Anti-THR Lies: Ecig proponents need to learn lessons from other activists

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philoshop

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Credit unions are very much alive and well in the US. It's a banking option. Some are happy with that option,and some aren't, but it's an option.

The farmer down the road calls and asks me if I can fix his barn door. I fix his barn door and a couple of months later he'll show up with half of a pig or something, for my freezer. It's not even barter, and nobody keeps track. I help him when I can, and he helps me when he can. It's a form of free-market that works for us. Many of my friends and neighbors would agree.
Collectivism/socialism/communism would mean that I was obligated to help him. None of us would be happy with that arrangement.
Therein lies the difference.
 

caramel

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Credit unions are very much alive and well in the US. It's a banking option. Some are happy with that option,and some aren't, but it's an option.

The farmer down the road calls and asks me if I can fix his barn door. I fix his barn door and a couple of months later he'll show up with half of a pig or something, for my freezer. It's not even barter, and nobody keeps track. I help him when I can, and he helps me when he can. It's a form of free-market that works for us. Many of my friends and neighbors would agree.
Collectivism/socialism/communism would mean that I was obligated to help him. None of us would be happy with that arrangement.
Therein lies the difference.

Collectivism does not necessarily include obligation. There are forms of it that do, some others that don't.

Since you mention socialism/communism in the same sentence, you may find interesting that one of the best points against collectivism was made by Karl Marx (not Ayn).

Talking of the benefits of non-constrained or weakly-constrained collectivism, I would suggest to research the story of FDR, the original "March of Dimes" and how a cure for polio was found. Hint: it wasn't an individualist entrepreneur that poured capital into getting a monopoly via a bunch of patents (they were busy with other, more immediate and lucrative options of the free market). Nor a government instituting a "polio research tax".
 
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philoshop

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I won't argue about society's equivalency regarding good and bad behavior. There are both kinds of people in the world, and both have their camps...
Some people choose to do good of their own accord. Making it law, mandating it, and requiring it under threat of government force changes the very definition of 'good'.
 

caramel

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I won't argue about society's equivalency regarding good and bad behavior. There are both kinds of people in the world, and both have their camps...
Some people choose to do good of their own accord. Making it law, mandating it, and requiring it under threat of government force changes the very definition of 'good'.

Then your objection is against coercion / enforcement.

This is the problem that the "free market" proponents can't solve. How do you allow for participants that don't agree with its principles and want to play by different rules? Once you enforce it, then it's not a "free market" anymore as it's something imposed by force. An utopia that can't be reached unless all participants agree on and observe the same exact thing. Good luck with that.

Collectivism is more resilient to this phenomenon as it is conceptually compatible with various degrees of enforcement or variance from the "recommended behaviour". Ironically, it allows for more individual freedom.
 
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caramel

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Government being involved means coercion and threat of force/violence. Always. In any matter.
And Government won't voluntarily stay out of anything.

There's the fight.

Remember that Roosevelt did not impose a "polio tax" to fight against polio like we have tobacco taxes to fight against tobacco. There falls the "always / in any matter" argument.

What you're noticing is that your current government is not like the ones you used to have.
 

caramel

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The very concept of a 'benevolent' government has changed.

Somewhere in the 90s the "common good" was defined to be "the economy". Unsurprisingly by the economists themselves. Everyone felt for it hook, line and sinker.

We have election campaign here and 2 out of 3 candidates for the PM job keep talking of nothing but "the economy". They haven't bothered touching even staples like "abortions" and "guns". It's all about the GDP now. Not surprisingly the third guy has real chances of winning with a "thinkofthechildrenandtheirhardworkingparents" approach.
 
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Ca Ike

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I'm not fully caught up on this thread but from what I am reading the 3 of you (jman, carolT and Kent) are arguing for a similar goal. Causality is what the infection theory is working toward from my understanding. MSuspect pathogens have been identified but not yet proven to be causes. This is the "work in progress" part of the infection theory.

I think, once pathogenic causality is finally proven, as it has been with HPV, then a logical next step would be to find out what compounds in cig smoke affect what pathogen and how or conversely have no affect. Only then will we have real evidence to prove or dispute ANTZ claims.
 
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Kent C

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Only then will we have real evidence to prove or dispute ANTZ claims.

It's not about the science - it's about individual choice. And it doesn't matter if we "prove" or have "real evidence" - we already have that in ecigs and it hasn't mattered at all to the ANTZ or their media and because of the latter - to anyone who has listened to them or read them, and believe anything major media says as gospel.

Take the most innocuous action - reading books, having a pet, wearing sandals, anything.... if it could be proven absolutely with true science that those things somehow could be harmful, should be ban them? If not, why not? And let me reassure you, there would be some people that would be 'activists' for banning those actions.

It's why principle has to be held in higher regard than 'pragmatism'. They can "prove" anything with junk science. They've proven that over and over. Then use it to ban individual choice or make it a crime to indulge in what is a mere vice, if that.
 

Ca Ike

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That is all too true Kent but we can't just abandon the science. We need every tool we can use but the most important tool we have is our voice saying loud and clear, ENOUGH!!!! We won't stand for it anymore. Followed by voting the .......s that legislate the lies out of office and going after the like of the FDA and the rest of the alphabet soup gangs for fraud. Remember , they are profiting big time from the lies they tell and the strong arm tactics they use IMO are just as bad as the old protection rackets of the 20's. The only reason they are getting away with these con games is because it's government approved.
 

Kent C

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That is all too true Kent but we can't just abandon the science. We need every tool we can use but the most important tool we have is our voice saying loud and clear, ENOUGH!!!! We won't stand for it anymore. Followed by voting the .......s that legislate the lies out of office and going after the like of the FDA and the rest of the alphabet soup gangs for fraud. Remember , they are profiting big time from the lies they tell and the strong arm tactics they use IMO are just as bad as the old protection rackets of the 20's. The only reason they are getting away with these con games is because it's government approved.

I agree, we should continue our science regardless, but the only way to stop the insanity is to vote those out that perpetrate the nanny state.
 

CarolT

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In 1974, after decades of heavy smoking, Ayn Rand undergoes lung cancer surgery and the doctors manage to save her life.

In 1976, after several "free market" medical bills, she understands the benefits of Collectivism and enrolls to Social Security and Medicare.

She dies in 1982 of heart failure.

If anything, the antz can have a field day any day depicting her as the posterchild of "free market" smoking.
Ayn Rand was no nun, and HPV causes lung cancer, too.
HPV Causes Lung Cancer

Also, as a self-employed writer, she paid both the employer and employee shares of the tax on Social Security and Medicare, so she was just getting back what she paid in.

And everybody dies of something someday.
 

CarolT

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"A different principle and different considerations are involved in the case of public (i.e., governmental) scholarships. The right to accept them rests on the right of the victims to the property (or some part of it) which was taken from them by force.

The recipient of a public scholarship is morally justified only so long as he regards it as restitution and opposes all forms of welfare statism. Those who advocate public scholarships, have no right to them; those who oppose them, have. If this sounds like a paradox, the fault lies in the moral contradictions of welfare statism, not in its victims.

Since there is no such thing as the right of some men to vote away the rights of others, and no such thing as the right of the government to seize the property of some men for the unearned benefit of others—the advocates and supporters of the welfare state are morally guilty of robbing their opponents, and the fact that the robbery is legalized makes it morally worse, not better. The victims do not have to add self-inflicted martyrdom to the injury done to them by others; they do not have to let the looters profit doubly, by letting them distribute the money exclusively to the parasites who clamored for it. Whenever the welfare-state laws offer them some small restitution, the victims should take it . . . ."

