OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
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User ID: 359
You use a lot of words without signifiers. If you would like to be understood, try answering the following:
The point here is to explore alternatives.
Alternatives to what?
Most people have never once even considered the possibility
The possibility of what? The possibility of people not having a legal right to exclusive use of land and valuable property?
If so, yes, I have considered it. I read Hardin's "The Tragedy of the Commons" in High School. Every teenager dabbles in the idea of anarchy or communism or such. In the end, the downsides of not allowing people sole use of productive property is too great. It creates very significant coordination and inefficiency issues. If you look at failed states, where there are no longer laws governing ownership, they are not productive places.
Countering with, "Well, don't raise problems until you've got a solution!" is just silly.
Oh. You really don't have an ideology you're trying to push on us and just darkly hinting? Because all your statements sound like you're darkly hinting at some kind of solution that we're all too dumb to get.
Ok, if all you want to do is ask if people have tried to puzzle out alternatives to ownership, yes, they have. The only reason why everyone has all these objections to the idea of structuring a society without ownership is because everyone has already tried to find alternatives and came up with worse situations than what we have now.
But if you conflate ownership with attachment ("It's mine!", belonging) or even mere physical possession, we can't even discuss whether preemptive principled deprivation is, in fact, a problem like I say it is.
Can you explain the difference between physical possession and belonging and "pre-emptive principled deprivation" is? I am holding a coffee cup in my hand right now. I physically possess it? (Y/N). It was gifted to me by my husband. So is there a principle by which I can deprive others of using it? (Y/N) Is this principle pre-emptive in some way? (Y/N) If no, what would make it pre-emptive (does it have to involve the law, like if I were to get a divorce I would have to have a legal right to exclusive use of the mug?)
I think, if you really want to just explore the topic, you need to start with family life. It is in a healthy family that we see humans at their most cooperative.
But that said, there are the haves and have nots in a family. Kids come into a family with no possessions, everything is preemptively held by the parents. The parents give what they thinks is best in a very paternalistic and condescending way. Even if the toddler has decided for himself that pennies taste delicious, the parent might deprive the child of the pennies - by force if needed! And this is in a loving household where the parents share all in common, and the kids will one day grow to be partakers of this commons.
And then you have to remember the ways in which a society is not a family. It is impossible to love everyone in your city as much as your family, to be as aware of their needs and desires and strengths and weaknesses as you are of your family members. "That only matters if you're trying to be a central-planning-tyrant," you might object. Well, no. It matters when you're trying to figure out if the person next to you, whom you've never met before, isn't going to just lie and cheat you.
"But I'm going to change human nature so that no one lies or cheats.." No, that way leads to death. See also, C.S. Lewis's "Abolition of Man."
So for a starting point (if you're really interested in starting points and don't already have a theory you're nursing that you just haven't shared with us), look at the family, and then see what you can extrapolate out. And then try the following exercises:
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In your new society, who is keeping the power on. What incentivizes them to do so? How do they get the materials they need for power generation?
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In your new society, who is growing food? What incentivizes them to do so? How do they get the materials they need to plant and harvest?
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In your new society, who is making laptops and their component parts? What incentivizes them to do so? How do they get the materials they need to fabricate and manufacture?
If you can answer all three questions convincingly, then people would be more likely to take the idea seriously. The reason why everyone's throwing up their hands and saying they prefer the current system is because no one, despite many people trying, has figured out how answer the above questions without some kind of ownership of productive property, whether it is by the state, by a corporation, or by individuals. My preference would be for everyone to own a portion of productive property, but "owning" is still a part of my ideal society.
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
1d ago
What I don't understand is why you not only think that ownership is bad but that everyone would agree with you that ownership is bad. The phrase, "legal right to deprive others," might sound scary simply because you put the word "legal" there, but it's incomplete. For example, my kids own things, even if legally I have every right to confiscate their toys. There are some toys which are gifted on birthdays which are theirs for a time, but eventually go into the general toy pile. There are some toys which we would never ever make them share - like the special stuffed animals they have slept with at night since they were infants.
These stuffed animals might be legally "mine," but they are in fact my children's. They have the right to deprive their siblings of these toys, and that is 100% perfect, treasured, lovely. I don't know how to express just how wonderful it is for them to have ownership of these toys, and how much psychological benefit this ownership has generated.
These stuffies are theirs. They smell like their owner. Putting their stuffy in their hands makes them calm down within a minute. Night wakeups are easily managed by reminding my kids of the existence of their stuffed animal.
