There's no rational reason to care about non-human lives at all. When we talk about pragmatic, secular ethics, we do so for the purpose of creating a stable and happy society. We know that by training other humans not to harm humans we reduce the likelihood that we will face hardship. There is no reason to include animals in this system other than that some people feel more sympathy for them. But animals can't engage in ethics with us, treating lab rats better will not make the rat species less likely to cause damage to us. Animal rights are a purely emotional impulse
> There's no rational reason to care about non-human lives at all
> Animal rights are a purely emotional impulse
That would be like saying you're going on holiday but there's no need to take account of the climate or weather.
Humans have emotions, therefore they are a consideration. To ignore emotions is not rational at all.
> We know that by training other humans not to harm humans we reduce the likelihood that we will face hardship. There is no reason to include animals in this system other than that some people feel more sympathy for them.
I, and many others throughout history would disagree with this assertion. As Tolstoy wrote: “As long as there are slaughter houses there will always be battlefields.” Psychopaths that hunt humans are well known for beginning on small animals and working their way up.
You may say that not all of society are psychopathic, but then we could ask if you would want to live somewhere where animal rights are strong, like the UK, or China, where they aren't even part of public consciousness.
If the powerful treat the less powerful badly, then I'd say it's naive to rely on their making the same arbitrary distinction between humans and other animals as you're relying on here.
That sounds extremely feasible to me. One of the companies i used to work for will definitely have a bunch of their training videos lost this way, and it's totally reasonable to believe that a new hire for the warehouse would not bother telling anyone that the video wouldn't play. I don't know that any real injury will result from this, but i wouldn't call the scenario absurd
I think it's good that taxes can solve problems a decentralized, and therefore disorganized, system will struggle with, but in the same way i don't think that a centralized economy will run as efficiently as a free market, I think philanthropy will make greater gains if a variety of parties are allowed to spend their money on what they think is important without needing collective approval.
You’re discounting scale though. Just like Microsoft destroyed competition and innovation with their monopoly (only possible with government backed IP laws), Gates eliminates competition for philanthropy and policy by force of his fortune. Gates is centralizing things, around himself.
I don't think you need to be too worried about that, young e-commerce competitors still pop up and seem to do well at taking a slice of the market. Shopify is larger than Amazon for my workplace, and Etsy is definitely getting bigger month by month.
There's a very common misconception that libertarians believe that what should be legal and what is beneficial are the same thing. It's not difficult to believe that YouTube should have the ability to remove these people from their platform, but also that they're wrong to do so. The libertarian preference for decentralization actively presumes that many actors will make poor choices, but that because it's not enforced top down it will be easier to persuade them to change those policies. New competitors are one way that you can create that pressure, but it's not the only one, simple dialogue is another viable avenue and the purpose of critiques like this one.
Years and years of widespread clinical practice would be my standard, but I'll make do with multiple large-scale randomized studies AND precise guidelines if absolutely necessary. As for evidence seeking, clinical research happens to be part of my job so I don't really need assistance, thanks.
Research is not "years and years of clinical practice". Do you agree that "years and years of clinical practice" is not a good criteria to use for prescription, or are you just saying you don't use anything until other people have been using it for years and years. (and in this case, hasn't it been used for years and years?)
I don't use anything not covered by guidelines if I can avoid it. And in the event I can't avoid it, I'll always go for the more usual practice, i.e. the one backed by years and years of experience. If you want to participate in clinical trials, that's another matter entirely and has nothing to do with usual care or individuals taking whatever on their own.
It's the standard of one particular professional with 15y of clinical practice and research who's seen every kind of manipulation and incompetence in medicine. But yeah, it may be silly. We'll see about that in the coming decades I guess.
I'm not planning to take metformin but it was discovered a century ago and has been in use for half that time. A quick look shows me that it's the 4th most prescribed medication in the US. I find it hard to understand how this would not satisfy "years and years of widespread clinical practice", at least with regards to understanding negative implications.
But as you said, you can do your own research, so I'll leave things where they stand. You just sound more like someone who's annoyed by pop-science more than someone who actually has strong opinions about the article or Metformin.
I am well aware of the downsides of metformin since someone ends up in my ER (and sometimes dies) because of it most weeks. So you'll excuse me if an off-label and very new potential indication is not an immediate go for me. When we want to open a new indication for a particular drug, evaluation of the risk-benefit ratio for this particular indication has to be performed. There are many factors at play and results are completely unpredictable.
As for the rest no, I'm all for pop-science because it's what stimulates the interest of the masses. The problem in my eyes is more that academic medical studies available to the wider public are akin to a very sharp saw, and people will get cut if they don't know what they're doing.
Yeah I'd recommend you open up with information like that in the future, just right off the bat. It's a lot more interesting and at least somewhat useful.
The only other legal tender in El Salvador is the US Dollar. If, for any reason, you have qualms about the US financial system, especially as someone foreign to the US with little priority in its decision making processes, it might be desirable to opt for a different currency. Is BTC the right currency for their government to bend to that purpose? I guess we'll find out.
There are other laws libertarians would like to circumvent. Occupational licensing, over scheduling of drugs, civil asset forfeiture spring to mind. Starting a new country on the ocean is a pretty drastic way to fight back, but i can't deny the impulse to opt out when change appears impossible.
> Occupational licensing, over scheduling of drugs, civil asset forfeiture spring to mind.
Just out of interest: What kind of problem do you, personally, have with these that you are considering starting a new country?
And isn't it the issue that the rich can already circumvent laws just fine? How is all this going to help the poor who have to stem the main bulk of the tax burden while the rich use loop holes and tax havens? They ware not the ones that are going to live on the ocean.
I'm not the OP, but the three listed things are fairly bland issues by libertarian standards.
Occupational licensing: it's gatekeeping that drives up the cost of services, reduces competition and quality. For example, when I dislocated my shoulder, the offsite radiologist who read the X-ray declared that it wasn't dislocated. He was wrong. Luckily for me, the staff at the clinic ignored his diagnosis and reduced it anyway.
Over scheduling of drugs: In the US, cannabis is a Schedule I drug at the federal level. This is the same bucket as heroin and the date rape drug. Prosecutors can use (or abuse) prosecutorial discretion to decide who to pursue for cannabis offenses, resulting in unequal outcomes based on your socioeconomic status. As a Canadian, I can be denied entry to the US if I admit having used cannabis. This seems wasteful, and impairs useful things like economic migration or families visiting each other.
Civil asset forfeiture: there are perverse incentives here where: (1) the agency seizing the money gets to use it for their operating expenses and (2) the burden of proof rests on the person whose property is seized. There are documented cases of police targeting travellers with out of state plates, knowing that they are unlikely to return to fight their case in court. As someone who takes road trips through the US, this affects me.
If you want to stir the libertarian pot, you should talk about child labour, consensual slavery and selling body parts. Occupational licensing, over scheduling of drugs and civil asset forfeiture aren't that out there, IMO.
I'm pretty sure the libertarian idea of not paying any property taxes would just lead to rich feudal lords owning everything and everyone else paying them rent. Which is probably worse for everyone else than paying taxes which are at least nominally used for the public good.
I really don't know how not to violate HN's guideline to maintain a kind and openminded discussion when presented with such a straw-man. There's just no way to react to this that would be in any way sincere and not offensive.
Property taxes are viewed as among the least bad types of tax among right-libertarians. And since libertarians believe in some minimal level of taxation to fund the army etc, your comment is inaccurate.
It seems odd to me to trade a small but real risk of this should I decide to carry around large quantities of cash (and/or drugs) for the risk of being robbed by literal pirates with no real recourse unless you're able to fight them off personally.
