Welcome to Smashboards, the world's largest Super Smash Brothers community! Over 250,000 Smash Bros. fans from around the world have come to discuss these great games in over 19 million posts!
You are currently viewing our boards as a visitor. Click here to sign up right now and start on your path in the Smash community!
How does an urban life cost more than a rural life? Urbanization should make it easier to support higher levels of population. If everything is rural, then we will run out of land a lot faster.And people think we're not in a utilitarian slippery slope....
I find it interesting that with regards to overpopulation, people always assume the issue with the number of people, not the way we support it. This may sound really uneducated, but I think the big problem is that we've over-urbanised society, so now it costs far more in resources to sustaint the life of one person than it does in more traditional, rural societies/tribes. Of course to reverse that problem would take centuries and is essentially unthinkable, we would never do something like that.
I'm pretty sure you are incorrect here. The cost of you getting food from farmers is much much less than you getting it yourself. This is due to economies of scale. There are a few farmers nowadays with massive amounts of land, so they find the most efficient ways to grow/harvest tons of crops (like having machines etc).Well I think of the cost of an urban house compared to a rural one, the cost to pay farmers and markets to prepare my food, rather than me getting it myself etc.
Can there be a rule or something against making blanket statements like this that are clearly opinion and don't contribute anything to the conversation?Killing babies is wrong
You're not looking very hard. In fact, part of the purpose of the existence of the word "fetus" is to distinguish it from "baby" and "embryo"."Killing babies is wrong" is not an arbitrary opinion; it's one held by 99.9999% of everyone ever. Are fetuses babies? I can't see a difference.
No, but does that mean you 100% should get that dude's blood? What if he doesn't want to give it to you? Is it ok for you to TAKE it from him?The point of viability thing is arbitrary; if I needed some dude's blood to combat a rare disease I had or w/e, does that make me not-alive?
What if a person (sentient) were trespassing on your property and threatening to kill you?What if the fetus were sentient and had the IQ of an adult; would it deserve death due to its parasitic nature?
Neither side of this is productive. Everyone will always claim that their opponent is the brainwashed one - and simply thinking like this means you aren't open to new ideas.And lol at "brainwashing of the radically right wing." You're the brainwashed one, buddy. "Their bodies, their choice"? Really? An obviously misleading statement, and yet you repeated it word-for-word like a good little puppet.
Anyways, if we don't pay attention to Kane's rambling, we're approaching the point where arguments will do no good and everything becomes subjective.Perhaps the brainwashing comment was unnecessary, but I just don't see how railing against more individual freedom for people is morally upstanding. The purpose of government is to, first and foremost, protect the common good of the people.
Dumb. If fetuses deserve life, restricting women's freedom to kill them is not wrong. The debate is about whether they deserve life. Arguments like yours are totally wrong, because you're ASSUMING that fetuses don't deserve life, that women are the only humans in the equation, and coming to super-obvious conclusions from there.
Laws are created on the basis that they're designed to prevent one human being from harming another, so a law against aborting a fetus (by definition: NOT A HUMAN BEING) is completely counter intuitive.
We are arguing about whether or not a fetus is a human being/worthy of life. That is the entire argument here. I'll ignore the superdumb part about laws being designed only to protect human beings from each other.
@Battlecow, you do realize global-wolf and I are essentially making the same argument here, right?
I'll say it again, there's a definitive moment where a fetus stops being a fetus and starts being an actual human being. You can quibble over when exactly that is, but at that point you're just being difficult for difficulty's sake.
The fact of the matter is that if you let the argument shift from "Is abortion wrong" to "When during a pregnancy is it wrong", you've already admitted on some level, at some point, that abortion is acceptable.
Is it worth arguing with people who steadfastly refuse to read OPs? What the ****, I've got nothing better to do.
Read the OP.
This isn't clear at all. Would you kill someone to take their blood, if you needed that blood to survive? Probably not, right? So why should you be able to kill the fetus just to keep yourself alive, if we follow that logic?@ballin'- If the fetus is going to kill the mother, abortions are OK (obviously).
Ok, but most mothers who want to get abortions didn't create the child on purpose either. So why shouldn't you be able to remove the child if it's trespassing on your body against your will?The dude-blood metaphor is flawed because the dude didn't create me and put me in a position where I needed his blood.
I didn't say it was. But one person says "you're brainwashed", the other person is 99% going to respond "no YOU'RE the one who is brainwashed" which is completely pointless.Also he totally is brainwashed and I'm not; this isn't one of those subjective things where both sides are equally right and wrong and they just need to see that really, they're all the same.
So yeah, does anyone still disagree with the "Abortion is acceptable up to a certain point, whereupon the fetus becomes "human" enough to keep alive" perspective? We still don't really have reasonable ideas for when that would be; I confess, I don't know.This isn't clear at all. Would you kill someone to take their blood, if you needed that blood to survive? Probably not, right? So why should you be able to kill the fetus just to keep yourself alive, if we follow that logic?
Mother dies, fetus usually dies. Mother has people who know and love her, total irrefutable human sentience, etc. etc.
Basically we value the mother's life more highly than that of a baby of any kind.
