Concerning the nature of man and the state, and how best the latter can be structured to augment the former.
Over the last few months, a few things have happened that have put space exploration on my mind:
As a result, space exploration’s political implications are the topic of today’s post.
There’s something that liberal theorists Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau all have in common–their theories about how societies should be organised or came to be organised are based on the notion that primal man was fiercely independent and had no social obligations, that he had to consciously decide, initially to exit this individualist state and choose to be part of a society or community. Today we know that early man was from the outset tribal–community was with us from the start. What implications does this have for these theorists? That is what I would like to discuss today.
Background: recently, pizza shop CEO John Schnatter decided to raise his pizza prices by up to 20 cents giving this reason:
If Obamacare is in fact not repealed, we will find tactics to shallow out any Obamacare costs and core strategies to pass that cost onto consumers in order to protect our shareholders’ best interests.
In other words, the provision in the recent health reforms that private enterprises with in excess of 50 full time employees provide health insurance or pay a penalty has convinced Schnatter that he must raise his pizza prices in order to maintain present profit margins. Today I’d like to investigate whether or not the Affordable Care Act should be opposed on this basis.
How many times have we heard this one? “Obama is a socialist”, they say, “he’s just like [insert Communist boogie man here]”. There’s an obvious thing being missed by the right when they call Obama a socialist, and that’s that there are endless variations on socialism. So that brings us to our question for today–if Obama is a socialist, what kind of socialist would he be, and who should the right be comparing him to?
Continue reading “Oversimplifications: “Obama is a Socialist””
Recently New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg has gotten into the business of regulating his citizens’ health choices. Two prominent recent examples come to mind:
Today I would like to discuss whether or not such regulations or “nudge” policies are within the state’s ethical purview. First, let’s look at what sort of argument opponents of these policies have at their disposal:
