I’m not going to type out all the arguments for you. If you’re curious they can be easily found. — NOS4A2

Yeah right. You could have filled a book out of all the crap you've written in defence of Trump and now suddenly it's too much effort to summarise a single argument? Either way, I'm not interested in the arguments at this stage. I'm sure that they exist - for both small and large government. Mere existence of an argument, then, is not sufficient to justify taking a position - especially one which will cause harm to others. You must be persuaded by it to the exclusion of others. So declaring the existence of an argument is pointless. You need to show why you are persuaded by it, and why you are not persuaded by arguments to the contrary, and why (in the light of this uncertainty) you've opted to err on the side of the more harmful option.

The “taking” aspect is the problem. You can do whatever you want with your own excess. You cannot do anything you want with mine. — NOS4A2

It's not your excess. It belongs to the government, if the government were to make a law requiring you to pay a certain amount of tax, then that money would legally be the government's not yours. Notwithstanding that, I absolutely can do something with your excess. I can gather together enough people to overpower you and take it.

Because caring involves taking care of the needs of others. Demanding others to care for others is not the same. — NOS4A2

Sounds the same to me. If I really cared about a dying man what would be the most rational expression of that care - me trying to save him myself, or me trying to persuade a qualified doctor to do it? Personally, I'd go with the latter.

Why don't they have a choice in it? Where did I suggest we get slave labour to build houses?


Because rights entail duties. A duty must be fulfilled. — BitconnectCarlos

Yes, but there's no shortage of housing which means presumably there's no shortage of people who've chosen to build houses of their own free will. If suddenly no one wants to build houses then we might all have to muck in, but so far there's no evidence that this might be a problem, so why even raise the issue?

You do realize that we have homeless shelters? — BitconnectCarlos

I'm not talking about shelters, I'm talking about housing (and jobs, and decent wages and healthcare etc).

This is a perfectly valid way to go out it, if you're going to pitch an idea I'm going to try to press you for specifics and when you can't provide those specifics or the details result in undesirable consequences that makes everything worse then maybe, just maybe, you should take that into consideration. — BitconnectCarlos

No. That doesn't make any sense at all. You're not an expert on these matters, neither am I. So it's absolutely pointless us trying to work out if there are undesirable consequences, or if they outweigh the desirable ones. This work has already been done by people with far more knowledge on the subject than either of us, why on earth would we try to repeat it? The result is - we don't really know for sure. Some experts say that long-term harms will arise, some say they won't. Our job as citizens is not to bash out the evidence (we don't have all the data) it's to decide what to do in the face of the uncertainty. Which experts do we trust? What position do we take when we can't be sure of the consequences? Those are the questions we're qualified to answer.

I have presented a philosophical distinction between positive and negative rights but you didn't really care. — BitconnectCarlos

And why would I? All you've presented is the distinction. No argument at all about why that distinction matters.

When you place the material well-being of society above fairness or free choice you will fail. — BitconnectCarlos

But this is just idle speculation (not to mention a very idiosyncratic definition of 'fairness'). You have no evidence that it will fail, so why presume so?

No, what I mean is it’s about confronting the arguments, not accepting the consensus. — NOS4A2

But you haven't provided any arguments whatsoever. All you've done is said things you prefer. You prefer states to only "limit government power while at the same time defending me from those who would take my freedoms away." and you dislike those that provide other services. All Along you're hinting at it being about more than just your personal preferences but you haven't said in what way.

Should I be allowed to take from you the fruits of your labor and use it as I see fit? Personally I see that as morally wrong just as I would any kind of thievery. — NOS4A2

Who said anything about "as you see fit"? I was talking about taking excess to meet people's basic needs. Yes, you should be allowed to take excessive wealth from me to give it to others who do not yet have their basic needs met. I see it as morally wrong to allow some people to suffer while others have more than they need.

Nothing is stopping you but your own refusal to act. So why not try to care for others instead of demanding others fund and do it for you? — NOS4A2

I am. I support governments who take money from those that have spare and give it to those in need. Why is demanding money from those who have spare not caring?

