Farming Bailouts and Subsidies

I have seen many an argument online about bailouts and various forms of government money to farmers of all kinds, in multiple countries. It has come up a lot recently, of course, but it's been argued about for years. A recent UK based news organization wrote about farmers who raise sheep making $0 in profit from their actual work, the money they get from government subsidies being the only reason they make money. A vegan complained today that without government subsidies, a big mac would cost $13. I've seen people argue against bailouts for farmers struggling due to the government imposed lockdown restrictions from the coronavirus, saying they should fail like any other capitalist business that "didn't control for risk".

There is a lot going on here, and I of course do not know everything about the inner workings of bailouts and subsidies for farmers, as I suspect basically no one does since it's bogged down to the depths of hell itself with regulations and red tape. Luckily, I don't need to know awfully too much to understand what the problems are, here.

Let's take things one step at a time. We'll start by establishing something important: most farmers do not sell most of their products directly to grocery stores. I qualify this only because there are certainly farmers who have taken it upon themselves to remove the insidious middleman from their work, usually in the form of farmer's markets (which are actually also not efficient in operation, but that's not relevant for this particular post). Nearly all products from farms are purchased from the farmers by packing and processing companies that operate entirely separately from the farm as their own business. They have contracts with the farmers or they buy livestock in a bidding system against other packers, etc., but they are a separate company from the farmer and they seek to buy low and sell high to their advantage, not the farmers'. Cow ranchers do not slaughter, butcher, package, and ship their cows to the store. They sell raw milk in a giant vat, unbagged truckloads of potatoes, and live chickens to the processors who then process these things into their various forms for shipment to grocery stores and restaurants.

This middleman system is, of course, rife with government interference. Packers want to buy the farmer's unprocessed resources for as low as possible and sell them for as much as possible. The processors are the ones who benefit from the supply and demand paradigm, while the farmers make dismal profits regardless of the issues plaguing the market. This was made offensively obvious by the government imposed coronavirus lockdowns that shut down restaurants, making packers unable to move products processed for restaurants and thus artificially reducing the "demand" for farmers' raw product.

What this meant is that while grocery store prices were skyrocketing and the news was flooded with meat shortage and food waste fearmongering, packers were buying low and selling high to a degree that was so intense that they're currently under investigation for price fixing. There was never a shortage of meat or food, there was a shortage of processing for that food, and regulations and red tape stopped farmers from selling their products road side. It's literally illegal to sell raw milk pretty much everywhere and farmers can't sell their any of their other products without them being inspected, which also requires labor and processing, which is where the shortage was.

The supply of raw product was high while the supply of labor to process that product was low resulting in an artificial lower demand for raw product. Government fees imposed on farmers made it cheaper for them to cull - that is, kill and discard - entire cows, pigs, and barns full of chickens than sell them to processors for multiple reasons, but one of the most disgusting reasons is that they pay fees when they sell those things. Packers creating less processed food meant the supply of that ready to buy food was lower, while the demand was skyrocketing. The packers made more money than they have made before, maybe ever, while farmers and consumers lost by and large. A proposal has been in congress far before the coronavirus related economic lockdown and never passed that seeks to reduce regulations to allow animal ranchers to sell their products without being legally required to submit to multiple inspections. Yet, even after this government bungle that caused farmers to suffer so much that many of them needed to sell their entire operations and change professions entirely to allow their families to survive, it has not even been voted on. We can see that our government, by and large, is uninterested in fixing this broken system.

Why is all of this important to mention? First of all, it shows that the imminent failure of farms that did not receive government aid would have been due to the government's interference in the first place. The fees and regulations imposed on farmers to sell the products they make don't exist because the farmers asked for them - it is because our food supply chain is tampered with by the government. The farmers pay fees to packers because the packers pay fees, like how Verizon is allowed to pass on their communications taxes to their customers. We do not actually live in a free market, the government actually controls our economy in many areas, but nowhere is this more painfully clear than in the agriculture business.

Secondly, it's important because it shows that the system from both ends is set up to the detriment of the farmer. The fact that they rarely process their own products and instead sell what they raise and grow to packers results in them making pennies to the dollar for what you buy your food for from the grocery store. There are many instances of farmers actually getting paid to reduce the product they create, or being reimbursed for wasted product - but not if they donate the product. The farmer, sometimes, cannot even try to make more money by producing more crops or producing more milk or animals as packers may not always be interested in buying it. The farmer is at the mercy of the packer's willingness to buy their products and is financially burdened by the government's red tape.

The entire system would have to be overhauled for farmers to start processing their own products for direct sale, including immense initial cost to the already struggling farmer to even get to that point. This is not the farmers' faults - this system arose originally because it seemed like a good idea. It allowed farmers to specialize in just growing the food while packers could specialize in just processing the food. This decent system became drenched in government regulations and now we are all trapped in the muck of this disaster. An overhaul of the system would severely disrupt the food chain, not to mention require intense cooperation from the government to loosen its vicegrip over our food.

There is another important thing to bring up that it seems many people are not aware of. Yet another government interference, the cost of food is artificially reduced by government subsidies. Kicking back to the vegan mad about big mac subsidies, without the government giving money to farmers, healthy food (which includes meat, regardless of what you've heard, but that's yet another post) would be nearly impossible for people to buy, especially with all the costs farmers pay to just grow their food. This is the food supply chain equivalent to getting a rebate for buying a phone, needing to pay upfront far more, but getting money back later. The farmers make next to nothing creating food, paying the government to sell their products, but then the government subsidizes them so that they can stay in business. People who lack the ability to process nuance see the farmers getting subsidies and think it means their business is not valuable since they could not operate without this government money, but they pass by the absurd number of roadblocks faced by farmers in the first place with their eyes closed.

Indeed, if nothing else changed about the cost of farming - the price of the land, the hundreds of thousands of dollars per machine required to plant, harvest, and milk, the labor and time investment - all food would be prohibitively expensive. The risk of the farming business is also unlike any other, since the farmer doesn't risk just regular business-related things like, say, a clothing shop does, but they are also at the mercy of environmental risk - an inland hurricane just destroyed one third of Iowa's crops. This is a risk unlike any other - it should not be surprising that the government has decided to step in to attempt to help food remain abundant and available for its citizens.

This is, clearly, a terrible system. It's held up by frayed strings and chewed bubble gum, but it's not the farmers' faults. It is absurd to tell all the lamb farms in the UK to close shop because their business is "not lucrative" - the government is regulating the cost of their products to the public so that they are "affordable" to people. If the farmers sold their products for an actual profit, everything would double, triple, or even quadruple in price. The reason they "only" make money because of government subsidies is because the government is limiting the profit they can make in the first place. Indeed, if sheep farmers could sell their products for the prices that their labor and effort demand, lamb would be a luxury food item like lobster or goose. Have you ever seen the price of a goose from the grocery store? They're 70+ dollars. For an amount of food the weight equivalent of two large chickens. How can they sell a goose for such a high amount of money, while a whole chicken is $5? The goose represents the market at work. Supply and demand - but most importantly, a lack of government subsidies for a food source not considered essential. This $70 goose represents the actual price of food in the current system.

I actually raise chickens for eggs and meat for personal use (you can read about that and related issues here). Considering the value they give as egg layers and the effort and cost that goes into keeping them safe and fed, $5 per chicken seems rather low. And yet, farmers make absurdly less than this per chicken due to the way the system is set up. The price of chickens is set in a bizarre way - farmers literally compete with one another, setting the initial price per chicken at something offensively low. This article cites 5 cents per pound. An uncooked grocery store chicken is usually $1.50 per pound, or $.99 per pound if you catch a good sale or go to a wholesaler warehouse. The starting price, for the farmer, is about 25 - 35 cents per entire chicken. The farmers compete to raise the fattest chickens, the "winners" with the fattest chickens getting 50% more per pound - so 7.5 cents instead of 5 cents, or 37 to close to 50 cents per chicken. Now, of course they are selling tens of thousands of chickens, so they make thousands of dollars at a time, and there is of course far more to it than this simplified explanation.

The point to be made here, though, is that the $5+ you pay for a chicken goes almost exclusively into the pockets of the store and the packers and does not represent anywhere close to the profit the farmer made growing that chicken. A farmer, thus, would actually make more than double they make with this system if people could go to their farms and pay $1 for a live chicken. My chickens are worth so much more than $1 each, so I can tell you personally that the price being paid to farmers per chicken is criminal. Unfortunately, with this system, there is little recourse - the packers and grocers want to make money, too, and they do so to the detriment of the farmer who did the most important work. People are squeamish at the idea of processing their own chicken. But imagine if a farmer could simply invest in a small processing center and sell a couple dozen chickens from the farm itself for the same price you buy one at the grocery store? Their profits skyrocket compared to what they make now - the profits per chicken would be thirty times their current profits and the price you pay doesn't even increase. Why wouldn't we support such a change to the system?

People want to cry that we need affordable - or even free! - food for everyone, but then they get angry when they find out "the government is bailing out farmers!" Farming is a business, but it's of unimaginable importance. If the government is going to do anything useful at all, enabling farmers to stay in business so that we do not all literally starve to death sounds like an okay deal. They caused this problem in the first place, of course, but fixing this broken system is untying a Gordian knot. You can either work piece by piece to dismantle a system so convoluted and needlessly complicated for years, ensuring that people are fed in the process, or you can cut through the knot with a blade - likely causing disruptions so severe that food shortages we've seen from the pandemic related government mandated economic shutdowns wouldn't even compare.

Of course, it is much more likely that our government will do neither, and simply allow the Gordian knot of overregulated nonsense to persist, simply band-aiding the system by paying off whoever they can to keep things afloat. Unfortunately, it's more likely than ever that the precarious house of cards will simply collapse on its own one day, which is not good news for anyone. Arguments about government bailouts are well and good, except people seem to forget they rely on farmers to survive. We cannot look at farming as "just any other business," unless your actual stance is that you are a-okay with millions of people in civilized, industrial society dying of starvation. We are at the mercy of this sprawling government-created hellscape until people start wising up - which could very well be never, and with the government content to leave the barricades in place, even the collective awakening of society may not be quite enough.

Boys and Girls Are Different

One day I read an article that proclaimed studies showing biological differences between men and women's brains fully and completely are entirely wrong and all differences can be attributed to social constructs, due to the brain's plasticity. I did not save a link to the article and for my life I cannot find it. I wrote a rough draft rebuttal, but it seems silly to rebut an article that no one can read. I've taken the concepts from the rough draft and written about them separately, removing the context of a rebuttal of the article that doesn't exist, using instead new sources and articles that talk about close-enough concepts. (Edit: By the time I got to the very end of writing this, I found an article that discusses very closely what I found in the original article. I will not be editing the first half since I literally just did that, and instead I will declare at the end when the rebut to the newly discovered article begins.)

The first debated concept here is that the mystery article declared there to be no differences between male and female newborn brains. The only reputable evidence I've found in this debate is a study showing that brain scans show no difference between boy and girl brains while doing math, which studied children of various ages, so this is unrelated to infants. Funnily enough, I can find no claims that infant brains have no sex differences, but a lot of research that they do.

According to what I originally wrote, the article attributed all gender differences for children as young as 0 years old to the way their caretakers treated them, establishing immediately their "socially constructed gender". It seems a little self-indulgent to rebut this when I can't find a single study, or even hyper-progressive op-ed, saying this. Instead I suppose I'll focus on the conclusions drawn by the math study.

The brain scan math study summarized shows that all children used the same parts of their brain to process math. Everything from the development of the brain in regards to math skills to the actual application of math skills from those same children doing math tests showed no significant differences in children's ability to do math. Great! I have no issues with that. I'm not a brain scientist and I've never looked at a child's brain scan.

The problem starts when the article starts to conclude that, due to there being no inherent, physically measurable difference between boys and girls in math studies, it means the disparity between men and women who enter the STEM fields must be attributable to some other factor, likely a societal factor.

It rules out the hypothesis that more males end up in STEM-related careers because they're somehow better at the maths required in some of those fields. Something else must be going on: for example, preconceived ideas about the jobs men and women should go into.

What I'm sick to death of is the incessant demanding that women are not as represented in traditionally male dominated fields simply because of "social constructs" and discrimination. I'll regale everyone with a quick personal anecdote: I was very much into biology, zoology, and science in general when I was young. My class choices reflected this as I progressed through high school - I took two science classes every year, even up to chemistry and physics. I, however, hated math, and slowly realized that I'd have to do a lot of math to be a scientist. I got turned off from the concept of becoming some kind of scientist and eventually lost interest in schooling altogether.

At no point did I feel discriminated against and pushed against in my interests by any of my friends, family, or teachers. Everyone was quite psyched I wanted to be a scientist. My loss of passion and interest was my own doing. I didn't like math. It doesn't matter if my brain does everything the same as men's brains because there is a factor without a physically measurable number - what people want to do. The conclusion that, perhaps, women don't want to go into STEM is never mentioned by these types of studies. This was 15-25 years ago, back before Y2K, that I was interested in animals and zoology. My mom got me scientific books. I read nonfiction books about animals as a hobby. I was always considered "smart" and everyone imaginable gave me their enthusiastic support. Everyone was very "progressive" and knew I could "do anything I wanted". If I ever once heard that I couldn't do something because I was a girl, I don't even remember it. My story cannot be attributed to gender based discrimination.

Of course, it's impossible to know if my anecdotal experience is typical or an exception. I just know that I was a poster child for "getting girls into STEM" and boy did I totally not at all get into STEM. I don't like math. Perhaps of interesting note, my mother didn't like math either. She was in college for psychology when I was in high school and studied endlessly to pass her math class with an acceptable grade in order to retain her scholarships. She succeeded and was able to keep her high marks in math to keep her scholarship - but she hated it. It doesn't matter if she could do it, if her brain was the same, she hated it! Personal preferences are real, and could very well be influenced biologically by our sex! Imagine it. But this concept makes progressives froth at the mouth - that there could be gender preference differences, especially ones that can't be measured by brain scans.

The original, missing article focused a good portion on "toy preferences", as many progressives try to do. They attributed the provable fact that girls and boys prefer different toys to that fabled "differing treatment by their caretakers as infants" that I can't find a single study or article claiming. The argument about toy preferences has been quite thoroughly put to rest and there is actually little point in me going on about it. I have found an article showing that monkeys even show gendered toy preferences. It's impossible to attribute this to socialization and it's more clear than ever that it's biological.

So what are the implications of gendered toy preferences being real? It's almost like there are distinct differences between male and female humans, and once again it has to do with preferences. Can we really not, as a supposedly enlightened society, see something like toy choice preference and extrapolate it to job choice preference? Play is how we learn, after all. Funnily enough, I never played with dolls, but not because I didn't choose them. My mother actually explicitly trained me to not play with dolls. They were quite literally forbidden, and if I ever got one from an unknowing school friend who didn't know any better (mostly because I barely had any friends and tended to invite people I realistically barely knew to my parties), it was confiscated. For awhile as a child, I mimicked my mother's severe dislike for these dolls, confidently proclaiming that I hated them - and she would proudly share how much I despised those unrealistic barbies. However, my neighbor who remained my friend for many years had lots of dolls. With well off parents, she had huge collections of barbie doll houses and miniature clothes and furniture and kitchen tools. I always told her I never wanted to play with them, but I was so often tempted by them. I was a decently obedient child and knew I wasn't allowed, so I declined to play with them.

