[Grovenet] Genesis 4:9

[Katie Allnutt]

What are we to do about the people who are not cavalier at all and  
have tried to get insurance but they have been turned down because  
they are uninsurable. ie pre existing condition.  If they then get  
smooshed by a truck, then they are on their own.

The argument generally boils down to how much taxation is the  
required minimum and how much regulation is the required minimum?   
And the other end of the spectrum of the question is at what point  
above the minimum does it become a problem?   Reasonable people can  
disagree on where to draw any of those lines.

Example: If you live in a community that wants to grow your commerce  
along a river that requires a levee, do you build the minimum levee,  
slightly above the minimum, the average, or the levee that protects  
you against the worst case scenario?  What do you decide if someone  
in a different region owns the land that is your environmental  
buffer? (ie the folks in Sacramento can build a levee but what if the  
land owners upstream pave over all the wetlands.) Do you want to have  
some regulation of what the upstreamers do because their choices  
impact your risk and your cost of mitigating the risk?  How do the  
people upstream feel about your meddling in their commercial growth  
choices?

We live in an interconnected world and being free to take care of  
yourself may have more of an impact on the opportunities others have  
to take care of themselves.


Katie





On Sep 7, 2008, at 9:10 AM, Gary Duncan-Gates wrote:

> Walt,
>
> Do you get paid by the word?  You are right about political  
> parties; they intentionally oversimplify the issues and in so  
> doing, obfuscate them.  It is a shame we all can't just talk to one  
> another as individuals without the labels.
>
> However, you also said,
>
> Is it best to take care of oneself? Of course it is, particularly
> when the opportunities exist to do so. Yet, if I got mooshed by a
> truck tomorrow, all my opportunities vanished and I had to spend the
> rest of my life as a jigsaw puzzle with a lot of the pieces missing,
> I know I'd rather have a "Liberal" administration in power, which
> mandated decent care for the disabled and the terminally strange,
> than a "Conservative" administration which operated on the assumption
> that nobody was obligated to take care of anybody, particularly not
> through (shudder) TAXES.
>
> TAXES, by definition, come from your fellow citizens and the  
> economy that sustains us all.  To take more than is absolutely  
> necessary because you are too cavalier to get your own insurance is  
> offensive.  To suggest that there is no alternative in our society  
> than to live on the governmentally mandated largesse of others is,  
> to say the least, disingenuous.
>
> It is a nasty, demanding world out there.  We have enough to worry  
> about taking care of ourselves, without having to fund other  
> people's follies.
>
> Gary
>
>
> ----- Original Message ----
> From: Walt Wentz <waltw at teleport.com>
> To: Forest Grove local interests list <grovenet at rdrop.com>
> Sent: Saturday, September 6, 2008 11:07:03 PM
> Subject: Re: [Grovenet] Genesis 4:9
>
> Carol:
> Actually, we'd have to go back to the Aramaic or Hebrew (or
> Babylonian or Akkadian, or wherever the Hebrews got this story from)
> to know the sense of the work "keeper" in this case. I'd always
> assumed it to mean "custodian or caretaker" in this connection,
> rather than "guard or jailor," which is another sense of the word in
> the English of King James' day.
>
>
>
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