It isn’t a Government service to refuse to engage in tyranny of its citizens. It’s a matter of ethics and good government. — NOS4A2

I'm not talking about the government's tyranny. You said that the government should protect your property, protect your right to free speech and defend you from threats to your freedom. Those are services. Why (apart from your own personal preference) should government services be limited to those.

There is a long list of thinking men and women who argue for free speech, for example. These are long, hard-fought battles, and the existence of rights are the fruits of these battles. — NOS4A2

So, do I take it your answer to the question of how you justify your claims about what services the government should and should not provide is whether a long list of intellectuals agree with it?

There is a long list of thinking men who argue for all the other human rights too, as there are who argue for free healthcare, even full egalitarianism. Are you suggesting there's some sort of consensus among intellectuals about what services the government should provide? I don't think your neo-con liberalism is going to come out well from that criteria.

Yes there is. I don't have enough money. I need someone with power to extract money from those who have more than me.


Straight from the horses mouth. — NOS4A2

And? You asked me why I didn't provide healthcare and housing. Its because I haven't got enough money. If I want others to have healthcare and housing I'll need to get money from others who are richer than me. What point do you think you're making here?

My claims are different because they aim to protect citizens from tyranny. Yours introduce a sort of tyranny, that one must give up the fruits of his labor for the sake of others. — NOS4A2

Right. And why (apart from your own personal preference) should government services be limited to protection against tyranny? Why (apart from your own personal preference) should people who share the same country not give up some of the fruits of their labours for the sake of others?

If you gave a shit about people you wouldn’t delegate your duties to the government. There is nothing stopping you from providing healthcare or housing yourself. — NOS4A2

Yes there is. I don't have enough money. I need someone with power to extract money from those who have more than me.

the children of the elite receive excellent educations, as do some others who will fill positions serving the interests of the elite — Bitter Crank

Well, I'm not so sure. The children of the elite certainly end up with sufficient paperwork to get into whatever institutions they desire. I'm not sure I'd call that an excellent education. I doubt any of them could fix a tap. Mind you, they only need to know how to get the 'staff' to do it.

"school" is less important now than it was in the past (this itself is a dated observation) because 24/7 mass media now shapes people into the kinds of consumers that are needed. — Bitter Crank

Interesting. Schools of the future could just be rooms with a guard on the door, Facebook on the big screen and chairs bolted to the floor. Next they have isolation rooms as punishments... Oh no wait, they already have.

Apparently voting for political parties, is much less about what the individual policies are of the political parties on certain issues, but more akin to supporting and identifying with a certain sports team. You choose a side, and usually stick to that side no matter what policies they propose, because its your side. So there's that. — ChatteringMonkey

Yes, there's that. It's probably only swing voters who would be affected. But then it's only swing voters that ever matter anyway.

I never called rights ”wants”. I called your version of rights “wants”, which I don’t believe to be rights at all. — NOS4A2

What you 'call it' is a pointless waste of time on a philosophy forum, we're not discussing your pet names for things. If you want to establish a difference between your list of 'rights' and my list of 'wants' which has a bearing on which the government should provide, you'll have to do more than just label them.

What criteria are you using to decide which services the government should and should not supply?

What justification are you using for your claim that these criteria are anything more than just your personal 'wants' regarding what you want your government to provide?

Pretend rights like healthcare are not, but are demands for goods and services from the government and other tax-payers. — NOS4A2

Defence of property, protection of free speech and defence from military invasion are all services you demand from the government. Why are your demands different from mine? 'Cause all I'm getting at the moment as a difference is that yours allow people to become self-obsessed sociopaths, whereas mine actually give a shit about other people.

much of battling it out politically ends up being about securing votes, so ultimately about the perception of doing something rather than actually doing that something. — ChatteringMonkey

Yeah, my definition of 'political' is also much broader than just getting votes.

