the GOP America and Christianity are deeply intertwined to the point of inseparability.

FTFY

Actual conservative here. To me it mostly means a defense of the essential culture and values of Christendom, AKA Western civilization.

No matter what I answer here, it will just feed into this no true scottsman fallacy you have with the definition of “christian”.

I don’t have that fallacy in my definition of “Christian” at all. A Christian is a genuine follower of Christ, of which there are many, and many more every day. The fact that some people claim to be Christian without actually following Christ does not mean there’s no true Christian. It’s entirely possible for you to choose to become Christian.

I don’t get any value out of bible verses. It’s just junk to me even if I understand it.

The only value we can have in life comes from God. When someone gives you a Bible verse, that is likely the most valuable thing you receive all day, if not all year.

And on that point, we have reached an impasse. I must abide by 2 Timothy 3:2-5, and turn away:

For men shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy,
Without natural affection, trucebreakers, false accusers, incontinent, fierce, despisers of those that are good,
Traitors, heady, highminded, lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God;
Having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof: from such turn away.

Thank you for all of this thought-provoking conversation. I wish you all of the best, and I pray you may yet find God.

It seems you are starting your argument with the premise that we aren’t responsible, and then concluding that we aren’t responsible.

My starting premise is God, and with penitent humility, God is my foregone conclusion.

You cannot have your conclusion as one of your premises, because that’s just a circular argument.

It’s not an argument of any type. It’s a humble acknowledgment of He who is in control.

That’s not what I said [that “all prophets are heretics”].

What you said, specifically, was, “That’s all assuming you know god’s plan which is heretical.” A prophet is someone who knows God’s plan as it applies to many people. So yes, you claimed that prophets are heretics. Now I’m no prophet, but like any Christian, I maintain a relationship with God and I read Scripture, so I know God’s plan to the limited extent He reveals it to me. That’s not heresy.

somebody doesn’t need to be christian to hold true beliefs or have valid arguments

You’re either with God or you’re against God. Anyone who sides with Satan cannot be trusted. They might indeed make true statements or valid arguments now and then, but they can only do so in service of the Beast, attempting to lead others down the road to Hell.

Second, it’s an argument from authority.

Nothing wrong with respecting authorities, and trusting their assessments. God is, after all, the Lord of Lords and King of Kings.

Third, it’s a setup for a no true scottsman fallacy, because no matter who I bring up you’ll call them a false christian because you’ve already defined a christian to be somebody who holds your own views exactly.

I don’t deny there’s a non-zero chance of the discussion playing out that way, but in practice I think there are just about zero climate scientists who call themselves Christians yet also think human beings could have caused climate change. If you find any examples, I’ll be rather curious what denominations they affiliate with. There are certainly a few crazy leftist denominations out there that seem to have fully rejected God, so it’s possible a few such climate scientists exist. If they do, and you were to find them, of course you’re right that I’d have to question their church’s Statement of Faith. But that’s no fallacy; it’s just recognizing that Christianity is incompatible with the premise that humans could possibly cause climate change.

This question is a ridiculous goal post that quite clearly on wheels, able to move the moment I name a name.

My only goal post is your acceptance of Christ.

Then I have misunderstood the term, I apologize.

Apology accepted. In case you’re curious to learn about it, you might click here. It’s a good topic for online classes, in case you ever find yourself with spare time.

I absolutely was raised as a christian, having been tought Jesus’ word.

Did they skip all the parts about mammon, or did you just ignore them? They’re fairly central to Jesus’s ministry.

That doesn’t mean it is true though [that it’s Gospel].

It does, in fact.

Yeah, it’s all kind of just meaningless to me. It would be like if I told you to read a passage with a vague moral from a Star Trek book. It’s all just fiction, made by men.

Even if it was written in Klingon, I’d do my best to read it and wrap my head around the point you were trying to make.

All of the Bible verses I’ve quoted to you and linked to you have been (by far) the wisest and truest words I’m able to speak. In most if not all cases, they’ve provided the point I was trying to make. So I find it discouraging and disheartening to know you haven’t been reading them, and seriously considering them.

Whenever you encounter a quote from the Bible, begin by thinking to yourself that you’re about to read something true and holy — even if you don’t believe that yet, start out by telling yourself that. Then ask God — and I know you deny Him, but at least try your best to ask God — that you may receive His holy words with a sober mind, and that you may unquestioningly accept their eternal truth. Then read, and reread, and read once more, the passage until you know it well. Read the context of the passage, as much context as needed, and read it in various other translations, to help you deeply understand its truth.