Regardless of the fact that my mother trained me to hate dolls and disallowed me from owning any, I wanted to play with them. Even now, while obviously I don't buy dolls for myself, I look at things like Calico Critters and think that it sure would be fun to have a little girl. I would get her so many tiny little dollhouse toys. They are absolutely precious and my innate female biological differences overrode my mother's intense social training that she began when I was a baby. I am but one person, but I cannot imagine I'm the only one with a story like this.

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By the time I nearly finished this entire post, I found an article that supposes exactly the same concept as the original article I couldn't find. If you read the "edit" at the very beginning of this post, you'll know what's up. This post is far more charitable than the original article I had found, and I will now discuss it at length.

This article focuses a lot on physical development and tries to prove that girls doing things like maintaining eye contact and walking later than boys is due to caretaker treatment. This article is clearly biased, and while that's not explicitly wrong, I want to ensure we are all aware. The article contains this excerpt after the introduction:

Seeing my son’s rambunctiousness as God’s plan and buying a “Tough like Daddy” T-shirt sounded much more pleasant than scrutinizing my own behavior and engaging in hard conversations about gender. But I couldn’t gulp down the pink and blue Kool-Aid just yet. After all, my sample size of two clearly lacked scientific rigor. So I started reading.

What we have here is someone who is allowing the truth they want to influence their research into what is the truth. This person explicitly searched for research that supported their conclusion. While it doesn't mean their research is automatically disqualified, it means that this person found research supporting the conclusion they didn't want - twice! - and disregarded it until they found research that concluded what they did want. Indeed, the author presents both sides as "theories" in the article and then ends their article clearly showing their favor for the theory they liked the most. This is a common behavior of people and it is important to take note of it. We should try to accept when research comes into view that casts doubt upon our desired conclusions, which is exactly why I now believe in biological gender differences, because I used to be on board with the author of this linked post. Surely no one should be surprised that a mother who explicitly banned me from playing with dolls also socialized me with the idea that "girls can (and should) do anything boys can do". She was, in fact, a modern feminist, and I believed what she taught me until well into my 20s.

The article goes on to say, in slightly more charitable terms than the mystery article I originally wrote about, that it's "not easy" to tell whether eventual gendered differences in adults are due to biological sex or due to the treatment we endure as children due to our sex. This article postulates the same idea that there are "no differences" between infant boys and girls and that the differences that appear are due to biased treatment based on biological sex as soon as they are born, though it correctly refers to this concept as a theory.

I am not a scientist, though maybe I thought I would be one day, but I have an important piece of scientific information that I never see mentioned by these "no differences in infants" articles. Baby girls and boys both have intense amounts of their mother's hormones in their bodies when they are in the womb and soon after birth. In fact, this quick explanation says that it may take over two months for the mother's hormones to stop affecting the baby. Lo and behold, the "no differences in newborns" article denotes differences beginning to start around four months old, after these infants start reliably regulating their own hormones. Is this the end all be all to this discussion? No, of course not. But I personally feel like it's a little important and I find it odd that it is not considered by these studies. The best we get is that the scientists who want "all differences are social" to be true have "questioned how much these hormonal differences matter". How convincing.

Of course, there is a lot deeper of a rabbit hole to go into over hormones, like how transsexual brains start to scan as the gender they are assuming after so long on hormone treatment, let alone the fact that those hormones alter their physical appearance. We don't know everything there is to know, surely, but I find it difficult to dismiss the mother's pregnancy hormones entirely in light of all of the other things we know about how strongly hormones can change our bodies and behaviors. Hormones seem to matter or not when it's convenient, which is something anyone interested in the pursuit of genuine truth absent of ideological opinions should care about.

Very interestingly to me, I had mentioned that the original article I found "mentioned no studies or sources to back up their claim". This article, however, does! What a joy. The mere mention of the articles is helpful, but unfortunately none of them are sourced. We can't know the manner in which these studies were conducted that claim that, for example, mothers interact less with their male infants. I question this profusely, as I can't see a reality in which they could get away with that. Infants need constant attention, how are they interacting less with them? Are mothers really just tossing their male infants aside and ignoring them because they are boys? Who can know without a link to the study.

I have two personal anecdotes this time. My father, overall a good man with faults like any other human, treated me and my brother quite the same. When I say this, I mean that even in spite of me being four years younger than my brother, he still did something like take both of us on top of the garage roof to sit and watch the stars at night - when I was a toddler. What comes next may surprise you, because it's the opposite of the first two anecdotes - I was a very reckless, active child and still love getting dirty and "playing" outside today, though I try to do so constructively. In fact, without even knowing that I went on top of the garage roof as a toddler, I spent many of my childhood years finding things to use to climb up onto the garage roof in order to jump off of it over and over, for fun. I climbed trees and trounced through the woods, dug holes and collected bugs in buckets. I was always a "tomboy" in fact, and along with everything else revealed here, I followed behind my brother in a lot of hobbies, one of which was video games. I had few female friends as a child and was teased for these "boy activities" - though being interested in zoology wasn't one of them. Perhaps since I had so many easier attributes to target than being a science nerd, no one bothered to try very hard when they teased me. Who knows.

This seems to go against my overall theme, here, you might be wondering. Clearly I'm advocating for societal treatment influencing physical development and interest in physical activity with this anecdote, you say. Before we get into that, my second anecdote. The second has to do with this excerpt in particular:

In other words, when we tell little girls to “be careful” but comment, “What a boy!” when our sons attempt the same feat, the stereotype becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

I actually have two boys, you see, and they were very early physical developers. I don't have a daughter to compare them to, but bear with me. My eldest rolled over for the first time at two months old, both of them began crawling by four months, and the eldest began walking at nine months, while the youngest at one year. The first born son, here, clearly developed physically much faster than his brother. Now, let me assure you, when my children do things like jump off the couch or try to climb up the shelves on their wall, the first thing out of my mouth is not "haha how funny you crazy boys" but "for the love of all that is good and righteous in this world be CAREFUL!" I have never encouraged reckless physical activity because I am actually scared to death of "freak accidents" where my children are inexplicably killed dead on the spot by breaking their neck, for example.

The eldest boy, with much sooner physical development accomplishments, is much more cautious than his younger brother. The baby boy will dash headlong into danger and enthusiastically agree to any sort of adventure. I have treated both with the same emphasis on taking care when existing actively in the world, including not running on asphalt and being slow while walking up stairs. I am more strict with the youngest child, as he wants to do everything his older brother does and I intentionally hold him back or force him to let me help him because I naturally think he's not as capable, being younger. Intentionally held back and not as physically advanced as his brother, the youngest one is still the most reckless and wild. This clear and distinct difference between two children close in age who were raised in the same house by the same parents and in the same manner seems to hint that socialization may not be as powerful a tool as we believe.

What these examples shows, I will admit firstly, is that gender differences can obviously not account for everything. Not every boy is reckless (my eldest son is quite careful) and not every girl is afraid of bugs (I collected them by hand in a bucket). Many of our individual differences can be attributed to the fact that we are all individuals and not all of us will fit into the box. The problem exists when you try to remove the boxes entirely, as if they have no validity. Clearly a gendered propensity toward certain choices exists. It does not need to apply with 100% accuracy to be acknowledged, but it also does not need to be disposed of entirely just because it's not 100% accurate. Why is it important at all, you may ask, if at the end of the day, people's choices are going to be affected by who they are and what they prefer?

