Are you planning to vote in the 2012 election

[Guest]

NOTE: This is not the most coherent of arguments. I suspect that I am insufficiently caffeinated to make the arguments that I am trying to make at this time.

@UtF: I am not an anarchist because I want to live in a socialist society. That's the antithesis of anarchy. I just recognize that forcing people who disagree with me into this political structure is unjustifiable. Me allowing you to have your anarchy in say, Florida, doesn't affect my non-anarchy in Massachusetts.

Though... eh, I see where you're coming from. I think of myself as much of a libertarian socialist than anything. If I change that to socialist anarchist on Facebook, I think people would get confused and have a fit.

@Gvg: We have that now, lol. Is it working?

My main problem with allowing to leave if they want to relates to the American Civil War. President Lincoln could have let the South secede and let them have their plantations and their slaves. It might have been the politically expedient thing to do at the time, even if it would have been the morally reprehensible one. (And a lot of commenters on liberal blogs like to lament Lincoln's decision today with the continued backwardness of some parts of the South. Which always engenders a response from southern liberals imploring them to rethink that sentiment. )

However, if Lincoln had let the South go, what would have happened the next time some part of the country wound up in disagreement with the Federal government? If the government refused to assent to the terms, they would look at the Confederate States of America to the south and say, "Well they did it, so why can't we?" It would have created a precedent to allow any state or group of states to break away from the Union whenever they found it expedient to do so. It would have hampered our ability to build a strong, diverse economy like the one we had at the height of the 20th century and should we have ever faced a truly existential threat to our existence, we would have been incapable of defending ourselves if any of the states felt they didn't need to help.

It was only because we remained one country, indivisible that we were able to have to economic strength to make the advances that we enjoy today. I don't like the idea of permitting people with ideologically different views to separate into their own communities because it allows them to create their own echo chambers, where they don't have to listen to or experience views that differ from their own. At that point, it seems like you would risk running into situations like the fictional kingdoms of Lilliput and Blefuscu. People might wind up fighting, simply because they can't agree with each other over trivial things on a fundamental level. There are already studies indicating that liberals and conservatives have differently wired brains. They have different value systems and different goals. If we let people separate into ideologically pure groups, then you risk getting to a point where conflict is unavoidable since people can no longer relate on even the most basic level.

To go back to the argument with UtF, while there's give and take to this, I also think that putting the profit-motive on everything in the world creates a negative stimulus on innovation. Companies are driven by profit (that is their purpose by definition). Research and Development is expensive and risky. If your project flops, you risk losing what you have to your competitors. So it's far safer for you to simply maintain the status quo and not make risky investments in projects that are not guaranteed to pay off. As I look back at the last century, it seems to me that most of the progress came from government-backed projects. Would we be in outer space (in even the limited capacity that we are now) if we hadn't had government pushing the envelope? Would we have the Internet in any form like it is today, if we hadn't had the government pushing the research (admittedly from the Department of Defense's perspective originally)? My understanding is that much of the pharmaceutical research and the like is done at public universities and generally sold to companies that sponsor it. But it's the government that is driving the innovation because they don't have the profit motive that a company does. The government can afford to put money into an expensive research proposal because it's supported by the taxpayer and if it pays off it will benefit the people. If it doesn't it's not like they'll lose marketshare or anything like that.

I'll finish with a short anecdote from my dad. He used to work at Ford Motor Company several years ago and he told me that he heard stories about some of the mid-level managers considering cutting the budget from the engineering department since it had a negative revenue stream and was therefore underperforming when compared to the highly profitable sales and marketing departments. Nevermind the fact that the engineers were designing and building the cars (and were drawing a paycheck, but not generating any money directly), while the sales and marketing departments were the ones selling the cars produced by the engineers.

(Okay, not quite finished): Leaving things to the "free market" is inherently unstable as people can make stupid decisions that can make a company go out of business for no good reason. What private financial company would have put their neck on the line to bailout GM and Chrysler when they were going bankrupt? The financially sound decision for everyone not directly involved would have been to let them fail and the people directly involved didn't have the resources to prevent that from happening. Without the government stepping in, while the rest of you all would have been "enjoying" a financial recession, Michigan, Ohio and the rest of the Rust Belt would have sunk into an economic depression. It was only the government's intervention that saved the state economies from total ruin. And now, they are turning a profit since GM and Chrysler have recovered and paid off their debts (ahead of schedule). In the event of catastrophic failure, what company (or other entity) could be expected to step into the breach, other than a government that is obligated to act (not that they did for Hurricane Katrina, though that was a result of ideologically incompetent administration more than anything else)?

[Guest]

Here's another reason I don't support the "free market" from Talking Points Memo, a political blog I like to read. The New York Stock Exchange is trying to say that they trademarked the trading floor, so anyone who uses images of the trading floor has to get it okayed by them first (and pay royalties). The line of argument is ridiculous on its face, but they are doing it because there will be some smaller entities that won't have the resources to fight the issue, so they'll have to pay if they want to use it.

This particular instance doesn't really make a difference in the big picture, but there are plenty of ways for large companies to do things like this to muscle out competition that happen all the time. Big companies don't like small companies getting in on their turf. They fear the camel's nose. So they take out the bazooka at the first sign of movement on the other side of the tent wall.

[Izzy]

Dawh, I want to make a few points. America is enormous. Florida alone is about the size of Germany. Even if all fifty states decide to claim their independence, our shared culture will still hold us together. Nothing would stop the states from working together. I don't think we'll spiral into this scary failing anarchist society you envision. If anything, we'll resemble Western Europe, + some diversity and freedoms, - some left leaning majority.

You mention slavery. Is being forced to comply with rules of a government you don't agree with not a form of slavery? Taxation, for those that don't want to tax, is slavery to the state. Their labor is going to other people. At least, that's how I imagine the right sees it. The left sees it more like the necessary foundation for their country.

My only goal in life is it be happy and to let others be happy. If you want a strong, central government, then by all means have one, but I think we should play nice and not make people that don't want to join in "play". It's kind of like charades. If someone has a bad attitude about it, it's going to suck. Rather than compromise and play a game no one is into, break into groups and play what you want. This logic is so elementary that we literally began employing it at recess in kindergarten. We were still friends with everyone back then, and I seriously think it can be applied to politics.

[Guest]

Dawh, I want to make a few points. America is enormous. Florida alone is about the size of Germany. Even if all fifty states decide to claim their independence, our shared culture will still hold us together. Nothing would stop the states from working together. I don't think we'll spiral into this scary failing anarchist society you envision. If anything, we'll resemble Western Europe, + some diversity and freedoms, - some left leaning majority.

You mention slavery. Is being forced to comply with rules of a government you don't agree with not a form of slavery? Taxation, for those that don't want to tax, is slavery to the state. Their labor is going to other people. At least, that's how I imagine the right sees it. The left sees it more like the necessary foundation for their country.

My only goal in life is it be happy and to let others be happy. If you want a strong, central government, then by all means have one, but I think we should play nice and not make people that don't want to join in "play". It's kind of like charades. If someone has a bad attitude about it, it's going to suck. Rather than compromise and play a game no one is into, break into groups and play what you want. This logic is so elementary that we literally began employing it at recess in kindergarten. We were still friends with everyone back then, and I seriously think it can be applied to politics.

Zizzy, if all fifty states decided to claim their independence then certainly whatever motivated those decisions would drive us apart. Even if one state did, first off as dawh stated, there would be a struggle to prevent it and animosity would follow. But if there were no struggle, don't you think whatever factor made Florida (for example) splinter off would have a lingering impact on our relations?

[Izzy]

Yet forced compliance is okay? If so, why? People, as dawh pointed out, are inherently different. If they don't agree on something, I don't see why only giving one person their way is the solution. Maybe a series of secessions doesn't solve this, but we do need a method of geographically grouping people with like desires together so we can even attempt universal happiness. Homogeneity isn't a bad thing if it eliminate internal disputes. I think we're almost at the point when most countries can start minding their own business... (Of course, if everyone wants to live where they live, there will be no reason to start wars in the name of "freedom", or oil. )

[Guest]

Yet forced compliance is okay? If so, why? People, as dawh pointed out, are inherently different. If they don't agree on something, I don't see why only giving one person their way is the solution. Maybe a series of secessions doesn't solve this, but we do need a method of geographically grouping people with like desires together so we can even attempt universal happiness. Homogeneity isn't a bad thing if it eliminate internal disputes. I think we're almost at the point when most countries can start minding their own business... (Of course, if everyone wants to live where they live, there will be no reason to start wars in the name of "freedom", or oil. )

The goal isn't to give only one person their way. The goal is to reach a group consensus through reasoned debate. It's not possible to please everyone in every situation. Since pizza toppings have been brought up earlier in the thread, I'll use them to illustrate my example. You may have a group of friends and you all do everything together and you all have really similar interests and views. But when it comes to pizza toppings, they all like really weird toppings that you can't stand. So there are always problems if you're all chipping in for a pizza. You either have to buy your own (which more expensive for you and you can't finish it all by yourself), or you have to pick off the toppings from the pizza the rest of them all enjoy. Your choice.

But that doesn't mean that you'll stop hanging out with this group of friends just because they have "bad" taste in pizza. (At least, I wouldn't expect it to do so. ) Anytime a group of people get together, someone's going to disagree on something. Just because people are more ideologically aligned doesn't mean that they will always get along. So we have to be mature about things when we disagree. Taking your ball (or taxes) and going home, isn't exactly the most mature attitude.

Sometimes, people have to move places for reasons beyond their control. I have a friend whose dad was a middle manager at Pfizer. They did a reorg (or maybe he offered to move, I'm not sure) and he wound up moving from the suburbs of Chicago to their Ann Arbor office. So the family picked up and moved his junior year of high school (which is when I met him). Then four years later (or thereabouts) Pfizer closed their Ann Arbor facility (), so the family wound up moving back to Chicago at that point. As it happens, I think they were fairly liberal, but I could see situations where moving from a conservative neighborhood in Chicago to the very liberal city of Ann Arbor might be cause for some discomfort for them. But if your company wants to move you to another office, you don't always have a choice in the matter if you want to keep your job and benefits.

Let's say for instance, that you're very liberal, but your parents are die-hard conservatives. So they move to Sugarland, Texas and you move to Boston. You're all living happily in your respective ideological worlds when you find out that your parents are gravely ill and need regular care. You can't abide the idea of sending them to a nursing home, so you pick up and move to Sugarland to help care for them yourself (at least keep an eye on them regularly; make sure they're taking the medication they need and that they aren't injured). But now you're living and working in Sugarland, a place ideologically different from you. Should they accommodate your beliefs just because you moved there? You're in the minority there, like it or not, so you have to respect their rules.

There are many reasons why people live where they do and a lot of the time, the can't (or won't) be able to move if they don't agree with the decisions of the majority. So it's not really a feasible argument to say that everyone should be able to get what they want if the rest of the people around them don't agree.

[Izzy]

Your pizza analogy fails because you overlook the most simple solution: making your order more clear. Just tell the company your ordering from to put mushroom on this fifth, with some pepperoni on these two fifths but only peppers on one of them. Have your veggie lovers, and so forth. The bigger your population is, the easier it so to order pizzas. In a group of 20, you can easily order a few pepperoni and cheese pizzas and feed them to the people that would be happy with just that, and everyone else can split pizzas up. Papa Johns and Pizza Hut are more than happy to do it.

I'd probably just ask my parents to move to Boston, and do my best to pay for their relocation. The north has better health facilities anyway. If none of this is an option, and I HAVE to move to Texas to care for my parents, then I'd do it, and I'd happily comply to the locals laws as much as I disagree with them because I'm there to help my parents. If I have kids in this scenario, then I'd be less willing to move, and maybe hire nurses for my parents instead and visit regularly.

If you've read Huxley's "Island", then I'd like to point out that I'd prefer it if people everywhere just behaved like the natives. It's so simple. Since we are different, well, *shrug*

Imagine, instead, this scenario:

We have Conservative America, Socialist Germany, Communist China, Jewish Israel, and *meh, other places*.

I will be more happy in socialist German than any of the other places. My Jewish friends will be fine in Israel. Die hard righties will like America, and the communists will favor China. To an extent, political dispersion through geography already exists. (And yeah, sometimes foreign relations suck, but that can be fixed). Should I have to remain in my arbitrary place of birth, even if I don't agree with what's going on there? Should an atheist born in Israel have to stay there?

Nah.

Secessions are a little different, but once they're said and done, we'll have little countries that are nearly completely politically unified. Imagine taking all the skinheads, anarchists, and teabaggers (er, partiers) out of Germany and leaving just the socialists. It becomes stronger.

Melting pots suck. Diversity sucks. By all means, accept other cultures, but don't be forced to embrace them and live by their rules just because of the majority vote. So much more will get accomplished if we just rewrite the world map. I'm sure your friend was fine with Ann Arbor after living there for a while? Change seems scary, but people get used to it. When we moved from Orlando to Oviedo, I was completely distraught. Going from the suburbs to the suburbs of the suburbs (what I, as an Orlando kid, considered the country ) was unthinkable. *shrug* I got used to it. At first, it sucked being a teenager here because there's *nothing to do*, but that was mostly due to immobility. I got my license and a car, and.. then it wasn't so bad anymore. Moral: people learn to like where they live.

Anyway. I don't know how coherent that is. It's summeraksjfakjdfakdjf.

[Guest]

I will be more happy in socialist German than any of the other places...

Imagine taking all the skinheads, anarchists, and teabaggers (er, partiers) out of Germany and leaving just the socialists. It becomes stronger.

Wait...isn't socialist Germany the Nazis?

btw...diversity is strength, not uniformity. Don't believe me? Trace the history of spaghetti. Take from others and improve upon it. Share knowledge.

[Guest]

I'd probably just ask my parents to move to Boston, and do my best to pay for their relocation. The north has better health facilities anyway. If none of this is an option, and I HAVE to move to Texas to care for my parents, then I'd do it, and I'd happily comply to the locals laws as much as I disagree with them because I'm there to help my parents. If I have kids in this scenario, then I'd be less willing to move, and maybe hire nurses for my parents instead and visit regularly.

Of course, you sort of glossed over the part where your parents have a different belief system than you. It happens (my dad's always been liberal and his parents have always been conservative). Does that mean that such splits would basically force people to live in separate places from the rest of their family when they grow up? It's either that, or suffer in an alien world. Whereas, if the people all get together and try to find a middle ground, people can live where they want without having to fit in completely.

Imagine, instead, this scenario:

We have Conservative America, Socialist Germany, Communist China, Jewish Israel, and *meh, other places*.

I will be more happy in socialist German than any of the other places. My Jewish friends will be fine in Israel. Die hard righties will like America, and the communists will favor China. To an extent, political dispersion through geography already exists. (And yeah, sometimes foreign relations suck, but that can be fixed). Should I have to remain in my arbitrary place of birth, even if I don't agree with what's going on there? Should an atheist born in Israel have to stay there?

You'd be content to have your friends living in Israel while you live in Germany? How often would you get together to see them? Or would that relationship be relegated to online/phone only for the most part? It's possible for people to have friends that aren't ideologically aligned with them. Should they have to live in separate countries? That seems a bit weird to me.

Secessions are a little different, but once they're said and done, we'll have little countries that are nearly completely politically unified. Imagine taking all the skinheads, anarchists, and teabaggers (er, partiers) out of Germany and leaving just the socialists. It becomes stronger.

Melting pots suck. Diversity sucks. By all means, accept other cultures, but don't be forced to embrace them and live by their rules just because of the majority vote. So much more will get accomplished if we just rewrite the world map. I'm sure your friend was fine with Ann Arbor after living there for a while? Change seems scary, but people get used to it. When we moved from Orlando to Oviedo, I was completely distraught. Going from the suburbs to the suburbs of the suburbs (what I, as an Orlando kid, considered the country ) was unthinkable. *shrug* I got used to it. At first, it sucked being a teenager here because there's *nothing to do*, but that was mostly due to immobility. I got my license and a car, and.. then it wasn't so bad anymore. Moral: people learn to like where they live.

Wait...isn't socialist Germany the Nazis?

btw...diversity is strength, not uniformity. Don't believe me? Trace the history of spaghetti. Take from others and improve upon it. Share knowledge.

I think that maurice is right on. The nobility in Europe got screwed up because they kept marrying their cousins. It seems to me that people's ideologies will get screwed up if people have to keep marrying their "ideological cousins." One of my professors had a phrase: "Leverage comes from new ways of thinking." I like that phrase. The goal is to try to find new, better ways to solve the problem. If everyone comes at the problem from the same starting point, it's going to be very hard to see any new choices.

As much as I disagree with most conservative viewpoints, if conservatives are at least trying to be reasonable, they can come up with good ideas that liberals might miss (I know there are some examples...I'll think of something...maybe it'll come to me ). My point is, while we may disagree on implementation in some instances, if we all have the same goal, we should be able to hash out a fair middle ground (that's the crux of Locke's and Rousseau's arguments). Of course, when our fundamental goals are different, it becomes harder to find that middle ground...

Anyway. I don't know how coherent that is. It's summeraksjfakjdfakdjf.

It's a work day... Edited May 27, 2011 by dawh

[Guest]

Dawh is the Justin Timberlake to my Chris Kirkpatrick. We may have the same ideas, but he expresses them so much more elegantly and coherently. I actually thought of English royalty but couldn't figure out how to get it from mind to mouth

But back to UTF. While I don't think his ideas as currently constituted are feasible (at least as the world is currently constituted) I do believe it would be foolish to dismiss his sentiments as rubbish. They are valid, and really the word "valid" doesn't do them justice. This is where diversity kicks in. Where those of us who truly give a darn and see the flaws of our system attempt to see what we may be able to integrate..one direction or the other. (kinda back to our earlier 3rd party discussion)

[Quag]

Nazis were socialaist in name only , well once Hitler got in control of things in any case.

I agree the pizza analogy fails, but that doesnt mean the point is no good just a poor anaolgy. Everyone has different views on different subjects making homogeny impssoible. there will be sililarities on certain subjects but there will always be differences on others. As a weid example I knew a kid in high school who was big into drugs but compeltely against pre marital sex. Normally those pro drug are fine with sex and those against against, but there are always those areas where peopel are different. Also what do you do if say thos ein Hamburg want to be more socialist but the people from berlin want to be less so? what do you do when peoples (individually and collectively) attitudes change over time? cosntant revolution?

I Liek the general concept Izzy i jjust think it will end up being less effective than what we have now in the democratic countries at least, where things can be changed if enough people get involved and work towards the change. Remember less than 100 years ago Germany was as far from socialism as you could get.

As to the idependance of the individual states, well being a quebecker I suppose I have a rather unique perspective here, as I have lived through 2 referendums on removing Quebec from Canada. Lots of problems involved, does the entire state change or just the parts that voted for it? What if all of northern Florida didnt want to leave? Can they form a new state of Florida? Or join Georgia? You can see that this will get messy, not impossible just very messy. It will leave very bad feelings among those involved, this is unavoidable, unless you get a massive consensus, a very very unlikely outcome.

I agree with maurice removing disenters doesnt make you stronger it makes you stagnate.

Since people have been suggesting books, I strongly suggest The Dispossessed by Ursula K Le guin. It is Sci-Fi but a good read and not heavy liek all the otehr books mentioned so far. Despite being a story, she does a good job of trying to explain a lot of the subjects talke dabout here, as pertainign to anarchism at least.

[Izzy]

Then the solution to different belief systems is having areas for the middle ground. Even now, people can't live wherever they want. They live where they can afford and where their birth or family relations allow them to live. Before I thought of this system, I wanted some completely globalized planet where everyone followed the same basic standard of laws, so that people could choose to live where they wanted to purely by location. I realized that's not possible, because we can't convince nations to give up their theocracies, their military policies, or their judicial systems. As the world stands, I would not feel comfortable living in Israel because as nice of a country as it is, I am not religious.

Middle ground is okay for middle ground's sake. If I want a veggie pizza and you want a meat lovers, we can settle on cheese. Neither of us will be happy with it, but the pizza meets its purpose. I don't think a government should exist for the sake of just meeting its purpose. It should try to make people happy. I'm not saying everyone has to live where they feel politically comfortable. That would defeat the purpose of letting people be in control of their lives. I just think the US should be set up so it is at least an option. In a way, it's happening because of state laws. So really, what I propose isn't all that different than the natural course the country is bound to take, and has taken for some time now. Face it, the north is very left, and the south... is not. California isn't far from legalizing marijuana (the first victory in the drug war, woot), while Florida has the third most strict cannabis laws in the country. Ann Arbor has its fine, and citizens of Oklahoma can be given up to life in prison. There are three solutions to drug use in the south.

1. Do it discreetly.

2. Get your local drug laws changed.

3. Move somewhere where drugs are a less serious offense.

1 is what most people end up doing, and those caught (one of my favorite people got arrested last Friday =/) serve as a warning to others. 2 is difficult. I think all drugs should be legal, but I understand that some people are fundamentally different in this view. They want to live in what they think is a safe haven away from all the "scary" drug users. I get that. Yay media demonization, but if they want to live in an area free of drugs, they should also have that right, just like an atheist should have the right to go to a secular school and the religious can have their religious ones. Nbd.

People are also fundamentally different when it comes to politics, because there is no right or wrong (at least when it comes to economics). Conservatives are perfectly justified in wanting to keep their money for themselves. Liberals are perfectly justified in thinking that money should go to build a stronger country. As I've said before, our current political system sucks because it makes you choose, for the most part, between yourself and society. (Now, what conservatives often overlook is that by building a stronger society, they're doing themselves a favor, but meh, whatever). And, again, the middle ground is okay, but it is not, in any form, ideal.

I'd be sad to see a lot of friends leave, but I'd also make new friends. I can see an argument coming in here that relates how living in a homogenous environment enforces the views of that environment, and that not necessarily being a good thing. I think, given the internet, people are exposed to enough other people for that to be less of a concern. Though, if people are happy with their local government, it shouldn't matter, because they'll already have what they want so there will be no need to dispute with different people. And again, they wouldn't have to live in different countries. I envision a lot of moderate states.

@Mo: Don't be stupid, I'm talking about current Germany.

Just because people share the same basic system of thought doesn't make them completely like one another. Unreality and I agree on most things, but when it comes to ways of thinking and problem solving, we're very different. Same thing with you and I. People of shared political leanings generally have the same goal. Let's take healthcare, for instance. Now, everyone has the same goal: people should have good heathcare. Liberals and conservatives have completely different subgoals. Liberals want socialized healthcare, and conservatives want privatized healthcare. These methods aren't means to accomplishing the first goal, but rather more specific versions of that goal. If a nation thinks it has the same goal, but really doesn't, we get the current form of Obamacare. That's a joke. Separate the people that want socialized and privatized healthcare, and the actual goal of improving healthcare can be tackled. The former will make sure it's provided to everyone, and can then work on the abilities of the doctors and comfort of hospitals and the latter can just put a s'hiton of their money into paying for services, because this is America and money can buy anything. () Now, the way these reforms go through will have a lot of approaches from both sides, but again, the goals are fundamentally different. The middle ground.. is... not very... clear.

[Quag]

Much better explanation Izzy,

Still don't think it would work, as you said there is no world govt yet and none in sight. Cultural differences make agreeing on even broad principals very difficult to achieve.

Like you said with the state system you basically have what you are asking for. It is just a matter of degrees as I see it. I compeltely agree with you on the healthcare bit, both sides want the best system possible they just differ on how to get there. BTW from what I understand of obama care I am not impressed. Seems confusing and heavily bureaucratic, Here in Canada we have universal health care which isnt that bad, not that great either, but the bureaucracy eats up about 50% of the cash which is why they are always short. BTW we do have private health care here in Canada as well. Most people dont know this, but we do. Here in Quebec we have the most Private health care in Canada, we laso have the highest % of people against private health care. Most people dont like the idea of the word private but when you talk to them you find out that most people have used the private system at some point. When they talk about closing the specific private clinics people get up in arms so it never happens. Seems the terms have become more powerful in the minds of many people that the actual meaning.

I must take exception with your remarks on economics, There is a right(ish) and a wrong(ish) approach and an even larger ambigous grey area. Certain economic ideas are compeltely unworkable others create huge unfair disparities. Conservatives and Liberals, like healthcare actually have the same objective and liek ,see a different way to get there. Conservatives believe less govt creates wealth and builds a stronger country, liberals believe government does so. Same goal different approach. History shows has shown that going extreme either way ends up really really bad for the vast majority of people.

UTF btw the advocating anarchy or the lack of any political system which from what i can tell is the exact opposite of what you are saying.

[Guest]

Dawh, I want to make a few points. America is enormous. Florida alone is about the size of Germany. Even if all fifty states decide to claim their independence, our shared culture will still hold us together. Nothing would stop the states from working together. I don't think we'll spiral into this scary failing anarchist society you envision. If anything, we'll resemble Western Europe, + some diversity and freedoms, - some left leaning majority.

You mention slavery. Is being forced to comply with rules of a government you don't agree with not a form of slavery? Taxation, for those that don't want to tax, is slavery to the state. Their labor is going to other people. At least, that's how I imagine the right sees it. The left sees it more like the necessary foundation for their country.

My only goal in life is it be happy and to let others be happy. If you want a strong, central government, then by all means have one, but I think we should play nice and not make people that don't want to join in "play". It's kind of like charades. If someone has a bad attitude about it, it's going to suck. Rather than compromise and play a game no one is into, break into groups and play what you want. This logic is so elementary that we literally began employing it at recess in kindergarten. We were still friends with everyone back then, and I seriously think it can be applied to politics.

I agree with everything you say here: great post.

Yet forced compliance is okay? If so, why? People, as dawh pointed out, are inherently different. If they don't agree on something, I don't see why only giving one person their way is the solution. Maybe a series of secessions doesn't solve this, but we do need a method of geographically grouping people with like desires together so we can even attempt universal happiness. Homogeneity isn't a bad thing if it eliminate internal disputes. I think we're almost at the point when most countries can start minding their own business... (Of course, if everyone wants to live where they live, there will be no reason to start wars in the name of "freedom", or oil. )

I completed agree that giving one person their way is certainly NOT the solution (well, it may be in our current society, but I wouldn't consider it a decent "solution" and I certainly don't advocate it).

However, I do think that "a series of secessesions" may help solve the problem somewhat. I understand that for socialists like you this may not work very well because of the problems of living in the same geographical areas as conservatives like me who don't wish to be part of a system with "public" roads, but still I think that the secession idea allowing people with different views to all have their way by not forcing one group's way on everyone through a voting process is a step in the right direction. Of course, I agree that a method to help geographically redistribute people so that socialists can live together have their way without forcing their preferred hierarchical society on those who don't want it would be a very good thing as well. Anarchists often talk about "infinite secession" as a solution to governments that force one standard across a whole large country, but I understand that allowing your next door neighbor to opt out of paying for the roads in front of your house could be a problem practically when transitioning from our current society to a society that doesn't force one group's will on everyone. But still, some secession should certainly be made legal immediately I'm sure you would agree. For example, if a state wishes to secede from the country, don't you think there should be a process for that secession to become a reality? Currently there is no such process, but imagine if 90% of Texans wanted to secede from the USA, for example, and establish their own county. Are you really going to advocate not letting them? Some people on this forum might, but I certainly wouldn't I would guess that you wouldn't either. Perhaps letting your neighbor secede is too extreme for you because of all the practical problems with transitioning away from a state like your neighbor not paying for the roads in front of their house, but certainly these arguments don't apply to not letting a state secede from the USA.

The goal isn't to give only one person their way. The goal is to reach a group consensus through reasoned debate. It's not possible to please everyone in every situation. Since pizza toppings have been brought up earlier in the thread, I'll use them to illustrate my example. You may have a group of friends and you all do everything together and you all have really similar interests and views. But when it comes to pizza toppings, they all like really weird toppings that you can't stand. So there are always problems if you're all chipping in for a pizza. You either have to buy your own (which more expensive for you and you can't finish it all by yourself), or you have to pick off the toppings from the pizza the rest of them all enjoy. Your choice.

But that doesn't mean that you'll stop hanging out with this group of friends just because they have "bad" taste in pizza. (At least, I wouldn't expect it to do so. ) Anytime a group of people get together, someone's going to disagree on something. Just because people are more ideologically aligned doesn't mean that they will always get along. So we have to be mature about things when we disagree. Taking your ball (or taxes) and going home, isn't exactly the most mature attitude.

Read the first two sentences of this quote again. You were replying to Izzy here (who I agreed with) who said: "Yet forced compliance is okay? If so, why? People, as dawh pointed out, are inherently different. If they don't agree on something, I don't see why only giving one person their way is the solution." I know that in our current democracy the goal isn't to give one person their way (that would be a dictatorship). But, the goal is still to give one group their way. For example, the group of liberals/democrats who want a universal health care system. Rather than letting those people choose to form together on their own and set up their own health care system together, they pass a law forcing everyone in the US, including many Republicans, libertarians, anarchists, some Democrats, etc, to pay for that universal health care system anyways against their will. Why? Why do you support this? Izzy may be one of the people who want some sort of government health care system, but at least she recognizes that others don't and doesn't wish to force her will on those people. So while she is a socialist, I would say she is also very close to being an anarchist because she advocates the exact same thing that I have been advocating which is that "People, as dawh pointed out, are inherently different. If they don't agree on something, I don't see why only giving one person [or group] their way is the solution." Izzy may want a government health care system (I'm guessing this on the basis that she is a socialist), but she recognizes that I might not and respects that, unlike dawh, by wanting to disagree with me peacefully rather than violently. Rather than advocating forcing me to pay for a universal health care system I don't want to pay for (as dawh might advocate), Izzy seems to want to let me not be a part of the system and then form her own "public" health care system with the other like-minded liberals in the USA.

As for the pizza analogy, while I think it fails for the reasons Izzy provided, I think it's also important to point out that if one of your friends really doesn't want to pay for the pizza with the toppings you want and then take the toppings off (although I admit it would be very easy to find a compromise in real life), the point is that you shouldn't FORCE your friend to by the pizza anyways. The analogy isn't great because it's so easy to compromise and agree on a way to buy the pizza even if you all want different toppings, but the whole point of the analogy is that if you can't reach a decent agreement on what pizza(s) to buy and how to pay for them, you shouldn't force your friend to pay for a pizza against their will even if it is more cost effective overall, etc. You might think that it's way better than all buying your own pizzas and wasting a lot or whatever but in the end you still shouldn't force your friend to buy the pizza against their will no matter the price of letting them buy their own pizza and paying for your own whole pizza yourself. Izzy and I seem to value consent more than you (dawh).

Another note: I think dawh's post number #159 was way off with what he was assuming was the implications of Izzy's statements about not wanting to force one group's will on another group.

[Guest]

Then the solution to different belief systems is having areas for the middle ground.

...

Just because people share the same basic system of thought doesn't make them completely like one another. Unreality and I agree on most things, but when it comes to ways of thinking and problem solving, we're very different. Same thing with you and I. People of shared political leanings generally have the same goal. Let's take healthcare, for instance. Now, everyone has the same goal: people should have good heathcare. Liberals and conservatives have completely different subgoals. Liberals want socialized healthcare, and conservatives want privatized healthcare. These methods aren't means to accomplishing the first goal, but rather more specific versions of that goal. If a nation thinks it has the same goal, but really doesn't, we get the current form of Obamacare. That's a joke. Separate the people that want socialized and privatized healthcare, and the actual goal of improving healthcare can be tackled. The former will make sure it's provided to everyone, and can then work on the abilities of the doctors and comfort of hospitals and the latter can just put a s'hiton of their money into paying for services, because this is America and money can buy anything. () Now, the way these reforms go through will have a lot of approaches from both sides, but again, the goals are fundamentally different. The middle ground.. is... not very... clear.

So you ended up mentioning health care (an example I used in my previous post). First, can I take this post to mean that you opposed Obama signing the health care bill into law? Do you think he should have vetoed it?

Second, I think the middle ground is pretty clear. While you are a socialist who wants socialized "universal" health care, I'm pretty sure you don't mean that you want to force me to pay for this health care system if I am someone who doesn't want to pay for it, right? So isn't the middle ground letting me get my health care from some private company, while you and all of the liberals who want some sort of socialized health care system set up a non-profit organization that is perhaps controlled by the government (or a democratic system of some sort) that collects money from all its members who make a lot of money and then uses that money to pay for health care for everyone, even the poor people in the system who don't make enough money to have to pay any money to the health care organization. So, in other words, the middle ground is that you can let me get health care from a business that profits if I want to, while you and others who want the same thing as you can set up an organization that isn't a business and isn't meant to profit, but is instead meant to redistribute peoples' wealth to provide health care for everyone living in its society, even those who are too poor to afford the health care anyways. So you can require that wealthier people who wish to join your socialized health care system pay a greater share than middle class people and you can also allow in poor people for free. Do just what many liberals want the government to do, but don't force those people who don't want to be a part of the system to pay for the system anyways.

[Izzy]

For my purposes, I wish Obama's bill would have been signed into congress without the adulteration of the right.

Since *that* didn't happen, it's all s'hitty now and serves no purpose.

[Guest]

For my purposes, I wish Obama's bill would have been signed into congress without the adulteration of the right.

Since *that* didn't happen, it's all s'hitty now and serves no purpose.

While I definitely think that it could be better, I much prefer having it to having nothing at all. For all their talk, the Republicans really didn't want to pass any health care bill in any form, so it was completely dependent on the Democrats to unite the factions in their party to pass anything. An enormous abuse of the rules (that no one in leadership is really interested in changing in either party) allows a super minority of the country to hold legislation hostage even if an overwhelming majority of the country wants it to pass.

The thing about the mandate that's been such a big issue is that it supports a system to help bring down everyone's insurance premiums. Insurance works with the expectation that most people won't be collecting the money that they pay in, so it funds the people who do wind up needing it. The more people paying into the system, the less money that is required from each person individually to fund it. When you start letting people "opt out," everyone else has to pay a little more in to keep the fund in the black. So, in a way, you could say that each person that "opts out" is taxing every other person in the system, and we've all been told how immoral taxation is...

My point with the pizza analogy (which I guess didn't work largely because it was too trivial) was that there are situations where people's goals are in direct conflict. I wasn't saying anything about how to resolve the situation. My point was that there was no solution that satisfied all parties' interests. Sometimes the only solution is compromise and both sides have to give up something they want. UtF seems to act like people should always be able to get what they want one way or another in his model society, and I was trying to say that there would be times where it wouldn't be possible. I wasn't trying to say that the person should be forced to buy a pizza with toppings she didn't like or that she should pay more for a pizza by herself. I was just trying to say that there would be cases where there wasn't a good answer for how the solution should resolve.

The most striking example of a situation where I think that private industry could not work is fire insurance/fire departments. If I was forced to buy fire insurance from a private enterprise, I think that I would spite my neighbors and refuse to buy it.* That way, if my house caught on fire, I wouldn't be covered and the fire service wouldn't be required to put it out. They would only have to put it out when it caught all my neighbors' houses that did pay. This is how things worked in Great Britain more than a century ago. If you didn't have a plaque on your house signifying that you had paid for fire protection services, they weren't required to respond to a fire that occurred on your premises. But of course, to limit the damage and spread of the fire, it makes the most sense to stop the fire when it's as small as possible. As soon as the fire starts to spread, it becomes much harder to stop it and the amount of damage increases at a potentially exponential rate. So the most reasonable approach is for everyone to pay into a system that provides the guarantee that any fire will be extinguished promptly, regardless of who's house it is.

*

Since we're creating fantasy realms, I'm imagining a world where I would be much nastier to the people around me than I probably would be in real life. I'd probably pay if it really was the only option.

[gvg]

Just to talk anout Obama's plan: It didn't do enough. He had a chance, with a supermajority in the house, to do basically whatever the f*** he wanted. Of course, he didn't know that the democrats are about as unified as the NY Mets, while the Republicans, even in the minority, worked together. It was better than nothing, yes, but it had a lot of watered down bulls*** thanks to some laws that at least need to be limited.

I would go more towards a single-payer system, like Bernie Sanders Medicare for all plan that was passed into law in Vermont yesterday. (see here: http://www.vermontforsinglepayer.org/vermontpassessinglepayerhealthcareworlddoesntend) It's a European style system. Because of some federal laws, it won't go into effect until 2017 (they are trying to get it reduced to 2014), but when it does, every single citizen of Vermont will have healthcare as a right (as it should be). If this were implemented nationwide, it would reduce costs; after all, in Europe, where many are under this type of system, they pay half as much as the US does under our current fully privatized system (mostly because it's so damn expensive, people don't buy any, and when the problem augments, EVERYBODY feels the pain. See Bernie Sanders' interview on Real Time with Bill Maher (it's on youtube) where he kinda explains it. And yes, if you haven't noticed, I love Bernie Sanders, and would pay to have him be one of the NY senators (not the state one of course, the Federal one)). Yes UtF: The private system costs people twice as much =) Free Market lost one there.

Anyway, enough of my rant. If I was old enough to vote when Obama reruns, I wouldn't want vote for him. I would try and get Bernie as a write-in, though I know that would do nothing. WHich is why I would, in the end, have to vote for Obama. I shudder to think of any of the Republican candidates in office in 2012.

Oh, here's the video:

[Guest]

When you start letting people "opt out," everyone else has to pay a little more in to keep the fund in the black. So, in a way, you could say that each person that "opts out" is taxing every other person in the system, and we've all been told how immoral taxation is...

This is such complete nonsense that it's difficult for me to believe that you said it. This sounds like something quag might say. Insurance is a product just like every other product or service. A seller and a buyer of a product (whether it be insurance or not) must agree on a price. Giving the seller the right to require that someone buys their product for a certain price against their will is completely immoral. Izzy said in an earlier post, "You mention slavery. Is being forced to comply with rules of a government you don't agree with not a form of slavery? Taxation, for those that don't want to tax, is slavery to the state. Their labor is going to other people." How do you not see this, dawh? Money represents what is produced by peoples' labor. By giving yourself (and the state) the right to take money from people to pay for things that they don't want (e.g. wars) or even for things that they do want, but at a price they don't want (e.g. health insurance or any other product), you are giving yourself the right to own the other person's labor. In other words, you are making the people your slaves--you're being a tyrant.

"So, in a way, you could say that each person that "opts out" is taxing every other person in the system..." While it might be true that if I'm selling a product (such as insurance) I can sell it for less money per product if I have more customers to sell to. Naturally Dell won't be able to design and manufacture my own personal completely customized computer for me at a cheap price, but by mass producing a design for many customers, the company manages to reduce the cost per computer. While I don't think this phenomena works exactly the same with health insurance, I see that there is some cost reduction per product by having more customers even for health insurance. However, saying that the small increase in cost of health insurance per person that may arise by allowing people to "opt out" of buying your health insurance is a "tax" is just as insane (actually more so) as saying that allowing people not to buy a mass produced Dell computer is a form of taxation on the remaining Dell customers because the cost of the computers is slightly more than it would be if everyone bought a computer from Dell.

If you're really still so clueless about what taxation is that you're comparing an instance where a product might cost a little more if fewer people buy it to taxation, then I don't know what--I'm just shaking my head. Taxation is when you force people to give you their money without their consent. By even suggesting that letting people choose not to buy a product for a certain price if they don't want to is a "form of taxation" makes me shiver--you're supposed to be smart. By letting people "opt out" of a government health care system isn't taxation at all. It's the exact opposite--it's letting people choose what they want to buy and what they don't want to buy and for what price. It's letting people trade their own products for other peoples' products in mutually-agreed upon trades. If someone says "I'll give you my apple if you build me my house," it's letting you "opt out" of that offer. It's immoral to support giving any person (even Gov. Almighty) the right to forcefully take ownership of another person's labor. That's slavery, and while I'm fine with some instances of humans enslaving things like chickens and trees I will not tolerate any human enslaving another human. If you vote to enslave taxpayers, you may be okay with enslaving yourself (one of the taxpayers), but people like me are not okay with you enslaving them.

I think your mind is twisted into thinking that the enslavement is okay because you're one of the people being enslaved and you're okay with it. Remember though, that there are people who you are enslaving who are NOT okay with it. Are you really okay with enslaving THEM? Are you okay with violating their consent?

Also, I think your mind is twisted into thinking that the enslavement that you support is okay because you think that your enslavement of people produces a better society than if you stopped enslaving people. Remember though that while you may think the society created when you enslave people is better than the society created when you stop enslaving people, other people may DISAGREE. Are you really okay with using force against them just because you think the world is better if you enslave them? Are you really okay with violating their consent? I think many of the slave owners in America in the early days also thought that the world was better if they owned slaves than if they stopped owning slaves. But, better for WHOM? If the slave disagrees with you that the world is better when you enslave them, are you really going to go on enslaving them or are you going to respect their disagreement and not use force against them without their consent. I don't know about you, but if I was that slave who thought the world would be better if people stopped enslaving each other then I would wish that people would value consent more. Maybe if you're the slave master you can think "screw consent" and go on enslaving people happily, but I think you would have to be completely ignorant, in denial, or a sociopath.

My point with the pizza analogy (which I guess didn't work largely because it was too trivial) was that there are situations where people's goals are in direct conflict. I wasn't saying anything about how to resolve the situation. My point was that there was no solution that satisfied all parties' interests. Sometimes the only solution is compromise and both sides have to give up something they want. UtF seems to act like people should always be able to get what they want one way or another in his model society, and I was trying to say that there would be times where it wouldn't be possible. I wasn't trying to say that the person should be forced to buy a pizza with toppings she didn't like or that she should pay more for a pizza by herself. I was just trying to say that there would be cases where there wasn't a good answer for how the solution should resolve.

Of course there are situations where people's goals are in (direct?) conflict. That's what politics is all about. The question is, how are you going to resolve those situations? By giving one side the right to point guns at the other side (statism) or by letting both sides of the conflict reach a compromise that they both agree on (anarchism)? If we take a situation where our goals are in "direct" conflict: you want health care and I want to dig a big hole in the ground, what are we going to do about it? Are you going to point a gun at me to force me to spend my labor towards your health care? Am I going to point a gun at you to force you to spend your labor towards my giant hole in the ground? Or are you going to let me dig my hole if that is what I want while you carry on taking care of peoples' health since that is what you want? Or am I going to let you take care of peoples' health while I dig my hole since that is what I want? It's a question of whether you are going to value consent or whether you are going to support using violent force against people to force them to spend their labor on what you want despite the fact that it is not what they want.

The most striking example of a situation where I think that private industry could not work is fire insurance/fire departments. If I was forced to buy fire insurance from a private enterprise, I think that I would spite my neighbors and refuse to buy it.* That way, if my house caught on fire, I wouldn't be covered and the fire service wouldn't be required to put it out. They would only have to put it out when it caught all my neighbors' houses that did pay. This is how things worked in Great Britain more than a century ago. If you didn't have a plaque on your house signifying that you had paid for fire protection services, they weren't required to respond to a fire that occurred on your premises. But of course, to limit the damage and spread of the fire, it makes the most sense to stop the fire when it's as small as possible. As soon as the fire starts to spread, it becomes much harder to stop it and the amount of damage increases at a potentially exponential rate. So the most reasonable approach is for everyone to pay into a system that provides the guarantee that any fire will be extinguished promptly, regardless of who's house it is.

Statists always seem to mention Great Britain's history when bringing up the fire protection subject as if it meant that pointing guns at people to take their money is the only way to stop fires from burning people, their houses, etc. Seriously... I've had less than a dozen real discussions on this issue, but Great Britain has turn up more often than not.

"If I was forced to buy fire insurance from a private enterprise..." This doesn't make sense to me. You're never forced to buy from a "private" entity. If you're forced to buy from the entity we usually call the entity "public."

I forget if it was you or gvg, but earlier on the subject of monopolies one of you presented a hypothetical situation in which you just presumed the existence of a monopoly. I then asked how that monopoly came into being. I attempted to explain why I thought that all of the profit incentives were against against the possibility of a private monopoly forming and that most monopolies in history existed largely due to the state granting them the exclusive right to whatever they had their monopoly on. Anyways, I think the same thing happened here: You just assumed that you would get into a situation where you live in a wooden house right next to your neighbor also with a wooden house and you assumed that you hadn't dealt with the fire problem before buying your house. You presumed that you're both already living right next to each other and THEN you finally ask yourself "what are we going to do if one of our houses catches on fire?" You decide to come up with a fire insurance plan that you and your neighbor are both going to pay for. The problem is that your wacko neighbor doesn't want to pay any fire insurance money. "My house isn't going to catch on fire!" he says. But, if it does catch on fire then surely it is going to spread to your house unless someone puts the fire out at his house first. So what are you going to do? Well, you could offer to put out your neighbor's fire so that it doesn't spread to your house should his house go up in flames, but isn't it unfair to cover the costs of the fire insurance entirely yourself? Shouldn't your neighbor pay some? But, he doesn't want to. There are two general solutions: 1) Point a gun at your neighbor and force him to pay or 2) Don't point a gun at your neighbor and deal with the problem nonviolently:

Some nonviolent possibilities:

-Pay yourself to put out the fire at your neighbors house should a fire occur

-Move to another house where your house isn't in danger of catching on fire due to a neighbor's house catching on fire

-Or it may be possible to just modify your current house so that it isn't in danger of catching fire from your neighbor's house(build closer to the center of your property, for example)

Since I probably wouldn't be satisfied with the above three nonviolent solutions in many situations due to inconvenience or unfairly paying for your neighbor as well as yourself, I would probably look to the following possible nonviolent solution:

-Move to another house where your house may be in danger of catching fire from a neighbor's house on fire, but work out an agreement on how you would both pay cooperatively for fire insurance together before settling on buying the house

In other words, BEFORE buying your house in the first place, make sure that you have an agreement with your neighbors on how to pay for fire insurance so that you don't get into the unfortunate situation that you presumed you'd be in in the first place simply because some people in Britain were once in that situation.

I know I've said this many times before, but your posts make feel that it doesn't hurt to say it again. Pointing guns at people isn't the only way to solve problems. If you're worried about your neighbor's house catching on fire and that fire spreading to your house, you don't have to point a gun at your neighbor to make them pay for fire insurance to make sure the fire gets put out before spreading to your house. Just set up a payment plan with your neighbor where you share the costs of the fire insurance. And if your neighbor is crazy because he refuses to pay a cent for fire insurance then don't move in to a house right next to him that is in danger of catching fire from your neighbor's house unless you're willing to cover the cost of fire protection without your neighbor's help. If you don't see this as a reasonable alternative to the insane possibility of pointing a gun at your neighbor to force him to pay for insurance then you're probably hopeless at learning anything about putting down the gun from our discussion here on this online forum.

[Guest]

Just to talk anout Obama's plan: It didn't do enough. He had a chance, with a supermajority in the house, to do basically whatever the f*** he wanted. Of course, he didn't know that the democrats are about as unified as the NY Mets, while the Republicans, even in the minority, worked together. It was better than nothing, yes, but it had a lot of watered down bulls*** thanks to some laws that at least need to be limited.

I would go more towards a single-payer system, like Bernie Sanders Medicare for all plan that was passed into law in Vermont yesterday. (see here: http://www.vermontforsinglepayer.org/vermontpassessinglepayerhealthcareworlddoesntend) It's a European style system. Because of some federal laws, it won't go into effect until 2017 (they are trying to get it reduced to 2014), but when it does, every single citizen of Vermont will have healthcare as a right (as it should be). If this were implemented nationwide, it would reduce costs; after all, in Europe, where many are under this type of system, they pay half as much as the US does under our current fully privatized system (mostly because it's so damn expensive, people don't buy any, and when the problem augments, EVERYBODY feels the pain. See Bernie Sanders' interview on Real Time with Bill Maher (it's on youtube) where he kinda explains it. And yes, if you haven't noticed, I love Bernie Sanders, and would pay to have him be one of the NY senators (not the state one of course, the Federal one)). Yes UtF: The private system costs people twice as much =) Free Market lost one there.

Anyway, enough of my rant. If I was old enough to vote when Obama reruns, I wouldn't want vote for him. I would try and get Bernie as a write-in, though I know that would do nothing. WHich is why I would, in the end, have to vote for Obama. I shudder to think of any of the Republican candidates in office in 2012.

Oh, here's the video:

I shook my head too many times and had too many face palms while reading your post to reply. You might not be a hopeless cause, but you appear too hopeless for me to bother with at the moment. It's like you don't think about anything I say.

"healthcare as a right (as it should be)" ... haven't you put in an ounce of thought into what this means after the hours of discussion time you have spent with me on the subjects of voluntarism and nonviolence? Don't you know what it means to make health care a right? We're not talking about negative rights--like the right of free speech or to practice whichever religion (or no religion) you want. We're talking about positive rights. Heath care is a positive right.

A negative right such as freedom of speech only requires that nobody uses violence against someone for speaking. A positive right on the other hand, such as healthcare as a right, requires that the government uses violence against people to take their money (their labor) against their will (thus enslaving them) to pay for the positive right (e.g. the health care). If you're arguing for positive rights, you're necessarily arguing for slavery. As an anarchist, as someone who is opposed to using violence except in self defense, I do not support these positive rights. I do not consider health care a right. If you want to pay for your own health care or be charitable and pay for other peoples' health care that is great, but if you want to point a gun at people to pay for peoples' health care against their wills, then you're a very immoral person in my view. And while morality is subjective in my view, you are a tyrant empirically based on any decent definition of tyranny. And don't forget: if you're a tyrant to others you have no right to complain when someone is tyrannical to you. If the government forces you to pay for a war or something else that you don't like, remember that you support the government having power over you and your money. If you so much as uttered "it's unfair that I have to pay for this war" those like me, forced by you to pay for government health care programs and other things against our will, would turn back to you and say, "not by your standards."

EDIT: And that video was nonsense.

Edited June 1, 2011 by Use the Force

[Guest]

I personally thought that the "" provided some context regarding the seriousness of my statement, but I guess that went over your head. You need to calm down. You're the one who sounding unhinged. You sound so angry and uptight in your posts. This isn't the sort of place where the loudest person in the forum wins. It seems like you should be able to make your arguments without appearing so condescending and upset.

The underlying problem of all this is a seemingly intractable difference in definitions of words. You (and you alone) insist that "taxation is violence" and no one else here agrees with you. Sure, you didn't choose to live in this society, but "when in Rome..." If you want to go someplace without taxes, you can always move to Mogadishu, but I'm pretty sure that's not the sort of society you envision.

If taxation is violence, then I hope the most violent thing that happens to me is that I have to fill out my tax return. Moderate taxation is tame in comparison to the violence inflicted on people by governments of old (and some modern ones too). But it's not tyranny and it's not real violence. Economic systems are completely arbitrary constructs of humanity. If humanity ceased to exist tomorrow, economics would disappear right along with it. So there is no inherent right to economic freedom. That only comes as granted through our system of government.

I don't view taxation as a "crime." I view it as the price for living in a stable, civilized society. You only seem to care about the winners in society. But there are guaranteed to be losers as well. For each person who makes money on the stock market, there are as many who lose money. For every successful business, there's a competitor who goes out of business (I'm exaggerating a bit, but I there are always people in society who are down on their luck, through no fault of their own). And in my mind, the worth of a society is determined by how it treats the least among them. I don't see your world addressing the needs of the poor and unfortunate. The only "safety net" you would provide is the random charity of the rich. If there isn't enough alms-giving by those who have the most, then there will be intense suffering of those who have the least. Do you want panhandlers on the street corners? Do you want one health catastrophe to ruin a middle-class family surviving on a modest income to leave them destitute? I don't see solutions to these sorts of problems in your model of society. It just seems like you want to sweep them under the rug and pretend that they wouldn't exist if everyone did what you want.

It seems that if I want to kill your idea, it will have to be a death by a thousand cuts as you won't agree with my terms of debate and I don't agree with yours. Molineux tried to brush aside the "What Ifs" by saying that detractors would use them to justify discounting his views, as if everything should just work out if given a chance and that any concerns people might have would be inconsequential or simply there as a malicious attack against him personally. But I think that the "What Ifs" that we've been asking here are of the utmost importance and they demonstrate the limitations of your system. Every time I say, "What if..." you reply, "I'd make sure there was already a contract for..." If you wanted to move into a new neighborhood, would you really be taking a checklist in and asking all your potential neighbors questions like, "Do you pay for your water utilities? Do you pay for fire insurance? Do you pay for the roads you use? Etc." If the only way to ensure that all of these communal needs were being met were to do something like that, then I really don't think that that's a society I would want to live in. In our current system, I don't have to worry about any of that because we're all using it anyway, so it's collected through taxes. I don't have to worry about my neighbor's house catching fire since I know the fire department will come by and put it out. If the water main breaks in the street, it's the city's responsibility to pay to get it fixed, funded in part by my taxes.

If you try to say that the DROs will handle most of that anyway, then I would say that you are advocating for government by another name. You want to have your cake and eat it too. You want to say that you have no government, but the DROs are essentially mini-governments that are constantly shifting and changing (which is terribly inefficient for business). I can't imagine that most businesses would enjoy a society like yours. If they have a perfectly reasonable contract with a DRO, but other people in the DRO find they like a different DRO better and leave it en masse, the DRO would go out of business, forcing the company to find a new DRO. To work in different regions, they would need a contract with each governing DRO, which could get cumbersome. Interstate companies already have to deal with different sets of laws depending on where they are, but they at least can expect that the laws will be fairly consistent regionally and they all derive from the same base from the Federal government. Your DRO system provides no such guarantee.

And while we're on the subject of DROs, I just want to say that your idea of economic ostricization seems like it might have profound negative psychological effects on a victim of such an attack. You might even call it "economic and psychological violence" and since "violence is immoral," it seems to me that the DROs break your own concept of non-aggression. Violence (as you define it) seems to be unavoidable.

[gvg]

UtF: I think Dawh covered what I mostly wanted to say, but i will add on.

First, PRIVATE INSURANCE IS A LEECH. They can ban you if you're born diseased, they can deny for the smallest things. They are HORRID. They basically condemn people to the type of 'violence' you seem to want away. As Dawh said, we are seen as a good or bad society based on how we treat the lowest among us. Your system beneifts the rich and powerful. Unregulated free markets are great for the rich and the mighty. But not for the rest of us. he US economy was held hostgage and destroyed by the non-regulation of wall street. 50 million individuals lack health care, including those disabled athletes talked about in the 'rubbish' video (how is it rubbish by the way? because it doesn't agree with you?) and the crowds of people lined up in the US to get help from a third world organization. You condemn those who need help to never get it, preventing their offspring from getting it, and theirs, etc. Great example: Western Europe during the Middle Ages. Yes, there was still a gov. But already with the extremely libertarian government that there was, you were born in the position you died. And so were your children. And theirs. Getting rid of gov. completley doesn't end these problems, it augments them. Economic ostra whatever as a punishment only harms the worse off. A wealthy man, even with a family, or even someone who lives alone and makes an upper middle class wage,, will look at this system and laughed. They've won, basically. The wealthy man who was convicted of murder will simply leave, and his family will move with him to a different area. The man who's alone will do the same. But the father of the poor family who is economically ostracized because he stole some food to help his family will watch in horror as his family dies slowly due to the lack of a support system that would help them if a government exists. The small business owner will watch as his life's work comes crumbling down because he can't compete with the growing company next to him, who, as corporations do today, will have a lawyer that knows how to get around a contract that would have prevented the growth of a monopoly. Not everyone is a contract lawyer. You forget this, you underestimate human nature, you show a blind eye to the powers of corporations in unregulated areas. You dismiss the demise from withing of unregulated free markets, you are the anti-robin hood (leaving the poor to die as the rich grow wealthier).

And you know what? Quite frankly, I'm tired of you insulting dissenters. The point of this forum is to discuss. People are going to disagree. Nobody here thinks taxes are violence, or slavery, or whatever (as Dawh said). You dismiss any evidence, like my video, as rubbish or claim that it couldn't happen due to X, Y, and Z (which wouldn't work). You are getting to be annoying and insulting, and if you do not wish to debate with me anymore, fine, I'm done too. I will simply watch, and attempt to support the other when i can, but as you are through with me, i am through with you. I am through with your ad hominem arguments, your dismissal of everything else. I am done.

[Izzy]

If you're really still so clueless about what taxation is that you're comparing an instance where a product might cost a little more if fewer people buy it to taxation, then I don't know what--I'm just shaking my head. Taxation is when you force people to give you their money without their consent.

That is only taxation as viewed by the right. To the rest of us, it is the debt payed to the state to live in a society with a socialized form of the necessities of life. In an (read: my) ideal society, taxes will pay for more than that sheer minimum. Neither view defines taxation, which is simply the compulsory contribution of revenue to the state. Just because something is compulsory does not mean it is lacks consent. From some people, perhaps, but reread your own claim before you call dawh clueless.

A positive right on the other hand, such as healthcare as a right, requires that the government uses violence against people to take their money (their labor) against their will (thus enslaving them) to pay for the positive right (e.g. the health care).

See above. I will, eventually, willingly pay taxes. In return, I feel entitled to what constitutes as an enjoyable, or at minimum, livable life. Healthcare, to me, is a minimum.

This debate is pointless because we have fundamentally different ideals. You want what is optimal for you, while the rest of us will rather sacrifice arbitrary currency in return for essential services that we feel should be available to even those that can't afford them. No one is "right" because it's not "wrong" to love yourself more than society or vice versa. The problem is that you need to realize that. Dawh and gvg are not spewing nonsense because you don't agree with them. To be fair, aside from when your logic is completely inconsistent, neither are you. I understand, that to you, taxes feel like they are violating your human rights, and are a form of non-violent violence (haha, and oxymoron that makes perfect sense). To the rest of us, taxes are the binding agent of our civilization.

Now, there is a point for debate in here, and that is the practicality of your society. That's what I was originally addressing with my "What will you do?" and Dawh's series of "What If's". It's important that your society will even function before you wish to secede from ours.

/post

[Quag]

Basically what Dawh said, taxation is not violence. Though you do not have to move to Mogadishu to avoid taxes, you can easily live in the USA. Only thing is that you UTF, want to have the benefits of living in a society without the obligation of paying for those benefits. You can move somewhere outside a municipality and not pay for roads. You will find that in all likelihood you will not be paying income tax as your employment possibilities will be very limited. You want those advantages living in society gives you and take exception at SOME govt spending and thus come to the conclusion that taxation = theft = violence = slavery. You don’t seem to realize the hypocritical stance you have of claiming the right to take advantage of society and denying any obligation to that society. Please reread the last sentence as that is where you are completely off.

Now onto health care, yeah I agree the Obama care is an abomination. Seem you guys looked around the world and said hmm how can we make a health care system even worse than everyone else’s? Instead of looking at what works and what doesn’t then trying to implant the good parts while avoiding the bad you seem to have gone the opposite way. Biggest problem I see with the US system atm and why health costs are going through the roof is your silly tort laws. You live in the most litigious society on earth and every part of the medical establishment from the company who makes the band aids to the person applying it has to have insane insurance to guard against lawsuits many of which are frivolous but often settling is cheaper than going to court, thus increasing the desire of Lawyers (liars?) to bring suits against those in the medical field. Of course a patient who is injured or sick makes a very sympathetic witness against the evil uncaring doctor/pharmaceutical company/surgical instrument company/nasty nurse etc.

Now do I think our health care system is perfect? Of course not it could/should be overhauled and improved. I can tell you that whenever I hear Americans talking about our health care they do not seem to understand it at all. We have universal coverage on basic health care, that is emergency room, doctor consults (not all types) and certain procedures. We do have a strong private health insurance industry here for medications, dental (young children are covered) prosthetics and even doubling of services offered by the govt health care, e.g. my x-rays (I’ve had lots, I think my left hand and foot are only parts of my skeleton I haven’t seen, yet never actually broken a bone) have been about 80% done in private clinics. I wish I could explain it better but it generally works ok, something like cancer often causes delays with our system that could be life threatening but that is usually during the diagnosis and only those who do not have private insurance and cant/wont pay for private clinics on certain tests have problems (remember I said our system wasn’t perfect)

When you start letting people "opt out," everyone else has to pay a little more in to keep the fund in the black. So, in a way, you could say that each person that "opts out" is taxing every other person in the system, and we've all been told how immoral taxation is...

This is such complete nonsense that it's difficult for me to believe that you said it. This sounds like something quag might say. Insurance is a product just like every other product or service. A seller and a buyer of a product (whether it be insurance or not) must agree on a price.

Surprise UTF I disagree with Dawh here, forcing a poor person to buy insurance they cant pay for is silly and pointless It is one of the main failing points of Obama care, but thanx for thinking of me 

I forget if it was you or gvg, but earlier on the subject of monopolies one of you presented a hypothetical situation in which you just presumed the existence of a monopoly. I then asked how that monopoly came into being. I attempted to explain why I thought that all of the profit incentives were against the possibility of a private monopoly forming and that most monopolies in history existed largely due to the state granting them the exclusive right to whatever they had their monopoly on.

Nope monopolies do not require govt intervention to be created and govts have always created laws to break them up, except those that were created by the govts. The bit about the incentives, all I can say is read a bit of history and find out that you are 100% wrong. Here is what will and has happened, company A has gotten to say 80% market share company B 20%(make is simple only 2 but add C,D,E,F if ya want). Now Company A can sell product at 9$/unit and make profit, say company B being leaner and meaner can sell it for 8$/unit. What has always happened without govt stopping it is Company A sells product at 7$/unit, being larger they can withstand the losses for longer than company B eventually company B goes bankrupt or sells out and company A raises the price to 11$/unit. Remember start up companies rarely make a profit in first year due to start up costs so even if company B starts up at 7$/unit they will still get bankrupted by company A.

Some nonviolent possibilities:

-Pay yourself to put out the fire at your neighbors house should a fire occur

-Move to another house where your house isn't in danger of catching on fire due to a neighbor's house catching on fire

-Or it may be possible to just modify your current house so that it isn't in danger of catching fire from your neighbor's house(build closer to the center of your property, for example)

Since I probably wouldn't be satisfied with the above three nonviolent solutions in many situations due to inconvenience or unfairly paying for your neighbor as well as yourself, I would probably look to the following possible nonviolent solution:

-Move to another house where your house may be in danger of catching fire from a neighbor's house on fire, but work out an agreement on how you would both pay cooperatively for fire insurance together before settling on buying the house

And if you live in an apartment? Get real not everyone lives in Mayberry in fact the vast majority do not.

Now back to main issue and Mogadishu 

What do you do with actual criminals? People who rob/murder/rape? Who will identify them if there isn’t an actual witness? If there are no police then there is no police investigation. If you sneak into my house and kill me and no one sees it, they may suspect you but that can’t know for sure or should in this case my family (i.e. the victims family) pay for an investigation including the forensics to try and catch a killer who may just be a psychopath that has already left for another town and will never be seen again? Or will DRO’s head this up? If so who pays them? Individuals? So its pay as you go for justice? Collectively? I.e. a tax and were back to a govt system?

I will try and explain what will happen in your anarchistic society should it ever evolve. First off the DROs will become corrupt. Who is paying for them and how? What will stop DROs from taking bribes and who will check to see if they are? I know in your utopia that wouldn’t happen or if it did the people would move to another DRO but first you have to have the suspicion of bribery before you would even think of changing, plus if you are doing the bribery well duh! of course you stay with them. Eventually there will be private security firms to uphold the DRO justice. It is the only way it could work. These private firms will become corrupt. Why well why not? There is nothing to stop them there is no govt of any kind to oversee them.

Now the Mogadishu link, these private security firms exist there, their CEO’s are called warlords, same name used in Afghanistan. In Italy and USA they call them the Mafia, Japan Yakuza etc. Somalia is a perfect example of an anarchistic society. All govt has broken down and now warlords run their little corner of Somalia. I know you will say I am talking nonsense because that is all you have ever said. But please look at human history there is not one example of anarchy leading to anything other than some form of dictatorship. It doesn’t even have to be violent to start. Often smooth talking political types get people to follow them without the use of violence. Cults are also an example; they will just form their own little hell on earth err... I mean paradise and eventually there will be no more Anarchistic system, just plain anarchy.

I know you said you don’t read much, a shame you should especially if you want to have more coherent arguments, but here is another book for you. Guns, Germs and Steel by Jared Diamond, I especially recommend the chapter on the Chatham Islands, very illuminating, kinds funny too in a very very Black humour sort of way.

[Guest]

And you know what? Quite frankly, I'm tired of you insulting dissenters. The point of this forum is to discuss. People are going to disagree. Nobody here thinks taxes are violence, or slavery, or whatever (as Dawh said). You dismiss any evidence, like my video, as rubbish or claim that it couldn't happen due to X, Y, and Z (which wouldn't work). You are getting to be annoying and insulting, and if you do not wish to debate with me anymore, fine, I'm done too. I will simply watch, and attempt to support the other when i can, but as you are through with me, i am through with you. I am through with your ad hominem arguments, your dismissal of everything else. I am done.

Okay. I'll just say that I think that my failure to clearly explain why giving people (the government) the legal right to take a portion of the money I make is giving these people the legal right to steal a portion of my labor/you all's failure to understand this is one of the central reasons why we haven't made much progress in our discussion. If we can't agree that the government forcefully taking a portion of the money that I make (given that I make enough money to be a taxpayer) is the same thing as the government taking a portion of what I produce when I work which essentially means that I am partially enslaved by the government because a portion of my labor goes to the government whether I like it or not then it is no surprise that you all manage to remain statists. I say the taxation is morally wrong because it is essentially theft and yet you say it's not wrong because you don't even think it is theft. If you understood that it was theft and yet still thought that it was morally okay I would just think you were crazy, but at least we could finish our discussion moderately-contented with our disagreement rather than how we are ending it now. I feel that now you all are just confused as to what you're actually doing to people when you're telling them they have to pay taxes or else stop producing enough to be taxed. I think if you understood what was really happening you would consider it wrong as well. So basically I don't think that you hold such morals because you're crazy; I think that you hold such morals because you don't really understand what taxation is. And after this much discussion on the topic I would go as far as to guess that the only way you would ever understand taxation would be if the government voted to tax you for something that you really didn't like and then you decided not to pay the taxes. What would happen as a result of that would possibly get you to finally understand the fact that taxation is coercive. I think part of the problem may be that you don't mind paying your taxes so you think that you're voluntarily paying your taxes. It would only be when you choose not to pay your taxes that you would realize the presence of the stealthy government force that was really there the whole time. Anyways....

You also asked for an explanation for why I said that video was rubbish so I'll answer. Basically our entire discussion on this thread has revolved around the ideas of voluntarism, the non-aggression principle, etc. Sure we've had some tangents and we went on discussing how a society might function without having a coercive institution to "stablize" and bring order to society by setting one standard of law across a geographic region and taxing its citizens for "societal" services, but at the basis of those tangents involving DROs, fires, etc, was the moral idea that the initiation of force is wrong, except in self defense. Really, even if I had no idea how to deal with problems like dispute resolution or roads or schools without using force against other people to collect money to pay for these things, I would still be an anarchist and would still agree with the non-aggression principle. Why? Because it's a moral choice that you learn as a kid when you learn that it's wrong to force someone else to do something. I never initiate force against people in my personal life, so why should I suddenly start advocating doing it as soon as I start learning about politics? I value consent in my personal life so why should I suddenly stop ignoring it and decide to tax people when I start looking into politics? It just didn't make sense. Having said that, there are really two main interpretations of the question, "what are your political views?" The question could be interpreted as, "to what degree are you a tyrant?" or it could be "do you prefer a single central organization to collect money from you and the other people in your society to pay for things like dispute resolution, roads, schools, health care, wars, fire protection, etc or do you prefer to minimize or abolish the presence of this institution and deal with such things through a free market where there are multiple groups, companies, and organizations trying to provide the same products and services?" To summarize those two questions, the first is asking whether you are an anarchist or a tyrant (and what degree you are a tyrant) while the second question is asking you if you are liberal or conservative. While many self-identified anarchists are conservative that is not a requirement for being an anarchist. You could want a large government... you could be a socialist... and still be an anarchist simply because you want to abide be the non-agression principle. You could be a socialist who is completely pro-redistribution of wealth through some central "government"-like organization, but you could be an anarchist as well in that you wouldn't want to force people who didn't share your views to be a part of your socialism if they didn't want to. So, really, while I'm a capitalist and would like to solve most of my problems through the free market rather than through a central organization like a "government", you could be a socialist and still be an anarchist like me simply because you support the non-aggression principle. So I'm saying all of this because I think our whole discussion has really been about the part of anarchism that is the non-aggression principle. When I mentioned DROs as a way to resolve disputes without forcing your will on others violently, you could if you wanted just reply "No thanks, I prefer a coercive organization that has absolute power over making the "law" and I want that organization to be democratic" and then you could still be an anarchist. Just CHOOSE to join such an organization voluntarily and don't force others to join who don't want to. So what I'm saying is that I feel other people on this forum have repeatedly essentially said to me, "Your ultra-conservatism won't work" rather than "Your non-aggression principle won't work." You can follow the non-agression principle and still be liberal. Just sign over your rights to a liberal government and advocate not forcing that government to use force against the people who aren't like you in that they don't want a government that taxes them for this and that. Only advocate your government using force against those who voluntarily join it. Okay... so this paragraph is supposed to be answering why that video was rubbish. Well, I said it was rubbish because the central point that we have been arguing this whole time is the non-agression principle. It seems that I am the only one here who follows it and you are all okay with breaking it and initiating force against other people against their will/without their consent for all the reasons (poor reasons in my opinion) that you have mentioned (like society not "working" unless you do). Then, once again, you seem to miss the point that this is what we are arguing about by providing the video that shows people saying how good their government health care actions are. How is this missing the point? Because supporting that government health care is an act of you breaking the non-aggression principle. Now, if you are liberal and want a universal not-for-profit health care system, by all means make one--I have no problem with that. My only requirement for you is that you don't force taxpayers who don't want to pay for it to pay for it against their will. This is the non-agression principle / voluntarism that has been at the center of our discussion this whole time and yet you seemed to forget about it when you posted the video for government health care paid for by coercing taxpayers into giving up their money. So to summarize this not-very-clear explanation: I am not liberal, but you are. I am fine with that so long as you don't force non-liberal people like me who don't want to pay for your government programs for wars and health care to pay for them against our wills.

So if you leave with anything from me, remember that you can have a health care system that provides health care for everyone regardless of their ability to pay or not withOUT forcing people to pay for that system against their will in the form of "taxes." There are plenty of people in this country for you to make that health care system with; I just ask that you don't force the minority of people who don't want to be a part of it to pay for it against their wills. If you do that I will be very content with your political views: even if I don't want a universal health care system like you do, I would still thumps up what you do. Why? Because you do it like any anarchist would: by following the non-aggression principle. That's what this discussion has really been about: anarchy vs tyranny, not liberal vs conservative. I want no government and you want a moderately big one (that is liberal vs. conservative). I don't initiate force against people except in self defense and you do (that is anarchy vs tyranny, which is what this is about). So I apologize for not being too clear on all this, but really I said the video you posted was nonsense because it missed the point in that the views it expressed still violated the non-aggression principle, which is something I know I am opposed to morally. It's not a matter of being intelligent, knowledgeable, or knowing how things work in society. It's a matter of deciding whether you are okay with breaking the non-aggression principle or not.