And with that, yet again, I strongly advise you to study Matthew 6:24-34. That’s certainly not the only thing you ought to read, but it’d be a solid start.

If the devil had a holy book you’d see the same thing about how the devil is the good guy.

Do you not see how ridiculous this argument is? Of course the Devil lies, but the difference between God and Satan is under most circumstances glaringly obvious.

I linked it because it is the golden standard for belief, and it requires evidence before belief.

The golden standard for belief is a mustard seed.

I’ve been having these sorts of conversations with christians for over a decade.

And who do you think has been motivating you to do that? Time and again, it is the Holy Spirit who moves you. God loves you despite your continued rejection of Him. Yet every time you receive another opportunity to drink of His water, you instead choose to follow your demons.

it’s not. I’m honestly just talking with you for the sake of enjoyment at this point.

I’m guessing you didn’t actually read Romans 1:18-32. Please do. If you can be honest with yourself, you’ll find it all too familiar. What you call “the sake of enjoyment” is described.

Nope, evidence must come before belief, and belief is not a direct choice.

Faith exists only because belief is a direct choice. Surely you don’t deny the existence of faith.

God gave us dominion, what is dominion if not complete control?

We find the answer is in Scripture. Let’s review Genesis 1:26-28:

And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.

So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.

And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.

That is the specific nature of our dominion.

And again, we definitely have the power to do so because there is mountains of scientific evidence showing that humans are responsible for climate change.

That’s agenda-driven nonsense. There can be no evidence showing cause-and-effect for something that we didn’t cause in the first place. Show me one Christian scientist who believes people caused climate change.

That’s all assuming you know god’s plan which is heretical.

So now all prophets are heretics? Are you joking?

Responsibility for our own actions should be the default. I don’t mean to be glib but of all people I would have hoped a conservative would understand that.

I fully agree, 100%. We’re not responsible for climate change because it’s not the result of our own actions. We are each individually responsible for our own individual actions, though, yes.

I’m probably more of a game theorist than you if I am being honest. I’ve done game development on the side for a little while now.

That’s like a plumber claiming he’s familiar with the Plumb Line Method of theoretical physics because it has the word “plumb” in it. Game development requires no understanding of game theory.

People can’t afford to do that though. It is a financially bad decision to put yourself at financial risk of losing your home, transportation, or food source.

I find it confusing that you thought you used to be a Christian, when not only did you never form a relationship with God, but you never even learned Jesus’s teachings. I quoted from the Sermon on the Mount to you. This is literally Gospel. Again, I strongly advise you to study Matthew 6:24-34.

Then like I said earlier, you have no method to determine what you worship is a good being.

I quoted the true word of God — the holy Bible. When you parrot your demons who claim it’s false, you reveal your foolish allegiance, but still you must know deep in your heart that God is good.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burden_of_proof_(philosophy)

I’m not trying to prove anything here. If you think I am, I have to wonder what led you to think that.

My primary goal here should be readily obvious: Matthew 28:19–20, the Great Commission. I am planting a seed, and praying your soil is fertile.

Your primary goal here, by contrast, is laid out in Romans 1:18-32. I pray your disposition is temporary and reversible.

If you think you have evidence that I haven’t seen before I am all ears.

You’re fully immersed in it. But until you establish a penitent relationship with God, you are blind.

Nope. I have no evidence for it, so I do not believe it. It has nothing to do with my intelligence.

If you’re honestly not trying to prove how clever you are, then submit to God in faith, and the copious evidence can then be revealed to you.

Once again, belief is not a choice.

No matter how much you insist upon that, I repeatedly choose to believe in the Lord our God. I accept that you don’t yet understand how belief can be a choice, but it most certainly is.

And correlation does not imply causation, therefore you cannot rationally say that being religious makes you more happy.

I have zero doubt that the cause of happiness is God’s blessing. Joy is quintessentially Christian.

Downvotes don’t federate, so I don’t see it. At least they don’t yet. But even if they did, I’m used to downvotes. My reputation here on kbin is -2178, which is over 800 closer to 0 than it used to be. Whee! That’s just for expressing Christian conservative perspectives. Not exactly popular in the Fediverse, or at least not on kbin.

Anyway, thank you for understanding.

So you just don’t question whether or not god is good or evil, have I understood correctly?