It matters for a very simple reason - we cannot keep fighting an imaginary enemy. There is nothing within society or law that is "keeping women out of STEM" and there is no gross violation of women's rights by the fact that by and large, women are happier when they raise families. Countries with more freedom - not necessarily as dictated by law, but affected by things like financial security (removing the need to be employed) or plenty of job options - by and large find fewer women in STEM jobs. The article provides its own conclusions, but I won't be taking the time to get into them here because I've gone on long enough. Suffice to say, absent of various types of pressure to get well paying jobs, women who get to choose what they want to do tend to not choose STEM. When you attempt to legislate that this difference shouldn't exist by disproportionately coercing, propagandizing, or incentivizing women into jobs they would ultimately not choose without such measures, what do you gain? People who are ultimately less happy.

Indeed, in light of the government interference in our economy and societal structures due to the coronavirus, we are seeing articles proclaim that we're "setting gender equality back by decades" because women are being forced by government interference to stay home with their kids to educate them due to school shutdowns. Women are "being forced" out of the workforce to care for their children. This is inexplicably considered a bad thing, that more women being home with their kids is innately bad, and that gender equality is being ruined by it. While there's a whole wasp's nest of things to talk about within this concept, the point I'd like to focus on is that op-ed writers and progressive thinktanks see women staying home with their children as bad. Talk about "social constructs" - how many women angry about caring for their own children are just as much victims of social conditioning as a girl who thinks she is genderly-disadvantaged at math? Can we not see how vehement denial of naturally occurring happenstance can "condition" just as much as anything else? Can we not see how someone may be hit over the head with the idea that something is bad for so long that they go along with it, afraid to ever admit that maybe they feel differently deep inside?

These "boxes" are important because progressive policy and culture has inadvertently forced the boxes to become relevant by trying to force the boxes to go away. How ironic, really. Let people sit in the box if they want and stop trying to guilt girls into thinking they're letting all of humanity down because they wanted to stay home with their kids. We shouldn't tell them they can't be scientists, either, but we can't immediately blame that boogieman sexism each time a girl decides otherwise. If you tried to force me into STEM now, I'd physically fight you to avoid it, and that's my choice.

Dissecting an Argument for Biblical Fallibility

I found a post that makes the claim and several arguments against the concept of biblical inerrancy. I am perhaps a little heavy on the rebuttals in this post and considered not linking to the original post as to avoid potential offense to the author of the post. I decided, ultimately, to include it, so as to allow the original poster their "fair shot" by allowing people reading this to read the original post, and to allow readers to know certainly that I did not make up these arguments.

The concept of biblical inerrancy is quite simple: the bible is the perfect word of God and nothing in it is wrong. People often try to claim there are errors in the bible by pointing out "contradictions", but research shows all of these contradictions to be conclusions forced by people seeking to discredit the bible and not actual contradictions. This person takes a different route and, from the perspective of a believer in Jesus, tries to argue against biblical inerrancy, for some reason. Here are his arguments and subsequent rebuttals.

1. The opposition argues that "trusting in the bible despite its errors" is actually faith. The comparison this person attempts to make is by comparing it to trusting his mother who correctly told him that he could be hit by a car while crossing the street, despite his mother's fallibility. This argument attempts to say that he trusts his mother, even if she does make errors sometimes, because she is right about other things.


A. The issue most glaring here is that the two things are not comparable - a fallible human whose ideas, opinions, and knowledge can dynamically change is not the same thing as the unchanging word of God. I would graciously assume that the opposition here was not actually trying to compare his mother to literally God, as if God himself could make mistakes in His word through the bible, but rather a new take on the "people wrote the bible" argument, where someone like his mother could perhaps write a book that may contain errors because she is fallible. Furthermore, this argument would then logically follow that this person believes everything the bible says that he cannot otherwise prove to be wrong, but simply believes it still could be wrong, which does not seem like "faith" to me.

The other problem here is we can physically prove in the material world many claims such as "if you walk in the street without looking, you could get hit by a car". We cannot prove one way or another what God's commandments are or that a man living over 2000 years ago told us what they are - we can only ever know these things by having them told to us through something like the bible. If your mother tells you an incorrect piece of information regarding the world around you, chances are you can test it to find the true answer. If any statements in the bible were actually wrong in regards to metaphysical reality, we could not possibly know, because we cannot test metaphysical reality. To continue to believe in the possibility of the fault of these claims is definitionally not faith, as (Hebrews 11:1) Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. Being convicted about the truth of things you cannot prove is literally faith - to do the opposite cannot also be faith, thus the original argument here is nonsense.

The bible as a whole in every aspect and claimed truth must be trustworthy for it to be worth following at all. We find that trust and faith in the fact that there is a perfect God who intentionally had His word documented in perfect form. If any part of the bible is wrong, then the entire thing cannot be trusted, as there is absolutely no way to prove that Jesus was God in the flesh. The entirety of the historical events that took place within the bible could all be 100% true without Jesus being God in the flesh, but we have absolutely no way to prove it beyond the historical testimony left to us through the books that make up the bible and the logical arguments and conclusions that follow from this evidence. Without the bible to start with, we have no logical arguments or conclusions through which to base our faith in Jesus as God in the flesh.

2. The opposition posits the theory that it requires more faith to believe that the bible is fallible than it does to believe that the bible is infallible.

A. This statement is so absurd, honestly, that I barely know where to start beyond mocking it. The bible contains so many stories - documented as true, historical events - that are literally impossible to have happened without miracle work from God. To believe that it's possible that Noah's or Jonah's stories are fabricated myths is to explicitly weaken your faith in God's unfathomable control and power. Believing a man lived in a whale for 72 hours requires nothing short of immense faith in God to be able to perform such feats that sit directly opposed to everything we know about what stomachs are. To believe it's possible that any given story or statement in the bible is outright false brings what can only be described as doubt upon every metaphysical claim, every spiritual claim in the bible. If God can't keep a man alive in a whale for 72 hours, He very well isn't the God described in the bible, and this casts doubt on every claim made about God thereafter. Doubt, being the opposite of faith, means that this claim is simply the biggest cope I've ever read.

3a. The opposition quotes this verse in 1 Corinthians 13:12 - "For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known." The opposition abuses this verse to contest that Paul is explicitly stating that his knowledge of the things he wrote that became part of the bible was flawed.

A. This verse is taken out of context. Paul is speaking in 1 Corinthians 13 to the people of Corinth who are taking too much pride in their knowledge and prophesy but are forgetting the commandments that Jesus gave to us - "And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ The second is this: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these." The people of Corinth are favoring works that are not valuable, because in eternity they will "pass away". The knowledge we have now will seem childish to us then, as compared to the way we understood the world when we were children to the way we understand things now. But love will not devalue in eternity, the charity we show and the love we show one another will be as valuable in eternity as it is now, and thus the investment in such things as prophesy and tongues is "childish", so to speak.

Now that we actually know what's going on in this verse, we can address if Paul is actually saying his personal testimonies written in the books that became the bible was flawed. The answer is no, we cannot rightfully extrapolate the idea that what Paul wrote into the bible was flawed because he said that his knowledge as a whole concept, constricted by earthly limitations, was not complete like it will be in heaven. It's not a conclusion that flows from this verse - we would have to be assuming that Paul is confessing literally everything he has ever said is false, at least to some degree. Paul clearly knew of and spoke of things other than what showed up in the bible, and obviously not everything he ever said was correct, but the argument that because Paul confessed to have his understanding of everything limited by his flesh (which we should have already known), that means everything he wrote in the bible could be erroneous, ignores what the bible is and how it came to be.

