Your view furthest outside the Overton window?

[Goldwater]

Reading through this thread has made me realize how much of a boring moderate I really am...

[Ilhan Apologist]

Anyway, for me: lawyers should always work for and be provided by the government. There's no reason why a richer person should be able to afford a better lawyer and therefore have an easier time staying out of legal trouble.

Oh, I agree with that big time. Add lawyers to the list of industries to nationalize.

Because the government is never wrong. This is one of the most idiotic things I have ever heard. Listen to what you are even saying.

Of course the government is wrong sometimes? By your logic, NOTHING should be nationalized

[Goldwater]

Anyway, for me: lawyers should always work for and be provided by the government. There's no reason why a richer person should be able to afford a better lawyer and therefore have an easier time staying out of legal trouble.

Oh, I agree with that big time. Add lawyers to the list of industries to nationalize.

Because the government is never wrong. This is one of the most idiotic things I have ever heard. Listen to what you are even saying.

Of course the government is wrong sometimes? By your logic, NOTHING should be nationalized

What makes you think he doesn't think that?

[parochial boy]

Anyway, for me: lawyers should always work for and be provided by the government. There's no reason why a richer person should be able to afford a better lawyer and therefore have an easier time staying out of legal trouble.

Oh, I agree with that big time. Add lawyers to the list of industries to nationalize.

Because the government is never wrong. This is one of the most idiotic things I have ever heard. Listen to what you are even saying.

Of course the government is wrong sometimes? By your logic, NOTHING should be nationalized

Well, no, think about it, there's a massive conflict of interest any time you have cause to go to court against the government. Even from a progressive point of view, imagine you an asylum seeker who's case has just been rejected, and you can't even appeal it without a lawyer employed by the organisation that wants to deport you?

[DC Al Fine]

Divorce should be banned or heavily restricted.

Gambling should be banned or heavily restricted. At the very least state owned vice should be privatized so that government doesn't have a conflict of interest in protecting the poor and vunerable.

Corporate taxes should be abolished in favour of just taxing the owners on their share of income earned/paid out.

The state's role in education should be limited to cutting cheques and some modest regulation.

Anyway, for me: lawyers should always work for and be provided by the government. There's no reason why a richer person should be able to afford a better lawyer and therefore have an easier time staying out of legal trouble.

Oh, I agree with that big time. Add lawyers to the list of industries to nationalize.

Because the government is never wrong. This is one of the most idiotic things I have ever heard. Listen to what you are even saying.

Of course the government is wrong sometimes? By your logic, NOTHING should be nationalized

Well, no, think about it, there's a massive conflict of interest any time you have cause to go to court against the government. Even from a progressive point of view, imagine you an asylum seeker who's case has just been rejected, and you can't even appeal it without a lawyer employed by the organisation that wants to deport you?

Yeah that one raised an eyebrow. Does a progressive really want the Trump Administration calling the shots for all lawyers?

[Pyro]

Capitalism is literally leading humanity down the road to extinction.

[Ilhan Apologist]

Anyway, for me: lawyers should always work for and be provided by the government. There's no reason why a richer person should be able to afford a better lawyer and therefore have an easier time staying out of legal trouble.

Oh, I agree with that big time. Add lawyers to the list of industries to nationalize.

Because the government is never wrong. This is one of the most idiotic things I have ever heard. Listen to what you are even saying.

Of course the government is wrong sometimes? By your logic, NOTHING should be nationalized

Well, no, think about it, there's a massive conflict of interest any time you have cause to go to court against the government. Even from a progressive point of view, imagine you an asylum seeker who's case has just been rejected, and you can't even appeal it without a lawyer employed by the organisation that wants to deport you?

That's a good point. It's not like that problem doesn't exist already, since federal judges are appointed by the administration, and they decide the case. But still, that's fair.

[Gracile]

End tax-exempt status for religious organizations.

[SWE]

Anyway, for me: lawyers should always work for and be provided by the government. There's no reason why a richer person should be able to afford a better lawyer and therefore have an easier time staying out of legal trouble.

Oh, I agree with that big time. Add lawyers to the list of industries to nationalize.

Because the government is never wrong. This is one of the most idiotic things I have ever heard. Listen to what you are even saying.

Of course the government is wrong sometimes? By your logic, NOTHING should be nationalized

Well, no, think about it, there's a massive conflict of interest any time you have cause to go to court against the government. Even from a progressive point of view, imagine you an asylum seeker who's case has just been rejected, and you can't even appeal it without a lawyer employed by the organisation that wants to deport you?

I don't really see the problem here. Public defenders are government provided attorneys tasked with representing clients going up against the government and there's no conflict of interest there.

[Fight for Trump]

Anyway, for me: lawyers should always work for and be provided by the government. There's no reason why a richer person should be able to afford a better lawyer and therefore have an easier time staying out of legal trouble.