Ok, but most mothers who want to get abortions didn't create the child on purpose either. So why shouldn't you be able to remove the child if it's trespassing on your body against your will?
Unless it's a **** baby, she certainly contributed to its existence, and is to some degree responsible. The baby can't help being there, and you don't kill someone because they, through no fault of their own, are going to inconvenience you to the degree that pregnancy does. If it is a **** baby, and she didn't have a chance at day after pills/early term abortions/whatever, then it sucks to be her but it isn't the baby's fault, and she has to put up with being inconvenienced for 6 months until she can put it up for adoption.
I didn't say it was. But one person says "you're brainwashed", the other person is 99% going to respond "no YOU'RE the one who is brainwashed" which is completely pointless.
Except that he totally is brainwashed, and my statement of this did not come simply because he said that I was brainwashed. No one who wasn't exposed to the culture of abortion would claim that it was acceptable simply because "it's the woman's body." It makes no sense on the face of it.
So yeah. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.Because when you're bearing a child, your hormones essentially go off sending out the so called motherly instinct. When it's born, you become connected to the child at a hormonal level, which is physiological and isn't just some kind of choice. You're going to love the baby anyways. Once the baby is born, over 95% of the time you will choose to keep the child, despite how many people to have abortions.
Lots and lots of babies are put up for adoption. You put way too much faith in this magical hormonal stuff.
What else is wrong with adoption? Adoption has actually a crap load of issues that usually are to do with damaging the child emotionally. Adopted children have more of a chance to be on drugs, commit suicide etc. simply because of the nature of their life.
I have an adopted brother and sister; they seem to be fine. In fact, my mother is an adoption lawyer, and I can honestly say that in my experience, adopted children seem to have, on average, more emotional stability than non-adopted ones, simply because they get great parenting. Unless you have some serious studies to back up that suicide+drugs thing, it's pretty offensive.
I would also like to note that only 8% of women who have children did not use contraception. I got this information from about.com, so I'm not 100% if it's true, but it's an interesting number.
Wut. That cannot be true. I firmly believe that more than 8% of babies are made intentionally. It is "interesting" in that it's wrong.
So anyways, what's different between contraceptives and abortion? Honestly, if the child can't feel pain during the first trimester, if they can't live completely independent of the mother, then isn't that almost the exact same as a contraceptive? I don't see how you piece this together; just because they're a fetus, they still don't fill. Sperm is a potential human. Eggs are potential humans. You can't just make this simple analogy that abortion = murder, because it's another type of birth control.
And we're back to the point I made in the OP.
So what am I trying to prove here? Fetuses are special people, and while they hold potential to be a human, they don't have any personhood yet. Fetuses shouldn't be treated like regular humans, because honestly, they're not regular humans and that's been acknowledged.
And we're back to the point I made in the OP again.
BTW, don't you agree it will be driving abortion underground and abortion will happen more with greater harm to the women getting the procedure?
Abortion will definitely happen a lot, lot LESS (people drank less during prohibition), and the criminals who do get it will suffer harm. Sucks for them.
"We find that alcohol consumption fell sharply at the beginning of Prohibition, to approximately 30 percent of its pre-Prohibition level. During the next several years, however, alcohol consumption increased sharply, to about 60-70 percent of its pre-Prohibition level. The level of consumption remained virtually the same immediately after Prohibition as during the latter part of Prohibition, although consumption increased to approximately its pre-Prohibition level during the subsequent decade."Source for people drank less during prohibition?
First result on google: http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=1017"We find that alcohol consumption fell sharply at the beginning of Prohibition, to approximately 30 percent of its pre-Prohibition level. During the next several years, however, alcohol consumption increased sharply, to about 60-70 percent of its pre-Prohibition level. The level of consumption remained virtually the same immediately after Prohibition as during the latter part of Prohibition, although consumption increased to approximately its pre-Prohibition level during the subsequent decade."
Alcohol Consumption During Prohibition
Jeffrey A. Miron; Jeffrey Zwiebel
The American Economic Review, Vol. 81, No. 2, Papers and Proceedings of the Hundred and
Third Annual Meeting of the American Economic Association. (May, 1991), pp. 242-247.
You can just google these things, you know.
Interesting opinion in the Debate Hall.Arguing with people who have already decided that they aren't going to change their opinions is pointless. Live your life, I'll live mine, wondrously content in all my baby killing glory
BC- I think you're funny and all that, but stop trying to deliberately portray an egoist image of yourself with comments like "if I actually cared how anyone but me felt", it makes it look more like a gimmick than a genuine life philosophy.Sorry. I was snarky and wrong about the googling. You have my sincere repentance.
Or, it would be sincere, if I actually cared how anyone but me felt.
trolololo-lo-lolo-lo-lololololoooool
Don't push battlecow away from us Dre!BC- I think you're funny and all that, but stop trying to deliberately portray an egoist image of yourself with comments like "if I actually cared how anyone but me felt", it makes it look more like a gimmick than a genuine life philosophy.
![]()
seriously, be realistic. he doesn't do those things.Don't push battlecow away from us Dre!
He's taking time out of his busy schedule of having sex with hookers while making muscle poses and staring at himself in the mirror.