Nobody has the rightful authority to question the word of God. I quoted a verse from the Bible to you. We accept God’s word without question because we are His humble servants. It would be arrogant to suppose we have permission to question His word, and it would be evil for us to desire to question His word. When you are presented with a Bible quote, you accept it as true and holy. When a demon tells you to question it, or claims that it’s false, you repent and ask Jesus to shield you from this demonic temptation. In the end, we must always conclude that the word of God is correct.

Like I said earlier, whichever way you mean, nobody is whispering anything in my ears.

And yet you continue to demonstrate clear evidence to the contrary. If you’re not plagued by demons then show me your embrace of God.

But to the best of my ability to understand, this is not something I am wrong about.

You put understanding before faith. That’s backwards. I assure you, this is something you are wrong about.

We have pretty strong evidence to suggest that dark matter exists.

True, but we have a thousand times more evidence to confirm that God exists. Evidence to which you are blind.

[Re: “Is it intelligent to want to be happy?”] Sure, but lying to yourself will never make you happy. You’re asking me to lie to myself.

If (A) I was asking you to lie to yourself, and (B) lying to yourself will never make you happy, then © actively religious people cannot be happier than irreligious people.

This is basic logic: A ∧ B ∴ C

And yet © is demonstrably false, an assertion which I substantiated with hard data. And that was just one survey. Survey after survey repeatedly demonstrates that actively religious people are far happier.

I’ll reply to some of the various other things you wrote, but this is the heart of our discussion. The crux, if you will. Your perspective is that you’re too smart to believe in God, and you refuse to acknowledge that God blesses His faithful believers with happiness. You believe that intelligent people choose unhappiness despite the obvious fact that it would be rather unwise to intentionally choose unhappiness, by virtue of the very definition of happiness. The only possible explanation for your insistent rejection of God is your unknowing loyalty to Satan, who has successfully convinced you that not even he exists.

As a result there are industries that are zero sum games, with an overall tendency to move towards zero sum.

The economy is fundamentally not a zero sum game. It cannot be, under any circumstances. I’m done arguing this point, as I’m not an economist or a game theorist, and you’re not either.

[Re: “The cost of business loss is equivalent to gained experience.” Not when your house or car is collateral. Not when it is the only thing paying your rent and keeping food on the table.

Sure it is. We can lose all of our material possessions, and all of our food, while we retain all of the wealth in the world through our faith in God. I advise you to study Matthew 6:24-34, but even though that’s only ten verses, for brevity I’ll only quote one here:

Behold the fowls of the air: for they sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feedeth them. Are ye not much better than they?

We were talking about homesteading, which absolutely has a limit.

I was not talking only about homesteading. I speak of all of us who walk upon the earth.

Then why do we have an army? If the government has no responsibility to protect us, then we could easily save hundreds of billions of dollars of tax payer money by disbanding all armed forces.

The government has a responsibility to protect our nation as an institution; not to protect us each individually.

I don’t care about how it sounds, it is the truth.

Except it’s not. You frequently come across as confidently incorrect.

[Re: “Businesses have tight budgets.”] Only because they budget boat loads of money for executives and shareholders.

Do you have any awareness that 99.9% of businesses in the US are small businesses? Literally 99.9%. (Source) Normal businesses are far closer to my example of making pottery out of clay from your backyard than they are to giant multinational corporations. But all companies, no matter the size, are normally somewhat strapped for cash, because they need to reinvest profits to grow.

Please start a business. The only reason you have not to is if you’re afraid of realizing that your entire economic theory is bunk.

[Re: “But freedom of religion is not freedom from religion.”] You can’t have one without the other.

Then how did we always have one without the other until recent times? You’re free to join any church you’d like, regardless of affiliation, provided that you worship the Lord our God. That’s our freedom of religion. If you deny God, you embrace Satan, and until fairly recently that would have meant you’d be locked away in a mental asylum.

And the states you are comparing are inherently a bad comparison because the state of a light bulb is in no way representative of serving, which is an active action.

You’re so fixated on this. If you insist, yes, a light-bulb “serves” its master, where its master is its owner who flips the light-switch on and off. But you’re really missing the point here.

We have two possible states, in which we cling to God or Satan. There is no third option. Satan will insist that neither he nor God exists, and you can choose to believe that lie at your eternal peril.

You know what I meant. The evidence for free will is lacking, therefore I do not believe it exists.

The evidence is within you every time you choose to reject God. Indeed every time you type a character in reply to me, you evidence free will.

