I would argue that what rights there are is inherently a moral argument. “Murder is not a right” is a moral statement, for example. The government doesn’t change what rights it thinks there are without some kind of moral basis for it. Even if it’s primarily done in the legal sense, we still generally act in the legal system based on a system of morality. Another example: “Compelling people to testify against themselves is wrong.” It would be really useful for the state if they could do that, but legally speaking, the US recognizes that there is a right against self-incrimination.

Laws are written because someone, somewhere, found a moral fault in the law. It’s just that some people believe that the only morality is power, and thus anything they do is justified. That’s why we have the Bill of Rights: it’s meant to stop people from simply saying “the government needs this power so we’re going to give it that power.” It isn’t about creating rights, it’s about recognizing and protecting rights that have existed all along.

But if the government can decide what rights there are, then anything they do is morally correct, no? Unless you’re going to hold the government to a higher moral standard than themselves, in which case the government doesn’t actually grant rights; it can only protect or violate them. If we have a higher moral standard than the law, then human rights do not come from the government, they are defined by whatever that higher standard is.

I think the Nazis were an insane and utterly contemptible political party that destroyed a struggling nation to slake their own thirst for power. But if the government decides what rights there are, then they can simply legislate out of existence the rights of anyone under their jurisdiction. Thus, anything the government does to them is justified.

And my point is that it isn’t the government that decides what rights are. You started this whole “can the government decide what rights are” discussion by dismissing out of hand the right of a person to defend themselves. I’d like for you to go up to a sexual assault victim, especially one who defended themselves with a gun, and tell them “um ackshually you didn’t have the right to defend yourself because guns are evil 🤓”. Or would you only do that after the Second Amendment is deleted from the Constitution?

Yes, I do find it dishonest to say both “the government has the right to grant and revoke rights” and “there are only some laws that are reasonable”. You can’t really take a moral stance against the government like that if they decide you no longer have the right to disagree with them.

I know it doesn’t lead to any particular right being set, but your argument that rights are set by the government still leads to the conclusion that, because the Nazis were in power, they had the right to decide that Jews, gay people, other ethnicities, etc. no longer had a right to life. It would also lead to the belief that the Nazis had the right to protect those people if they wanted to. It would open the door to whatever oppression, discrimination, protection, liberty, and whatever else the ever-fickle government decided. Nobody would be right to resist it because “the government sets the rights, therefore it’s okay”.

Do you believe that Nazi Germany was justified in killing 11 million people? Because that’s the logical conclusion of your belief.

So the government can decide what rights are? If the Republicans get a 2/3 majority and amends the Constitution to say that LGBT+ people can be killed at any moment, does that make it right?

Also, let’s assume your proposal happens. What specific policies do you mean by “sane gun control”?

How do you propose we lower the number of guns in our society in a way that disarms criminals and doesn’t violate people’s right to self defense?

They do, but the fact remains that you can’t effectively incentivize people to work more for you personally when they’re already soul-crushingly overworked doing things for everyone else in their rotation. Trying to get more out of nurses who are in the industry already would be trying to squeeze blood from a stone. Also, you don’t go to college for several years to be a server. If people realize they’re going to have to beg for tips from their patients, then that won’t bode well for the profession.

See, there’s a crucial difference in the two professions. A server is someone who brings your food, takes your check, and generally doesn’t do much else. A nurse, on the other hand, needs to balance the life-saving care of dozens of patients at once while dealing with administrative bullcrap the whole time. People tip servers well to incentivize them to spend less time on their phones and dropping plates, and more time carrying food and recording orders accurately. You can’t do that with nurses because they can’t possibly give any more of their time. 91% of nurses experienced high levels of burnout in 2023,, and I’m dead certain that a lot of that is the insane workload. Twelve hour shifts working with uncaring staff and pissed-off patients must be soul-crushing. Then for your employer to try and disguise your looming pay cuts as “a way to give your healthcare heroes a special thank you” would probably cause an exodus from the profession; people can see through that stuff pretty easily.