Maybe if we could at least get clear on those, some of the disagreement would go away. — ChatteringMonkey

Yeah, I certainly think it can't hurt, and may just eliminate a little of the disagreement. At least clarify the options. One of the big problems I think is that people can try to support their policies with an excessive coverage of objectives (by which I mean claim their preferred policy meets 'everyone's' aims). If we had greater clarity about methods it would at least cut down on this type of deception. Very few things are panaceas and most sacrifice some objective for another, yet if you read any political manifesto you'd think they'd found the door to Valhalla.

empirically some amount of regulation seems to work better than no regulation or complete regulation. — ChatteringMonkey

I'm not even sure we can get there, but I agree it's probably true. Technically, the disasters of excessive state control could have been caused by any number of comorbid features. Those states were hardly tried out during easy times globally. Likewise with no states at all, one would have to look at context to check it wasn't external factors which caused the problems. I don't think we really have a large enough sample size.

That being said, we've got to decide one way or another and I agree the failures we've seen at either extreme are good enough evidence to be going on with, in the absence of any better.

It's tough, because of the whole climate surrounding these issues, but I think i should be possible to come to some empirically grounded conclusions. — ChatteringMonkey

I agree, in general, but we need also to agree on objectives as no empirical data can tell us what our objectives 'should' be. I fear that, in this, we will end up with so much disagreement as to render any objective data about how to achieve these objectives useless.

Hence I defer to the idea of battling it out politically.

Take housing as an example. If we all agreed that the long-term welfare of our society as a whole was a primary objective, then we could, in theory, consult architects and economists to see if an increase in taxation to pay for the new housing would be sustainable. I'm fairly sure, however, that even if the answer came back as an unequivocal yes, dissent would start with people declaring the tax 'unfair', 'fairness' now having sprung out of nowhere as an objective higher than societal welfare.

Indeed. What I've been trying to get at with both @NOS4A2 and @BitconnectCarlos, is that if we're not referencing some objectively justified criteria for what services should not be provided, then we're doing nothing more than exchanging 'wishlists'. If that's the case we already have a system for dealing with competing wishlists in democracy, so there's nothing further to discuss.

If, on the other hand, there's some fundamental aim we're all agreed upon, then it is largely an empirical matter as whether any service supports or frustrates that aim.

So, do you have any criteria that you think might be more universal than just what you personally prefer?

the notion that the power of government to issue laws is restricted to certain clearly defined domains. — ChatteringMonkey

The thing that defines it, is not the brute amount of laws or finances, but the fact that it's powers to govern (the issue laws) is restricted severely. — ChatteringMonkey

But this is the case with all governments I know of, yet the debate does not seem to be settled. I don't know of any government which has totally unrestricted powers to issue laws. Most are restricted by requiring first a political mandate of some sort, most have constitutions which must be abided by, many have subjected themselves to unified higher authorities such as the UN or the EuCHR.

So no answer to the actual question then?

A good school for democratic leaders would be a democratic school.

http://www.summerhillschool.co.uk — unenlightened

Yes!

So, I occasionally use experts to discover new knowledge but only if the paperwork for such new knowledge can (conceivably) be verified mechanically. Otherwise, I do not trust these people. — alcontali

You're not providing, in this binomial assessment, any means of dealing with uncertainty. There's knowledge who's paperwork can be verified, we trust that and proceed as if it were the case. Then there's knowledge who's paperwork cannot be verified mechanically (say much of psychology, my own area of expertise). We do not trust that.

But what if you needed, nonetheless, to make a decision in a field who's paperwork cannot be verified mechanically? Let's say economics. The paperwork for its knowledge claims cannot be verified mechanically, but what grounds have you for claiming this binomially. Maybe its paperwork is nearly verifiable, or nearer to verifiable than other systems. Maybe it's probabilistically a better guess. If you're forced into making some kind of decision either way, you'd be best going with the more verifiable system, even if that paperwork is messy and flawed, better than no paperwork at all.

I only said, after a short preliminary investigation into the matter, that I do not see any reason to distrust their Methimez (generic) product any more than the Tapazole or Northyx (Big pharma) alternatives. — alcontali

No, you actually said you would choose them over the other, meaning that you either consider them better or, for some reason not yet clear, you consider money to be the only factor (they're cheaper so I'll go with them).

what they proclaim are not objectively justified beliefs. If a belief is objectively justified, then its paperwork can also be verified mechanically. If that is not the case, then there are no experts in that particular field. — alcontali

Again, as above, you are treating this, for some reason, as if the only options were mechanically verifiable paperwork (trustworthy) and not mechanically verifiable paperwork (not trustworthy). I don't know why you're excluding partially verifiable paperwork (slightly more trustworthy than not, and a goid option if you've no better choice).

I only use experts to discover candidate claims, i.e. hypotheses, and to produce the paperwork, which later on, will need to be verified mechanically (well, ideally). — alcontali

In 'ideally' here you're ignoring one crucial pragmatic factor which is time. We can posit any algorithm we like and claim it to result in the 'right' answer, but if we cannot complete that algorithm in the time by which the answer is required then its pointless, no matter how 'right' it ends up being.

Often 'experts' are just a shortcut to knowledge which you yourself could verify but not in the space of time you have by which you need to make an informed decision.

A right to healthcare is a desire for healthcare. I don’t disagree with your want, just your reasoning for calling them a right. No need to twist around what I say. — NOS4A2

I'm not twisting anything. You called rights 'wants'. You never mentioned that some had 'reasons' to be included as rights while others didn't. So what are the criteria for something to be a 'right' that you think say, free speech, qualifies for but healthcare (where its available) does not?

A government should protect my property simply because I pay it to do so. — NOS4A2

So? The same could be said of healthcare.

what concerns me is that someone needs to build those homes, manage those homes, HVAC.... and they don't have a choice in it. — BitconnectCarlos

Why don't they have a choice in it? Where did I suggest we get slave labour to build houses?

If someone has a right to a home that home must be built. — BitconnectCarlos

Nope. Someone could have a qualified right to housing. A right to a house, presuming there's one available. A right to a house, presuming there's enough GDP to build them. A right to a house, no greater of lesser than the average. There's all sorts of qualifications we can put on rights without abandoning them.

We're bouncing around too much here. You bring up a lotttt of issues here which each could warrant their own debate.

I'd just like to stick to the topic. — BitconnectCarlos

No, the topic is 'small government'. You were advocating small government on the grounds that the government need not supply the things some people were claiming to be 'rights'. The very substance of my argument against that is that you cannot justify that position at all. One of the reasons you can't is because the issues are multi-variate and complex, you cannot simply dismiss these claims on the basis of a simple philosophical position, you're now having to demonstrate that each claim is unsustainable on its own merits. If well-educated expert economists don't even agree whether these things are sustainable or not, then we're not going to resolve the matter by putting forth what we 'reckon' might be the case.

The point is that you've agreed these claims are not denied the status of 'rights' on some categorical philosophical basis. We agreed that harm to society resulting from satisfying these claims is the only reason to dismiss them. Seeing as the harm to society these claims may cause is still a moot point among experts, that should be the end of it.

Giving everyone what they need to live a decent life (at the expense of those who have more than they need) would be a nice thing. Letting people starve on the streets (so that others can afford a second yacht) is not a nice thing. So if the jury is still out on whether it would cause any long-term harm to secure everyone a decent life (and it definitely is), then anyone still choosing to not even try is just either selfish, dogmatic or hasn't thought it through properly.

You keep getting sidetracked into your evidence against big pharma and missing the point.

I completely agree with you that Big Pharma do not have my welfare in mind, that they will, and do, happily lie to me to sell their products which may or may not have any beneficial effect on my health. OK. So can we stop getting sidetracked into your rants about how bad they are. I haven't taken any form of medicine at all (not even paracetamol) fro the last decade, despite some close shaves. I don't trust them because they have demonstrated that they are untrustworthy. This is not an issue on which we disagree.

The issues I'm raising here are twofold.

1. In order to learn this stuff about Big Pharma, about which we both agree, you had to trust someone on the basis of their purported expertise. You did not personally find all this out, you listened to experts - whether they we investigative journalists, drug database system administrators, certification authorities, testing labs - you had to decide that these people were likely to be telling you the truth. You say you used corroboration, but that is exactly the method used to assess all experts at a base level.

