Originally Posted by
protonitron
He said that money donation is a form of free speech and expression, not that without money free speech is inhibited.
Originally Posted by
ImmortalPig
According to what you said he didn't make the ruling on the basis of "money = freedom" he made it on the basis of "freedom means being able to use your money as you see fit".
So to say that he said "money = freedom" is very much incorrect, and is very much outside his job description -- he is an authority on law, not semantics or philosophy.
No. You've both missed the point of his ruling. His point isn't simply that freedom of speech means being able to donate money to political campaigns. His point is that this same freedom extends to corporations. They're allowed to give money because giving money is a part of their freedom of speech. Giving money = freedom of speech. What happens when you don't have money to give? You have less freedom. Contrary to your belief Pig, freedom is not a binary.
Originally Posted by
ImmortalPig
I guess what we consider to be "enough" differs. Imagine if you had some unknown illness, would you be comfortable with medical decisions being made by democracy of average citizens? What minimum level of qualification would you want a person to have to be allowed... blah blah blah
Having experts decide on something within their field of expertise is as bad as having laypeople decide on something they at best have a basic understanding of?
Please, do elaborate.
I'll rephrase your question and cut to the bottom line. Having a system where the people don't determine how they want to live is as bad as having a system where people don't determine how they want to live.
Originally Posted by
ImmortalPig
When Aristotle walked the Earth the entire population of the world was barely twice that of Tokyo today. His sentiments are really only valid for very small communities, they don't scale to countries with hundreds of millions of citizens. It's absurd to say the least.
You're telling me Aristotle would argue for a system in which the people don't determine how the want to live? That's not only absurd, it's ridiculous.