[extropy-chat] health #1; freedom #2

[Mike Lorrey]

--- Al Brooks <kerry_prez at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Mike, perhaps it's not so much that freedom is
> overrated, but that it has become a catchall, even a
> platitude.  Like love. I've been hearing about Love
> everyday, forever. As far as I really know it was
> about ID bracelets in the 7th grade. After one says
> the word 'love' over & over it loses all meaning. 
> Repeat 'happiness'; 'family'; 'responsibility';
> 'honor'; 'dignity'; 'duty'; and 'freedom'  too many
> times they become nothing. Also we cannot define where
> liberty leaves off and where license begins.

This is absolutely untrue. The Zero Agression Principle clearly defines
the distinction.

> However you are correct that we want freedom as much
> as anything-- whatever freedom might be. A caged
> animal wants freedom even when freedom would mean it
> is out into the wild that it has forgotten how to
> thrive in. Barry Goldwater's truism is: "Americans
> would rather be poor and free than rich and enslaved",
> which is valid; a man in a cell (which is a polite
> word for cage) would rather eat beans and rice on the
> outside than live in a cell where he is feed eight
> course meals including lobster. Yet by my lights
> better to be healthy and poor (as distinct from
> destitute) than poor and free. If I were impoverished
> in America I would concern myself with merely
> surviving and staying reasonably healthy, freedom
> would be a lower priority in the condition of poverty.
> I personally would rather be healthy and poor than be
> free and rich.  So freedom by my definition is
> certainly not the be all & end all. Freedom might be
> #2, after health. What good is being rich & free if
> you are sickly or don't feel well?

What good is being healthy if your health is merely put to the ends of
the state or other slavemaster?

The fact is that those living in freedom are healthier by choice than
those who are not (NH was rated the healthiest state in the US, btw).
Looking at the USSR and many other tyrannical states, we see the life
expectancy, infant mortality, and many other measures of health
significantly lowered.

Here in the US in general, we see that the primary detriment to life
expectancy seems to be the fact that the food industry is subisidized
by the government into using high fructose corn syrup and other corn
products excessively in processed foods, which is widely attributed to
be the root cause of the excessive obesity problems of our society. If
such subisidies did not exist, then corn would have to compete against
other sources of sugar and starch fairly and would thus be less widely
used, and obesity would drop.

Also, when your level of taxation is burdensome, you overwork, are
overstressed, and are unable to find the time to maintain a physical
fitness regimen, all of which contribute to ill health. There is a
reason the US as a whole fell out of the top ten most economically free
nations, and quality of health has dropped as a result.

Mike Lorrey
Vice-Chair, 2nd District, Libertarian Party of NH
"Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom.
It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves."
                                      -William Pitt (1759-1806) 
Blog: http://intlib.blogspot.com

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