2. In trusting the Asian alternative companies you are presuming, without warrant, that simply because they are not engaged in the deceitful activities of the Big Pharma, they are not engaged in any unsavoury activities at all. Again, this is either an act of trust, or it is monumentally naive. There are all sorts of ways in which these companies might make money at someone's expense, even if the actual molecule they supply is the same one Big Pharma do. That is not the only effect a company has in conducting it's affairs.

a. Which company has a better record on workers rights and environmental protection?
b. What other ingredients, besides the active one, are allowed into the pill which the FDA may have banned?
c. Are the company paying any money towards researching new better drugs?
d. Do the company have a proper system for reporting side effects so that future patients can be better informed?
e. Who checks the medicines to ensure they contain the ingredient they claim and can those people be bribed/coerced?

You cannot personally verify any of these things. To do so you must decide to trust experts. You need not make this decision blindly, but you absolutely must do so in at least partial uncertainty. That's what trust is - not blind faith, but a judgement in a state of partial uncertainty.

The question was one about trust in experts, not about which medication to take for hyperthyroidism

A Seagull is essentially pushing a correspondence theory of truth that could be fruitful if tweaked. — Arne

But that doesn't mean it is not part of a better system.

If one wants a simple, self-consistent and comprehensive philosophy, then IMO it is not only the best but the only way to go. — A Seagull

'Better/, 'Fruitful' for what? What is it these systems are trying to achieve that you think this approach might make more likely?

low hanging fruit. — Arne

Indeed. That's the point I was making. If we're only using 'true' like 'blue', limiting ourselves to that which we all agree on, we're not going to have a great many of the most interesting concepts labelled 'true'. Maybe that's as it should be though.

Propositions (or statements) can be labelled as 'true' when they are considered to be an accurate representation of an idea that the brain/mind has labelled as 'true'. — A Seagull

Sure, but that would be a really weird use of the word. Totally out of kilter with the way it's used at the moment so I don't think you'll get many takers.

If everyone is given a house and a sufficient income just as a matter of right then you've destroyed the incentive to work for a lot of people. — BitconnectCarlos

Woah, you've jumped from a simple example with only one variable to this massive assumption in an extremely complex multi-variate environment. What evidence are you using to support the idea that people will not be incentivised to work if they're given sufficient income? And how on earth did anyone construct the control group to eliminate all other potential variables?

If we did somehow learn that people weren't incentivised to work when given sufficient income, we could link that income to work. It still could be a right (even though you'd have to work for it), like a right to employment.

But these are taking extremes. The right to clean air, clean water, good working conditions, freedom from abuse, a decent wage, freedom from discrimination, an education. None of these things have even the slightest evidence that they'll end civilisation, so why shouldn't we allow them as claims?

I think there is substantial agreement about what is 'true' in the world. — A Seagull

I agree (using your 'labelling' type definition of 'true'). But if the definition were limited to the sort of thing about which there is such agreement, then virtually no proposition in philosophy could be labelled 'true'.

Isaac, what is your response to the parasite case that I presented earlier on our island civilization? — BitconnectCarlos

As I said. I think the likely collapse of civilization is a reasonable ground to deny a right. We can't very well justify a claim to something which itself will cease to exist as a consequence of that claim, the would be somewhat contradictory.

There are, however, plenty enough houses. If everyone claimed a house, everyone would have a house. I don't see any evidence at all of immanent civilization collapse resulting from such a claim.

We learn to recognise what is referred to as a 'blue' object. Then we can categorise all the objects that appear blue as being 'blue'. It is the same with truth, we label ideas as being 'true' when they have the appearance of being true. Sometimes those ideas can be summarised in statements, so we label those statements as being 'true'. — A Seagull

I don't see how this could be the case. If there was substantial disagreement about which things were 'blue' it would be impossible to learn how to use the word. There is substantial disagreement about what is 'true'.

Maybe you could use that argument to justify a simplistic correspondence theory of truth. In which case virtually all of philosophy is misusing the word 'true'.

if one could gain a right simply by proclaiming it as a want or desire it would result in absurdity like if everyone were just to demand constant back massages. — BitconnectCarlos

I'm not advocating such a thing. I'm asking how you are justifying your rejection of some of these claims.

I noted an important distinction. If you choose not to accept it as meaningful then okay. — BitconnectCarlos

No, you noted a distinction. You offered no justification at all to support a belief that it was "important".