That doesn’t answer my question. How do you know that god doesn’t want humans to solve climate change on our own? “Just pray for an answer” doesn’t tell me anything about the methodology of how you came to your current conclusion of “no”.

Did god personally tell you that the answer was no? Is it just a feeling you have? Was it some “sign”?

The entire premise requires us to arrogantly suppose we could possibly control the whole planet, which is contrary to everything God tells us.

Humble yourselves in the sight of the Lord, and he shall lift you up.

James 4:10

Those aren’t just a bunch of archaic random words; they’re instructions for how we are to live. And they are entirely applicable to the climate agenda. When we are humble, we put our trust in God, not ourselves.

My answer was generalized because I do not care to get into the specifics. I’m sorry, I know that seems dismissive. But I wasn’t kidding when I said “book-length”. You’re proposing an extremely long and detailed discussion. Maybe someone else will bite, but it won’t be me. Not today. I stand behind my generalization fwiw, and I’ll leave it at that.

Forget Trump for the purpose of this question, because he’s divisive, and many conservatives don’t fully support him.

The general answer to your question is that Progressivism is designed to destroy the USA by gradually eroding traditional values, and then progressively moving on to erode more. That’s the entire point of Progressivism.

I’ll spare you the book-length answer that unpacks that idea into a long list of examples.

I am criticizing a fictional, human made character. As a result of being human made, there is no such infinite wisdom.

Imagine for once that you are completely wrong about this belief of yours. Yes, it’s the height of hubris. If we know nothing else, we know at very least that our Creator lives.

How have you determined that you aren’t worshiping an evil god if you haven’t questioned god? How do you know that it isn’t the case that both god and satan are evil?

Psalm 100:5:

For the Lord is good; his mercy is everlasting; and his truth endureth to all generations.

To choose just one of many possible answers.

Nobody is whispering anything in my ears, metephorically or literally, whichever way you mean. And I question everything before I believe it.

I mean literally. You may look at your shoulder, expecting to see no demon, while maybe picturing the cutesy BSD mascot, and sure enough you don’t see one sitting on your shoulder. “See?” you reassure yourself, “no demon.” You then recall that you’ve never seen the BSD mascot running around anywhere IRL, and conclude that demons must not exist.

How sure are you that you do a good job questioning everything before you believe it? Is it possible that you’ve made an error?

Demons do not look like cutesy cartoon characters, and indeed they’re not visible to the human eye (at least not to mine). As with all extant spiritual entities, we can know they exist despite our inability to see them.

Are you just as quick to deny that dark matter exists?

That’s not true. [Re: “it’s self-evidently true, as anyone who denies God cannot be said to be very intelligent.”]

You said you were willing to question your beliefs, so I urge you to question this. I think it underlies the rift between us.

You want to see yourself as a reasonably intelligent person, and you want to cling to a state of mind which you believe to be shared by other intelligent people.

But I ask you, are you so sure that it’s intelligent to reject God? Consider the following:

According to Pew, actively religious people tend to be far happier. Is it intelligent to want to be happy? Could this effect possibly be a quantitative measurement of God’s blessings? And is it intelligent to want to be happy?

Again, I ask you: is it intelligent to want to be happy?

As a result of all of this, this industry is a zero sum game.

I doubt any economists would agree with this. Even with declining demand, the addition of every grain of rice is a contribution to the economy.

One is the cost of startup the other is the cost of loss.

The cost of business loss is equivalent to gained experience. Let’s say you extract clay from your backyard and use it to make pottery, which you then sell at your local market. Startup cost is $0, as you hand-made your own kiln and your own cart to transport your pottery.

You have a few sales, but not many. When you see people walk away from your table without buying anything, you stop them to ask them why. Several of them tell you that your products are all too small for their taste.

So you close down your shop, head back home, and get to work rebuilding your kiln to be ten times larger. Two months later you open up a brand new shop, based on your gained experience, and now your pottery sells like wildfire.

There is no such thing as a free lunch.

You seem to misunderstand that phrase. It is commonly used to express the limitations of government provision. But I was talking about God’s provision, and there’s no limitation to that.

It is the business of the government to protect the people, and greedy corporations who pay poverty wages is one such thing that we need protection from.

Where did you get that idea? Nowhere in our Constitution does it say that government is supposed to protect the people.