Obviously Paul was not all-knowing, but we have faith in the inerrancy of the bible in spite of the fact that the people who wrote it were flawed. We know they willingly and faithfully allowed God to use them to write down His word, God knowing what would become of those writings, and that we would use it today to know what God had to say. Indeed, this reads as a slightly different version of, yet again, "the bible was written by fallible humans" argument. How exhausting. No one ever claimed Paul was perfect, just that what he wrote in the bible was guided and inspired by God. This argument is honestly so draining. We never justified the inerrancy of the bible by proclaiming that the people who wrote it were perfect, nor did we ever say that everything they ever said was inerrant. Paul wrote and spoke, surely, a huge number of things throughout his lifetime, but none of the attributes of anything Paul did or said that did not make it into the bible affect the accuracy of the things he wrote that did make it into the bible.

3b. This argument further states that, somehow,  by writing this, Paul is implying that to trust his writings is some sort of pompous faithlessness. The opposition goes on to restate his absurd claim that certainty in the bible is faithlessness based on this assumption he has made that Paul was saying that.

A. We are to trust and be faithful to the Lord. The scriptures are God-breathed, (more on this later) which means they are from God, who used humans for His purposes. Paul was a Christian killer who got blinded for three days by a flaming bush on a road, did he have a certainty that God was real? Is he suddenly a faithless man for being so thoroughly and unshakably convicted by God's truth? Do we lack faith when we could absolutely never be shaken from our belief in God? No, this is literally faith, to believe that God is powerful and trustworthy enough to deliver His word to us. We trust in the unseen God who said to us that He gave us the Bible. I trust him on that, because I have faith, not in spite of it. Paul trusted God to be able to inspire him to write perfect, inspired letters that reflected God's perfect truth and perfect will. Paul, despite being flawed, had faith in God so strong that he knew he could trust Him to guide him in his letters to other believers on how to properly follow God's commandments. I have no doubt that Paul was inspired by God and to cast doubt on that is to be faithless in God's ability to do as He pleases and use the people called to His purposes.

I do not believe everything I've ever written or said is inspired by God, but curiously, there have been times when I've written about scripture or biblical truths and suddenly felt "This is forced. Something is wrong." and erased entire paragraphs. I trust God to lead me to write truth and I trust that when, in my brokenness and fallibility as a person, I write something uninspired, God lets me know. God knew very well that what Paul would write would wind up in His word to be read for the next rest of existence, so I can only imagine that God really let Paul know when He didn't like something he wrote. To believe otherwise is, frankly, disgusting. This doubt in God's sovereignty is absolutely wild.

"But...", you say, "Paul could have, in his fallibility, ignored those feelings that "this is wrong" and chose not to omit faulty instruction!" Surely, people often ignore obvious hints from God. But many do not, and people who dedicate themselves fully to God, believing unwaveringly in Him and His power, would not dare to ignore when the spirit convicts them. These people have given up themselves and live for God and His purposes. I am not saying this describes me, but it almost certainly describes Paul. God explicitly chose him out of extraordinary circumstances, knowing what he would do and what he would write. You can't get any more chosen by God than being blinded by a spontaneously combusted bush on your way to kill some Christians and being miraculously converted to follow the God you've been staunchly opposed to your whole life. Doubt in Paul is doubt in God.

4. The opposition argues that "the scriptures are God-breathed" is not a testimony to the accuracy of the bible because Adam and Eve were God-breathed and were not perfect, and thus concludes that no things are perfect. He further states "God did not call His creations perfect, He called them good". He argues that God is the only perfect thing and nothing else can be perfect, thus the scriptures cannot be perfect and therefore must necessarily be flawed.


A. This seems believable at first, but it's sophistry, as several of the premises are false. Let me clear this up real quick: God-breathed means from God, not perfect. This applies differently to humans, who can take actions, than it does to words, which do not do anything. If the scriptures are from God, it means it's God's word. Humans are from God, meaning we were created in His image and likeness and for His purposes. If we had been God-breathed and then took no other actions, we would still be perfect, but we are not because we used our gift of free will from God to sin. The scriptures don't have free will because they are words, so they still exist exactly as God created them (through the humans He used to write them).

Furthermore, the claim that the only perfect thing is God is also actually wrong. The reason is very simple: to say that nothing could be perfect except for God actually puts a limitation on God, as it necessitates that God could not create something perfect. Perfect things that are not God must be able to exist, even if the only perfect things that exist are created by God. Whether or not anything else perfect exists may be up for debate, but you cannot posit that "no perfect things aside from God can exist" since even if no perfect things could exist without God's intervention, God can do anything and thus could create something perfect.

What does it mean for something to be perfect? Perfect things are not God, they are not all-powerful, eternal, or any of attributes of God. "Perfect" and "God" are not synonyms - perfect is merely a word among many that describes God. God created exactly specifically and perfectly precisely what He intended to create. To call God's creation not perfect misunderstands what is meant by perfection. You could, for example, bake the perfect cake. You could grow a perfect melon. You could say something perfect, at the perfect time. This is possible because things that are perfect are perfect within the understanding of that thing. It simply means that nothing else, given the circumstances, function, purpose, and other attributes of that thing, could have been better. The perfect thing to say in a particular moment could be devastating at a different time. What makes a melon perfect would make a terrible banana. Indeed, a perfect cake would make a poor meatloaf. "Perfection" is not limited to God, it's simply one of the many things God is, and it exists as a concept apart from God.

Furthermore, perfect is used in the bible many times, and not only to describe God. In fact, we are called to "...be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect." (Matthew 5:48) but we could not be God. Indeed, trying to be God is what got us in this big mess in the first place. (Genesis 3:5 [satan speaking] "For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.")


5.The opposition claims that desiring inerrancy is reflective of "a need for control".

A. This is yet another claim so absurd it's difficult to explain why without being rude. The conclusion here that "believing biblical inerrancy results from a need for control" rests in, I'm guessing, a thought process that believes that the opposite - believing in fallibility - results in a lack of ability to have control, and thus people who do not wish to lack an ability to be in control believe in inerrancy as a means to retain the ability to be in control, and not for virtuous reasons. This is absurd, because the bible itself actually tells us to relinquish control to God. To believe that this statement in the bible is infallible, and thus must be obeyed, immediately destroys the argument that we would be believing in inerrancy in order to seek control. Believing in inerrancy necessitates giving up control, since it's the bible that tells us this.

What I truly believe the opposition did here was misunderstand and confuse the concepts of "control" versus "certainty". Accepting biblical inerrancy removes much uncertainty from our lives. Believing the bible is true in entirety gives us a firm foundation and allows us to rest easy in God's promise, because we have faith that everything we have been told is accurate. Indeed, these benefits are described in the bible itself as bonuses that followers of Jesus enjoy for our faithfulness. Believing that the bible is fallible makes us no better off than unbelievers, since we can never be sure of anything. This has nothing to do with control and has everything to do with peace of mind. We do not have "control" for our full and unwavering faith in the word of God, we have "peace beyond all understanding" (Philipians 4:7).

If the bible could be wrong, there is no peace beyond all understanding, since any given part of it could be wrong, including that God loves us, or even that He is real, let alone that Jesus died for our sins so we could be spared from eternal suffering. Being unable to be confident that God gave us a way out of death - unfathomable, never-ending torture - is exactly the life I led when I was an atheist. Constant and unshakable existential dread and knowledge of my unavoidable fate to one day die resulted in substance abuse, depression, an unbreakable habit of self-sabotage, and often a feeling I can only describe as a void opening up in the pit of my stomach, slowly expanding to absorb my entire being until I broke down into uncontrollable tears regularly. How do you separate the believer from the unbeliever if neither can rest easy in God's promises? Doubt on any part of God's word brings doubt to the whole, which includes big ticket items like God's love and mercy.

