What I'm saying that your sentence doesn't make much of a point in the context of "A being no worse than B". i.e. "I never lie except on Sundays" is fine as a descriptive statement but it can't be used - on it's own anyway - in support of "I never lie". Similarly, your point appeared to be that the "Free market" does not increase the problem of pollution. Your sentence can not be used to support that idea. Is that somehow unclear?
Yes, completely unclear and logically fallacious. If I said "I never lie unless my life is threatened", that is completely consistent with "I never lie". (Both because my life may never have been or may never be threatened and because lying when your life is threatened isn't 'really' lying because it doesn't cause the harm that lying normally causes.)
Not really. The second case is clearly equivocation. The first case is at best ignoratio elenchi. Unless of course you are asserting that, in your world nobody would ever pollute their own property or allow their property to be polluted deliberately. Which is why you had to rephrase my statement. If that is what you are asserting then again. An infinitely more clear way of stating it would be the way I just did.
It's hard to figure out your point because you've concealed it behind a nitpick at my grammar.
That is not a nitpick on grammar - it's just leaves me at a loss as to what you're actually saying. You can, at any time - instead of...for example complaining - reform your argument in a different and hopefully clearer way.
I don't know what's unclear.
The statement we are discussing. Are you not sure what statement I was referring to? You sure seem to know what statement I'm talking about. Are you completely incapable of restating it in another way? If not, doesn't that make you wonder if your ideas are really so well thought out?
Nothing about a free market makes pollution worse with the exception of people being able to pollute their own property when that doesn't harm others. I submit that if this is unclear to you, it's because you are intentionally trying not to understand it.
Because it's entirely unlikely that you repeating the same words over and over without explication isn't helpful. Right? Sheesh. Perhaps this process seems normal to me because where I work it's important that things are clear and you're often dealing with people who look at things in different ways.
If you know of some other way a free market might make pollution worse, do tell.
And if I did have some other reason X. What's wrong with you saying: "Nothing about a free market makes pollution worse with the exception of people being able to pollute their own property when that doesn't harm others and X"?
Perhaps you answering that will illuminate things somewhat.
Otherwise, I don't know how I can be any clearer than I've been. Zero pollution is not the optimum level of pollution. Making some pollution worse is not a bad thing if the pollution level was below the optimum level previously.
Hey, look at that you actually *DO* know how to make statements other than repeating the same thing over and over again...(sadly this makes you're assertion about 'trying to not understand' false - too bad for you!). So what are you saying then? That the "free market" (whatever that means) is guaranteed to have less pollution than whatever pollution people put on their own property?
I will agree with this though -- if you don't believe that a free market will add to prosperity, you should believe that a free market will probably make the pollution problem worse. If you believe a free market will add to prosperity, you should believe that a free market will probably make the pollution problem better.
Define "prosperity"...
Material wealth. Technological progress.
Is "material wealth" mean owning more things? Are you saying that in a prosperous society people will generally own more things? How would you measure material wealth? i.e. is a country with a higher GDP have more "material wealth" than a country with a lower one.
I can't imagine why this matters to you. Are you honestly saying that you don't know what I mean by prosperity? You don't understand what wealth and progress are?
Lulz. Isn't that the very thing those kinds of questions would help me find out. I mean that is before the question gestapo came out and said "No questions allowed in the Libertarian paradise!!"
Crazy.
I don't understand why you want me to jump through all these odd hoops.
Why do you get to call them odd? They seem pretty straight forward questions if you've thought about your concept much.
Do you honestly not know what I mean?
How do I know what you mean without asking questions about what you mean?
Or are you one of those people who insist that we can't talk about "intelligence" until we can precisely define it and come up with units for it?
I don't know who "those" people are but ones definition of something is what limits what kind of discussion can be had on the subject. For example if "intelligence" can only be agreed as a categorical then you are severely limited to the kinds of comparisons one can make as opposed to say if it can be defined as an ordinal. However an ordinal is still more limited than a ratio. So I scale the kind of discussion that can be had on the basis of the kinds of definitions we are working with.
Perhaps my requests for more concrete things to attach to your definitions is because I deal with a more varied selection of people than you do and because of which I don't take much for granted.