You’re still assuming this is going to be an immediate industry-wide thing, too. Like I said, people will see through the corporate bs, and they’ll learn at some point that they can go to another hospital, not be expected to beg for tips from their suffering patients, and get paid more than the place that was lowballing them. Word of mouth is powerful. There’s an entire cottage industry of Canadian nurses who cross the border into America for work because they’re so dissatisfied with the Canadian system. Your scenario only works in a setting where there is only one nationwide hospital system that decides the market rate for nursing, and that people wouldn’t decide not to become nurses after seeing that they’re expected to tip them. We already see a nursing shortage because they’re being treated so poorly; trying to make it a tipped industry would only make it worse.

As for the “would you?” thing, I can speak from a degree of personal experience here. I was in the psych ward in May and I was waiting for over ten hours in there to see a psychiatrist. I was tired, hungry, bored, and scared of what might happen to me. I was in no way equipped to make financial decisions at that point, and I get the feeling that the medical field would consider taking tips from someone who was in such an emotionally frail state to be unethical at best. (Oh yeah, and they took away my wallet. Couldn’t give them cash if I wanted to.) My insurance made the cost of going there “reasonable,” (mostly because I wasn’t actually admitted,) but if the hospital expected me to tip the staff there, it would be nonsensical. How would you determine what the tip should be based on? The pre-insurance amount? That’s like $5,000 there if I’m lucky, and 20% of that is $1,000 on a bill I only paid like $275 for. One word: No. The post-insurance amount? That’s $27.50. A pittance compared to how much time and effort went into taking care of me, including the time it took to become a nurse to begin with. Furthermore, I would be so removed from the process of sending the tip that by the time the money reached the nurse(s) who helped me, they would only know me as a name on a bill at best. And again, would insurance be willing to cover the cost of a tip?

What makes you think people will go from tipping $10 on a $40-50 meal, to tipping, say, $100 on a $400-500 medical bill? Or $1,000 on a $4,000-5,000 one? Or even more? Do you think that insurance is going to cover tips for nurses? Do you think every nurse in a given hospital is going to stay there instead of getting a job somewhere else that doesn’t expect them to take tips, especially when they realize that nobody is tipping them?

This reminds me of that chart showing gun deaths over a few years that showed the line going down the more deaths there were. That made sense graphically, they colored it in to look like blood dripping down, but this is just dumb.

If a hospital in the US started paying their nurses the same minimum wage that a server gets, that hospital would suddenly be without nurses and it would be entirely the hospital’s fault.

The fact that this is now apparently a bipartisan effort means either it’s a good idea or a terrible idea. I’m leaning towards “good.”

How long will this farce go on?

I think it depends on the amount of fun you have. There’s a difference between “I grinded for 30 hours to get this item, I felt pulled into doing it and now I’m 6 hours late for work” addictive fun, “I played for 30 hours on and off, it was such a relaxing experience” chill tf out fun, and “I played for 30 hours, I broke my controller from gripping it too hard and my heart was pounding the whole time” hardcore action fun. It’s tough to gauge a game just on how much time it takes to complete.

How often do more ethical businesses swoop in to rent out the spaces formerly occupied by indentured servitude corporations? If these businesses aren’t replaced by something, what will the people formerly working there do for an income?

First, Alex Jones’s trial was a civil matter. The families of the Sandy Hook victims took issue with him and took him to court of their own initiative. This is a criminal matter. This involves people being tried and jailed by a foreign country over laws of which they were potentially unaware. That is a significant escalation of the situation.

Second, no country has the right to tell citizens of other countries what they can do in their home countries. That’s nonsense. Allowing the UK to extradite random people over Internet comments would set an awful precedent for the future. If a right-wing extremist became PM and made it illegal to promote gender-affirming therapy online, would it be right for him to extradite US citizens for “causing physical or psychological harm”?

Here’s a longer excerpt from the interview. In the words of the police chief at about 1:40: “And whether you’re in this country, committing crimes on the streets, or further afield committing crimes online, we will come after you.”

“Being a keyboard warrior does not make you safe from the law. You can be guilty of offences of incitement, of stirring up racist hatred. There are numerous terrorist offences regarding the publishing of material. All of those offences are in play, if people are provoking hatred and violence on the streets, and we will come after those individuals just as we will physically confront on the streets the folks who are causing the problems for communities.”

I didn’t pick up on the word “extradite,” but the wording means either they’re going after anyone in the world who commits a crime against their laws, or they’re only going after UK citizens. Either way, this nonsense is what you get when there is no First Amendment.

Oh, I do know it. I’m just saying why it happens. It’s a very hard hole to crawl out of.