We can have certainty and fully lack control. Indeed, believing in the word of God through the bible results in an understanding that we lack control and are subject to horrible suffering at the hands of this broken world, but it allows us to rest easy in spite of this.

Indeed, the most charitable understanding of this argument I could make is that the opposition completely misunderstands the concept of "control". Barring that, this argument is simply nonsensical, claiming that we make an idol out of the bible itself instead of "simply trusting God", as if we could trust God without knowing anything about Him. We need the bible to have faith in God, or else we have zero evidence of Him or His promises. It is possible to worship the bible as an idol, but that is... not what this is. Without the bible there is no litmus test, just our own fallible brains believing we hear and feel God when, perhaps, we do not. We require a standard to test against when we believe we are being led by the spirit, and that test is the bible. Without being able to trust that the bible tells us the truth, we have no standard, no foundation upon which to trust. Without the word of God, we have only hearsay from humans just as fallible as the ones who wrote the bible to begin with. There is no virtue in dismissing the bible as possibly faulty because it was written by humans in favor of believing the whims and inklings of yet other humans.

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In conclusion, it turns out most arguments against inerrancy are just new and unique methods of finding ways to say "the people who wrote the bible were fallible". Following that, we had two arguments that required the full and complete misunderstanding of the definition of words in order to work.

We must always remember God's sovereignty and complete and total power over everything across dimensions, including through time, and we simply must stop making silly conclusions that ignore obvious facts, like that God knew what books would end up in the bible and it is entirely within the scope of His abilities to ensure that everything He wanted us to know would end up inside it.

Families Are Not Proof of Concept for Government Systems

I have often seen arguments from socialists that revolve around the concept of a family utilizing "socialism" to operate. The conclusions pushed change depending on what argument the person is trying to make, but ultimately, the concept is that, because families support one another by giving each other money and labor so that they all survive and benefit, this is basically socialism. I have seen the conclusion that we can't be against socialism as a government system if we "utilize socialism" in our family unit, the conclusion that socialism works on a large scale because of the success of the "socialist family unit", and many more.

Today, I saw the "family argument" in another light, from someone who is staunchly opposed to authoritarianism. This person argued that tyranny is ingrained so deeply in common people and parents that people do not question this materialization of authoritarianism within their own families, especially in regards to punishments toward children. There are many people who will die on the hill of whether spanking, shaming, or other punishments many argue to be too harsh are acceptable or not, but my point here is that this is the first time I saw what is basically the "is spanking acceptable" argument phrased in a way that insisted societal utilization and acceptance of authoritarianism is reflected in it.

The problem with both of these arguments, and any other "family argument" that I may ever see, is that the form and function of the family unit both does not reflect, and is not proof of concept for, any government system or operation. The fallacy is easy enough to see, and yet people still attempt to extrapolate "family -> society as a whole" constantly.

The first and foremost most important issue, and easily the only one that really needs to be said, with the family argument is that the government does not love you. The people in power over any number of other people are not invested emotionally in the happiness and success of their people. The guise of love, or at least concern, may appear, but it is merely the costume put upon the fact that the government needs its people to succeed. If there are no people, there is no state, and there is no one to rule over. People are required to labor for any value to come from the society in question. The government is against large swatches of their population dying, under normal circumstances, only because of "human capital". In democratic societies, the voter base for whichever politician in question is in power is important to that politician, only because they require those votes to remain in power.

This undercuts any "family argument" from either side of the spectrum. A parent who punishes their child (usually) does so out of the desire for them to grow up as a functional adult who understands right from wrong and understands the concept of consequences for their actions. This is love from the parent's side, as (the majority of) parents are not merely concerned with their child growing up to be productive and wealthy, but understands that failure to recognize that actions have consequences will more than likely lead that child to poor experiences in their adult lives. Which punishments are good or bad is - for better or for worse - going to be discerned by the parent in question, and their competence in choosing effective, fair punishments may not be the best. They may not understand that the punishment they have chosen is not actually "rehabilitating" their child, but the intentions of the parent and the intentions of the state are too far removed from each other to make this argument work. Governments and parents both suffer the same potential incompetencies in deciding the punishments of those who they have judged to be at fault, but the state does not love the person they have determined to be guilty and the state does not much care for the result of that person's life. They are unforgiving and unloving in their punishments, while the parent (ideally) truly seeks what is best for their child.

On the exact opposite of the spectrum, the family unit that shares wealth and labor does so out of love for each other and a desire for the people they love to prosper and be happy. The family will utilize the resources they have for the betterment of the family, and they may have to make tough financial decisions that not everyone is thrilled with if they lack the funds to provide everything desired. The attempt to attribute this concept to a socialist government fails horribly at this last point. Surely, we see few differences between a socialist government with plenty of money and a family unit, but what happens when the funds start to run thin? We have governments deciding that people are not worth the money to keep alive in hospitals, so far as not even allowing them to travel to a hospital in another country, even if that country has agreed to care for that patient. No parent would ever simply give up on their child, as we see here in these very examples. The NHS said they could not possibly provide anymore help to these children, so the parents sought to move entirely to another country to find the help they needed, and the socialist healthcare system of the UK explicitly disallowed them to do so. We see that the socialist government will sacrifice the weakest ones to save money, even when other options are available. People will spend years, even their entire lives, caring for their families, doing whatever it takes, including going into bankruptcy, to do so. The government does not love you and will let you die if you are too inconvenient. This attempt at extrapolation simply does not work.

There are many other reasons why the family argument does not work, but this is easily the strongest and most easily applicable to any argument that comes up. Further reasons the family unit cannot be extrapolated to government is because the family unit lives within the government - or in the case of a lack of a government, exists independently from the government, the family unit is far smaller than any given state or country, the family unit is a functionally necessary concept, and finally, the family unit cannot be absolved or overthrown. The family unit is not chosen and it exists for a different purpose than the government. A king can argue to have been born with the right to rule, but this is merely traditional, arbitrary nonsense. A president may be voted for, but then he may lose his position later after another vote. Even in the case of adoption, the person who birthed you is your mother and will always be and there is absolutely no possible way this can change. Family units are diverse in good and bad ways, but the weave that creates and holds them is cut from a different fabric than what creates a government. We cannot extrapolate "mother" into "president" - they are vast worlds different from one another.

Equality of Opportunity

Today a popular account I see often via accounts I follow argued that equality of opportunity and equality of outcome require the exact same regulations and produce the exact same results. The argument was that, more or less, that equality of outcome requires equal representation of various types of people within the workforce, and equality of opportunity in practice requires the exact same thing.

The comments go on, with one person clarifying that that's not actually what equality of opportunity is. One commenter correctly defines equality of opportunity as not being denied an opportunity for an arbitrary reason aside from skill and ability, whereas someone replies that "skill and ability are exactly why equality of opportunity is nonsense". The original poster himself agrees that denying people opportunities based on arbitrary factors unrelated to their skills and abilities is bad, but says that's not what equality of opportunity is.

This is a very interesting example of a failure to clarify terms. Furthermore it shows the dangers inherent in choosing the name for your thought processes, as many people will attempt to tear down arguments using the semantics of the individual words chosen for that thought process rather than the thought process itself. This is little more than a shifty semantics argument that has taken a defined term and obfuscated it to mean something it doesn't mean, and then arguing against the new made up definition. People do this constantly with ideologies like "prolife" and "black lives matter" as I explained in another post. It's not actually necessary for people who identify as prolife to engage in any other activities as defined by the objections of their opposition.  We all know "prolife" means someone who is against abortion. To attempt to argue that they must also be vegan or against the death penalty is pedantic semantics, because that's not what "prolife" means when used as the name of this well understood ideological thought process.