If everyone were to do this there would be no civilization. — BitconnectCarlos

Yep. That's a reasonable line to draw. If everyone followed the same principle civilization would fail. So with a claim to a right to housing in a modern capitalist economy, how will civilization fail as a result of that right?

How so? — frank

You didn't extend me the courtesy of explaining how I'd gone wrong.

Is it necessary to know x, to formulate a question regarding x ? — Monist

Yes, I think so. What people often think of as an exception to this is, say, if you'd heard a word "pegasus" you might sensibly ask "what is pegasus?". But this is just a linguistic illusion of a problem. What you really mean is to ask about the word 'pegasus', not the actual thing 'pegasus'. You can't ask about the actual thing 'pegasus' without knowing something about what the thing is.

You could reasonably ask "what do people mean by the word truth?". If you did, my answer would be "really, really...."

If you see that I'm tripping up on the fundamentals, tell me you think so, even if I think you're being a jerk for saying it. My ego will heal. I'll benefit from the heads up. — frank

Cool. Well you're tripping up on the basics.

The cost of producing drugs is not in manufacturing: — alcontali

That was just an example. Maybe the cost is in R&D (maybe not, if you trust the BBC journalism), paying for regulatory checks, whatever. The point is the companies in India are not charities. If they're offering the thing cheaper it's because they're not paying for something the more expensive companies are paying for. To conclude that they're worth going for, you need to know what that something is and be sure you can do without it. To know that you have to trust somebody who is an expert in the field telling you what that thing is.

Sun Pharma in Uttar Pradesh does not have the same stronghold on the American FDA as e.g. Merck or Johnson & Johnson. It simply does not work like that. — alcontali

I'm not limiting this to America.

to proceed by purchasing online an Asian generic version of the drug, typically from the Indian subcontinent (India, Pakistan, Bangladesh) which seem to specialize in keeping afloat an alternative production of generics. — alcontali

I wouldn't trust some random Internet sale with my health. That would be borderline lunacy. How do I even know the pill contains anything but sugar? How do I know they haven't just fullied a generic-branded packet with leftover pills from some less well-selling bulk purchase. How do I know that new medication will still be properly funded? How do I know adverse reactions will be properly accounted? That's a crap solution, and some hand-waivy reference to 'paperwork' won't wash.

I'm not being a jerk here, Isaac. I'm telling you that you have problems with super basic logic. — frank

Telling someone they have problems with something 'super basic' when you know full well they are an intelligent adult just because they draw different conclusions to you is kinda being a jerk though, isn't it?

It's true, though. — frank

Ah well, if it's 'true' then that's alright. I never thought of checking to see if my propositions were 'true'. Where did you go to get that checked, I'll get mine checked right away?

Naturalism ends up being dependent on dualism to express what it rejects. The Naturalist binds herself to conclusions with no theory leading up to them and then demands that we limit the scope of the question. — frank

No. Just no. Proceed to whatever source of insight you trust and start over.

How can one know what truth is, without knowing what truth is in the first place? — Monist

How can one formulate a question about truth without knowing what truth is?

There actually is widespread agreement on basic moral issues. — BitconnectCarlos

Yes, but these don't help us resolve differences over rights, which extend frequently into areas of morality over which there is far less agreement.

It's a fundamentally different type of claim than claiming a right to life, which just involves that no one kills you or maims you intentionally. If I claim a right to housing I'm claiming that someone else must pay for and build a house for me. Also someone must repair and maintain that house now. Now other people are burdened whether through their time being taken or their money being taken. — BitconnectCarlos

Right. But all you've done there is point out the difference. I could quite legitimately point out that the right to property and the right to life are very different too (in different ways). That doesn't prevent you from declaring both to be fundamental rights. You can't just arbitrarily say its not a right because it burdens someone else. Why doe burdening someone else prevent it from being a right?

It depends on whether you believe that this information is in doubt. It certainly could be. — alcontali

Yeah, that's the whole point. You can't escape from forming a simple gut belief about whether some data is worth doubting. You talk about databases and multiple corroboration, but that's exactly the procedure used to justify the experts you earlier decried. Their knowledge bases is accesed and tested multiple times by multiple individuals and their status as an expert is maintained by their ability to provide functioning solutions each time (or at least mostly). An expert engineer has built multiple bridges for multiple clients. His expertise in bridge-building has been corroborated in exactly the same way you're now suggesting we can do with databases.