One day, while driving my oldest to school, she started getting upset. I asked her what was wrong.
She said, "I left Hopper on the floor."
"It's ok, he'll be just fine there."
"No, what if [the toddler] steps on him?"
"Hopper will be just fine, I've stepped on him before and I weigh much more than [toddler]. Hopper will bounce back! He's fluffy."
"No.. What if [the toddler] steps on him... and realizes how soft and wonderful he is?"
"Oh, you're worried about Forbidden Love. I'll call daddy and have him put Hopper on the dresser."
This sounds cute, but it expands further than children in a family. An ideal family holds everything in common, it's as love-oriented over ownership-oriented as you can get. Even in the family, there are different divisions of dominion. Humans need dominion.
We naturally divide up labor and tools according to who has the capacity to use them. Oftentimes divisions become domains - the husband does yard work and bathroom cleaning, the wife does kitchen work, the kids bring the mail in and sweep on weekends. Having dominion gives you authority to do things you otherwise wouldn't do. When a kid is told to clean the counters, the kid will wipe just the visible areas without moving the toaster or spice rack out of the way. This is because the kid does not have dominion over the whole kitchen, doesn't feel pieces of his own awareness/soul/psyche over all the appliances. The adult who has dominion over the kitchen will take everything down, move tables and chairs and appliances, and give everything the maintenance it needs to be clean and functional.
People find dignity in owning things and using them to make other things. My knitting supplies and the kitchen's baking tools, these are mine. I take care of them, I use them to make things for my family. I don't need a lawyer to step in, everyone in the family knows that these are mine and they need to ask my permission to use them. In using these tools I create my identity and dignity.
And if that applies so well in the home, where all is held in legal common and we are constantly working towards the other's good, how much more does that apply in the public world?
I think the only sympathetic thing I find in your comments are what Catholics would call, "The Universal Destination of Goods." Catholics have a concept that the whole world is a gift to all humans from God, and that no one has the right to deprive others of what they need. So that whoever has two shirts should give one to someone without any. And if you have more bread stored up than you can ever eat, you are stealing it from someone without.
However, this concept is tempered by the idea that humans get dignity from work, humans were made to be stewards, and good stewardship depends on having a sense of ownership over the physical world. So you have a world that is truly owned by God, gifted to humanity as a whole, which is divided to everyone as stewards. These stewards have a sense of ownership which is in reality participation in the Divine Ownership of all things. Not everyone has an equal share of stewardship, because there is inequality in people's capacities along with inefficiencies in the allocation methods. But everyone should be using their goods to the glory of God and the well-being of every person.
There you go, I have articulated a positive vision of property and ownership. Now your turn. I'm as tired of everyone else on this forum of how you keep dancing around what you actually believe should happen, rather than just acting negative about a concept that most people actually see the benefits of.
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
8d ago
If you would like something more like a newspaper article, this is a good summary of several cases: https://www.basicincome.com/bp/files/A_Protestant_Looks_at_Lourdes.pdf
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
8d ago
Women are more likely to seek treatment, so have a consistent medical record of before their healing which can then be used to judge a healing took place. They are also more likely to seek a faith healing.
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
8d ago
72 cases of miraculous healings that are ruled a such by a board of doctors and other medical experts studying medical records before and after the event is much better evidence of a miraculous healing than a cell phone video. I am responding to your idea that a cell phone video would make belief and religion obsolete.
If there were evidence, anyone could believe it, and the true faithful wouldn't be doing anything very impressive or unique.
Interesting. So for you, the significant part of religion is believing without evidence, and that in and of itself is impressive and unique (and rewarded I guess?)
That's um... not my experience. My experience was basically understanding the philosophy of what is meant by "God" (contrasted against my misconceptions from being a child,) investigating the historicity of the Gospels, and seeing that the beliefs of the Catholic Church aligned the best with all the data I have seen. A skeptic is very limited and is dogmatically constrained to profess things like the Resurrection of Jesus, the Miracle of the Sun at Fatima, the apparition at Zeitoun, miraculous healings, etc as Hallucinations or Hoaxes, even if those explanations do not comfortably fit the data. A believer, meanwhile, is free to believe these things are hoaxes, hallucinations, or real manifestations of a Supernatural order if the data indicates so.
And then what merit is in practicing religion is obviously to the extent you let it constrain your will and your ruinous desires. Not believing without evidence. That's not a virtue at all.