Oh, I agree with that big time. Add lawyers to the list of industries to nationalize.

Because the government is never wrong. This is one of the most idiotic things I have ever heard. Listen to what you are even saying.

Of course the government is wrong sometimes? By your logic, NOTHING should be nationalized

Well, no, think about it, there's a massive conflict of interest any time you have cause to go to court against the government. Even from a progressive point of view, imagine you an asylum seeker who's case has just been rejected, and you can't even appeal it without a lawyer employed by the organisation that wants to deport you?

I don't really see the problem here. Public defenders are government provided attorneys tasked with representing clients going up against the government and there's no conflict of interest there.

There is no problem only because defendants always have the right to hire their own counsel. The right to choice is just as important in maintaining legitimacy of the system as is the right to a public defender.

[HisGrace]

IDK, maybe legalized prostitution

- Even in 2019, I still believe Saddam Hussein did have WMDs (that the Assad regime has now) and was planning to work with al-Qaeda to strike the East Coast of the US.

I don't think it's an unreasonable opinion to say Saddam actually did have WMD, but if he did it was as a deterrent against Iran, he wasn't bonkers enough to want to try and nuke the United States. A lot of people also think he planted fake intelligence to make it look like he had them to scare Iran off but then it ended up backfiring and getting the US to attack him.

Iran pretty clearly was under the impression that he had them or else they would have overran the country after the Cold War ended when Saddam was internationally isolated and had no one to protect him.

[Xing]

Probably several views involving education, such as phasing out standardized tests or raising the pay of teachers, paraprofessionals, and classified staff significantly, while capping the pay of University presidents.

[John Dule]

7. Iceland has the right idea with regard to congenital disorders. (And most people who object to this while otherwise rejecting the idea that "abortion is murder" are hypocrites.)

I couldn't agree more.

[💥💥 brandon bro (he/him/his)]

College is a scam. Most jobs could just be taught without a college degree. College degrees are a way for wealthy liberals to keep poor and middle class people out of certain industries they hold a monopoly in.

I agree with most of what you said, but not this. It's true that most jobs can be done without a college degree (and requiring a college degree to apply is usually pointless), but what about education for the intrinsic value of knowledge? People WANT to learn about history and biology, even if most of them won't end up with a job related to that. There's got to be more to life than just working for a wage until you retire, and education provides that. (that's why college needs to be tuition free, or at least affordable for everyone)

Nothing wrong with that but keep in mind that facts have a half-life. Most of what you will learn in college will turn out to be wrong and disproven in the future.

Although I agree with you. Nobody should have to pay for knowledge that is temporarily correct/relevant or a piece of paper so they can work a job that has nothing to do with their major because HR departments are too lazy to evaluate people on a case by case basis.

College (and education) isn't just about knowledge. It's about learning critical thinking, reasoning, complex problem solving, and how to evaluate arguments. That and generally refining skills like writing, presentation, several practical skills, etc. The knowledge and base of facts is just the marble that the really difficult is made of.

You can read a book to accumulate facts. You could get some of the benefits of college from reading a book but it's much harder and takes a lot of books.

e: to answer the original question I have a number of very radical ideas about environmentalism that I don't fully support because of the backlash they would engender, but I still think they are ideas with merit. Things like banning/restricting plastic usage, airline travel, and meat consumption.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

6. Criticism of Catholic Church throughout US history was mostly justified, even if the prejudices resulting from it often were not.

How's that controversial?

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

To answer the question, it would be banning private schools in primary education.

[Orser67]

Population control in developing countries is necessary to combat global warming and resource depletion. Forced sterilization isn't a policy worth pursuing, but I strongly support one- and/or two-child policies. In some situations, I would support conditioning aid on the implementation of a two-child policy.

Also, I think standardized testing is, for the most part, a good idea, and I think Common Core was probably an improvement on what came before.

[Antonio the Sixth]

Anyway, for me: lawyers should always work for and be provided by the government. There's no reason why a richer person should be able to afford a better lawyer and therefore have an easier time staying out of legal trouble.

Oh, I agree with that big time. Add lawyers to the list of industries to nationalize.

Because the government is never wrong. This is one of the most idiotic things I have ever heard. Listen to what you are even saying.

Of course the government is wrong sometimes? By your logic, NOTHING should be nationalized

Well, no, think about it, there's a massive conflict of interest any time you have cause to go to court against the government. Even from a progressive point of view, imagine you an asylum seeker who's case has just been rejected, and you can't even appeal it without a lawyer employed by the organisation that wants to deport you?

There are ways of putting institutions in the public purview without putting them under direct government control. By that standard, you're saying judges also can't be unbiased because they are a branch of the government (of course judges in the US are often biased, but that has more to do with the specifics of how they are selected than anything inherent of them being a state institution per se), or that the BBC is biased because it's a public TV station. That's an incredibly simplistic view of what nationalization means.