I have never said that they would be "better". In my experience, however, they certainly tend to be cheaper. — alcontali

Yes, but to advocate them, you need to trust that they are at least not worse, ie that no corners have been cut in order to secure that lower price. How can you possibly know that?

Bumping up the price in the North American market is a known process. — alcontali

Lowering the price by using lower quality materials, quality and safety checks, and worse manufacturing techniques is also a known process, so I don't see where this gets you so far as choosing between the two is concerned.

The problem is really not about the small guy or about lab technicians. The problem is about how the pharma oligarchy manages to write the laws and then contort their application, while killing an increasingly large number of their customers in the process. — alcontali

I'm not talking about where the problem with the pharmaceutical industry lies, I'm in almost complete agreement with you about that. I'm talking about where the problem with any alternative might lie. Companies producing cheap knock-offs are motivated by exactly the same greed as the big companies. They have exactly the same ability to extort and manipulate laws (albeit more likely with bribes than lobbying), they have exactly the same c-level management).

It's not your assessment of the problem I take issue with, it's your assessment of the solution.

I'm appealing to basic moral intuitions.... like that if I demand constant back massages from you that you're not actually obliged to give them. — BitconnectCarlos

Right. But basic moral intuitions don't help us with issues of rights because people disagree. Basic moral intuitions are not agreed upon.

So if we take your "If you've violated someone's rights you've seriously wronged them", and include that by 'seriously wronged' you mean 'committed some widely agreed on moral transgression', then what is preventing the homeless person from claiming a right to housing? Allowing harm to come to someone (say by them sleeping rough) when you could easily prevent it (say by paying more in taxes to fund social housing) is a moral transgression for many people.

O

If you've violated someone's rights you've seriously wronged them, do you agree? Are you seriously wronging someone who desires constant back massages by not giving them that? — BitconnectCarlos

What if I said yes? To what are you appealing here? If I said, yes, not providing constant back massages is seriously wronging someone, you'd like to tell me I'm wrong, yes? But to what measure are you appealing to do that?

What would there be wrong with e.g. Coq? — alcontali

It's a tool for mathematical theorms. Hence it is pseudo-technical to suggest it could apply outside of mathematics. Unless someone in a technical field has made that connection.

Let's pick an arbitrary example from the drugs.com database: Methimazole. — alcontali

Whom you'd have to trust to be providing you with the correct information.

IBEF record for Sun Pharmaceuticals — alcontali

Whom you'd have to trust to be providing you with the correct information.

double check in how many different countries their Methimez product has been certified for local distribution. — alcontali

Where you'd have to trust the certification system.

Each of these certifications will have a laboratory reports available. — alcontali

Whose processes and integrity you'd have to take on trust.

What makes you believe that the paperwork for Tapazole and/or Northyx would indicate that these branded alternatives would be safer to use than Methimez (the Indian generic)? — alcontali

Nothing. I don't trust the manufacturer of any medicine these days. Every pharmaceutical company has maximising profits for its shareholders as their primary motivation. That's not conspiracy theory, its written in their legal documents. So every product they produce will be the one which maximises their profits. If it also cures you, that's little more than a coincidence.

What I objected to is your demented anti-western bias making out that Indian companies are going to be any better than the Western ones. If Western companies are bumping up prices by some illicit means, then the Indian company is probably cutting prices by some equally illicit means. Screwing the consumer to make money is not an activity confined to Western markets.

we would need to dig up all the paperwork, scrutinize it thoroughly, and discover the proper procedure to verify it, while doing that. — alcontali

We cannot do that without trust. You're acting as if we can eliminate empirical data somehow and somehow derive knowledge without it. Somewhere along the line we'd have to include empirical data the gathering of which we were not personally involved in.

All this of course is assuming we trust our own faculties more than others even if we could somehow do all the experiments ourselves. I for one would rather trust what an experienced lab technician said happened than what I think I saw.