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
8d ago
So you say. Or it's all a trick like David Blaine. There's always room for doubt. The hundreds of miraculous healings with good medical documentation that occurred at Lourdes and at every saint canonization hasn't convinced you. https://www.lourdes-france.com/en/miraculous-healings/
Not sure what you mean by, "it wouldn't be a religion anymore." Is your definition of religion, "cannot be proven or argued for unless someone already irrationally believes it?"
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
8d ago
There is a distinction between the God of the Philosophers (for example the ultimate being Aristotle or a Hindu philosopher might reason towards) and the gods that people worship on a daily basis. Hinduism is neat in that it connects the God of Philosophers with the gods. In Greek, Roman, Celtic, and other mythologies such a connection didn't really develop.
Christianity and Judaism scaffolds the European pagan gods to the God of Philosophers in a way the pagans never did in practice.
I feel comfortable saying that, just as Christians, Jews, and Muslims worship the same God (despite having different beliefs surrounding Him), Hindus worship the same God (but have even more error, emphasizing Divine Simplicity to the diminishment of His other qualities.)
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
8d ago
I disagree that it's a poison pill clause. It's a significant part of why the vast majority of the Cardinals present signed off on Sacrosantum Concilium. They wanted a globalized Latin rite.
Let's say the church wants to expand in a culture where showing the soles of your feet is considered horribly rude (like half the world). Even if it doesn't make it into an official document, you can imagine that in those regions, people would be careful to not show the soles of their feet at Mass. They might kick other people out for doing so.
The priest might modify the liturgy in places where they would typically have to show the soles of their feet, for example during Eucharistic Adoration they might not kneel with their back to the congregation. People might not kneel at all but adopt other postures of reverence. Churches may come up with feet hiding devices, like an altar rail for legs.
All this is to say, there are legitimate reasons why "rigid uniformity" can be bad - if you're expanding to actually different cultures and peoples.
The problem with the football example is that it's not actually rude to neglect the morning football prayer. It's not a requirement of the society. They're just normal Westeners, mixing the sacred with the banal.
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Fiat justitia ruat caelum
8d ago
It's not a very abstract decision. It's what makes the "Liar, Lord, Lunatic" trilemma distinct about Jesus compared to the Buddha. The Buddha could simply be earnestly mistaken. He fasted and meditated, entered some weird mental/physical state, thought he understood something no one else did, passed it along. With Jesus, "earnestly mistaken" isn't an option.
If a guy like Jesus appeared in 2025, healing the sick and raising the dead and multiplying food in front of crowds of 5,000, some would call him mentally ill. But I don't think they'd be right to do so.
requires the belief in a literal fall of man by eating literal fruit in a literal garden of Eden.
No, this is not required. A single original couple, committing a specific original sin, is what is required. Can you link to where you got the requirement for a literal fruit from? Edit: this article quotes from the authoritative documents to specify the minimum required belief.
I also would like your source on Q being infallibly condemned. Typically speaking the Church doesn't take sides in academic debates like that. Especially since the most obvious explanation of Q is that it is the original Aramaic notes of Matthew, as hinted to by Papias.
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
9d ago
Christianity says that our ancestors were all wrong, for thousands of years, and then a guy in the middle east figured out the truth
You're getting pretty strong pushback on this phrasing, for good reason. Most are arguing the "ancestors were wrong" angle, which is very fair. I'd like to push back on the idea that the Christian's claim is that Jesus claims he figured out the truth.
Jesus never said he figured out the truth. He said he IS the Truth. He isn't a sage in the desert who discovered something outside himself. He said that he is sent. He says that he is the Way, the Truth, and the Life. The way to salvation isn't to learn what he has learned, it is to follow him. "No one can get to the Father except through me." Not "through my teachings." "Through me."
This is absolutely bizzare, if you have studied global religions. Jesus is unique in this regard. He doesn't claim to have brought fire from the gods, he claims to be the flame. He doesn't claim to have received divine revelation, his followers claim that he is the divine revelation.
His teaching is secondary - a nice lovely tantalizing icing - compared to his life, death, and resurrection.
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
9d ago
Regarding Cardinal Tagle, all I can say is that failure to generate a thriving local church doesn't mean a lack of Cardinal allies. @hydroacetylene knows more about the politics side of the equation.