[Antonio the Sixth]

7. Iceland has the right idea with regard to congenital disorders. (And most people who object to this while otherwise rejecting the idea that "abortion is murder" are hypocrites.)

...you do realize that something can be bad without being murder, right?

Also, good job continuing to deprive the word "hypocrite" of any substantive meaning by basically using it to mean "holding any two positions I consider inconsistent". This is one of the most illiterate habit on this forum and I thought you at least were too thoughtful to contribute to this linguistic degeneracy.

[parochial boy]

Anyway, for me: lawyers should always work for and be provided by the government. There's no reason why a richer person should be able to afford a better lawyer and therefore have an easier time staying out of legal trouble.

Oh, I agree with that big time. Add lawyers to the list of industries to nationalize.

Because the government is never wrong. This is one of the most idiotic things I have ever heard. Listen to what you are even saying.

Of course the government is wrong sometimes? By your logic, NOTHING should be nationalized

Well, no, think about it, there's a massive conflict of interest any time you have cause to go to court against the government. Even from a progressive point of view, imagine you an asylum seeker who's case has just been rejected, and you can't even appeal it without a lawyer employed by the organisation that wants to deport you?

There are ways of putting institutions in the public purview without putting them under direct government control. By that standard, you're saying judges also can't be unbiased because they are a branch of the government (of course judges in the US are often biased, but that has more to do with the specifics of how they are selected than anything inherent of them being a state institution per se), or that the BBC is biased because it's a public TV station. That's an incredibly simplistic view of what nationalization means.

Well that in part comes down to Santander's point about choice - in the case of the BBC, it isn't a monopoly, and functions in an industry that is highly visible and with a free media which inherently makes it much more transparent. With lawyers, you have an industry that most of the time is basically invisible to most people, which combined with turning it into a monopoly has its issues. And that is especially the case in the US, where, as you pointed out, there is already a worrying lack of judicial independence to begin with.

[Antonio the Sixth]

Well, my ideal country would be set up very differently from the US, so I don't know why you'd assumed it as the basis for discussion. This thread is about spitballing our most blue-sky proposals, so obviously a lot of things would have to change before turning criminal defense into a public service can be put on the table. I don't think it's as difficult as you make it sound, though. Whatever setup works for judges in most countries will also works for lawyers (although with a strict career separation between the two, of course - there should also be strict career separation between judges and prosecutors, but that's a different story).

[Antonio the Sixth]

No disagreement here. I'm pretty sure I'm on record saying I'm worried by the recent direction of the American pro-choice movement and the vitriol that comes with The Abortion Debate in general. Still, that's not a reason to attack the pro-choice position in the abstract.

From a pro-choice standpoint, there is an easy response to the use of abortion as a eugenic tool: ban prenatal diagnostics for anything that doesn't endanger the mother's health. That doesn't run counter the principle of bodily autonomy in any way.

[Antonio the Sixth]

That's a fair point. I'd certainly err on the side of protecting maternal health whenever that was a concern. However, my understanding is that there is currently information whose sole purpose for being currently provided is to create the opportunity for eugenics, and that kind of information should not simply not be available anymore.

[TheDeadFlagBlues]

What occurs in Iceland is not eugenics but, rather, ample information being provided to all mothers, almost all of whom decide to get an abortion when they discover that their unborn child has a significant risk of having down syndrome. By coincidence, those who support eugenics would approve of outcomes in Iceland but it cannot be described as eugenics because this outcome does not necessarily flow from mothers having access to very sophisticated information about health risks.

If there's no desire to promote any particular kind of outcome, but, rather, a desire to expand the ability of parents to plan for the future and to expand the scope of their choices, it's not "eugenics"! Of course, averroes appears to support eugenics because he approves of this particular outcome. While I believe that eugenics is abhorrent, the system that led to this outcome is a just one so I can't be bothered by this.

I'll add to this by saying that I am equally as disgusted by the crowd that believes that the state ought to be used to enforce family planning decisions as I am by eugenics. Move to China if you believe that abortion ought to be banned - forcing women to incubate babies is hardly any different from encouraging women to commit infanticide. Both are gross impositions that treat human beings as instruments rather than ends in and of themselves.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

That's a fair point. I'd certainly err on the side of protecting maternal health whenever that was a concern. However, my understanding is that there is currently information whose sole purpose for being currently provided is to create the opportunity for eugenics, and that kind of information should not simply not be available anymore.

There's simply no way this could be enforced. This information could just be be provided under the guise of "maternal health". Unless you like the idea of micromanaging doctors and actually prosecuting some for providing potentially relevant information to pregnant women about their health.