Things I have to post - libertarianism derail

[Seth]

Moral cowardice is easy, but it's still cowardice. Yours is the justification of the Sondercommando.

Didnt release they needed any justification?, those who took part who didnt really have much choice in the matter lived for longer , got better rations etc.

Most people will do anything to stay alive even for just a single day, its why most people in the death camps didnt commit suicide even when they knew they were going the gas chambers the next day.

Moral cowardice is moral cowardice, no matter the rationalization. If the tens of thousands of Jews in the extermination camps had decided to throw themselves on the wire and attack the guards, many would have died, but some would have lived like they did at Sobibor, where prisoners decided they would rather die quickly fighting the Germans with their teeth and fingernails than be herded into a gas chamber, and more than half escaped.

But we're not really talking about that, we're talking about your lame attempts to rationalize theft and oppression on behalf of people who are unwilling to accept the consequences of their actions and who refuse to live their own lives without demanding that others submit to slavery on their behalf.

You have yet to put forward an argument other than "because I'm entitled to your labor." And you've failed to support even that argument, which is the argument of the thief. You want what someone else has and you do not, so you're happy to take it from them by force. That's thievery. Always has been, always will be.

[MrJonno]

You have yet to put forward an argument other than "because I'm entitled to your labor." And you've failed to support even that argument, which is the argument of the thief. You want what someone else has and you do not, so you're happy to take it from them by force. That's thievery. Always has been, always will be.

You have yet to forward an argument but why should you even be allowed to work and live in a country without paying for that right. The default position for rights like god is something doesnt exist until someone creates it/produces evidences for its existance. To think you can work in a country without paying for that position is theft

[Santa_Claus]

If anyone needs an "ism" of any sort - they deserve all they get.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

If anyone needs an "ism" of any sort - they deserve all they get.

Oh goodie. I need a prism.

[Santa_Claus]

If anyone needs an "ism" of any sort - they deserve all they get.

Oh goodie. I need a prism.

That may reflect badly on you.....

[Gawdzilla Sama]

If anyone needs an "ism" of any sort - they deserve all they get.

Oh goodie. I need a prism.

That may reflect badly on you.....

I'm working on an angle.

[Seth]

You have yet to put forward an argument other than "because I'm entitled to your labor." And you've failed to support even that argument, which is the argument of the thief. You want what someone else has and you do not, so you're happy to take it from them by force. That's thievery. Always has been, always will be.

You have yet to forward an argument but why should you even be allowed to work and live in a country without paying for that right.

You haven't forwarded an argument as to why one has to purchase one's rights. I get to work (or not work for that matter) and live in the country where I was born because it's my birthright. No person in any country on earth must pay simply for the "privilege" of existing within their own country. There is no automatic tax levied on a newborn that obligates them to pay something merely for existing and such a system would be immoral beyond belief. And what of the indolent dependent class? If I have to pay for the privilege of existing in my country, why shouldn't they also be required to pay, and what happens to them if they refuse to (or cannot) work to pay that bill that's handed to them when they exit the birth canal? Your model is idiocy and not at all thought out.

People pay taxes to support government because government provides them with services. If you consume the services of government, then you must pay for your share of those services, but the notion of an "existence tax" has been long rejected by civilized people, if such a notion ever existed anywhere outside your fevered imagination. Moreover, even if what you suggest were true, nobody is born owing YOU their labor. People owe for what THEY consume, and nothing more.

The default position for rights like god is something doesnt exist until someone creates it/produces evidences for its existance.

Well, that's your collectivist opinion, and a faulty one at that, but you're entitled to hold it...oh, wait, did you BUY the right to hold that opinion? I want to see the receipt.

To think you can work in a country without paying for that position is theft

Theft of what? If my work doesn't consume any government services what would I be paying for? Besides, you're the only one erecting the strawman that one can "work in a country without paying for it" because you don't define what "it" is. You haven't constructed any sort of rational argument describing what exactly one is paying for under this vague obligation to pay for existing. Presumably, since you've admitted that you're a useless leech on society who could not continue to exist without substantial financial and medical support from others, you mean that I'm somehow obligated to labor on your behalf so that you can go on living, and living in the lifestyle that you're accustomed to, but you've utterly failed to ethically or morally justify why I should be enslaved to your particular interests, or indeed the interests of anyone else.

I may be obligated to pay for my share of government services, which might include at a minimum things like the military and use of infrastructure, but you have not justified why I should pay to support the indolent dependent class, including yourself.

