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UtF:

When I said you were using the Ayn Rand quote as a source, I was attempting to treat it like evidence for a persuasive essay. (I found a decent representation of my expectation here, see the section titled "Using evidence in an argument.") Apparently, you didn't intend it to be taken that way, so I'm not sure what purpose it serves. :wacko:

I'm also unaware of the place where I said that I (or the government) could own your body. I said that there are no implicit property laws, which means that no one has ownership over anything until we create a artificial contract to negotiate. That's completely different. Property is a human concept that doesn't exist in nature. (You could argue that animals defending territory and mates represent property, but I don't think that that constitutes the same relationship as humans have regarding their "own" property.) My point was that the only property rights that exist are those created by a social contract or constitution.

As a sidenote, I would say that I control my body, but I wouldn't think of it as "owning" my body. I don't think that anyone can own a body/mind, not even their own. There are so many parts of a person that exist outside of the conscious world, it's hard to justify the term "ownership" in my view because so much of it remains unknown. :unsure: I just don't think that the word applies to the context.

I don't understand your apparent confusion regarding my use of the term "social contract" as it has already come up previously in this discussion and it's integral to the whole basis of modern democracies (so it's a rather important concept to understand). In talking about social contracts, I'm referring to the topics discussed by Hobbes, Locke and Rousseau mentioned in this Without an agreement on the vocabulary used here, it's hard to make much headway in terms of a debate.

Up until now, you have been talking as if these things that you have been saying are truths that should be held "to be self-evident." Now you say that they are your opinions and not necessarily intended to be factual statements. It's rather hard to have a useful debate with someone who presents their opinions without pertinent facts to back it up. Everyone has an opinion, but it's only really useful to the world in general if he or she can present that opinion with strong reasoning for holding it. So whenever I post something that constitutes my opinion, I try to justify it based on historical examples or logical reasoning. Most of what we've seen from you are blind assertions that have to be taken on faith because you don't provide a rational basis (in so far as any of us have been able to detect) for your statements.

If you cannot provide factual bases for your assertions, then I agree that we have reached an impasse that makes further discussion on this thread somewhat pointless. You can't win someone to your side by making assertions without a factual basis to support them (and if you can persuade them with such an "argument," you probably ought to worry about their ability to think and act in a rational manner :duh: ).

So after all this, have you been saying that, "[it is your opinion that] taxes are violence" and that, "[it is your opinion that] violence is immoral"? Because if that's what you have been arguing, that has not been clear to any of us here (though I guess I can't claim to speak for everyone on this board ;) ). And if so, the reason that we've been so opposed to your viewpoint is precisely because you haven't provided us with any strong reasons to agree with you. You have been saying that "the world would be a better place without governments" and we have been asking, "Why do you think so?" to which you answer, "Because I (and Molineux) say so." That's not an argument. You've presented us with a lot of words, but when you cut through everything, that is the crux of the argument that I've seen you make.

OK, one more attempt to explain the difference between personal relationships and other relationships. (I realize that this terminology seems out of the blue, but bear with me for a second.) Whenever I try to talk about needing government to regulate our interactions with other people, you ask, "We don't need government to tell us how to deal with our neighbor, so why should we need government at all?" My point has always been (though I realize I haven't always stated it that clearly) that our relationships with our neighbors are fundamentally different than they are with any random person. You know your neighbor, so if something bad happens to them, you might feel inclined to help out. If you hear that Joe Blow (whom you've never met or heard of before) died from an earthquake on the other side of the country, you might feel sympathy for his family, but you would be less inclined to offer your assistance to him because you don't know him personally. It's a different sort of relationship between you and Joe Blow, than it is between you and your neighbor. And because the relationship is different, you have to treat it differently when you compare it.

I bring this up to compare your corner store green grocer and the big box store Walmart. The green grocer is a local person, your neighbor. You know him and you might talk with him on a regular basis. Walmart is completely foreign. You might shop there, but you have no relationship with Walmart. Walmart is just a corporate entity. It's not a person. In any case, if you really like a particular brand of eggs, you can go to your green grocer and tell him that you would enjoy coming to his store even more if he stocked this particular brand of eggs. And the grocer, because he knows you personally, might be inclined to try to grant your request, since your additional business with his store might offset any expenses that he incurs stocking these eggs. And even if it doesn't, you are friends (more or less) and he likes to be kind to his friends.

If you tried to go to Walmart and say, "There's this brand of eggs I really like and I'd shop at your store even more if you stocked them," Walmart doesn't have much incentive to listen to you. You're a patron of Walmart just as much as you are a patron of the green grocer's, but without the personal relationship, there's really no incentive for Walmart to be nice to you. There's little benefit for them to grant your request since if they lose your business, they've only lost one out of a million customers, so it's no significant loss to them. Walmart doesn't know you and Walmart doesn't care about you, so you can't treat the relationship you have with Walmart to the relationship you have to your green grocer.

That's why I feel that your system doesn't work. When the corporate entity has no stake in your personal happiness, then they won't care if they do things with which you disagree. If you try to take up a disagreement with Walmart with your DRO, they'll laugh in your face and continue doing whatever it is they were doing before. They're not going to be chastised by the complaint of one disgruntled customer. And even if you influence the people in your community to follow suit with you, Walmart is large enough that they wouldn't care if they lost an entire community's business. They've already proven that under our current system. By a strange coincidence, when the employees of two Walmarts in Canada voted successfully to unionize, both stores had to close down. Of course, the two events were completely unrelated, even though it happened twice. :rolleyes: So when the workers at those Walmarts decided that they had a right to form a union, Walmart decided that they also had a right to be unemployed. If that's not a stark example of corporate intimidation, I don't know what is.

"You either do as we say, and like it, or we'll leave you to rot. Your choice." What a choice that is. :dry:

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Here's an illuminating chart regarding the cause of the current debt. The chart shows that the largest, single contributor to our debt is the Bush Tax Cuts, but the wars and the economic downturn also contributed heavily. The single biggest thing we could do to reduce the size of the debt would be to end the Bush tax cuts.

I disagree. The largest contributor to our debt is not the Bush tax cuts, but rather the government's spending. Also, the single biggest thing we could do to reduce the size of the debt would not be to end the Bush tax cuts, but rather would be to reduce spending as much as possible.

If I lose my job or some other source of income (Bush tax cuts) and then continue spending a lot of money, the reason why I go into debt is not because I lost my job, but rather is because I spent money I didn't have. To try to deal with the debt you have to reduce spending significantly; you can't just blame it on a lack of tax income.

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Some telling quotes of Dawh's:

"It's a different sort of relationship between you and Joe Blow, than it is between you and your neighbor. And because the relationship is different, you have to treat it differently when you compare it. [You can't just interact with Joe Blow on a voluntary basis as you do with your neighbor; you have to point a gun at Joe Blow.]"

"Walmart doesn't know you and Walmart doesn't care about you, so you can't treat the relationship you have with Walmart to the relationship you have to your green grocer. [You have to point a gun at Walmart.]"

"'You either do as we say, and like it, or we'll leave you to rot. Your choice.' What a choice that is. [Walmart interacts with you on a voluntary basis, but because you depend on it much more than it depends on you, you have to point a gun at Walmart to get it to do what you want. Then you'll have a choice.]"

Needless to say, Dawh obviously doesn't believe in the non-aggression principle and is fine with being a tyrant to the people and companies he doesn't know personally. Why you think it's wrong to point a gun at your friend, family member, peer, or other person you know, but NOT wrong to point a gun at a stranger or a company that you don't know, I will never know. You're not wrong for holding this view because it's just your opinion in the same sense that it is my opinion that it's wrong to threaten anyone with force, even people you don't know, unless you're acting in self defense.

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UtF: First, if it was a report done by someone, and they have facts for it, then.... there's no opinion really. The facts support it. THough we have to do both.

Also, WTF with the twisting of Dawh's words. That's not what was meant. You are obsessed with this violence thing, yet you turn a blind eye to the more inherent horribleness of places like Walmart and other corporations, which USE slave labor (actual violence and slavery!) as I've shown before. Seriously, enough. If that is what you are going to interpret everything as, then we can't continue this discussion. I did not interpret it that way at all, although I'm glad you didn't call Dawh crazy ^_^

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I disagree. The largest contributor to our debt is not the Bush tax cuts, but rather the government's spending. Also, the single biggest thing we could do to reduce the size of the debt would not be to end the Bush tax cuts, but rather would be to reduce spending as much as possible.

If I lose my job or some other source of income (Bush tax cuts) and then continue spending a lot of money, the reason why I go into debt is not because I lost my job, but rather is because I spent money I didn't have. To try to deal with the debt you have to reduce spending significantly; you can't just blame it on a lack of tax income.

So if I lose my job, should I stop paying my mortgage? How about utilities? Maybe I could forgo food for a while? Just because your source of income is cut off doesn't always mean that you can curtail spending as much as needed to stay out of debt. Sometimes, you have to manage with some amount of debt.

However, this wasn't like a situation where the country lost its job. It was more like, "We've been saving up for a new Hummer, but we've decided that we don't need the money, so we'll donate it to the 'Poor, Rich Person's Charity' instead. And then we'll buy the Hummer anyway."

The money that went into the tax cuts was already appropriated for other purposes, but when they decided to give the money back, they never changed the appropriations, so they continued to spend as if they still had the money while simultaneously giving it away. So I do agree with you in this instance; the party of "fiscal responsibility" was monumentally irresponsible with fiscal matters (but that's nothing new). :rolleyes: The Republican Party has never balanced the budget in the modern era.

Of course, the fact that we agree doesn't mean much since we have radically different solutions to the problem. I think that they shouldn't have cut the taxes if they weren't willing to curtail the spending and while you would probably agree that that would have been a good start, you would rather abolish the whole system anyway.

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On a different, but related subject to US elections, here's an interesting article from the Atlantic regarding ways to fix the partisanship in Congress. I agree with pretty much everything he says. It's pretty clear that the Party-first nature of our political atmosphere is the root cause of our current political dysfunction.

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Oh yes, that guys right. I use republican and democrat as insults now. Liberal and conservative are the ideologies. Democrat and Republican are organizations (center-right and far right respectively; there's no more liberal 'party', not counting the third parties)

It's a game. All it is. That's all i see on the news. 'How can they impress more voters? Who can win? Who will gain momentum and who will lose it?' They sound like sports teams.

We NEED more independents/third parties in congress until the main parties are gone. I would love to abolish them all though. All you need is a candidate, not party loyalties.

