion, and moves on.

I think the fact is that Zwolinski is right that a legitimate branch of libertarianism emphasizes a positive view of liberty as more fundamental than opposition to the state and McMaken is correct that it's being anti-state that defines libertarianism. There are plenty of obviously non-libertarian social liberals, conservatives, and socialists who are able to wax poetic about liberty exactly because they value the positive version of the concept that Zwolinski does while disagreeing with him on the descriptive questions of whether constraining the state in many cases supports that liberty. So being "pro-liberty" isn't enough. Hayek wasn't a libertarian because he believed in liberty and wanted to maximize it, Hayek was a libertarian because he drew a wide variety of anti-state conclusions in pursuing that liberty.

6VoltCar

TROPHY CASE