[Seth]

If anyone needs an "ism" of any sort - they deserve all they get.

Oh goodie. I need a prism.

That may reflect badly on you.....

I'm working on an angle.

Stop trying to bend things to suit your particular needs, there's a whole spectrum of possibilities out there.

[Beatsong]

No it doesn't. If I fail to pay a parking ticket, a warrant may be issued for my arrest, and if I resist hard enough when the cops come and try to arrest me, then they can use force. If I come at them with a weapon, they can kill me.

All over a parking ticket. They could just decide that no person's life is worth a parking ticket and walk away.

I'm about done talking to you about anything, because it is wearisome.

Your arguments are weird. On the thread about the Berkely protests and the pepper spray, you're all about the justified nature of the police actions. Why not just decide that it's not worth injuring people and walk away?

In the case of the warrant in my example, it's because a warrant is a lawful order for arrest and the job of the police is to arrest people in accordance with the law. If a person resists, then the police are to take appropriate action, and not just let the squeakiest wheels go.

If a person attacks police when the police are serving an arrest warrant for even a minor infraction, and the police have to defend themselves, then the cause of the injury or death to the perpetrator is the perpetrator's actions, not the small degree of offense.

It's like if a cop pulls someone over for having a faulty taillight, and the guy gets out and attacks the cops. If the cops kill the guy in self-defense, it doesn't make them "jackbooted thugs."

For some reason, when it comes to idiot OWS protesters, you think the police action is totally justified in their coercion. The cops order people off a walkway/street, and try to "coerce" them to leave, they won't leave, so you see no problem in them pepper spraying seated individuals. Congress passes a law requiring payment of a tax, and you think that enforcement of that Constitutional Law is Jackbooted Thug Coercion.

You have put your finger on the essence of the problem with libertarianism. It paints itself as opposition to force and coercion, but it's really just a way of justifiying those forms of coercion that are advantageous to libertarians, while pretending that all coercion that is disadvantageous to them is innately wrong. It is nothing more than a subjective statement of self-interest wrapped up in pseudo-ideology.

Libertarians like to proclaim that coercion is wrong, so there must be no government force used to remove any private individual's property. At the same time they conveniently ignore that the use of force to protect that property - indeed the very notion of property itself - is a form of coercion. The claim that something belongs to person A and therefore NOT to persons B, C and D, basically amounts to coering persons B, C and D to do or not to do certain things (trespass on it, use it for their own purposes, etc.)

The problem is that all statements of property ownership are social constructs. Libertarians are just as happy as socialists or anyone else to enlist force and coercion to uphold the particular way they would like that construct to be formulated.

The difference is that socialists are honest about it.

[Svartalf]

If anyone needs an "ism" of any sort - they deserve all they get.

Oh goodie. I need a prism.

want an app in it?

[Seth]

No it doesn't. If I fail to pay a parking ticket, a warrant may be issued for my arrest, and if I resist hard enough when the cops come and try to arrest me, then they can use force. If I come at them with a weapon, they can kill me.

All over a parking ticket. They could just decide that no person's life is worth a parking ticket and walk away.

I'm about done talking to you about anything, because it is wearisome.

Whatever.

Your arguments are weird. On the thread about the Berkely protests and the pepper spray, you're all about the justified nature of the police actions. Why not just decide that it's not worth injuring people and walk away?

Different argument, different situation, different objective.

In the case of the warrant in my example, it's because a warrant is a lawful order for arrest and the job of the police is to arrest people in accordance with the law. If a person resists, then the police are to take appropriate action, and not just let the squeakiest wheels go.

And why should there be warrants issued for parking tickets? Sometimes the law is an ass.

If a person attacks police when the police are serving an arrest warrant for even a minor infraction, and the police have to defend themselves, then the cause of the injury or death to the perpetrator is the perpetrator's actions, not the small degree of offense.

Other times the police try to arrest the wrong person and kill them by mistake when they lawfully resist an apparent lawless attack. But the root cause is the government's insistence on enforcing the law, no matter how petty the offense or morally wrong the enforcement. The FBI killed more than 80 people at Waco on the false claim that children were being molested.

It's like if a cop pulls someone over for having a faulty taillight, and the guy gets out and attacks the cops. If the cops kill the guy in self-defense, it doesn't make them "jackbooted thugs."

No, it's more like the cop pulls him over for a taillight infraction and then starts beating him with his nightstick because the driver complains that the cop is being a petty jerk.