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Some telling quotes of Dawh's:

"It's a different sort of relationship between you and Joe Blow, than it is between you and your neighbor. And because the relationship is different, you have to treat it differently when you compare it. [You can't just interact with Joe Blow on a voluntary basis as you do with your neighbor; you have to point a gun at Joe Blow.]"

"Walmart doesn't know you and Walmart doesn't care about you, so you can't treat the relationship you have with Walmart to the relationship you have to your green grocer. [You have to point a gun at Walmart.]"

"'You either do as we say, and like it, or we'll leave you to rot. Your choice.' What a choice that is. [Walmart interacts with you on a voluntary basis, but because you depend on it much more than it depends on you, you have to point a gun at Walmart to get it to do what you want. Then you'll have a choice.]"

Needless to say, Dawh obviously doesn't believe in the non-aggression principle and is fine with being a tyrant to the people and companies he doesn't know personally. Why you think it's wrong to point a gun at your friend, family member, peer, or other person you know, but NOT wrong to point a gun at a stranger or a company that you don't know, I will never know. You're not wrong for holding this view because it's just your opinion in the same sense that it is my opinion that it's wrong to threaten anyone with force, even people you don't know, unless you're acting in self defense.

I have no problem using "aggression" toward companies as they only exist as entities based on a government charter. They (unlike you) were created by contract with the government and they are therefore ineligible to argue along your line of reasoning that they should be exempt from the government's laws. While you can whine about being born into "bondage," these companies formed with a full understanding of the terms of their agreement with the government. So if they break the government's rules, the government is perfectly justified in acting (violently if necessary) to enforce the regulations. It doesn't break the non-aggression principle at all. :)

I also never said that having a different relationship with Joe Blow and your neighbor was right or wrong. I was pointing out the current realities of the situation, with little expectation that they will change any time in the near future. While I'm sure that there are plenty of compassionate people who would care about Joe Blow just as much as they care about their neighbors, there are enough people in the world who make a distinction between them that it is impractical to expect that they will behave in the same fashion to Joe Blow as they would to their friends. And since that's a reality, you need a different way to relate to those people. (And I never ever said anything about violence in the whole analogy, so gvg is right in saying that that was completely twisting my words. Unless 'Different' = 'Violent' now. :wacko: )

To change the subject again, I ran across another interesting article on Salon talking about government investment in the past century and how we need new investment for our new infrastructure needs (in the information technology fields). Of course, in our currently charged political environment, I don't see that happening anytime soon. Broadband access in the developed world in Europe and Asia is so much better than it is here in America because it was designed and built by the governments. Here, it was started as university (government) research projects and then allowed to grow haphazardly through private investment once the Internet went commercial. No company is willing to pay the cost of building a stronger broadband backbone in the US, particularly if they can't have exclusive rights to it (via Net Neutrality initiatives). So we continue to founder in the Internet realm while other countries make smart investments and move ahead.

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I have no problem using "aggression" toward companies as they only exist as entities based on a government charter. They (unlike you) were created by contract with the government and they are therefore ineligible to argue along your line of reasoning that they should be exempt from the government's laws. While you can whine about being born into "bondage," these companies formed with a full understanding of the terms of their agreement with the government. So if they break the government's rules, the government is perfectly justified in acting (violently if necessary) to enforce the regulations. It doesn't break the non-aggression principle at all. :)

Uhh... I don't know about that. But, what about Joe Blow? It's the same issue with Joe Blow as it is with a group of Joe Blows who form a company. I am certain that Joe Blow never made an agreement with the government to have force used against him to take his money. Are you really okay with initiating force against him? Why? Just because he's a stranger? You would never initiate force against your friend so why do you initiate force against Joe Blow? The fact that you don't know him isn't an excuse at all. It might be a way for you to avoid looking at what you are really doing (pointing a gun at him saying, "If you don't give the government your money then we will use force against you to lock you up in a cell") but it certainly isn't an excuse for actually initiating force against him. It's still immoral, just as it would be if you were initiating force against your friend.

I also never said that having a different relationship with Joe Blow and your neighbor was right or wrong. I was pointing out the current realities of the situation, with little expectation that they will change any time in the near future. While I'm sure that there are plenty of compassionate people who would care about Joe Blow just as much as they care about their neighbors, there are enough people in the world who make a distinction between them that it is impractical to expect that they will behave in the same fashion to Joe Blow as they would to their friends. And since that's a reality, you need a different way to relate to those people. (And I never ever said anything about violence in the whole analogy, so gvg is right in saying that that was completely twisting my words. Unless 'Different' = 'Violent' now. :wacko: )

"And since that's a reality, you need a different way to relate to those people. (And I never ever said anything about violence in the whole analogy, so gvg is right in saying that this was a completely twisting my words. Unless "Different' = 'Violent' now. :wacko: )"

Different doesn't have to mean violent, but based on your Joe Blow example and your Walmart example below in which you talked about needing government regulations, etc, and finished by saying, "That's why I feel that your system doesn't work," it certainly seems like you meant violent as different. My system is the non-aggression principle. By saying that you think the Joe Blow and Walmart examples mean that my system (the non-aggression principle) won't work, you are saying that you think that the initiation of force (violence) IS necessary (in the form of government regulations, taxation, etc, perhaps). So I wasn't the one interpreting your vague assertion of needing to treat Joe Blow and Walmart "differently" as needing to treat them "with violence/the threat of violence (initiation of force)". That was you. You already expressed quite clearly that that is what you meant when you said that my system of non-aggression wouldn't work. The only alternative to the non-initiation of force is the initiation of force. And force is violence. I'm not twisting your words; you're just still not understanding that 'Different' from not initiating force is initiating force which is of course violence. So 'Different from my system' = 'violence' yes. :wacko: at you.

If you're still lost: When the government initiates force against me to put me in jail for not paying taxes or for offering someone less than $7.25/hour to do a job for me, etc, that most certainly is violent force. Using force against someone not in self defense is most certainly violent and tyrannical. Don't pretend it isn't (or do pretend, but state clearly that you disagree with me on this so I can move on from this discussion satisfied that our disagreements weren't just due to miscommunications and misunderstandings... i.e. if you really do think that I'm twisting your words, if you really do think that you can initiate force against people without being violent towards them, then tell me so so that we can move on from this discussion).

OK, one more attempt to explain the difference between personal relationships and other relationships. (I realize that this terminology seems out of the blue, but bear with me for a second.) Whenever I try to talk about needing government to regulate our interactions with other people, you ask, "We don't need government to tell us how to deal with our neighbor, so why should we need government at all?" My point has always been (though I realize I haven't always stated it that clearly) that our relationships with our neighbors are fundamentally different than they are with any random person. You know your neighbor, so if something bad happens to them, you might feel inclined to help out. If you hear that Joe Blow (whom you've never met or heard of before) died from an earthquake on the other side of the country, you might feel sympathy for his family, but you would be less inclined to offer your assistance to him because you don't know him personally. It's a different sort of relationship between you and Joe Blow, than it is between you and your neighbor. And because the relationship is different, you have to treat it differently when you compare it.

I bring this up to compare your corner store green grocer and the big box store Walmart. The green grocer is a local person, your neighbor. You know him and you might talk with him on a regular basis. Walmart is completely foreign. You might shop there, but you have no relationship with Walmart. Walmart is just a corporate entity. It's not a person. In any case, if you really like a particular brand of eggs, you can go to your green grocer and tell him that you would enjoy coming to his store even more if he stocked this particular brand of eggs. And the grocer, because he knows you personally, might be inclined to try to grant your request, since your additional business with his store might offset any expenses that he incurs stocking these eggs. And even if it doesn't, you are friends (more or less) and he likes to be kind to his friends.

If you tried to go to Walmart and say, "There's this brand of eggs I really like and I'd shop at your store even more if you stocked them," Walmart doesn't have much incentive to listen to you. You're a patron of Walmart just as much as you are a patron of the green grocer's, but without the personal relationship, there's really no incentive for Walmart to be nice to you. There's little benefit for them to grant your request since if they lose your business, they've only lost one out of a million customers, so it's no significant loss to them. Walmart doesn't know you and Walmart doesn't care about you, so you can't treat the relationship you have with Walmart to the relationship you have to your green grocer.

That's why I feel that your system doesn't work.

Do you really think I twisted your words? I treat the people I know by not initiation force against them. I treat strangers the same way. You seem to think that it's necessary to treat strangers (and companies such as Walmart) "differently." What other interpretation of "differently" is there here other than violently? The only alternative to interacting with people voluntarily (non-aggression principle) is by coercing them by initiating violent force against them (to regulate them, tax them, etc).

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This is just a guess, but wha dawh meant by the Joe blow thing is that you are so sure people will help other people through private charities that gov. one's (ie unemployment, SS) aren't needed. Dawh was saying that that isn't true by explaining that people won't care as much about what happens to other people, which is why your thing won't work. this may not be what dawh intended, so don't assume that it is.

And companies aren't people. yes, they have to be treated differently. because they aren't people. And as dawh said, corporations must have gov. approval or whatever, so there is no violation of your 'non-agression principle' because they did agree to it (and have been abusing their 'rights' by outsourcing, being anti-union (did you not read in the article above where the one company killed union members/leaders in Colombia?), and generally being dicks.)

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This is just a guess, but wha dawh meant by the Joe blow thing is that you are so sure people will help other people through private charities that gov. one's (ie unemployment, SS) aren't needed. Dawh was saying that that isn't true by explaining that people won't care as much about what happens to other people, which is why your thing won't work. this may not be what dawh intended, so don't assume that it is.

And companies aren't people. yes, they have to be treated differently. because they aren't people. And as dawh said, corporations must have gov. approval or whatever, so there is no violation of your 'non-agression principle' because they did agree to it (and have been abusing their 'rights' by outsourcing, being anti-union (did you not read in the article above where the one company killed union members/leaders in Colombia?), and generally being dicks.)

gvg's more or less on point regarding my meaning. UtF, you seem to read your own prejudices into what we write. I think that the most distilled essence of what I've been trying to say comes out in this example:

You're in a burning building with your best friend and Joe Blow (a complete stranger). They both pass out from asphyxiation. You can only carry one of them to safety. Who would you save? If it's a 50% chance who you would save, then yes, you treat all people equally (and you would be an exception to the rule). But if you would be more likely to save your friend than Joe Blow, then that implies that you treat (and value) them differently. Not violently, differently.

Humans, by and large, are more inclined to relate to (and protect) their "tribe," the people they know personally, rather than complete strangers. Sometimes that doesn't change much between their relationships with people, but it does create situations where their behavior will change, depending on with whom they are interacting. When you are designing a society, you should take this difference into account. I don't think that you do. :unsure:

To change the subject a little (yet again :P), I think that forcing people to rely on charity is immoral because of people like "Bobby Thompson." He created a completely fake Navy Veterans' charity that he used to line his pockets with $100,000s of donations given in good faith. I don't know how long he operated, but he seemed so genuine that he got himself photographed with a number of prominent politicians (including President George W. Bush). Of course the name was a pseudonym and he's now wanted in a half dozen states, but wherever he is, he's not likely to be suffering, living off his ill-gotten gains.

You can't stop con-men like that from existing. You may live by the non-aggression principle, but they are under no obligation to do so as well. People will create fake IDs and they will do things like that. He was forced to stop because someone with authority finally looked at his books and discovered that most of the people on his charity's board were fictitious. In a world without authority, who would be there to try to catch (or at least shut down) scammers like Bobby Thompson? People like him probably harm the efforts of legitimate charities (and Naval Veterans' charities in particular). If someone can appear to be completely legitimate and still be such a scoundrel, how are people supposed to know that their money really is going to the good cause they think that it is? :huh:

Depending on charities means that there's no guarantee. You have to hope that if you need help, there will be some charitable source that will provide for you. Government, in my view, should seek to provide that baseline. If no one else can (or will) help you in your time of need, at least the government will be able to provide the basic services you need to survive. Aristotle was the first philosopher to advocate that government should provide the basic needs for its citizens in his Politics. It's a topic that's been debated back and forth ever since. I agree with him in this instance. Otherwise, you have a subclass of people in society that are trapped in "survival mode," where they have to worry about keeping shelter for their family and they don't know if there's going to be food to put on the table. The goal of civilized society should be to bring as many people out of living in survival mode as possible. We don't live on the frontiers anymore. People shouldn't have to live like they do.

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You're in a burning building with your best friend and Joe Blow (a complete stranger). They both pass out from asphyxiation. You can only carry one of them to safety. Who would you save? If it's a 50% chance who you would save, then yes, you treat all people equally (and you would be an exception to the rule). But if you would be more likely to save your friend than Joe Blow, then that implies that you treat (and value) them differently. Not violently, differently.

Well obviously you treat strangers differently than your friends in some respects such as that respect, but when you said, "That's why I feel that your system doesn't work" right after saying that Joe Blow needed to be treated differently than your friend, you strongly implied that you meant Joe Blow needed to have force used against him. "Differently" from my system is differently from the non-aggression principle which can only mean initiating force against Joe Blow. Of course I would treat Joe Blow differently than my friends in some respects, but I would still treat Joe Blow with non-aggression as I treat my friends. You implied that you wouldn't do this, but would instead treat Joe blow with force when you said "That's why I feel that your system doesn't work."

Humans, by and large, are more inclined to relate to (and protect) their "tribe," the people they know personally, rather than complete strangers. Sometimes that doesn't change much between their relationships with people, but it does create situations where their behavior will change, depending on with whom they are interacting. When you are designing a society, you should take this difference into account. I don't think that you do. :unsure:

You don't design a stateless society. In this thread I was merely suggesting possible ways people might deal with problems such as dispute resolution, etc, without using coercion. I would never dream of trying to designing a society. Only a fool would do that.

And again, what you just said is implying that you think you need to initiate force against strangers. Of course I treat strangers differently than friends, but I still don't initiate force against strangers. When you say that a stateless society doesn't take into account the difference in relationships between people and friends and people and strangers you are implying that you think that the stateless society's approach to not initiate force against anybody at all, even strangers, is flawed. This implies that you think someone needs force initiated against them (presumably the strangers, although from the stranger's perspective that would include you and your friends too). Why don't you just confirm or deny this instead of saying I'm twisting your words? Do you or do you not support initiating force against people (strangers or your friends or both)?

To change the subject a little (yet again :P), I think that forcing people to rely on charity is immoral because of people like "Bobby Thompson." He created a completely fake Navy Veterans' charity that he used to line his pockets with $100,000s of donations given in good faith. I don't know how long he operated, but he seemed so genuine that he got himself photographed with a number of prominent politicians (including President George W. Bush). Of course the name was a pseudonym and he's now wanted in a half dozen states, but wherever he is, he's not likely to be suffering, living off his ill-gotten gains.

You can't stop con-men like that from existing.

Of course you can't; I agree. But, you can guarantee that the money you donate to charities gets spent towards charitable causes defined in the way you specify rather than just hoping that this guy will spend the money efficiently on the charitable causes that he pretends to support.

You may live by the non-aggression principle, but they are under no obligation to do so as well.

Obviously, it's not like I've forgotten that people like you support imitating force against me to take my money, etc.

People will create fake IDs and they will do things like that. He was forced to stop because someone with authority finally looked at his books and discovered that most of the people on his charity's board were fictitious. In a world without authority, who would be there to try to catch (or at least shut down) scammers like Bobby Thompson?

I imagine it would be quite easy. This guy didn't point guns at people to force them to give him there money, did he? Assuming he was just scamming people by saying, "Would you like to donate some money to help out these charitable causes?" and people said, "Okay," and wrote him a check, then clearly you don't need to use force against him to stop him. Surely the problem is that people just hand him their money without any consequences if he spends the money on himself instead of the charity that he claims to pay it to. If you've never heard of his charitable organization (i.e. it's not something widely know like the Red Cross, for example, that you are pretty confident isn't going to scam you) and you want to donate any significant sum of money, just make a quick contract specifying the limitations of what your money can be spent on if you want that also specifies what the consequences will be for not spending the money on the defined things and also defines a way to make sure that the money is being accounted for (so that you actually know if they don't spend the money where they say they will). Anyways, I can't imagine how you could possibly support initiating force against people just for saying, "Hey would you like to donate some money to help out blah?" and then "Sure, here's some money. I hope you're honest! I won't know if you aren't though!" You don't have to donate to someone asking for money, and if you want to but are worried that they might want to scam you in some way or something, then just devise a way to deal with the problem (e.g. contract, public records of their book keeping, etc) before donating. The fact that you still seem to think that you need to initiate force against these people who other people voluntarily just hand them money is somewhat terrifying. There are plenty of peaceful ways of dealing with potential scammers, corrupted people, etc. And even if you think force is necessary, don't initiate force against him after he spends the money on himself. Instead, have him agree in a contract to have the force used against him should he spend the money in a way that violates the contract. In this way, you aren't initiating force against him because he agreed to have the force used against him in the first place.

Depending on charities means that there's no guarantee. You have to hope that if you need help, there will be some charitable source that will provide for you. Government, in my view, should seek to provide that baseline.

I know; you've said that dozens of times. I've also said dozens of times that it's wrong to point guns at people to force them to give up their money for these poor people against their will.

If no one else can (or will) help you in your time of need, at least the government will be able to provide the basic services you need to survive.

No. If no one else can help, then the government won't be able to get the poor person help because all the government does is point guns at people to force them to help. And, if other people can help, but don't want to, then the government still wouldn't be helping the poor--all it would be doing is pointing guns at the person who can help but doesn't want to to force them to help against their will. The government doesn't help people. All it does is point guns at people to force them to "help" other people. If the government didn't have this power, if it didn't have those guns to point at people, then there would be nothing left to call a "government." All the government is is an institution that initiates force against some people to redistribute those peoples' wealth to other people.

Aristotle was the first philosopher to advocate that government should provide the basic needs for its citizens in his Politics. It's a topic that's been debated back and forth ever since. I agree with him in this instance. Otherwise, you have a subclass of people in society that are trapped in "survival mode," where they have to worry about keeping shelter for their family and they don't know if there's going to be food to put on the table. The goal of civilized society should be to bring as many people out of living in survival mode as possible. We don't live on the frontiers anymore. People shouldn't have to live like they do.

You keep sounding like you think I or anybody else doesn't care about the poor. In reality, I think a majority of people care about the poor. What makes you think that they would watch these people die instead of voluntarily giving their money/support to them? Why do you think it's necessary to point guns at people in order to stop poor people from starving to death? If I was completely poor and owned no material possessions (except maybe a shirt and pants?) and I went up to someone well off and asked them for some food because I was starving and they said no, I wouldn't want someone to pull out a gun and point it at them to force them to give me food. Are you kidding? No, I'd go to the next person, the next house, or wait in line at the soup kitchen, etc, or offer someone my labor in exchange for a meal, etc. I'm certain that someone would voluntarily help me and if they didn't I'd rather starve to death in front of their eyes before pointing a gun at them.

Anyways, I think the current system is helping to perpetuate poverty rather than alleviate it. While I don't think "poverty" (kind of vage: where's the line?) will ever be eliminated, I think a stateless society would do far better at alleviating it than our current statist society. You still seem to think that without a government everything will spiral into chaos though so I'm not going to bother to get into arguing this here. I'll stick to the simple moral issue for now.

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I don't think you realize that the man did it for years under a false name. And they don't know where he is. Obviously, it would be easier for him to scam people; after all, would you bother looking for him on the other side of the country?

And again, yes, I really think you overestimate the charity of humankind. Have you been living in a bubble? We are in a class war, upper vs lower. they want their money, and couldn't care less about the rest of us. And everybody else is in the same position, so it really doesn't matter. i don't know if you saw those two things I posted, but look at them. And this:

And yes, I will concede that the CURRENT system isn't working. No one is supporting the current system here. We want to go more 'left,' you more 'right.' The CURRENT system sucks.

And poverty is classified (as of 2008) as an income of $1.25 or less a day. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poverty_threshold

Edited by gvg
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To the first article. I read until: "That $150 is a poverty tax — a fee paid by the poor because they are poor." Of course I objected to this. Then the article corrected the error itself and then said, "If it were a tax, then the couple in Wal-mart's ad would eventually see some kind of indirect benefit from that $150." I disagree with this as well. The government taxes people and spends the money on guns, bullets, missles, hitmen, etc, to go attack people. I don't regard this as "some kind of indirect benefit from that $150." I regard that as immoral and damaging. And to elaborate, I also consider the sum total of what the government gives in return for the taxes that it takes as damaging still, because despite some benefits that it gives, the overall net benefit is less to society than the benefit that society would achieve if it were not being taxed. In other words, even if I point a gun at you to steal your money (i.e. tax you) and then spend that money on some food or something and hand it back to you, I am still not giving you back some indirect net benefit because the food I give you is of less value than the the money that I took from you in the first place. If it's not of less value, then you would have voluntarily chosen to give me the money to buy the food or whatever and thus I wouldn't have had to point a gun at you and the exchange wouldn't have been coercive and thus wouldn't be taxation.

"Taxes go toward civilization — national defense, highways, sewer systems, health care, police, food safety, clean water, fighting wildfires, developing flu vaccines, etc." If someone wants to give their money to the government for these things, then that is fine. But, if they don't then I don't support the government initiating force against them to force them to pay taxes for these things anyways.

"And taxes are part of the social contract assented to by everyone who participates in that civilization." I find it telling that the author used the word "assent" rather than "consent." One definition of assent according to dictionary.com is: "to give in; yield; concede: Assenting to his demands, I did as I was told." By this definition, I suppose tax payers do "assent" to the government's coercion. However, by what I think that author's intended meaning was, the government does not have the consent of taxpayers to take their money. It may have some peoples' consent (e.g. Dawh's) (at least for the time being), but it certainly doesn't have everyone's consent. For example, obviously the government doesn't have my consent to take my money as I am here saying that it doesn't. If you disagree, then here's an analogy to help you out: Imagine someone is raping you and then denies that it is rape because they say they have your consent. Well, obviously they don't have your consent because you're screaming in protest. So next time you think you have someone's consent, ask them to make sure so as to avoid accidentally raping them as a result of your willful ignorance.

"So as nice as it is that this couple is "saving" $250 a year by cashing their checks at Wal-mart instead of the even-more-exploitative competition, it'd be nicer still if they could save an additional $150 a year by not having to pay to cash their paychecks at all." I wonder if the author is working to set up an organization that provides free checking to poor people or if his idea to deal with this issue is to point guns at Walmart to force them to offer free checking or no checking at all.

"I'm not suggesting that everyone who works at a bank that extracts these billions from customers through an overdraft protection scheme is, necessarily, a Bad Person due to working there. And I'm perfectly willing to allow them the chance to defend themselves. I am, in fact, eager to hear their explanation — to hear them describe the actions they've taken to protest this policy and the reasons why such actions have, thus far, not succeeded. My point here is only that such a defense, such an explanation, is required of them if they want to continue interacting on polite terms with the rest of us — if they want to drink in our bars or attend our churches or walk down our streets without parents clutching small children by the hand and dragging them aside and saying, 'Come over here, honey, we don't want to go near the banker.'"

Well this is rubbish. How is someone a bad person for offering someone a service that they a perfectly welcome to turn down?

"1. We need a viable community banking option for the working poor, a place where they can cash their paychecks and maybe even someday build their savings without being subject to fees and overdraft protection rackets. We needn't get into the details here of the policies the FDIC and Fed could put in place to protect and encourage such banking options, only to mention that such policies are a Good Thing."

Okay, good, so the author is indeed advocating a solution. The "viable community banking option for the working poor" sounds like the "organization that provides free checking to poor people" that I thought the author might want to set up to deal with this problem. One thing I thought of though, is that if the author wants a solution for the "working poor" then, perhaps asking the employer to deposit $100 into the person's account so as to avoid the low-money-in-account fees. Perhaps the poor employee can offer the employer a small fee to make up for having to set $100 aside (a smaller fee than what the bank charges). They can also agree to have the money withdrawn immediately and returned to the employer should the employer fire the employee (thus it's still the employer's $100... it's just stored in the other person's bank account for the employee and employer's mutual benefit (employer benefits from the small fee the employee gives the employer and the employee benefits from the difference in fees that the employer (or someone else... it doesn't have to be the employer) charges for putting $100 in the person's account versus what the bank charges for having less than $100 in the account)). Anyways, if I was the employer employing the poor person, I don't think I would charge any fee to my poor employee to store $100 of my dollars in my employee's account. I have money saved anyways and it makes no difference to have $100 of my savings stored in my employees account except that doing that will make it so that my employee won't have to pay fees to their bank. So why not give your employee $100 right off the bat (after hiring them) to store in their account to make sure that they don't have to pay any fees? So this doesn't seem like too difficult of a problem to solve despite the current $36 billion in overdraft protection fees per year. Anyways, why did you bring this up? Banks requiring that people pay fees to store less than a certain amount of money in a bank account is a completely voluntary thing. You don't have to get a bank account with such a bank. So what does this have to do with our whole non-aggression principle discussion we're having right now? It doesn't seem related.

"2. $38.5 billion. Seriously. The executives and shareholders of those banks ought to be flipped off, constantly, by everyone they encounter, all day long, from the moment they leave the house in the morning until the moment they return home. Even in church. Especially in church. From the pulpit, in fact. Nonviolent social change doesn't need to be genteel."

Again, these banks offer people services that people are free to accept or reject. If you don't want to get a bank account where you're charged for only have $50 in it or whatever, then don't get one.

As for the second link:

"What they don't understand is the series of intricate financial traps that makes that incredibly difficult." I just said, "So this doesn't seem like too difficult of a problem to solve despite the current $36 billion in overdraft protection fees per year." Apparently this author who is actually in the situation of having to deal with the problem disagrees with me. Okay, so maybe it is more difficult than it seems to me to be.

"Because having a checking account while poor doesn't just mean you have to be responsible and good at math -- you have to be perfect. Meticulous, flawless record keeping is the difference between surviving and having the bank seize your next paycheck." Okay, my family is probably in the upper part of the middle class and yet my parents still meticulously keep track of every check to know the exact balance of their bank account. It might be somewhat difficult, but I'm still lost at why you brought this subject up: what does this have to do with the state or with coercion or with the non-aggression principle? Nothing.

"The bank can hit you with a $35 fine for every charge that comes in while you are in minus territory. The bank will not tell you they charged you this money. You will have no idea anything is wrong." If you're someone living on the brink of having no money in your account every day then perhaps you should be more meticulous with your record keeping to make sure this doesn't happen and perhaps get your bank to warn you if you go negative. Also, why not get a bank that will stop you from withdrawing fees as soon as you get down to $100 or whatever? "Warning! You only have $100 left in your account! Withdrawing more money could result in overdraft fees!" Perhaps most banks profit by these charges on people with no money so maybe it would be difficult to get your bank to do this, but remember that you're not obligated to accept your bank's services. If they won't offer you a way to make sure you don't accidentally take too much money out of your account then you can choose to not do business with them. And again, if you don't like any of the banks in existence you can still not accept any of their services and can set up a bank of your own that won't charge you for over-drafting (or won't let you in the first place). Banks do need money to operate, however, so perhaps your bank will charge a constant fee on everybody (in which case I bet your bank would be full of people living on the brink... but that's okay). Anyways, none of this has anything to do with the non-aggression principle. Your interactions with your bank are voluntary. Unless you're going to tell me that you think the government should tax people for the costs of bank operation and then provide free checking for everyone, then I don't know why you brought this up. And if that is the reason why you brought this up, then I'm not going to respond except to say that that tax would violate the non-aggression principle. If you wish to voluntarily pay for the bank operation so that poor people can have free checking, however, then be my guest.

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"I don't think you realize that the man did it for years under a false name. And they don't know where he is. Obviously, it would be easier for him to scam people; after all, would you bother looking for him on the other side of the country?"

So the current system didn't work? Okay, so how could a stateless society fail more? Anyways, if I gave someone my money either to do a service or for a product or to go buy things for poor people, then yes, I would make sure that the person I was giving money to didn't have an incentive to use the money for himself and hide out in another part of the world. I still don't get the problem. Are you saying a coercive government is necessary to deal with things like this? I certainly don't think it is. These problems could easily be dealt with in a stateless society. Just don't hand out your money without first making sure that there are harsh enough consequences for the person if they decide to spend it on themselves rather than the charity that they claimed they would spend it on.

"And again, yes, I really think you overestimate the charity of humankind. Have you been living in a bubble? We are in a class war, upper vs lower. they want their money, and couldn't care less about the rest of us." Well luckily for my side of the argument, only the government can take peoples' money against their will. As for all the banks, Walmarts, false-charity scammers, etc, they have to hope that we voluntarily give them their money. And if we do give them our money voluntarily despite not liking their charges (overdraft fees or $3 fee) or the fact that they can run off with our money without any consequences (that's why you should make a contract!), then it's our fault so we have to one to blame. Who are you blaming? The banks, Walmart, and the scammers who you give money to on good faith that they'll spend it the way they claim to? They're not to blame. Your interaction with them was voluntary. If you don't like the result then you're to blame for doing business with them in the first place. Banks don't steal your money. Walmart doesn't steal your money. Scammers sometimes steal your money (but it's your fault if you give it to them and they run off with it... it's their fault if they seize it from you without you giving it to them). Governments steal your money.

"And yes, I will concede that the CURRENT system isn't working. No one is supporting the current system here. We want to go more 'left,' you more 'right.' The CURRENT system sucks."

No. More 'left' or more 'right' is still our current system. Our current system is coercion. Our current system is government. My system is the non-aggression principle--a stateless society.

"And poverty is classified (as of 2008) as an income of $1.25 or less a day." Well it would certainly be very easy to get rid of poverty then. Just get rid of minimum wage. My standards of poverty are much higher than that though. Still, getting rid of minimum wage would certainly help begin dealing with poverty. Eliminating the state and accepting the non-aggression principle would help a lot too.

Edited by Use the Force
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I only brought it up cause Dawh talked about 'survival mode' or whatever. Anyway, I just thought that since we were continually changing subjects at this point, i would throw it in there. Just showing that the poor seem to be punished. Anyway, it was irrelevant. Just wanted to see what you thought. It wasn't about the non-aggression principle. All I'm going to say on that is that I abide by it until it gets in the way of what's good for as many people as possible. And the gov. provides more pos. than neg., it's just that we are in a war right now that was supported by almost everyone at the time it started and is now being irresponsibly dealt with (again, I do think change is needed).

So if you really think that taxes violate the non-aggression principle, then I guess I don't fully abide by the non-aggression principle. Ah well. But see, I don't think taxes= violence, but if we are looking at it from your perspective, than I guess the non-aggression principle needs to be violated for the greater good of what's right for the most people. Whatever provides the most rights as possible and provides the most protection economically (through regulation, yes) and allows for the most health and allows for the most prosperity... than it is for the better. And if that means you think I'm violating the non-aggression principle, so be it. I guess I'm a violent maniac then, what with my wish for a public health care system that gets as many people covered as possible, what with my socio-capitalist ways, what with my support of welfare programs that help the needy, what with my possible leaning toward a public-'big Pharma' where profiting off of people's pain is actually immoral, what with my support of gov. paid tuition so that those who are barred from college for financial reasons can actually go, what with my taxing of the rich so that as many people as possible are helped so that the middle class doesn't disappear, what with my support of a gov. by the people and for the people, what with my economic regulations so that the super-rich, Wall Street, and so on are forced to stop raping the American people and the world. I suppose I am a crazy socialist maniac. Is that truly what you think?

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"I don't think you realize that the man did it for years under a false name. And they don't know where he is. Obviously, it would be easier for him to scam people; after all, would you bother looking for him on the other side of the country?"

So the current system didn't work? Okay, so how could a stateless society fail more? Anyways, if I gave someone my money either to do a service or for a product or to go buy things for poor people, then yes, I would make sure that the person I was giving money to didn't have an incentive to use the money for himself and hide out in another part of the world. I still don't get the problem. Are you saying a coercive government is necessary to deal with things like this? I certainly don't think it is. These problems could easily be dealt with in a stateless society. Just don't hand out your money without first making sure that there are harsh enough consequences for the person if they decide to spend it on themselves rather than the charity that they claimed they would spend it on.

He was only found out because some authorities began to get suspicious of him (for one reason or another) and an investigation uncovered that it was all a sham. If you don't have anyone actively seeking for someone ripping people off, how would someone like that ever get found out? Who would be responsible for taking action against him? Who would be responsible for funding an investigation? Without the state, investigations become arbitrary and dependent on those with money to fund them. Any society where "Money = Power" is unjust (and immoral in my view).

Your solution to all of these problems that I bring up is "Oh, I'd make sure I have a contract..." Like I said, it's infeasible to expect that you can create a contract with every single person with whom you do business, but the only way you could be absolutely sure that you're never going to get burned would be to do so. Are you really going to insist on creating a contract allowing you to audit a charity's books every time you make a $25 donation? How else could you tell if they were spending the money as you stipulated? You would truly be a joy to work with. :rolleyes:

"And again, yes, I really think you overestimate the charity of humankind. Have you been living in a bubble? We are in a class war, upper vs lower. they want their money, and couldn't care less about the rest of us." Well luckily for my side of the argument, only the government can take peoples' money against their will. As for all the banks, Walmarts, false-charity scammers, etc, they have to hope that we voluntarily give them their money. And if we do give them our money voluntarily despite not liking their charges (overdraft fees or $3 fee) or the fact that they can run off with our money without any consequences (that's why you should make a contract!), then it's our fault so we have to one to blame. Who are you blaming? The banks, Walmart, and the scammers who you give money to on good faith that they'll spend it the way they claim to? They're not to blame. Your interaction with them was voluntary. If you don't like the result then you're to blame for doing business with them in the first place. Banks don't steal your money. Walmart doesn't steal your money. Scammers sometimes steal your money (but it's your fault if you give it to them and they run off with it... it's their fault if they seize it from you without you giving it to them). Governments steal your money.

If I'm making $1.25 a day, then I don't have much in the way of choice in where I shop. If I'm barely eking out an existence and the only place I can afford to shop is at Walmart, chances are, I'll shop at Walmart just so that I can survive. That is not a choice. That is not volunteerism. The action is "voluntary" only in that I am "choosing" not to starve. You assume that companies will only prosper if they make their customers happy. That is sufficient, but not necessary for a company to be profitable. Creating a captive market can be just as effective (Walmart, Company stores, etc.). Volunteerism could only work in a world where everyone is well-to-do (if it could ever work). Anywhere you have people who don't have the freedom to choose their habits, volunteerism fails miserably. :angry:

"And poverty is classified (as of 2008) as an income of $1.25 or less a day." Well it would certainly be very easy to get rid of poverty then. Just get rid of minimum wage. My standards of poverty are much higher than that though. Still, getting rid of minimum wage would certainly help begin dealing with poverty. Eliminating the state and accepting the non-aggression principle would help a lot too.

UtF: Seriously, take an argumentation class. This section is gibberish. You throw in an attack on the minimum wage as a complete non sequitur to the subject at hand. You provide no reason for why you think that the minimum wage exacerbates poverty. You also give us no reason why a lack of the state would help poverty either. :wacko:

And I just have to respond to this:

"And again, if you don't like any of the banks in existence you can still not accept any of their services and can set up a bank of your own that won't charge you for over-drafting (or won't let you in the first place)."

That has got to be one of the most ridiculous statements you've made. Random people aren't going to be able to create whatever service they want for themselves if the available services don't meet their expectations. If I make $25,000 a year (working 8 hours per day) and I spend $20,000 a year on food and shelter and all the banks around me charge overdraft fees and other junk like that, I probably don't have the option to use my $5,000 in potential savings ($417 per month) to create a new bank. I have to "choose" one of the available options if I want to get any of the benefits that a bank offers. The world is full of sub-optimal choices and most people are willing to suffer a little disappointment if the alternative is much harder, even if it would be "better" for them. And often times, there is no other option that they can attain.

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I only brought it up cause Dawh talked about 'survival mode' or whatever. Anyway, I just thought that since we were continually changing subjects at this point, i would throw it in there. Just showing that the poor seem to be punished. Anyway, it was irrelevant. Just wanted to see what you thought. It wasn't about the non-aggression principle. All I'm going to say on that is that I abide by it until it gets in the way of what's good for as many people as possible. And the gov. provides more pos. than neg., it's just that we are in a war right now that was supported by almost everyone at the time it started and is now being irresponsibly dealt with (again, I do think change is needed).

So if you really think that taxes violate the non-aggression principle, then I guess I don't fully abide by the non-aggression principle. Ah well. But see, I don't think taxes= violence, but if we are looking at it from your perspective, than I guess the non-aggression principle needs to be violated for the greater good of what's right for the most people. Whatever provides the most rights as possible and provides the most protection economically (through regulation, yes) and allows for the most health and allows for the most prosperity... than it is for the better. And if that means you think I'm violating the non-aggression principle, so be it. I guess I'm a violent maniac then, what with my wish for a public health care system that gets as many people covered as possible, what with my socio-capitalist ways, what with my support of welfare programs that help the needy, what with my possible leaning toward a public-'big Pharma' where profiting off of people's pain is actually immoral, what with my support of gov. paid tuition so that those who are barred from college for financial reasons can actually go, what with my taxing of the rich so that as many people as possible are helped so that the middle class doesn't disappear, what with my support of a gov. by the people and for the people, what with my economic regulations so that the super-rich, Wall Street, and so on are forced to stop raping the American people and the world. I suppose I am a crazy socialist maniac. Is that truly what you think?

I still don't see how you don't understand that taxation is coercive. Isn't it incredibly obvious that the reason why people still pay their taxes to fund the U.S.'s wars despite the fact they yell out in protest of the war is because the government is coercing them into paying their taxes? Do you really think that taxes are voluntary and that the people yelling out against the war are just complete idiots for voluntarily paying for a war they don't want? How could you think people are that hypocritical?

Car salesman: "Hi, would you like to buy this car for $100,000?"

Customer: "NO WAY! ARE YOU KIDDING? THAT CAR ISN'T WORTH NEARLY $100,000!!! DON'T MAKE ME BUY THAT CAR!!!"

*Customer hands salesman $100,000*

Salesman: "Okay, here's your car. Thanks for the business!"

Customer: "You idiot! Why did you force me to buy that car!?"

Salesman: "I didn't; you bought it voluntarily."

Customer: "What are you talking about? You were pointing your gun at me threatening to lock me up!"

Salesman: "No I wasn't. You bought that car voluntarily. I wasn't coercing you into buying it at all. It appears we disagree on what is voluntary and what is coercive."

This is basically our disagreement for taxation. Is this really how you view taxes? You think that people like me protest having to pay taxes for all of the government's things that we don't want and then voluntarily choose to pay anyways? How incredibly stupid and hypocritical do you think we are?

Other than being in denial that taxation is coercive, you must also be in denial of the fact that people aren't dumb enough to do what the customer in the above example did--that people aren't dumb enough to voluntarily buy things they clearly don't want (e.g. expensive cars and wars). No, the the only way that the customer would pay for the $100,000 car despite obviously not wanting it would be if the salesman threatened his customer with some sort of force that the customer was too defenseless to defend against. If the salesman told the customer that he would lock him up in a jail if he refused to buy the car and the salesman had a big military of power behind him that the customer was to weak to defend against, then the customer would likely submit to the salesman and buy his car just like how people like me submit to the government's taxation despite how we yell out about not wanting to buy the government's wars and other bad programs. But, if the salesman wasn't coercing the customer at all (as you think is the case), there is no way that the customer would voluntarily choose to buy the car while clearly not wanting it. I sure hope you can see that this is the case with the car analogy and I hope that you can use that to see that there is most obviously coercion present in the taxation issue. People wouldn't pay taxes for things they didn't want to buy unless they were being forced to buy the things anyways the government in the same exact way that people wouldn't buy any other product that they didn't want, such as a $100,000 car, unless they were being forced to buy the car by the car salesman.

When the mafia comes to collect your protection money, you don't pay voluntarily. You pay because the mafia threatens to use force against you, your property, your family etc. If you don't see that the government does the same thing (initiation of force / coercion)(well the government doesn't threaten to shoot your wife of course, but they still threaten to use force against you to confiscate your money, your house, etc, or lock you up) then clearly you're in denial.

If it was a voluntary decision I wouldn't be paying taxes for the U.S.'s wars. But, I am paying taxes for such things. So, the question for you is: Do you think I am a hypocrite or are you ready to stop denying that the government is actually initiation force against me / coercing me / threatening to take my property or threatening to lock me up, etc, as a means to get me to involuntarily pay the taxes that I clearly don't want to pay?

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He was only found out because some authorities began to get suspicious of him (for one reason or another) and an investigation uncovered that it was all a sham. If you don't have anyone actively seeking for someone ripping people off, how would someone like that ever get found out? Who would be responsible for taking action against him? Who would be responsible for funding an investigation? Without the state, investigations become arbitrary and dependent on those with money to fund them. Any society where "Money = Power" is unjust (and immoral in my view).

Of course you're not likely to find people like this unless you're looking for them. But, since when did looking for them require initiating force against other people? You can go after people like this voluntarily in a stateless society.

So what are you saying... do you now consider potential-scam-investigators a "human right" like health care? That seems to be what you're implying when you imply that you want to point guns at people to force them to pay taxes to fund the potential-scam-investigators to go after people like this guy to try to catch them.

"Any society where "Money = Power" is unjust (and immoral in my view)."

.... you're not kidding? Okay. How do people get money again? They sell people products and services to which other people voluntarily give them money in exchange for those things, right? So, for example, I could tend your garden and you could pay me for it. Does me now having this money give me "power"? How is having this money/power immoral in any way? You voluntarily gave it to me. Just because some people manage to be more productive than others (by finding ways to mass produce products and deliver them to many people, for example) and thus make more money doesn't mean that it's suddenly immoral for them to have so much money/"power." It's not like their "power" takes the form of an army of people with guns. Their "power" was voluntarily given to them by other people who traded voluntarily because they were benefiting from the trade. So after I tend your garden and you voluntarily pay me for it, do you really support pointing a gun at me to tax me because you consider having a lot of money (and thus "power") immoral? This seems absurd to me. When someone voluntarily buys something or sells something they do it because they see a benefit in the trade. When you go buy something at the store you do it because you value the food more than the amount of money that the food costs. Similarly, the store sells it to you because it values the money more than the cost of the food. When the store's employee works at the store for $10/hr, the employee does it because they value getting $10 more than they value spending a hour of their time working for the store. If you own the grocery store and you've hired managers to run the store, higher new employees, etc, and are now generating income from the store despite not having to even pay attention to the store any more, does the fact that you might now get rich make what you're doing immoral? Of course not. You just invested in a business plan and it turns out that it's a good one. You're not stealing peoples' money--they're giving their money to you voluntarily and they are working for you voluntarily. Everyone benefits from the customer to the store owner because everyone participates voluntarily. But now you want to call the millionaire store owner immoral for being so "powerful" now? I don't understand. The immoral thing would be if you pointed a gun at the store owner and said, "You're making too much money in my opinion; give everyone back some or else we are going to forcefully shut down your business, lock you up, etc." In the free market everyone benefits because everything is voluntary. When you bring in the coercive government, the "public" may benefit, but they do so at the expense of the people who they are taxing against their will.

Your solution to all of these problems that I bring up is "Oh, I'd make sure I have a contract..." Like I said, it's infeasible to expect that you can create a contract with every single person with whom you do business, but the only way you could be absolutely sure that you're never going to get burned would be to do so.

Of course I'm not going to make a contract with every person I do business with. Right now I've been working for a stranger for about three weeks and we haven't even discussed how much he is going to pay me, let alone make any contracts. I just think that he's going to agree to pay me an amount that I'll agree on so I'm fine working for him without creating a contract to reduce the risk. I think it's already very low risk so a contract isn't necessary. I just finished the first part of what I'm doing for him two days ago and I am going to type up my bill and give it to him tomorrow. If he doesn't agree to my price I might lower it slightly, but even if he were to say that he wasn't going to pay at all after all, I wouldn't have to have a coercive police/court organization to go to resolve our dispute. The contract rating idea that I mentioned for a stateless society would work perfectly fine. I would just go to one of the contract rating organizations and would get them to lower his contract rating. In the long term it would make it much harder for people to do business with people if they have a low contract rating so it would probably be in the best self-interests of the guy I am working for to pay me the wage I want anyways. Or maybe I might try charging him $100/hour in which case he would go to the contract rating organization or DRO and tell them what what work I did and how the market value for that work is much less than $100/hour in which case they would agree that he shouldn't have to pay me that much considering we never agreed on a price ahead of time. So they would refrain from lowering his contract rating if he agreed to pay me whatever the market value of the job was approximately. So anyways, I'm confident that he is going to pay me an amount that I agree to and in a stateless society if he didn't offer me a reasonable wage I wouldn't want some coercive organization to force him to pay me a decent wage. By the way, do you know how businesses like Ebay work? Ebay works not by violently enforcing the trades but by having a rating system where users rate each other on the if they actually do what they say they are going to do--if they actually pay when they say they're going to pay, if they actually send the product that they advertise in the condition they advertise by the time they say, etc. If you had a whole society like that, where everybody had contract ratings, then it would be even better than ebay because someone couldn't escape the system nearly as easily as people could do on Ebay by, for example, selling a product while claiming it is in pristine condition while it is actually falling apart, suffering the bad rating, but then just leaving ebay. You couldn't leave the DRO/contract rating system nearly as easily as you could just leave ebay. And yet Ebay worked out just fine so why do you think that coercive organizations that violate the non-initiation of force principle in order to get people to trade honestly or efficiently?

Are you really going to insist on creating a contract allowing you to audit a charity's books every time you make a $25 donation? How else could you tell if they were spending the money as you stipulated? You would truly be a joy to work with. :rolleyes:

Of course not. Have you ever heard of the Red Cross or Salvation Army? There are many charitable organizations that we have heard of and trust that they are spending our money well. I would only recommend drawing up a contract if you want to donate your money to some obscure organization that you think might scam you. I'm not afraid of the Red Cross scamming me so I'd gladly hand them my money ("them" not meaning some random guy on the streets pretending to be part of the Red Cross of course) without a second glance. All I'm saying is that the people who donated to this scam guy should have been more skeptical that he may have been scamming him. And if they wanted to donate to a more obscure organization that may not be as honest as some of the more prominent charities out there, then they can always draw up a contract if they want.

If I'm making $1.25 a day, then I don't have much in the way of choice in where I shop. If I'm barely eking out an existence and the only place I can afford to shop is at Walmart, chances are, I'll shop at Walmart just so that I can survive. That is not a choice. That is not volunteerism. The action is "voluntary" only in that I am "choosing" not to starve.

That most definitely is a voluntary choice. You could choose to knock on my door and ask for food because you don't want to go to Walmart and I might very well feed you. You could also grow your own food in a garden or find work somewhere else or just beg people to feed you while you sit there helplessly.

People do often bring up how nature is violent towards them as an excuse to be violent towards other people to force those people to help defend them against the wrath of nature. I really don't think this is an excuse. Even if I'm some child without arms or legs or parents because my parents cut off my limbs and then committed suicide, I still wouldn't support having people force people to pay money to fund taking care of me. I would want people to voluntarily take care of me and if they didn't voluntarily help me, I wouldn't mind losing the fight against the violent mother nature. I'd rather the forces of nature make me starve and bleed to death than initiate force against another human to force them to help save me against their will. Even though people are struggling to survive against nature for as long as they can, that doesn't make it moral to force other people to help them fight off the forces of nature.

You assume that companies will only prosper if they make their customers happy. That is sufficient, but not necessary for a company to be profitable. Creating a captive market can be just as effective (Walmart, Company stores, etc.). Volunteerism could only work in a world where everyone is well-to-do (if it could ever work). Anywhere you have people who don't have the freedom to choose their habits, volunteerism fails miserably. :angry:

UtF: Seriously, take an argumentation class. This section is gibberish. You throw in an attack on the minimum wage as a complete non sequitur to the subject at hand. You provide no reason for why you think that the minimum wage exacerbates poverty. You also give us no reason why a lack of the state would help poverty either. :wacko:

I know I'm terrible at arguing and expressing my views clearly, but my mention of the minimum wage wasn't a non-sequitur. I mentioned the minimum wage because we were talking about people in poverty and I thought it was clear that obviously some people are going to be poor if nobody will hire them and if nobody is allowed to hire them for less than $7.25/hr then of course that could be a reason why nobody would hire them. Gvg defined the poverty line as $1.25 a day, but if that were true then you could easily get rid of ALL the poverty in America just by getting rid of the minimum wage. If someone isn't worth $7.25 an hour they might not be able to get a job anywhere and thus might not have any income. But, if you get rid of the minimum wage, then people would actually hire them (even if for only $5/hr or $1.25/hr). Someone could work for 1 hour a day and be above the poverty line by the standards gvg mentioned. So I don't think it's a non-sequitur. If you want to get rid of poverty you shouldn't prohibit poor people from accepting jobs that pay less than $7.25/hour. Maybe that's why they don't have a job?

Maybe we should raise the minimum wage to $100/hour. Now THAT would get rid of poverty....

And I just have to respond to this:

"And again, if you don't like any of the banks in existence you can still not accept any of their services and can set up a bank of your own that won't charge you for over-drafting (or won't let you in the first place)."

That has got to be one of the most ridiculous statements you've made. Random people aren't going to be able to create whatever service they want for themselves if the available services don't meet their expectations. If I make $25,000 a year (working 8 hours per day) and I spend $20,000 a year on food and shelter and all the banks around me charge overdraft fees and other junk like that, I probably don't have the option to use my $5,000 in potential savings ($417 per month) to create a new bank. I have to "choose" one of the available options if I want to get any of the benefits that a bank offers. The world is full of sub-optimal choices and most people are willing to suffer a little disappointment if the alternative is much harder, even if it would be "better" for them. And often times, there is no other option that they can attain.

I didn't intend to make it sound like I thought starting a bank was a very practical option for a poor person to start their own bank. I was just saying that if a poor person didn't think that it was in their benefit to use the existing banks' services for the cost of the existing banks' services then they don't have to. It is indeed their choice. They could go without a bank if they want. They could go without money if they want and just work for food and shelter. Just because someone is offering a service doesn't mean you have to accept it.

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"Any society where "Money = Power" is unjust (and immoral in my view)."

.... you're not kidding? Okay. How do people get money again? They sell people products and services to which other people voluntarily give them money in exchange for those things, right? So, for example, I could tend your garden and you could pay me for it. Does me now having this money give me "power"? How is having this money/power immoral in any way? You voluntarily gave it to me. Just because some people manage to be more productive than others (by finding ways to mass produce products and deliver them to many people, for example) and thus make more money doesn't mean that it's suddenly immoral for them to have so much money/"power." It's not like their "power" takes the form of an army of people with guns. Their "power" was voluntarily given to them by other people who traded voluntarily because they were benefiting from the trade. So after I tend your garden and you voluntarily pay me for it, do you really support pointing a gun at me to tax me because you consider having a lot of money (and thus "power") immoral? This seems absurd to me. When someone voluntarily buys something or sells something they do it because they see a benefit in the trade. When you go buy something at the store you do it because you value the food more than the amount of money that the food costs. Similarly, the store sells it to you because it values the money more than the cost of the food. When the store's employee works at the store for $10/hr, the employee does it because they value getting $10 more than they value spending a hour of their time working for the store. If you own the grocery store and you've hired managers to run the store, higher new employees, etc, and are now generating income from the store despite not having to even pay attention to the store any more, does the fact that you might now get rich make what you're doing immoral? Of course not. You just invested in a business plan and it turns out that it's a good one. You're not stealing peoples' money--they're giving their money to you voluntarily and they are working for you voluntarily. Everyone benefits from the customer to the store owner because everyone participates voluntarily. But now you want to call the millionaire store owner immoral for being so "powerful" now? I don't understand. The immoral thing would be if you pointed a gun at the store owner and said, "You're making too much money in my opinion; give everyone back some or else we are going to forcefully shut down your business, lock you up, etc." In the free market everyone benefits because everything is voluntary. When you bring in the coercive government, the "public" may benefit, but they do so at the expense of the people who they are taxing against their will.

I'm going to have to give you an 'F' for reading comprehension. I said "Any society...is...immoral." I never said that the millionaire was immoral. I said that the society that explicitly or implicitly made him more equal than the pauper was immoral. That is the implicit result if we extend your idea out to its logical conclusions. If you have lots of money, you have plenty of choices and if you don't like something, you can pay to change it. If you don't have money, you have to settle for whatever you can get.

People do often bring up how nature is violent towards them as an excuse to be violent towards other people to force those people to help defend them against the wrath of nature. I really don't think this is an excuse. Even if I'm some child without arms or legs or parents because my parents cut off my limbs and then committed suicide, I still wouldn't support having people force people to pay money to fund taking care of me. I would want people to voluntarily take care of me and if they didn't voluntarily help me, I wouldn't mind losing the fight against the violent mother nature. I'd rather the forces of nature make me starve and bleed to death than initiate force against another human to force them to help save me against their will. Even though people are struggling to survive against nature for as long as they can, that doesn't make it moral to force other people to help them fight off the forces of nature.

Like I've said before, you seem to be an extreme exception to the rule. The vast majority of people in the world would use force to save themselves (and their family) if they saw no other way. So while you would apparently be willing to die a slow, painful death, most other people would be willing to lash out as someone (steal food from stores, mug passers by, rob a bank, etc.). Some people do it because they have "issues," but others would only do it because they don't see any other way to survive. But they would do it. If you're really so adamant, put your principles into practice, like you say you would and stop paying those coercive, immoral taxes. :rolleyes: See what it's like, living on the other side for a while.

I do think that we've reached an impasse because your discussion of nature proves that you reject the entire basis of our society: That we come together to escape the vagaries of Nature. That is the essential points in the beginning of each of Hobbes' Locke's and Rousseau's treatises. Hobbes famously described the State of Nature as "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short." Therefore, each of them explained how the Social Contract (upon which all modern democracies are based) elevates us from that state and brings us to a better, more stable and just state. Here's a link to a summary of each of their views on the State of Nature. It doesn't quote any of the texts directly and I have to say that her characterization of their views is not quite the way that I remember them, but it has been a while since I read the texts myself, so I could be misremembering their precise arguments. I think that you would agree with some points of each and disagree with others. But if you reject their views on why we need to leave the State of Nature, then we really can't make any headway here because you reject the premise that the rest of us accept. The Wikipedia page on the State of Nature has summaries of a number of philosophers' views on the subject, but it's really not that useful without the full context of each of their arguments. Each described the State of Nature to explain why we needed governments to make a more just society and none of that is explained on the page. :duh:

I know I'm terrible at arguing and expressing my views clearly, but my mention of the minimum wage wasn't a non-sequitur. I mentioned the minimum wage because we were talking about people in poverty and I thought it was clear that obviously some people are going to be poor if nobody will hire them and if nobody is allowed to hire them for less than $7.25/hr then of course that could be a reason why nobody would hire them. Gvg defined the poverty line as $1.25 a day, but if that were true then you could easily get rid of ALL the poverty in America just by getting rid of the minimum wage. If someone isn't worth $7.25 an hour they might not be able to get a job anywhere and thus might not have any income. But, if you get rid of the minimum wage, then people would actually hire them (even if for only $5/hr or $1.25/hr). Someone could work for 1 hour a day and be above the poverty line by the standards gvg mentioned. So I don't think it's a non-sequitur. If you want to get rid of poverty you shouldn't prohibit poor people from accepting jobs that pay less than $7.25/hour. Maybe that's why they don't have a job?

Maybe we should raise the minimum wage to $100/hour. Now THAT would get rid of poverty....

Well, I could guess what you meant, but it was still a non sequitur the way that you said it. You provided no context for your statement, so it was impossible to know exactly what you meant without extrapolating it ourselves.

In any case, I think that the minimum wage is not the limiting factor in why people can't get jobs. "It's the Economy, Stupid!" When you're in an economic downturn, companies stop hiring. So when people lose their jobs, they can't find new ones. And then when you increase the number of unemployed, you have more people competing for the fewer available jobs. So wages get further depressed because people have to take what they can get. I'm not an economist and this is entirely my opinion, but that's what makes the most sense to me. I don't think that the minimum wage is the primary culprit behind unemployment. There are so many other factors that come into play and I don't think you can blame it on any one factor. They all affect unemployment. It doesn't matter if people are willing to work for $0.50 a day if companies aren't hiring.

And gvg's number was the "World Poverty line," which amounts to the average level across the entire world. It's vastly different in different parts of the world (which have vastly different standards of living). A section half-way down the page, "National Poverty Lines" identifies poverty as less than $11,161 per year for one person in the US. That comes to roughly $30.50 per day to live at the poverty line in the US. For a family of 4, it's listed as $21,756, or ~$60/day.

Assuming you are a single person living in the US working 8 hour days, 5 times a week, you would need at least $5.36/hour to stay at the poverty line. For a family of 4 under the same conditions, you'd need to be making $10.46/hour. Hence the reason that most families in the US can't survive with one parent working full time at the current minimum wage ($7.25/hour) without outside assistance. And of course, that's if they want to live at the poverty line. If they want to get out of poverty, they need to be making a lot more money than that.

I view the minimum wage as a tool to protect the family from the reduced needs of the individual. If you didn't have a family to support, you could conceivably do the same task as someone who does have a family to support for a lot less money. If I need $10.50/hour to support my family and you come along and offer to work for $5.50/hour, chances are, I'm going to lose my job to you just because you can afford to work for less. :( Setting a minimum wage helps prevent people from getting undercut by someone with fewer needs than they have. It also protects American wages from the global market to some degree (though it fueled outsourcing to some extent over the last decade (which many companies are coming to regret for one reason or another :) )) because the cost of living is different in different parts of the world. The Wikipedia article lists the poverty line of rural India as $7.50/month, which comes out to ~$0.25/day. If Americans were forced to compete directly with that level of wage depreciation, wages would quickly collapse over here.

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I'm going to have to give you an 'F' for reading comprehension. I said "Any society...is...immoral." I never said that the millionaire was immoral. I said that the society that explicitly or implicitly made him more equal than the pauper was immoral. That is the implicit result if we extend your idea out to its logical conclusions. If you have lots of money, you have plenty of choices and if you don't like something, you can pay to change it. If you don't have money, you have to settle for whatever you can get.

While I've gotten plenty of D's on reading comprehension before, this is my first F. Anyways, it seems to me then that you must think that any society with money is immoral, not just a society where people aren't taxed to redistribute their wealth. Even if you tax everybody 100% and redistribute the wealth to everyone as equally as possible the people who are more productive will still be more "power"ful than the less productive people. Even if you send everyone through identical schooling and have them live in identical houses with identical meals and force them to work for identical amounts of times each day, some people will still be smarter than others and will still be better at helping themselves than others. Due to the extremes with which you might wish to make them all equal rather than let some people get ahead (i.e. become more wealthy) by being more productive, people certainly won't be able to that much more "power"ful than their peers, but you'll never eliminate it completely. Even if you eliminate "money" and force people to barter, I would still say that "Any society where "Money = Power" is unjust (and immoral in my view)" would lead you to consider the society to be unjust. Money is really just the middle man in a transition of what form of wealth you have. Perhaps you own a good or perhaps you are about to work or create a good or a service. You work and create that good/service and then you trade it away for money so that you can then trade that money for other goods or services. If you get rid of money in a society your statement still has a meaning. It would mean that you consider any society where the amount of value that someone produces is proportional to the amount of power they have is a society that you consider unjust/immoral. If I could magically cause a wonderful house to spring up out of the ground with the snap of my fingers I would certainly become very rich, but even if we lived in a society with 100% taxation with equal wealth distribution to all or even if we lived in a society without money where people had to borrow, the fact that I would be such a productive/wealthy person would also mean that I am a "powerful" person. "Any society where "Money = Power" is unjust (and immoral in my view)." People who produce things that people value are always more "power"ful than those who aren't as good at producing things that people value. so "Money = Power" will always be true to some extent in all societies. Are all societies thus unjust to you, or are only societies in which the majority doesn't have some ability to tax people to some extent to redistribute wealth against the wealthy peoples' wills (i.e. voluntaristic societies (stateless societies)) immoral?

Like I've said before, you seem to be an extreme exception to the rule. The vast majority of people in the world would use force to save themselves (and their family) if they saw no other way.

"...if they saw no other way." No other way as in you asked everyone you've seen and nobody will give you any food voluntarily no matter what you do for them? Yeah right... I know you think that you're one of the few charitable people in the world, but come on, people aren't that uncharitable. If you are crawling around starving to death I don't think you'd even have to ask. Worst case scenario though, say "Help, I'm dying!" and I'm sure you'll find someone charitable enough to help you. You wouldn't have to steal. You wouldn't have to threaten anyone. People have said I've overstated how charitable people are, but there's no way I'm overstating it here. You can get the basic things you need to survive a moderate lifetime without stealing them or threatening people that you'll harm them if they don't help you. I imagine there are very few people in the world who would actually watch you starve to death, for example, if you actually go up to them and ask them to help you. If you hide in a gutter somewhere wealthy people might waste their energy on some luxury things instead of saving you, but take the most selfish, uncharitable person you know and tell me that they'd actually let someone starve to death if that person came to them for help. There's no way. And even if I'm wrong and there are indeed a ton of insane non-humanist folk in the world, the paupers can always find the people like you and me to help them if they need help surviving.

So while you would apparently be willing to die a slow, painful death, most other people would be willing to lash out as someone (steal food from stores, mug passers by, rob a bank, etc.). Some people do it because they have "issues," but others would only do it because they don't see any other way to survive.

Again, if all my friends and family died and I received brain damage that made me dumb so nobody wanted to hire me, I'm sure I would still manage to find a decent enough person to be charitable towards me to save me from dehydrating/starving/etc to death. Perhaps they wouldn't pay for an expensive medical procedure to prolong my life to old age, but they'd certainly be charitable enough.

But they would do it. If you're really so adamant, put your principles into practice, like you say you would and stop paying those coercive, immoral taxes. :rolleyes: See what it's like, living on the other side for a while.

I don't get what you're saying? Are you saying that if I was very poor I would want you to support a government that would force people to pay for welfare programs (and wars?) against their will? I really don't think I would even if all my friends and family died and I suffered some brain damage preventing me from being a productive person. But, then again, because I'm not living in poverty you can just continue using this as a silly argument against me supporting the non-aggression principle. Anyways, while I still currently consider it "just" (not negative connotation) an opinion to believe in the non-aggression principle, this guy (Molyneux, who I have so poorly represented on this thread) wrote a book claiming to offer "A Rational Proof of Secular Ethics." I haven't read it yet, but it's pretty short so maybe you might want to read it rather than getting the poorly said and poorly argued rants by me that you have been receiving on this thread that clearly aren't doing any good.

I do think that we've reached an impasse because your discussion of nature proves that you reject the entire basis of our society: That we come together to escape the vagaries of Nature.

Oh good, so what are these "vagaries of Nature"? (As usual, I'm ignorant of most of what many of these intellectuals have said... do you blame me for not being too educated by the way? I was in the top 10% of my class in high school (a very good school too) if you'll believe it. And yet I barely know a thing... how can it be? And I'm not being sarcastic just in case you thought I was: I too consider myself quite dumb or uneducated in a lot of areas such as my inability to argue decently as shown in this forum.).

That is the essential points in the beginning of each of Hobbes' Locke's and Rousseau's treatises. Hobbes famously described the State of Nature as "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short." Therefore, each of them explained how the Social Contract (upon which all modern democracies are based) elevates us from that state and brings us to a better, more stable and just state. Here's a link to a summary of each of their views on the State of Nature. It doesn't quote any of the texts directly and I have to say that her characterization of their views is not quite the way that I remember them, but it has been a while since I read the texts myself, so I could be misremembering their precise arguments. I think that you would agree with some points of each and disagree with others. But if you reject their views on why we need to leave the State of Nature, then we really can't make any headway here because you reject the premise that the rest of us accept. The Wikipedia page on the State of Nature has summaries of a number of philosophers' views on the subject, but it's really not that useful without the full context of each of their arguments. Each described the State of Nature to explain why we needed governments to make a more just society and none of that is explained on the page. :duh:

"'Each Transgression may be punished to that degree, and with so much Severity as will suffice to make it an ill bargain to the Offender , give him cause to repent, and terrifying others from doing the like' (Second Treatise, 272)." I remembered reading this a year and a half ago and it triggered my memory to recall that I have actually read some of John Locke's and Hobbes' writings. I didn't study them in too much detail, but I have read some of what they wrote.

I have a question: "Having a law-enforcer in a state of nature means to give power to somebody and therefore create a governed system. Nonetheless, Locke who advocates equality among human beings, claims that everyone would be empowered to enforce the Law of Nature in a state of nature. " So does this mean that Locke also supported giving power to a "law-enforcer" despite how "Locke adds a ...moral aspect to the theory, stating that... we have a clear duty not to harm others (except for limited purposes of self defence)"? Or did he think that people could enforce the "Law of Nature" themselves without giving power to such a governmental law-enforcer? Because I would respond to this subject by saying that if we just make the "Law of Nature" the non-aggression principle, then it should be clear to everyone when someone does something immoral and they can thus be punished easily without setting up a coercive state to arbitrarily decide on what the "law" is. Also, I would say that people with power tend to corrupt that power, so giving power to a government "law-enforcer" to enforce the government's arbitrary laws is surely a bad idea as there is bound to be corruption.

"However, Rousseau’s point on morality is dramatically different form Locke’s one. He states that in a state of nature there is no room for law, right and morality. Rousseau simply means that we tend to avoid harming others because of our natural aversion to pain and suffering." I definitely disagree with Rousseau on this. I think that a good society should be based on a moral principle like the non-initiation of force. If most people don't accept the non-aggression principle then people will be harmed despite our natural aversion to pain and suffering simply because if power is available to people, many people will tend to use that power to better themselves. If history has shown anything it is that people will corrupt their power, whether it's a single dictator with power or a majority with power in a democracy. I think that as long as people tolerate initiations of force against others, people will always initiate force against others for their own gain at the others' loss. So to disagree with Rousseau, I think society should be based on the non-aggression principle.

Well, I could guess what you meant, but it was still a non sequitur the way that you said it. You provided no context for your statement, so it was impossible to know exactly what you meant without extrapolating it ourselves.

In any case, I think that the minimum wage is not the limiting factor in why people can't get jobs. "It's the Economy, Stupid!" When you're in an economic downturn, companies stop hiring. So when people lose their jobs, they can't find new ones. And then when you increase the number of unemployed, you have more people competing for the fewer available jobs. So wages get further depressed because people have to take what they can get. I'm not an economist and this is entirely my opinion, but that's what makes the most sense to me. I don't think that the minimum wage is the primary culprit behind unemployment. There are so many other factors that come into play and I don't think you can blame it on any one factor. They all affect unemployment. It doesn't matter if people are willing to work for $0.50 a day if companies aren't hiring.

I agree and disagree. I agree in that I certainly don't think the minimum wage is the only factor. I disagree though with this idea: "It doesn't matter if people are willing to work for $0.50 a day if companies aren't hiring." If the government abolished it's minimum wage laws, I guarantee you essentially every company in the country (myself included) would offer almost any person capable of walking (as well as many people who couldn't even walk (so basically only the cucumbers and little children excluded) a job for 50 cents a day. Now, you're not going to get people out of poverty by hiring them for 50 cents a day, but I'm certain that without minimum wage laws, almost every single person in the country would be offered jobs from many companies for rates much higher than 50 cents a day. If a company couldn't benefit $7.25/hour from you for your work, then it won't hire you with our current minimum wage laws. But, without the minimum wage, I would certainly offer people jobs doing any tiny jobs around my house even for 50 cents an hour. I doubt many people would accept the jobs, but I'd certainly be willing to pay someone 50 cents a day to do a number of chores for me. Their services may not be worth $7.25 an hour and I might not be able to afford to hire too many people at $7.25 an hour, but without minimum wage, I would offer some pay to almost anyone looking for a job. So really I just want to strongly disagree with your statement: "It doesn't matter if people are willing to work for $0.50 a day if companies aren't hiring." If someone is willing to work for $0.50 a day I'm sure that a ton of people would love to hire the person for that much.

And gvg's number was the "World Poverty line," which amounts to the average level across the entire world. It's vastly different in different parts of the world (which have vastly different standards of living). A section half-way down the page, "National Poverty Lines" identifies poverty as less than $11,161 per year for one person in the US. That comes to roughly $30.50 per day to live at the poverty line in the US. For a family of 4, it's listed as $21,756, or ~$60/day.

Assuming you are a single person living in the US working 8 hour days, 5 times a week, you would need at least $5.36/hour to stay at the poverty line. For a family of 4 under the same conditions, you'd need to be making $10.46/hour. Hence the reason that most families in the US can't survive with one parent working full time at the current minimum wage ($7.25/hour) without outside assistance. And of course, that's if they want to live at the poverty line. If they want to get out of poverty, they need to be making a lot more money than that.

Yes.

I view the minimum wage as a tool to protect the family from the reduced needs of the individual. If you didn't have a family to support, you could conceivably do the same task as someone who does have a family to support for a lot less money. If I need $10.50/hour to support my family and you come along and offer to work for $5.50/hour, chances are, I'm going to lose my job to you just because you can afford to work for less. :( Setting a minimum wage helps prevent people from getting undercut by someone with fewer needs than they have. It also protects American wages from the global market to some degree (though it fueled outsourcing to some extent over the last decade (which many companies are coming to regret for one reason or another :) )) because the cost of living is different in different parts of the world. The Wikipedia article lists the poverty line of rural India as $7.50/month, which comes out to ~$0.25/day. If Americans were forced to compete directly with that level of wage depreciation, wages would quickly collapse over here.

I don't see the undercutting issue as a real problem. If someone is looking to hire you or another person and the other person offers to work for less money, then shouldn't the employer be allowed to hire that other person instead of you? I mean, it would certainly be very annoying to you that this other person comes along and takes your job just because he is willing to work almost for free, but shouldn't you just look for another job at that point? You wouldn't really want to criminalize him for offering to work for such a low wage or criminalize the employer for hiring him for that wage, would you? What did either of them do wrong? The employer is just someone who wants someone to do a job for them for less than $7.25/hour and the employee is just someone willing to do that job for that wage and you're someone not willing to do that job for that wage. That's that, isn't it? To me it certainly looks like you're going to have to rely on voluntary solutions to your predicament because I'm certainly not going to criminalize the employer or the employee for having the employee work for the employer voluntarily regardless of the wage.

I also don't understand: "It also protects American wages from the global market." Why do you need to "protect" American wages from the rest of the world? What's wrong with letting people voluntarily decide how much they are willing to pay for someone to work for them? And what's wrong with letting people voluntarily decide the price at which they are willing to work for someone?

Edited by Use the Force
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Also:

"If Americans were forced to compete directly with that level of wage depreciation, wages would quickly collapse over here." I think you mean "allowed" not "forced." Even if Americans were allowed to hire people for an amount of money greater than $0.00/hour, but less than $7.25/hour, I'm quite skeptical of your claim that "wages would quickly collapse over here." I don't know if we should bother getting into a debate on this though.

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1. Dawh meant money equals power as in a fuedal type society. Yes, maybe there was that one guy who worked hard. But then, his son doesn't have to work... than his.... etc. but they are still the most powerful. i believe this is what dawh was getting at.

2. You are greatly overestimating the good nature of humanity. Otherwise the fuedal system would have worked, communism would have worked, and we'd all be singing kumbaya. This is, I think, a major reason we can't agree. We view humanity differently.

3. I don't know locke or whatever, so I won't comment on this.

4. The law of nature, though, is very evident on anybody fluent somewhat in evolution: The strong will survive, survival of the fittest, etc. And this is fine in the wild; after all, humanity got here that way. But we are supposed to be able to go above that, and allow EVERYONE to not just survive, but thrive. And yes, there are people who don't give a s*** about anyone else. You think wall street cares about you? Or the insurance business (who gains profit from your suffering, and even denies you coverage if you are already suffering)? No. Most people don't care about anybody else. The rule of thumb for capitalism is social darwinism, the strong will survive. is this what you really want? I don't.

5. Dawh wasn't criminalizing anybody, just showing that minimum wage laws protect those who need protection. Can a father of six really afford to work for as little as a single man in his early twenties? No. This allows the father to compete.

6. Americans are already being forced by businesses who are outsourcing. Google is in CHina, Nike uses slave labor, Walmart is f'd up, Gap uses slave labor. They don't want to deal with 'whiny American workers.' They want profit, and are willing to step on anybody's toes to get there. That's why you have to be a mean SOB to succeed in business. My dad has told, not in a bad way, that I'm too nice to be in business. Business is cruel. And they don't care.

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