Equality of opportunity has never meant that people must be granted opportunities. It has in fact always meant that opportunities should not be denied to people based on arbitrary factors unrelated to their skills and abilities, which the original poster agrees with, so why he chose to argue against the semantics of the term in order to disagree with it, I will never know. It would be absurd for anyone to argue that a person who does not grow or produce any food should be given a spot in the farmer's market tent. A person uninterested in welding would probably not even apply for a high experience welding job, so to seek out a non-welder who hasn't even sought out such an opportunity would be absurd. Equality of opportunity only applies to people actively seeking opportunity. It is not a passive state of being. Equality of opportunity necessitates that the people involved are in fact seeking opportunities.

The concept that we could force opportunity upon people ignores people's choices. The true meaning of equality of opportunity is that if two people of different superfluous attributes both have the same skills and abilities, they should have the same opportunities (if they so choose to pursue them), and not be denied because one is black or one is white. To argue that equality of opportunity is somehow the active force of requiring equal numbers of blacks and whites in workplaces is an obtuse redefinition of the term that no one was actually using.

A proper application of the thought process of equality of opportunity could easily result in a business where everyone is black, assuming no white people applied for the position, or even if only unqualified white people applied for the position. The resulting hiring or denial based on the application is the outcome, so to argue that the equality of opportunity forces businesses to hire incompetent workers comes from redefining "outcome" to mean "opportunity" - which is nonsense. The idea that you are forcing the business to hire equally representative numbers of various types of people under equality of opportunity is simply false. That's not what it is, that's literally what equality of outcome is, and unlike the argument presented at the beginning, they are actually different. Equality of opportunity stops as soon as the job application has been submitted. The result of them being hired or not would be the outcome of the opportunity to apply. The understood explanation of equality of opportunity is that no one is stopped at the door of the bank and that anyone can submit an application anywhere. The results following that is the outcome.

A real life example for application of equality of opportunity would be job applications where the name, sex, and race of the applicant are absent, and potential hirees are judged on their abilities, skills, and experience alone. It is being argued in the comments multiple times that those abilities also fall under the "equality of opportunity" umbrella, that equality of opportunity does argue people can't be denied because they lack certain abilities. But that's not what it is and no one arguing for it has ever argued that it was that. To argue that, you would necessitate that you believe someone who has never cooked a meal in their life should be hired after submitting an application as a cook at a five star restaurant, and no one believes that. Attempting to argue that equality of opportunity necessitates that is simply a failure to define the term accurately. Stopping a man from handing in his application at said restaurant because he is black, or tossing it straight into the garbage because he's black, would be violation of equality of opportunity. They had the opportunity to apply, but the outcome of their application is denial due to lack of experience and skills. This argument is, at its bare basic level, simply frustrating, as it is adding new qualifications to the definition that were not there before in order to argue against it.

The only thing I can see here is that the opposition is having an issue figuring out where the "outcome" begins, and they are defining the "opportunity" as requiring someone to be able to attempt the job in question, or force the bank to give anyone and everyone a loan and see if they fail or not, and then the outcome of their attempt is where the outcome first begins. This argument is stretching the distance of what the opportunity was in the first place. I would argue that the very first barrier that must be passed in any event is the "opportunity". Thus, if we were to apply this concept to a much different example, we could say that a hunter-gatherer choosing to gear up and go hunting would in fact be his opportunity, while his success or failure is the outcome. This seems to coincide with the argument I presented in the beginning of this paragraph. However, there is a huge difference in the wildman hunter-gatherer's situation and the man seeking employment - there is no one to tell him he can or cannot go hunting. The opportunity to start a business or get a job is not the first barrier to pass for the modern man, it is gaining approval or resources to do so. A man who needs no loan can start a business without barriers, and for this particular man in this particular situation, his opportunity is running the business, while his outcome is whether the business succeeds or fails. The man who needs a loan to start his business must first pass the financial barrier of needing someone to agree to finance his endeavor. His qualifications for the loan is where the outcome - approval or denial - begins.

We could even dissect this further and argue that each aspect of the "application, acceptance/denial, performance, reward" formula is two total "opportunity -> outcome" functions. You have the opportunity to apply for a job, and your outcome is if you are hired. Your next opportunity is to perform your job functions, and your outcome is dependent on your ability and application of skills. Indeed, one could experience the outcome of acceptance, and then fail entirely to show up to work. What then becomes of the "opportunity/outcome" formula? It seems almost necessary to acknowledge that this formula entails two opportunities and two outcomes. To ignore the self evident reality that "acceptance/denial" is an outcome, per the definition of outcomes, is a failed game of semantics. Being accepted or denied on your application for a loan or job application is unarguably an outcome of an opportunity, so to argue that "equality of opportunity" necessitates that we must allow all applicants "the opportunity" to head to the "performance" section of the formula is a failure to define terms accurately.

Surely, if you're going to argue semantics for what entails an "opportunity", you must acknowledge that infinite opportunities exist locked behind infinite outcomes, thus your objection to there being a difference between equality of opportunity and equality of outcome seems very reasonable. However, at that point, no one is there who ever believed in what "equality of opportunity" ever originally meant, because now you're far off into a void of semantics no one asked for. Obviously no one believes the final opportunity is what requires equal access, but rather self-evidently, people who believe in equality of opportunity believe the first opportunity is what should have equal access, in the context of our modern world and the requirements necessary in order to enter into the market.

If you believe an argument for equality of opportunity should include skills and abilities of individuals as well as every opportunity behind every outcome possible, and that it is impossible for us to continue to argue for equality of opportunity unless we include skills and abilities, then my sincerest apologies for the improper naming of the thought process in the first place. We'll name it something better in the future, like "we shouldn't deny people loans or jobs based on arbitrary factors unrelated to their skills and abilities." Phew, rolls right off the tongue.

Poverty is the Default State

Adherents to Marxist ideology and proponents of socialist government systems contest that "capitalism creates poverty". An effective invalidation of this argument is the true statement that poverty is actually the starting point for individuals, phrased often as "poverty is the default state". This argument is immediately understandable and difficult to contest. This argument does not prove capitalism is good or bad, but rather that it simply cannot create poverty as poverty is the default, and all systems can either perpetuate poverty or create prosperity. Still, it is often argued against in a very roundabout way that attempts to redefine words or - perhaps intentionally - misunderstand the statement.

Let's clarify "poverty as the default state". This is not an economic argument, but a philosophical one. A default state is the bare basic starting point. It is entirely unaugmented, which is to say, when nothing is done to change it to a different state, it remains. If actions are taken but are then ceased, then things will revert back to this. It is a "resting state" so to speak. Poverty as the default state does not refer to an individual in society within society as it is now, but it refers to all of humanity and human society as a whole. Without actions by any given person or group of people, poverty follows for individuals. Poverty can be averted for one by the actions of others, but this necessitates that action is taken. Thus, inaction reverting to a default state of poverty is not felt just on individual levels, but society as a whole.

An applicable understanding of this is that a child born into a family not living in poverty is not impoverished, despite no actions taken by the individual. The child can descend into a state of poverty by actions outside of his control, and with few resources, skills, or innovative action may remain there. However, even then, yet other people can, by their actions, cause this child to be pulled out of poverty without action by the child. While it's unlikely that a child could pull himself out of poverty on his own, even that is a potential action. An individual who takes no action, possesses no resources, and/or is not given resources, will always be impoverished.

Arguments against poverty as the default state ignore this understanding and attempt to apply it differently. This is why it's always very important to define your words and arguments. The follow examples are arguments I've seen against "poverty as the default state".