The Spirit of Vatican II is characterized by the time immediately preceding and immediately following the Second Vatican Council. I'm not sure what would have gone differently if this "Spirit" wasn't a real spirit, and a demon to boot. Watch the Puppet Mass or the Clown Mass and tell me there's no demonic involvement. (I'm not sure how serious I am being here. There are many who would take this allegation more seriously.)
Rewind a bit. Why did people feel like they could have a mass with clowns and puppets? Before Vatican II, there was a very specific rubric they were supposed to follow. After Vatican II, there was a very specific rubric they were supposed to follow, one that did not recommend clowns or puppets. The rubric changed, but the adherence to it stopped. Priests either started doing their own inventions, or stepped back from their leadership role in the liturgy and allowed lay people (predominantly women who were teenagers in the 1960s) to add things to the liturgy.
The Spirit of Vatican II, most plainly put, is the attitude many took when things that seemed unchangable began to change. Many Catholics didn't (and still don't) understand the difference between small "t" traditional practices, like liturgical rites, and big "T" Traditional Doctrine, like teachings on Christology, Sacraments, and Morality. If you were alive then, and thought the mass is something the Church taught could never change, and then the Church changed it...
The conclusion a lot of people made was that anything could be changed. And if anything could be changed, it might as well be changed by themselves, in their own image and likeness.
Let's rewind a bit further. Why were people dissatisfied with the Mass of Pius V? The laity felt disconnected from the mass. There were lots of abuses. The most common mass was a low mass, without music and most of the fanfare that fans of the Mass of Pius V like today.
It was common for priests to try to rush through the mass - I have heard people say that most masses they went to were 20 minutes long. In order to get through the whole liturgy in 20 minutes, the Priest would have to be mumbling quickly in Latin. There wasn't as much call-and-response like there is in the new mass. The experience of many Catholics was: go to Church, pray quietly while listening to a priest mutter to himself for 20 minutes, sometimes receive communion, and walk out.
High masses were glorious time commitments, low masses were checking off a cosmic checklist. Good and holy priests would have good and holy low masses. But there were many priests who did not fill this category, and many priests who felt like there was no point in enunciating a mass spoken in Latin to God instead of in the vernacular to the Congregation.
What was the new mass, the Mass of Paul VI, supposed to look like? Done according to the rubrics, it looks like this. According to the Vatican II document discussing the Liturgy, Sacrosantum Concilium, Latin was still supposed to be given "Pride of Place." Here is how the actual council of Vatican II wanted things to develop:
- Therefore no other person, even if he be a priest, may add, remove, or change anything in the liturgy on his own authority.
- Sacred scripture is of the greatest importance in the celebration of the liturgy. For it is from scripture that lessons are read and explained in the homily, and psalms are sung; the prayers, collects, and liturgical songs are scriptural in their inspiration and their force, and it is from the scriptures that actions and signs derive their meaning.
- It is to be stressed that whenever rites, according to their specific nature, make provision for communal celebration involving the presence and active participation of the faithful, this way of celebrating them is to be preferred, so far as possible, to a celebration that is individual and quasi-private.
-The sermon, moreover, should draw its content mainly from scriptural and liturgical sources, and its character should be that of a proclamation of God's wonderful works in the history of salvation
- the use of the Latin language is to be preserved in the Latin rites... But since the use of the mother tongue, whether in the Mass, the administration of the sacraments, or other parts of the liturgy, frequently may be of great advantage to the people, the limits of its employment may be extended. This will apply in the first place to the readings and directives, and to some of the prayers and chants, according to the regulations on this matter to be laid down separately in subsequent chapters.
-The Church acknowledges Gregorian chant as specially suited to the Roman liturgy: therefore, other things being equal, it should be given pride of place in liturgical services. But other kinds of sacred music, especially polyphony, are by no means excluded from liturgical celebrations, so long as they accord with the spirit of the liturgical action
At no point do I see anything recommending deploying clowns.
And so it goes for the other Vatican II documents. Individual Catholics took minor developments in a certain direction (often a return to traditions and increased emphasis on teachings from earlier in Church History) and decided to make a complete rupture.
I focused a lot on the Liturgical side to this, but I could make similar write ups on what Vatican II teaches on interpretation of scripture, No Salvation Outside the Church, etc.
I have never had any trouble finding good parishes that mostly abide by the rubrics. Even so, I have noticed an increase in chant and Latin. Parishes have started doing the entrance antiphon - I never heard this as a kid. Our parish has two first-year priests, they seem a lot less gay and more knowledgeable than the older priests. There is a major vibe shift going on.