Every time you imply that corporations are “greedy”, you sound out of touch and inexperienced. Please start your own company. You will learn so much about the real world. It doesn’t need to be anything fancy. Sell an old book on ebay. You will learn so much.

These companies absolutely have the money to pay

You make it so clear that you’ve never run a business and hired anyone. You’re completely out of touch. Businesses have tight budgets. Sell that old book on ebay, and grow your nascent business enough that you want to hire someone to help you out. You will quickly learn that you can afford very little to hire someone, yet you’re overburdened with work so you need to hire someone as cheap as possible.

The 1st amedment explicitly states otherwise, that our government shall not enforce religion.

I don’t want the Senate to declare that the Pope has legal authority over Americans any more than you do.

But freedom of religion is not freedom from religion. In America, we have the former. Not the latter.

You are either with God or against God. The US is one nation under God.

And a light bulb doesn’t serve anybody which makes it a bad comparison.

It’s a good comparison because I’m trying to make a point about possible states. When you reject God, you embrace Satan, because there are only two possible states. Just like a light-bulb.

Just know going forward I don’t really see free will as something that makes sense.

You don’t need to understand something in order to accept that it’s true, or that it exists.

Did you ever think that maybe god wants us to fix the problem? Have you considered that you might be going against god’s will when you say we should do nothing to prevent further damage to the environment/god’s creation? It seems pretty straightforward to me that if god exists and created us and this planet, that such a god would want us to take good care of the planet.

Once you accept Jesus Christ as your personal Lord and Savior, and you live in a state of perpetual prayer, you will know what God wants from you personally. You will learn that His will often goes against your own, and that it sometimes makes no sense to you.

Ramaswamy’s response to the pansexual women is about as out of touch as one can get.

I wasn’t referring to that in particular. I was referring to the big-picture point he made in the whole last 11 minutes of the video. The point was about western civilization, the insidious project to undermine it, and our duty to defend it. That point is foundational to much of our disagreement. It sounds like you stopped watching before he even got to the point.

“The decline of christianity”

Yeah, but that misses the bigger picture. It’s not as if people are rejecting Christ and converting to Judaism. Rather it’s a secular movement driven by Satan’s success at convincing a vast swath of the populace that God is imaginary.

I disagree that the foundation of western civ is solely placed on god.

This is one of those ways in which Wikipedia tends to be secular. It says in the intro that Western civilization is “linked” to Christiandom. That’s misleading. Western civilization is Christiandom. The only difference is we don’t call it that anymore. But everything that followed from Christiandom is built upon Christiandom as an extension of Christiandom. Though to the article’s credit, it does later state that:

[…] Western civilization, which throughout most of its history, has been nearly equivalent to Christian culture.

That’s close to accurate. In truth the two are inseparably identical, which is why Satan hates Western civilization, that that in turn is why you’ve been convinced to believe you want to contribute to the project of undermining Western civilization.

If you’re going to look through this, I recommend spending extra time on the section explaining the enlightenment.

I’m not sure exactly what points you’re referring to here. Skimming through it, I’m pretty sure I already know all of these details. The only change I’d make is to emphasize God’s role in all of these things, and His importance to all of these historical figures.

Sure I can, god, according to your worldview, created a world in which children get cancer.

It is the height of hubris to criticize God. His wisdom is infinite, and if yours was too then you’d understand why certain children are given cancer. It’s not for us to try to understand. It’s for us to accept in our worship and prayer.

And before you say I think I know better than god, in reality I know better than the humans who made god up.

At some point, immanently I hope, you’ll realize how absurdly wrong you are about this. You have demons whispering lies into your ears, and you believe them unquestioningly. I know they make it feel good when you believe them, but they’re lying to you.

In the end it wasn’t Zeus who causes lightning, it is a build up of a difference in energy between clouds and the ground.

Comparing Zeus to God is far worse than apples and oranges, because at least apples and oranges are both fruits. It’s like comparing icebergs to smartphones. They have absolutely nothing whatsoever in common, to the point that it’s nonsensical to even try to compare them.

Let’s say you were to throw a basketball, and make a basket. Some scientists observe it, and say “That’s interesting. Let’s figure out what that’s all about.” So they observe you throwing the basketball. They measure your movements, the wind movements, the ball’s PSI, the height of the basket, the material compositions of the ball and basket, just all of it. And then they formulate a theory which postulates how the ball goes through the basket. And then people start to deny that you exist because they have the theory of how the basketball goes through the basket. The whole idea is absolutely ridiculous. God is in control, no matter what your demons tell you.