"Poverty doesn't have to be the default state"

This argument fundamentally misunderstands the concept of a default state. This argument attempts to define the default state as the starting point for each individual within society contingent on factors present in that society. To understand this argument in practice, it refers to the default state in reference to individuals, with the idea that when others take actions to elevate an individual above poverty, it changes their default state. This argument's fallacy rests squarely on the fact that default states cannot change.

If, as a society, we all shared resources and wealth to a point where no one was in poverty, it does not change poverty as a default state. If the actions are stopped - the ones doing the work to provide resources to the ones who are not working - the default state returns. Thus the argument that posits "something else could be the default state" is fundamentally flawed. Nothing else can become the default state without the very rules of our universe changing. We must eat, thus we must work - or at least, someone must work. This means action of some kind must always be taken, by someone, somewhere, to leave the default state of "not having enough resources to survive", which is what poverty is.

"What really is poverty? [attempts to redefine poverty]"

This argument is similar to the previous argument, but instead of trying to redefine what a "default state" is, it attempts to redefine poverty itself. This argument is effective if unchallenged, as a nebulous, subjective concept cannot be a default state, as a default state demands consistency in any and every environment. I mentioned earlier that defining your terms is important, and I did, if you noticed, define poverty as "not having enough resources to survive". If this is not the definition of poverty, its position as the default state could be challenged. So, let's be more clear about what poverty really means.

The opposition tends most often to make the claim that poverty is relative, and it sure seems that way. In the United States, the federal poverty level is $12,000/year. By contrast, $12,000/year in some of the poorest countries is 3x their national GDP. Whether you think GDP is a valuable measure or not, its undeniable that what this shows is that the national poverty level in the USA is way higher compared to whatever one would be considered as being impoverished in these poor countries. This brings a strong argument against poverty as a default state if even a rich man in Uganda is impoverished according to the United States national poverty level.

The problem with the United States national poverty level being used to bring doubt upon poverty's ability to remain objective is that what has happened is merely a definition out of necessity. In the United States, we have socialist welfare programs that redistribute tax money taken from "well off" people and gives it to the poor. To do this requires a level considered "poor" within the standards of living in the United States. It would be worthless to base this number off of the world at large, as not only is the wealth disparity across nations very wide, but the resources of other countries does little to help us have resources in our country. What has happened here is that we take the real definition of poverty, "not having enough resources to survive", and narrow down resources to one particular resource - currency. The national definition of poverty, then, is the one that is wrong.

Let's apply this concept. Say an individual living in the United States on his own makes just $12,000 per year, but has family, many friends, and several other support systems providing resources to him. This accumulation of resources from sources other than his reported income on his W2 provides him enough to live comfortably. Is he impoverished? If you are tempted to argue that he is, you are being intellectually insincere. We already established that a child living with a well off family is not living in poverty, despite not producing any wealth himself. The only difference here is that the man is physically living "on his own" - but he is truly not living on his own. This voluntary redistribution of wealth by actors other than the government provide a way for this man to be lifted from the default state of poverty into a situation where he is not left wanting for anything. It does not matter who does the lifting - a large number of individuals, the individual himself, or the government - the result is the same. The default state has been left behind for the elevated state where enough resources for survival are present.

Thus someone can live simultaneously below any given "national poverty line" while still not "living in poverty" due to the actions of others, as previously established. Not only that, but someone could earn below what is considered impoverished while still having enough resources to survive due to possession of or access to resources that simply aren't taxable income. This means that measurements of poverty in any of the various nations cannot be the true definition of poverty. We understand poverty in this argument as an objective and consistent concept that can be applied without alteration to any person living anywhere in the world.

A less common argument in the attempts to redefine poverty challenges the concept of poverty as a lack of currency, which as we have already discussed, is valid. It, however, does nothing to challenge the argument of poverty as the default state, as should be clear from my apartment dwelling man example. Rebutting this argument is as simple as clarifying that the opposition is correct, lack of government issued currency is not by definition poverty, and then properly defining poverty. Remember, this is not an economic argument, but a philosophical one.

"The default state is having enough resources for everyone to live comfortably"

This argument attempts to redefine the default state. This is different from the "Poverty doesn't have to be the default state" argument, which posits the default state could change. This argument posits that the default state simply is not poverty.

This argument is that, if people did not claim private property, everyone would simply have enough resources to live comfortably. This person does not believe anyone can make claims to resources, whether it be wild blueberries, or electricity or oil to run machines that produce resources. This argument hinges on several ideals that are fundamentally flawed and is obviously based in the idea of "ideal communism" - that is, what the theory of communism would be if it ever worked (people willingly sharing resources to the benefit of everyone), and not what it always devolves into (a violent State that seizes and controls all resources).

Now, we could argue about the functional application of communism in rebuttal of this argument until we're blue in the face, but it would be to no avail as it doesn't actually refute the argument. The argument here is saying that, without people making claim of resources, there would simply be enough resources for everyone. However this ignores that the resources would not pop themselves up out of the ground and walk themselves into factories and homes. Work still must be done. The proper application of this idealistic communist operation - unclaimed resources going to everyone as they needed them without anyone hoarding them or charging others for them - still means that someone is doing work. This means that this argument can simply not be a "default state". Actions are being taken to elevate individuals above the default state.

This means, yes, a successful application of idealistic communist utopia would result in a lack of poverty. But that doesn't mean it's the default state. The idealistic communist utopia still requires application. Work must still be done. The argument that the default state is "plentiful resources for everyone" is flawed because it's a misclassification. "Plentiful resources for everyone" could be true, but it doesn't, by itself, remove poverty as the default state.

If you lived in a small village and there were enough wild resources around to feed everyone easily, then there are plentiful resources for everyone. But actions need to be taken to turn those resources into food and to bring them to each person. The village could still live in poverty if those resources are not distributed properly by workers. Half the village may work on gathering and refining resources into food and other valuable commodities while the other half does not, the former half still sharing those collected resources without charging for them, but this does not mean that the default state has changed. If the former half that gathered the resources stopped taking this action, the default state comes back unless counter-action is taken. Plentiful resources and poverty can exist simultaneously, thus, to argue that the default state is "plentiful resources" ignores the necessity of work, or action.

This argument, in fact, is a failed attempt to argue against a completely different premise. The argument in full was actually, "The default state is having enough resources for everyone to live comfortably, capitalism is the violent seizure of these resources". They were rebutting the concept of capitalism as the means of creation of prosperity, but managed to challenge the concept of the default state, perhaps merely due to naivety.

The statement of poverty as the default state rests hand in hand with the presentation of the important question, "what creates prosperity?" The presumed argument in full is thus, "Poverty is the default state, thus capitalism does not create poverty, as poverty by its very nature is not "created". What, then, creates prosperity?" The person speaking may vouch for it being capitalism, while the person who claims this argument I have refuted is vouching for communism. Thus, this is an all around failure to make a coherent argument. They do not actually need to argue against poverty as the default state, but are in fact arguing for communism as the answer to the question of what creates prosperity, or "having enough or more than enough resources to survive".

What I have argued here is not if capitalism creates prosperity or not, but that poverty is in fact the default state. The communist does not need to refute the true statement of poverty as the default state as it does not hurt his arguments. He should - if he were smart - embrace it, then move onto the explanation of how he believes communism most effectively elevates people above that default state.

A simplified answer to "what creates wealth," is, in fact, "work". The details of how this work is to be performed and by whom and under what regulations is thus the real debate to be had. Arguing against poverty as the default state does not help the communist promote his ideals, it simply makes it clear that he lacks the intellectual capacity to comprehend such concepts.