That’s what I was hoping someone else would bring up. Can someone set up a fund for us lemmonades to dump money into so we can have saltwater aquariums for coral built? Is that possible? Is there a marine biologist in the house?

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They need to make that stuff required education for all people.

I am legitimately trying to figure out why it is people still use Google for anything when we know there are tons of better alternatives out there.

Do people just not know about the alternatives? Do they not know about DuckDuckGo?

I’m in the natural law camp of people that understand the concept of natural rights, but good on you for making it obvious you have no real respect for rights.

No, rights are natural qualities, principles or states of being we are born with. They’re either endowed by you by the creator of your choice or they exist through natural laws. They almost always can be derived from natural law and/or natural observation.

No human being dictates what rights another has, period. That means no, you don’t get to tell people they don’t have the right to smoke.

Grow the fuck up and accept that other people smoke and stop obsessing over things you can’t control.

That’s one of the facets of rights, is the freedom to do things. Rights aren’t only freedom from things.

And you might not like smoking, but other people are going to make choices and live their lives in ways you don’t agree with, even that you abhor, and rights means you have to put up with that for the betterment of all.

So people, young people, are going to smoke, and you’re going to put up with it.

Nah dude, literally everyone does have to be able to read. You can’t do anything in life unless you can read, especially using the internet, and abusers specifically use the inability to read to exploit victims financially – if you can’t read, you can’t sign contracts or consent to anything, you can’t learn anything (and no, videos are not enough; most of the things they teach you require reading) and you can’t effectively communicate with anybody who isn’t directly in front of you.

I agree with you about the respect part. Respect is BADLY needed and the lack of it is part of the root cause of the collapse of the education system. People just don’t think education or learning is needed, and I think deep down inside you suspect as much, which is why you were talking about victim agency.

I don’t really disagree with you, I’m just informing you of the reality of the situation. I just read on the World News reel here that 54% of American adults read below a 6th grade level – that alone shows us that Americans at least really don’t have any agency and I assert this is part of the reason why abuse and exploitation from all sides is so goddamn rampant here.

Stopping abuse is a fight that will have to be done through multiple methods, but the only way to do that is to restore our agency as a people, and the only way we can do that is by first recognizing that most of us really don’t have it.

It’s up to us who are educated and who therefore do have agency to lift the others up. We need to make government force people to be educated – offer free remedial classes at community colleges, enforce a high-school level reading standard and if you can’t meet that, you legally can’t be gainfully employed. Anonymize testing and tie results to social security numbers. It can be done.

Yes it is.

Because attributing any blame to a victim is always a sleazy attempt to shift all responsibility for a situation away from the aggressor and onto the victim. It’s a common abuse tactic.

Plus, most people really aren’t capable of doing what they need to do in life-threatening or abusive situations. Adults really don’t have as much agency as they like to pretend they do, and I personally am tired of being dishonest about it.

I say that as one of the people who has been abused partly through their own failings and iniquities. I don’t call myself a victim. I’m also not an average representative of people in abusive situations – I have always been and always was capable of doing far more than most other people, and so I am telling you from that experience that you cannot attribute any responsibility for a situation on a victim like that. Most people are just NPCs and you need to respect that.

The right to smoke and be unhealthy.

Also bodily autonomy. That kind of action, if accepted, could be used to impose incremental bans on anyone for any reason, so long as the majority is authoritarian enough to agree.

Like access to hormones for trans people. Or abortions. Or birth control. Or weed.

It’s always wrong to blame the victim, yes. You just genuinely don’t believe they actually are victims, and if you want to have that debate, be honest and have it. But you don’t get to recognize their victimhood and then invalidate it by implying their suffering is partly their fault.

They don’t respect the rights of other people, that’s all. It’s just blatant authoritarianism that they’re getting away with because of popular support.

The military shouldn’t be allowed to actively recruit anyone regardless of their age. It’s inherently predatory to everyone in this society.

Yeah no, you don’t get to arbitrarily use age to deny people their rights and manipulate them into doing what you want them to do.

… Therefore blaming them for using the service.

Why even have a capitalist economy if private businesses can just abuse people like that and the customer is routinely blamed for participating in the economy the only way they’re allowed to?

It is

So is anyone going to do anything to temporarily cool the rivers down or will everyone stand around with their thumbs up their asses while the dolphins go extinct?

Yeah, I’m sure someone who won’t put up with you trying to frame pedophiles in a positive light would be a monster in your eyes. Can’t have anyone actually hold the pond scum you’re protecting accountable in any meaningful way. How else would you fulfill your pathological need to feel needed?

You keep living up to your namesake and you’re going to find yourself in a gutter with a crack pipe and an empty bottle of Jim Beam, dude. Seriously.