Ayn Rand
“The Question of Scholarships,”

Government Grants and Scholarships—Ayn Rand Lexicon
The real problem with those tax-subsidized private grants and scholarships is that the college administrations grovel to get them. It gives the wealthy more power over the colleges. They are both power-mad and stupid. I have in mind stuff like advertising mogul Sid Lerner's donations to Johns Hopkins, Columbia, and Syracuse University.
http://www.jhsph.edu/news/news-releases/2014/new-lerner-center-for-public-health-promotion-launched-by-johns-hopkins-bloomberg-school-of-public-health.html
https://www.mailman.columbia.edu/give/donor-profiles/sid-lerner
http://www.awakeningscny.com/Natural-Awakenings-Central-NY/March-2015/An-Interview-with-Mad-Man-Sid-Lerner/
This is the kind of crap that the government should be protecting us against, not encouraging. And all that guff about "looters" and "parasites" is just a distraction from the really important thing, our freedom from charlatanism and tyranny.
 

nicnik

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The real problem with those tax-subsidized private grants and scholarships is that the college administrations grovel to get them. It gives the wealthy more power over the colleges. They are both power-mad and stupid. I have in mind stuff like advertising mogul Sid Lerner's donations to Johns Hopkins, Columbia, and Syracuse University.
http://www.jhsph.edu/news/news-releases/2014/new-lerner-center-for-public-health-promotion-launched-by-johns-hopkins-bloomberg-school-of-public-health.html
https://www.mailman.columbia.edu/give/donor-profiles/sid-lerner
http://www.awakeningscny.com/Natural-Awakenings-Central-NY/March-2015/An-Interview-with-Mad-Man-Sid-Lerner/
This is the kind of crap that the government should be protecting us against, not encouraging. And all that guff about "looters" and "parasites" is just a distraction from the really important thing, our freedom from charlatanism and tyranny.
I've never seen the show Mad Men, and didn't know anything about Sid Lerner until reading the links you posted, and searching a bit from there. Looks like he's involved with people putting out anti-vaping trash, including the 'mouse study'.

You're right. Governement should be protecting us from this stuff, rather than encouraging it.
 
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Jman8

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I'm not fully caught up on this thread but from what I am reading the 3 of you (jman, carolT and Kent) are arguing for a similar goal.

That was this thread? I almost forgot about that.

Causality is what the infection theory is working toward from my understanding. MSuspect pathogens have been identified but not yet proven to be causes. This is the "work in progress" part of the infection theory.

I think, once pathogenic causality is finally proven, as it has been with HPV, then a logical next step would be to find out what compounds in cig smoke affect what pathogen and how or conversely have no affect. Only then will we have real evidence to prove or dispute ANTZ claims.

I dispute ANTZ (or virtually anyone's) definition of causality. I enjoy being skeptical on this point and take lots of confidence in understanding how science is literally making up a definition as it goes along.
 

CarolT

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I'm not fully caught up on this thread but from what I am reading the 3 of you (jman, carolT and Kent) are arguing for a similar goal. Causality is what the infection theory is working toward from my understanding. MSuspect pathogens have been identified but not yet proven to be causes. This is the "work in progress" part of the infection theory.

I think, once pathogenic causality is finally proven, as it has been with HPV, then a logical next step would be to find out what compounds in cig smoke affect what pathogen and how or conversely have no affect. Only then will we have real evidence to prove or dispute ANTZ claims.

It is NOT about "what compounds in cig smoke affect what pathogen." The issue is that the anti-smokers' studies are cynically designed to falsely blame smoking for diseases that are really caused by infection. Poorer people are more likely to have been exposed to those pathogens, and at younger ages, and smokers are more likely to have been poorer people.

Causality has been proven for HPV, EBV, HBV, HCV, Helicobacter pylori, and other pathogens. But the anti-smokers' studies ignore them! Every Surgeon General report is proof.
The Surgeon General Lies About Cancer
The Surgeon General Lies That Smoking Causes Heart Disease
And when they do include infections e.g. HBV and HCV in liver cancer, they use insufficient tests to diagnose all the cases, so there are false negatives that get blamed on smoking. Or they use studies that only looked for one of the viruses and ignored the other! And the gang that writes the Surgeon General reports ignores the good studies and use only the junky ones, in order to blame smoking.

We have had the power to dispute the anti-smoker claims for a long time, but those who get all their information from the mass media don't know this.
 

nicnik

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If I was a betting man, I'd bet that CarolT is probably right.
But I'd want odds.
:laugh:

I mean, seriously, why would we NOT expect it to be mostly true?
I get really stressed when I try to open my mind about what she says. I feel guilt, either way. It certainly wouldn't surprise me if every word of it were true, but the implications, and how it complicates the fight - I'm not sure I can handle it.
 
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