For some reason, when it comes to idiot OWS protesters, you think the police action is totally justified in their coercion.

Probably has something to do with the fact that they were blocking a public sidewalk.

The cops order people off a walkway/street, and try to "coerce" them to leave, they won't leave, so you see no problem in them pepper spraying seated individuals.

Right. They are interfering with the right of passage of others and refuse to move. They were made intensely uncomfortable for a few minutes to get them to move. No permanent harm was done and the public way was opened. They asked for it, they got it.

Congress passes a law requiring payment of a tax, and you think that enforcement of that Constitutional Law is Jackbooted Thug Coercion.

Passing a law that takes my money by force and gives it to someone else is not a legitimate act of government, it's theft, plain and simple.

Do you even listen to yourself sometimes?

Constantly. I enjoy myself immensely.

Or, is this more of your: "I'm just adopting random positions and seeing how arguments shake out" type of thing?[/quote]

[Seth]

No it doesn't. If I fail to pay a parking ticket, a warrant may be issued for my arrest, and if I resist hard enough when the cops come and try to arrest me, then they can use force. If I come at them with a weapon, they can kill me.

All over a parking ticket. They could just decide that no person's life is worth a parking ticket and walk away.

I'm about done talking to you about anything, because it is wearisome.

Your arguments are weird. On the thread about the Berkely protests and the pepper spray, you're all about the justified nature of the police actions. Why not just decide that it's not worth injuring people and walk away?

In the case of the warrant in my example, it's because a warrant is a lawful order for arrest and the job of the police is to arrest people in accordance with the law. If a person resists, then the police are to take appropriate action, and not just let the squeakiest wheels go.

If a person attacks police when the police are serving an arrest warrant for even a minor infraction, and the police have to defend themselves, then the cause of the injury or death to the perpetrator is the perpetrator's actions, not the small degree of offense.

It's like if a cop pulls someone over for having a faulty taillight, and the guy gets out and attacks the cops. If the cops kill the guy in self-defense, it doesn't make them "jackbooted thugs."

For some reason, when it comes to idiot OWS protesters, you think the police action is totally justified in their coercion. The cops order people off a walkway/street, and try to "coerce" them to leave, they won't leave, so you see no problem in them pepper spraying seated individuals. Congress passes a law requiring payment of a tax, and you think that enforcement of that Constitutional Law is Jackbooted Thug Coercion.

You have put your finger on the essence of the problem with libertarianism. It paints itself as opposition to force and coercion, but it's really just a way of justifiying those forms of coercion that are advantageous to libertarians, while pretending that all coercion that is disadvantageous to them is innately wrong. It is nothing more than a subjective statement of self-interest wrapped up in pseudo-ideology.

Libertarians like to proclaim that coercion is wrong, so there must be no government force used to remove any private individual's property. At the same time they conveniently ignore that the use of force to protect that property - indeed the very notion of property itself - is a form of coercion. The claim that something belongs to person A and therefore NOT to persons B, C and D, basically amounts to coering persons B, C and D to do or not to do certain things (trespass on it, use it for their own purposes, etc.)

The problem is that all statements of property ownership are social constructs. Libertarians are just as happy as socialists or anyone else to enlist force and coercion to uphold the particular way they would like that construct to be formulated.

The difference is that socialists are honest about it.

Actually, the correct Libertarian formulation is "initiation of force" and "private ownership of property" not the absence of "coercion." Therefore, when someone comes along and attempts to dispossess the rightful owner of his property, THAT is the initiation of force (or fraud) and the use of force is fully authorized to protect that private property interest. That happens to include against a governmental initiation of force (or fraud) in an attempt to take what belongs to the private individual by force, including the inherent force of law.

And yes, Libertarians are perfectly comfortable with the use of retaliatory or defensive force. One must perforce defend one's property, otherwise one will have no claim to that property. Libertarianism merely eschews the initiation of force or fraud. It must be noted however that in order to determine who initiated the force or fraud, one has to look at each situation as it occurs.

The government levying a tax to pay for welfare benefits for the indigent is initiating force upon the owners of the property to be coerced from them (money or other property) because the owner of the property has not consented to having his property taken for the benefit of others, from which he receives no direct (or indirect) benefit himself.

On the other hand, the government levying a fee on a person for his use of a public highway and enforcing that fee with force or coercion is an initiation of fraud by the individual who used something not belonging to him without paying for the privilege of doing so, and the force of the government (or the private toll road owner) is justifiable defensive and retaliatory force intended to secure just payment and punish the fraudster for that offense.

The essential question is whether the individual has made a free and voluntary contract for some good or service that he has agreed to pay for or he has agreed to make a gift of his property to another. Absent a voluntary agreement of some sort, a forcible transfer of property not pursuant to the owner's initiation of force or fraud is itself an initiation of force or fraud which may be lawfully and morally resisted by the property owner.

[Beatsong]

But when the "owner" claims ownership of his property, that is initiation of force, by definition. By asserting a right of that property, he is forcing other people to do or not do certain things.

[surreptitious57]

I believe that every physically and
mentally capable adult should be doing
something to reference their existence that
is beneficial both to them and society. Now that is
usually expressed through the medium of work but are
other ways : study or training for example. So far so good

But what happens to those who seek not to further themselves in
a positive way ? A libertarian stance would be to leave them enough to
survive on but no more for even though taxation would finance their lifestyle
it would be at the most basic level - one could take this to its absolute limit how
ever and deny them financial assistance altogether. This would be fine in principle if
there was the possibility of full time employment - for entire working population - but that
cannot always be guaranteed however. The simple solution would be voluntary work that provides
no salary to bind the jobless over till work arrives - but these are those remember who choose to opt
out altogether and may actually be surviving financially independently - such as through proceeds of crime
but they are fine if you remove state assistance. You still have the problem of what to do with those who wish
to do nothing. It seems libertarianism has no answer. There is no method that has ever been devised successfully
references this - human nature cannot be legislated against so one has to realise this then whether one likes it or not
That is the fundamental that cannot be addressed by any system - some are better than others obviously - none are perfect

[Seth]

I believe that every physically and
mentally capable adult should be doing
something to reference their existence that
is beneficial both to them and society.

They probably should, but the question is whether government has the authority to force them to do so.

Now that is
usually expressed through the medium of work but are
other ways : study or training for example. So far so good

Yup. Self-improvement is always a good thing.

But what happens to those who seek not to further themselves in
a positive way ?

They suffer the consequences of their indolence and sloth.

A libertarian stance would be to leave them enough to
survive on but no more for even though taxation would finance their lifestyle
it would be at the most basic level - one could take this to its absolute limit how
ever and deny them financial assistance altogether.

Wrong. A Libertarian stance would be to let them starve in the gutter and freeze to death in the dark if that's what their indolence and sloth get them. Now, those who are physically or mentally incapable of caring for themselves are an entirely different matter, and rational self-interest and compassion, altruism and charity cause Libertarians to care for such people. But the willfully indolent? They are strictly on their own, to suffer the consequences of their actions and hopefully find out that it's better to take care of themselves than to expect or demand that other care for them.

This would be fine in principle if
there was the possibility of full time employment - for entire working population - but that
cannot always be guaranteed however. The simple solution would be voluntary work that provides
no salary to bind the jobless over till work arrives - but these are those remember who choose to opt
out altogether and may actually be surviving financially independently - such as through proceeds of crime
but they are fine if you remove state assistance.

Nothing whatever wrong with programs of public service to be performed by the unemployed as labor towards the costs of supporting them while they seek other work. But they HAVE to work, or get their support from those who volunteer their property to the indigent and unemployed. They may not demand support as a right because that's perpetrating both force and fraud on unwilling slaves to their needs.

You still have the problem of what to do with those who wish
to do nothing. It seems libertarianism has no answer.

Libertarianism has a perfectly fine answer: Wish to do nothing, get nothing. No place on the park bench, no welfare, no food, no nothing other than what you can persuade someone to give to you voluntarily. And if you take up a life of crime to support your indolence, then anyone you rob is perfectly entitled to shoot you dead.

There is no method that has ever been devised that successfully
references this - human nature cannot be legislated against so one has to realise this then whether one likes it or not and
that is the fundamental that cannot be addressed by any system - some are better than others obviously but none are perfect

Libertarianism is perfect in that regard. You get what you work for, otherwise you get nothing other than what someone may wish to gift you with. You're responsible for your own life, health, safety and economic condition and may not push that responsibility off on others, but must accept the consequences of your own actions. Libertarians are satisfied to let people go to hell in their own way, without interfering with them. And they are also willing to help and support those who are in genuine need who cannot help themselves if they are of honest intentions.

Nobody owes anyone else anything as by right, other than respect for their peaceable exercises of their own rights.