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
10d ago
Found this resource that seems pretty in depth of who is electable and where they stand:
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
10d ago
Sometimes I worry that I neglect growing in prayer by focusing on theological and apologetic details, which the Imitation of Christ is pretty harsh about. But Joe Hesmeyer recently said something along the lines of "If you love your wife, you find out everything you can know about her. Same with God." which makes me feel better about all the minutia I've gotten absorbed with.
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
10d ago
Thanks for the correction! If it's a theology or spiritual advice question I've got The Motte covered. When it's a political question... I don't really know.
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
10d ago
Here is what I have heard:
Theologically Conservative Frontrunner: Cardinal Peter Erdo, Archbishop of Budapest, Hungary. Primate of Hungary.
Theologically Centrist Frontrunner: Cardinal Pierbatista Pizzaballa, Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem.
Theologically Liberal Frontrunner: Cardinal Tagle, ex-Archbishop of Manilla, Philippines. Currently head of Vatican Evangelization.
There will not be any top-down changes to the Spirit of Vatican II, because the Spirit of Vatican II had nothing to do with the actual documents of Vatican II, which are all fairly benign. The Spirit of Vatican II is going to be demolished over the next twenty years by the rise of young conservative priests.
Going to start following https://x.com/pope_predictor
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
10d ago
A lot of what you remember about being a kid isn't going to be relevant until your kid's older. Sounds obvious, but it isn't. Even if you had younger siblings, you may have blacked out the first three months of their lives from your memory.
Reading to a baby is a way to get them exposed to the phonology of the language they are immersed in. Genuine baby books that have good rhymes are rare though. Bill Grossman is one of my favorite children's poets, then there's Seuss and Silverstein. At that age it's not really about the pictures yet.
At around 1-2 years old, it's all about the pictures. They can't follow the plot too well, but they will love to point to things and have you say what they are.
Diaper blowouts are a thing that you can't really avoid. Always have a change of clothes for the baby, and maybe a second shirt for you and mommy. If diaper blowouts get common, that is a sign to go a size up on diapers.
The first three months are just about teaching a baby to eat and sleep. Because these things are best learned at home, we don't really travel outside the house without the baby except for maybe a 10 minute walk during their most wakeful time. Doctor visits are the exception and you'll have a ton of them until the baby is 6 months old. If I have to, I'll go shopping with the baby but kids can't sit in grocery cart seats until they are 1 years old.
Lots of parents like to use baby chest carriers. I struggled with "baby wearing."
- Baby is near the boobs and can smell milk. This makes baby hungry and cranky.
- Can't lean forward, it's hard to do things. Some women claim they can do the dishes, sweep the floor, and dance like a Disney princess while baby wearing. I cannot.
- Baby overheats.
- If baby naps in the carrier, they only take a short nap and then are cranky. I've never had a baby nap 1.5 hours in a chest carrier the way they do in their proper bed. (A baby will happily nap in a car seat carrier for hours if you let them.)
- If you get two kids, and the older one needs to be picked up, you can't. A stroller keeps my arms free.
I recommend getting a stroller system that works with your car seat. Baby falls asleep in the car and then you can transfer the car seat to a stroller. Baby stays asleep up until the doctor's testing reflexes.
Books I read and stuck with me:
Mom Genes: Inside the New Science of Our Ancient Maternal Instinct by Abigail Tucker. Talks about the changes that will happen with your wife. It's almost as significant as a second puberty and comes with many challenges and benefits.
Bringing Up Bébé: One American Mother Discovers the Wisdom of French Parenting by Pamela Druckerman. What sets this apart from a lot of baby books is that it suggests relaxing and not trying to deliver the perfect experience to your children is how to raise the happiest children.
Babywise - the most controversial book ever and you can probably get a lot of the good advice elsewhere, but here are the good things I got from it:
- Sometimes we wake a baby if the time is appropriate.
- Babies are just like humans in that they will get hungry and sleepy at around the same times every day, if you are consistent in feeding them and getting them sleep at around the same times every day. Not so much in the <3 months age range, but 4 months and older for sure.
- Nursing should take 20 ish minutes, switch sides and interact with the baby to keep the baby awake, don't let the baby snack on foremilk and never get hind milk.
- Burping works by consolidating little bubbles into bigger bubbles. I feel like my technique improved once I understood that.
- The schedules in the book were helpful guides.
In the end, the baby year is the hardest, and the first baby is the hardest. But babies are pretty simple. The complicated stuff comes when you try to figure out what "Authoritative" parenting means.
