The Glade 4.0

Yes, and he's right. It's ALSO dependent on his own labor and abilities. It can be dependent on more than one variable, Khross.

No no, you've got it all wrong. You're trying to personify individual cells within the nation. You're not talking about people, you're talking about healthy economic cells vs. economic cancer cells.

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Buckle your pants or they might fall down.

I agree with this, but I would say that I "owe" a "debt" to cover the cost of the limited services I received from the government (security, currency, etc)

Arathain:

You can't possibly be this dense. You just argued that a person's ability accumulate wealth is entirely dependent on every human being but themselves. Or, barring that, you still have not read what RangerDave actually said.

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stolen snippet...

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A man who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself. ~ John Stuart Mill

No, I actually said the opposite. Nice reading comprehension, though.

Khross, given that Arathain's understanding of my comment correctly reflects the meaning I intended to convey, I think it's your reading of it that's off.

... Really? You intended to convey some meaning only possible from being illiterate?We have an appositive here. It's in bold and set off by the original commas. It happens to be adverbial with no real impact on meaning. So, we'll just take it out so there's no confusion as to what you said ...You said exactly what I quoted you as saying. It reads, without question, nowhere close to the mealy-mouthed "complex combination" reading that Arathain is giving. In fact, you EXPLICITLY severed "personal efforts" in a pretty dramatic way: "nothing whatsoever" ...

In fact, that's pretty **** absolute. So, I'm going to call bullshit on both of you; or, I'm just going to let you know you can't read or write. Take your pick ...

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Still not seeing the problem. I said there are "factors...that have nothing whatsoever to do with your personal efforts." In short, I severed your "personal efforts" from those other factors, not from your ability to accumulate wealth. The "mealy-mouthed, 'complex combination'" reading that Arathain gave it is spot on, and you're simply misconstruing my meaning in a fairly obvious display of either bad faith or poor reading comprehension. Take your pick....

Here, Khross, let me help you.

Let's assume there are a grand total of ONLY 6 factors that determine your success.

1 of these is your drive and ambition. Call it "A".
1 of these is your intellect. Call it "B".
2 of these are other environmental factors which you control. Call them "C and D".
2 of these are environmental factors, one past, one present, that have nothing whatsoever to do with your personal efforts. Call them "E" and "F".

Let's call success "Y".

Y is a function of A, B, C, D, E, and F.

Your success is thus dependent on each of the 6 factors. Thus, it is dependent on factors which have nothing whatsoever to do with your personal efforts. It is also dependent on other factors.

So, you can get upset all you like, but he's correct.

Come to think of it, are you really arguing that RD is retarded enough to believe that personal efforts don't come into play in determining success? Do you honestly believe he thinks that? If not (and I'm sure you are intelligent enough not to think that) then what is the purpose of your arguing about this?

So much for the usefulness of my IRA. I could have spend that money on cocaine...

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"...the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?" -Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Arathain gets it.

Odd how I found the intent of RD's post immediately obvious and clear as well.

Wow, you guys really are illiterate ...

I mean, seriously, you guys really are illiterate. You don't even know the English language well enough to understand what he actually said. I don't even **** know where to begin ...

Maybe you should go back to the third grade or something and relearn basic sentence structure.

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LMAO, just stop man, just stop. It's a discussion about the nature and purpose of government, and you're freaking out, cursing, and carrying on over sentence structure. And what's worse - you're not even correct.

You never answered me - do you honestly believe that RD thinks our success is solely dependent on outside factors - that we cannot influence our own success? If not, then what are you trying to accomplish with all this nonsense?

Were anyone actually interestedin isolating causation in regards to outcome, one would eliminate shared factors.

Those who grow up in America share in the same system of social benefit. The things that benefited Khross also benefited those less fortunate

Those things which were not part and parcell to a blanket social safety net from which all benefit, are the only things which seperate success from failure.

The things inherent to Khross, in his individuality, are what make the difference. And that makes you wrong.

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Ezekiel 23:19-20 

Arathain:

Except, I am correct.Let's look at this sentence.That's what RangerDave said without qualifiers. However, he has a qualifier in there:The adjective clause qualifies factors. Curiously enough that means this sentence translates to:

Maybe you should study English a little more, because you'd know what modifies what if you could diagram a sentence.

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I call it a service. I pay money to an entity and get a service in return, just like any transaction. For instance, do you owe a debt to Best Buy for your TV when you give them money? I don't think this is just semantics. Calling it debt means we're "indebted" to our government. We create the government to be our civil servants, not the other way around.

Curious how you left out "was dependent on an intricate web of factors, both past and present" in your analysis.

For someone who teaches English, you sure seem to have trouble understanding it.

While citizens like RD and etc mean well, many of those policies do more harm than good. I hate it when someone says as much, then suddenly they hate poor people and want people to suffer.

Politicians can appeal to a feel good rhetoric to get elected now, then many years later then the effects of their foolishness is felt no one remembers. Or they've moved on the the next higher office somewhere else. Politicians can always benefit now with irresponsible behavior and then others pay for the harmful incentives created later.

Saying unpopular things like "we're all going to have to suffer a little now so we can benefit in the future" is not going to get you elected, but that's the truth. We all need to suffer now to fix the mess so future generations can profit.

The only way it's going to change is for the political machine to break. It runs on the welfare of it's citizens, while it tells them it's helping them and paints itself as the savior.

I disagree, but this is not a popular opinion in either party. You're just crazy until there's enough of you to be taken seriously.

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"...the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?" -Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

No two people derived the same level of benefit from the system because the system is not designed to produce (and indeed never could produce) equality of outcome. As a result, each person has a different starting point in the race. Khross' genetics, parents, friends, teachers, socio-economic background, religion, local culture, personal experiences, dumb luck, etc. are all different than mine, and mine are all different than yours. It's impossible to isolate causation in the way you're suggesting.

*sigh* I have been following this discussion and was hoping it would get beyond this. RD, before Khross jumps all over you again, you seem to be saying, again, that greater achievement is more due to an unequal (perhaps unfair?--be it institutionalized bias or shear dumb luck) share of public resources and largely NOT due to personal skill, effort or motivation. Is this what you really mean?

Except for the system. We all share that, so Khross doesn't owe it anything.

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Ezekiel 23:19-20 

I didn't leave anything out. Maybe you should learn to read the whole post. Indeed, since the adjective clause you and Arathain and RangerDave think miraculously changes the meaning modifies the word "factors", you're still wrong. But, you know, you sure have a lot of trouble reading a very basic sentence correctly even when it is pointed out to you.

Or, maybe because you don't want to admit you're wrong, you'll just post a bald-faced lie and try to insult me. You three are wrong and need to go back to basic grammar school. More to point, if we look further into RangerDave's original post ...

His meaning cannot possibly be what you're trying to say it is:It's funny how this statement immediately succeeds the sentence in question and you three keep ignoring it. You guys sure are a bunch of illiterate fools trying to play smart on the internet. You don't understand adjective phrases or reinforcing sentences. Indeed, you've spent two pages trying to convince the forum you know the language better than I do, when you don't even know what part of speech RangerDave's qualifiers function as or how they work in the sentence.

Now that you've taken to outright lying about a post, you might as well just concede that RangerDave did indeed state things I read them. If he meant anything else, it's not evident in the sentence itself or the rest of his paragraph where he mentions me owing society for the privilege of accumulating wealth. Context and grammar prove the three of you wrong ...

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I believe this little gem of projection answers your question, Arathain: