rEvolutionist wrote:Seth wrote:rEvolutionist wrote:@Seth, the real moral problem is descendatns getting something for free.
So what? If your daddy gives you $20 to go to the movies you're "getting something for free." Big deal. Who cares?
If my daddy gives me $200,000 that he did nothing to do to earn (his grandfather stole it from your grandfather) to get a top flight law degree, and you get nothing because you are poor because of the actions of my great grandfather, then a lot of non-sociopaths like myself care.
Only because you're a greedy and avaricious sociopath. My grandfather should have taken action when the theft happened and resolved it then because trying to determine who stole what when two generations later is idiotic. Your daddy gave you some money and it doesn't matter whether he "earned" it or not, it's his money and he's perfectly entitled to do whatever he wants with it and I have no claim on that money at all.
You obviously don't (when it happens to others; I suspect you'd quickly change your tune if it happened to you).
Well, that's the thing about having principles, something you appear to be entirely ignorant of...when one lives by principles, fuckwitted socialist attempts at insults become nothing more than amusing.
Why are you so hung up on someone getting something from someone else gratis that you aren't getting? Sounds a lot like jealousy, envy and greed to me.
No, it's about what's fair and social cohesion and harmony.
No, it's about jealousy, greed, avarice and power. You don't want what I have because it's "fair," you want it because you want it, and you don't give a flying fuck about social cohesion or harmony and you'd be perfectly psychotically and psychopathically satisfied to have somebody else take what you want from me by force because you're too lazy and too much of a coward to try it yourself.
I agree that there needs to be practical limitations on compensation, but it's not an even playing field. Let's say my great great great grandfather stole your ggg grandfather's wealth. Would you accept this as a fair situation and you were just going to let it go? I doubt very much most people would let it go, let alone someone with your selfish proclivities. Why should I have greater ease at accessing life's necessities than you, particularly because I did absolutely nothing to earn that access to greater ease?
Life is not an even playing field. Never has been,
Naturalistic fallacy.
Fact.
never will be.
Orly, Nostradamus?
Rationalist.
Your socialist streak clouds your reason and enhances your cupidity without any rational basis. Just because someone else has something doesn't mean you can expect to get some too.
When they have something due to the force/fraud of another then that is unfair. That's basic morality. Most people have that. Right-libertarians obviously don't.
Correct. Therefore your grandfather was guilty of being unfair by stealing $200,000 from my grandfather, and my grandfather was therefore authorized and justified in using whatever force was necessary to recover the stolen money, up to and including deadly force. If he failed to do so, that's his problem, not mine, because it's his money and he can abandon it to a thief if he so chooses. Your father, however, was not unfair in giving the money to you because the guilt for the initiation of force and/or fraud died when your grandfather died.
The point of Libertarian philosophy with respect to "getting something for free" is that, beyond it being nobody's business but the parties to the transaction, is that it's simply impossible to keep track of who got what for free after the people involved are dead. And it's nobody's business how one person gets the property of another so long as there is no force or fraud involved.
This really is empty rhetoric to attempt to justify the present status quo. If you were a native American Indian, I doubt very much you'd support this view.
I'm a Scot. Shall I therefore demand that everyone in the United Kingdom recompense me for Longshank's (and a bunch of other British monarchs) depredations upon my people? After all, we Picts were there long before either the Saxons or the Normans showed up, so fuck all y'all, pay up. And then there's my German Palatine heritage that, using your illogic, entitles me to make claims on Germany for booting my ancestors out in 1704.
How far back shall we go? You yourself are a gross hypocrite because you live in a place "stolen" from aborigines. So shut the fuck up about ancestral guilt. I don't care what some American Indian of today thinks because any claims to land occupied by whites had to be made by the people dispossessed from that land, not by their umpty-teenth descendants, who "never worked for what they want to get for free."
Your whole philosophy is based around selfishness now that you are the privileged sub-group in society.
Your whole philosophy is based around greed, avarice, jealousy, envy and a willingness to kill other people to get what you want.
It's immature in the extreme. Hence why most people grow out of Libertarianism in their late teens, early twenties.
Sadly, Socialists are generally to stupid to ever outgrow Marxism.
How do I know your grandfather stole my grandfather's wealth? Can I just say so and expect to be compensated? What about the facts of the case that might show that it wasn't a theft at all, but was part of a negotiated contract? How can one be expected to parse such things when the people involved are dead?
What if there are clear records that show it was taken through force/fraud? There's no way in hell you would just let it go.
Yes, I would. It's not my job or my right to defend the wealth of my ancestors
ex post facto. If they couldn't or didn't care to do it themselves, I certainly have no moral right to do it for them after the fact.
The real problem in your thinking is the silly notion that we are all equal when we are born,
When have I ever said that? I think I said above that life is not fair and never has been. I've never, ever even intimated that "we are all equal when we are born."
and it's only through hard work and/or work ethic that different people get ahead. That's clearly bollocks.
Indeed it is because I've never said or suggested that either. You're making shit up again.
Most people are born disadvantaged from the start, with some cripplingly disadvantaged.
Yes, they are. So what? Am I supposed to feel guilty for not being disadvantaged and be forced to give up the fruits of my labor because someone else was born at a disadvantage? Unless I personally caused that disadvantage, I'm neither morally nor ethically responsible for their plight, and therefore neither they, nor society, has a rightful claim on my labor or property on behalf of a disadvantaged person.
However, if a disadvantaged person needs my assistance, and is willing to politely ask me for it, I will give the request serious consideration and, out of a sense of altruism, charity and rational self-interest may be willing to donate my labor or property, or both, to assist such a person. But no person, disadvantaged or not, has any right to force me to labor on behalf of the disadvantaged without my willing consent.
If my granddaddy stole your granddaddy's watch, does that mean that you can come to me and demand that I give you a watch? Hardly.
It's not about individual items as you keep disingenuously trying to portray. It's about a serious unearned advantage in life over other individuals, most of which probably work far harder than you do (i'm talking the hypothetical "you" here).
As I said, life is not fair. Never has been, never will be. Get over it. Your idiotic socialist notion that the disadvantaged are owed something by everyone else is merely a reflection of your own cupidity and envy. The blame for disadvantaging someone lies with those who either caused it to happen through conscious acts intended to do so or to nature and fate. I've never owned a slave, and therefore I bear
absolutely no responsibility, liability or guilt towards anyone who was held as a slave, and most particularly towards the descendants of such people, who in America have all had the same opportunity to succeed or fail on their own merits that anyone else does. Equal opportunity does not equal equality of outcome. It merely means that our system of government does not place deliberate legal and enforceable impediments in the way of anyone who has the ability to succeed economically by virtue of their own hard work. Equal opportunity does NOT mean a "level playing field" in which everyone starts out with the same amount of Monopoly money with which to make or lose their fortune.
It just means that nobody is permitted to prevent you from succeeding if you are capable of doing so. If you're not, well, that's a problem you need to work on. Asking politely for assistance might be a good idea.
That being said, it is the acknowledgment of the fundamental nature of most people as charitable, altruist, honest, compassionate and rational that Libertarianism hold to be sufficient motivation to care for the disadvantaged and needy without any need for coercion or force by anyone, including the government. The disadvantaged are assisted according to their willingness to participate in striving towards success and independence because Libertarians recognize that a rising tide raises all ships, and that it is not in their rational self-interest for the poor to be ignored and left to their fate.
The distinction is, once again, whether the collective is authorized to force any individual to be charitable, altruistic or compassionate. Libertarians do not believe that such coercion or force is justifiable.
"Seth is Grandmaster Zen Troll who trains his victims to troll themselves every time they think of him" Robert_S
"All that is required for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing." Edmund Burke
"Those who support denying anyone the right to keep and bear arms for personal defense are fully complicit in every crime that might have been prevented had the victim been effectively armed." Seth
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