The only thing I can recommend for the Toddler years is to repeat back what you think the kid is saying before responding to it. A lot of preschool/toddler conversations go:
"I Want X"
"We need to do Y instead."
"I want X!!!"
"We need to do Y instead. Don't you want Y?"
"I Want X!!!"
"I know you want X. X is really great. I'm sorry we can't do X right now."
"OK."
With and adult, they would understand that when you bring up Y you're also addressing X. But a toddler doesn't make that connection, especially when they're emotional. Sometimes just addressing X directly, even if you're not adding anything of value, is what they need. They just need to know that you understand them.
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
13d ago
Specifically here, Melito is explicitly talking about Jews. There may be some devotional aspect intended, that recalls to us our sins and their consequences, but look at the context:
O Israel, what have you done?
Is it not written for you: "You shall not spill innocent blood"
so that you might not die the death of the wicked?
"I" said Israel. "I killed the Lord."
Why? "Because he had to die"
You have erred, O Israel, to reason so
about the slaughter of the Lord.
He had to suffer, but not through you.
He had to be dishonored, but not by you.
He had to be judged, but not by you.
He had to be hung up, but not by you and by your right hand.
This, O Israel, is the cry with which you should have called to God:
"O master, if your son should suffer,
and this is your will,
let him suffer indeed, but not by me.
Let him suffer through foreigners,
let him be judged by the uncircumcised,
let him be nailed in place by a tyrannical right hand,
not mine."
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Fiat justitia ruat caelum
13d ago
He had to suffer, but not through you.
He had to be dishonored, but not by you.
He had to be judged, but not by you.
He had to be hung up, but not by you and by your right hand.
Melito of Sardis, "On Pascha," writing sometime between 120-160.
It's important to remember that Christianity rejects Consequentialism - even if God can bring good from evil, it's still bad to be the one whose hands are in the cookie jar. It was God's role to save, not humanity's role to pin Him down into a specific method of salvation.
Indeed: https://www.npr.org/2025/04/14/nx-s1-5364502/trump-bukele-el-salvador-deportation
"The question is preposterous: how can I smuggle a terrorist into the United States?" Bukele said.
And video, the quote goes longer: https://x.com/Osint613/status/1911845751606423938
"We're not very fond of releasing terrorists into our country. You want us to go back to releasing criminals, so we go back to being the murder capitol of the world?"
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Fiat justitia ruat caelum
17d ago
For future's sake, I lost the bet and paid up. Never been happier to lose a bet.
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Fiat justitia ruat caelum
17d ago
I was referring to European countries making it almost impossible to fire an employee without a solid record of misbehavior and prior notice.
America decides, "We will only have free trade with countries that maintains worker accidents under a certain threshold and has solid enforcement against slave labor on exports."
Then Europe says, "We'll make our own free trade organization with countries that have a good enough social safety net and do not allow companies to fire their employees willy nilly." And the US gets kicked out of the global trade anyways.
Except that would never happen, because they would love to sell to us. It's mostly a thought experiment to try to assess where the line is that we wouldn't' allow countries to cross. China at one end, Canada at the other, where is the line drawn?
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
17d ago
Thank you for hearing me out, I was worried I came across as too harsh, but it looks like I'm only medium harshness comparatively.
If you ever want to talk with someone about your doubts, philosophy, the Bible, etc, feel free to DM me. I also highly recommend Jimmy Akin for a rational (though he was doing it before the Rationalists, he's just likely autistic) explanation of Catholic teaching. And I have Joe Heshmeyer and Dr. Brant Pitre to thank for making the Bible seem coherent and reasonable. All three are all over Youtube and have books out.
One of the biggest difficulties smart people run into with Catholicism is that a lot of what you find in books and online is classified as "acceptable theological opinion." It's a small "t" tradition and hasn't been made dogma. Even a Nihil Obistat on a book doesn't mean that everything in it is 100% dogmatically true, it simply means "nothing (currently) obstructs," there's no outright heresy in it. That doesn't stop people from acting like their particular theological hobby horse is 100% set in stone and disagreeing with it is tantamount to leaving the Catholic faith.
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
17d ago
Yes, this is true. I would be for a kind of trade union that where the main requirement for entry is not exploiting their workers or environments (and maybe combined with a military pact.) Of course, the EU might have a different understanding of what that means than the US...
All you leave us with is speculation because you are not specific. What is the difference between ownership and possession?
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