Not only is that not true [that the most intelligent scientists all believe in God] (because you added the “most intelligent” qualifier), but given that scientific literacy is correlated with atheism, I find it to be rather damning for religion:

First off, it’s self-evidently true, as anyone who denies God cannot be said to be very intelligent. I’m trying to word that so as not to offend you, and it’s hard. Sorry. My point here is not to insult you, but just to explain my statement about the most intelligent scientists.

Secondly, the scientific disciplines are certainly attractive to atheists who want to devote their lives to pretending that they’re disproving God by collecting the evidence of the basketball. So yes, atheists are more likely to become scientists than pastors. We don’t need to consult any studies to know that’s true.

Go for it! It’s pretty easy to play against others nowadays now that there are so many popular chess sites. chess.com and lichess are pretty decent.

Maybe eventually, but not today. I have too much else on my plate. But thank you for letting me know it’s easy to play online. That’s something I hadn’t considered.

But when they do that it doesn’t change the demand for nuclear fuel pellets. The demand is largely static, so in order to sell X more pellets, X pellets from other producers must go unsold/not made. Somebody else has to lose, which makes it a zero sum game.

The production of anything means it’s not zero-sum. Demand can expand and contract over time in any market, but that doesn’t matter. If you grow an apple or produce a nuclear fuel pellet, you add value to the economy. Now if there are multiple sellers competing, then it’ll drive down the price. But we’re not discussing prices here.

It does. Not everybody is an MIT grad or has the skills to be one, and yet you say that just anybody can compete with google. That is a contradiction.

It’s a matter of drive. Anyone can try to compete with Google. Someone must be adequately driven, and reasonably intelligent to succeed. But everyone who fails will gain the opportunities to build on those failures and start a more successful venture.

60% of the country cannot because they are living paycheck to paycheck and cannot afford it.

Again you can start a business for $0 or next to nothing.

Basically every other developed nation seems to think otherwise. For example, we are more or less the only one without universal healthcare, that’s what’s naive.

Why would we Americans care what other countries think? We’re blessed by God to be the greatest country on Earth. People flock from around the world to live here, and they want to so badly that they’re willing to become illegal just to live here. It’s very rare that you can find a principle applicable to other countries which also happens to be applicable to the US. If some other country wants to give out “free” ice cream to all of its citizens (in exchange, of course, for an obscenely high tax), they can have at it, for all we care.

literally just the basic necessitites, not cable. Etc.

My point was that it’s subjective what the “necessities” are. Some people like me will say it costs $0, while others may insist it’s a minimum of $250k. This is complicated by the fact that the dollar is worth dramatically different values in different parts of the country, a fact often ignored. Generally speaking it’s worth much less in urban areas.

Nobody can survive on $0. You need to have food water and shelter.

Again, grow your own food, haul your own water up from the stream, and build your own shelter out of logs you felled yourself. $0, just like our forefathers.

If it is unrealistic for everyone then it isn’t a reasonable answer to what the minimum wage should be.

Whoa, I thought we were discussing your notion of a “livable wage” as an abstract concept, but now you’re changing it to minimum wage. The concept of a minimum wage is evil for multiple reasons.

First and foremost, it’s a free country, and so we’re all allowed to negotiate our own terms of business. If I want to hire someone for $1 a day, and that person agrees to the compensation, it’s nobody else’s business. Not yours, not the government’s, nobody’s.

Secondly, minimum wages are absolutely disastrous for the economy, and that has been shown time and again. When you run a business, you have a certain budget to spend on compensation. Let’s say you want to hire two people to help you, and you can afford a maximum of $100 per day to hire them. That means you can pay them about $6 per hour maximum. Now some busybody steps in, and introduces an oppressive law that you have to pay more than $6. Well that sucks, doesn’t it. That means you can’t hire two people after all. You can still hire one person up to $12 per hour, but you’ll have to overwork him to produce the results of two workers. Meanwhile somebody else will be jobless. Now let’s say the busybody comes back and says $12 is still too low! Well fine, that means you can’t hire anyone at all. So now we have two people out of work who would have had jobs. And it also means you’ll need to find a robot that’s cheaper than $100 per day, because if you can’t then the busybody just drove you out of business.

The concept of minimum wage is un-American and downright evil.

Blaming individuals for the failures of a system, and suggesting individuals change to deal with that defect in the system is irrational.

What system? We’re all individuals.