Libertus
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Posts posted by Libertus
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labmath2, for what it's worth, I, for one, understand and greatly appreciate your argument put forward, your attempt of precise use of language and the way you conduct yourself in this thread. If I knew you'd be calling in to the show, I'd make sure to tune in.
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Very funny.
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Drugs would become very expensive, therefore smuggling becomes extremely profitable. At some point the drug dealers would have made enough money to buy the surrounding anti-drug blocks or pay off the DRO agents who are supposed to enforce the ban. There would still be a drug market inside, of course, but now the drug cartels control whose drugs are allowed. At some point the surrounding blocks will ask themselves why they pay huge sums for a drug-free zone when it costs a lot of money and doesn't work.
Sounds familiar?
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You could go ahead and answer the list of questions I posted, based on your model.
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You are just emotionally not willing to accept that under a state of coercion, person C is not a moral agent.
I asked you to make your case for that, do provide an argument and you said it was part of your "model", so it's assumed to be true. I also asked you questions you could have answered from within your "model" and you're refusing to do so. Now you're psychologizing. What's next?
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If you can't answer any questions, then maybe your "model" is not very useful. You were complaining about lifeboat scenarios, yet your argument depends on exactly that. Pouring gasoline over kids? Please.
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An employer would raise wages when they want to attract skilled (sought after) employees, including the ones already working there. Chances are, if you are a qualified and skilled employee, it's going to cost a lot to replace you, a lot more than what they pay you extra.
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In my model
That's why I asked you questions. Can you answer them, based on your model? What good is a model if it can't be tested?
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The distress someone is put under when they have a gun pointed at their head and told they are about to die I would say certainly takes away their moral agency. How can someone make any kind of rational decision under those circumstances?
Adding "certainly" is not an argument. I'm not saying this to pick on you, but it really isn't. How do you arrive at this conclusion? I have asked you all sorts of questions to "test" your conclusion, and I don't see you addressing them one by one, merely restating your conclusion. Let me make this really easy for you:
- What if A simply threatens to break C's nose, wouldn't that be coercion, too?
- How severe does the threat of violence have to be in order to turn somebody into a "killer robot" (absolve them from all responsibility)?
- Does it have to be a threat of death?
- What if A threatens to hurt somebody else, say, an innocent person D, would that be sufficient to turn B into a killer robot, too?
- What if A threatens C only with mild discomfort, where is the threshold?
I say, C bears at least some responsibility. You say, you can prove that he doesn't have any - let's see your proof, if you don't mind.
- For example, if I were person C, I could see myself refusing to assault somebody else and preferring to become the victim of assault by A to being the perpetrator against B.
Wouldn't you?
"Do whatever you want to me, I won't bomb a pre-school" - this is moral, I think.
"Sorry, I had to bomb the pre-school and kill 500 innocent kids, the man threatened to shoot me." - 100% moral behavior?
"Sorry, I had to bomb the pre-school and kill 5000 innocent kids, the man threatened to shoot me in the foot." - how about now?
"Sorry, I had to bomb the pre-school and kill 5 innocent kids, the man threatened to punch me in the nose" - how about now?
I think person C bears at least some responsibility.
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That doesn't answer any of my objections.
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In the situation, where A points a gun at C, who then goes ahead and assaults B with a hammer, you were saying that C was being coerced and therefore, "obviously", all of C's actions towards B would have to be amoral (not immoral). Can you elaborate on how you're getting there? To me, this conclusion isn't that obvious. What if A simply threatens to break C's nose? Wouldn't that be coercion, too? So how severe does the threat of violence have to be in order to turn somebody into a "killer robot" (absolve them from all responsibility)? Does it have to be a threat of death? What if A threatens to hurt somebody else, say, an innocent person D? Would that be sufficient to turn B into a killer robot, too? What if A threatens C only with mild discomfort - the question becomes, where is the threshold? What if A threatens to break C's nose, unless C breaks B's?
An alternative approach could be, that since C is acting in his self-interest (but caution, we're talking about the avoidance of discomfort / pain / death here, not gain or reward), he bears at least some responsibility. For example, if I were person C, I could see myself refusing to assault somebody and preferring to become the victim of assault by A to being the perpetrator against B.
Wouldn't you?
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OP equivocates the situation of two persons sitting in jail (!) with a free society and market. And then he wonders why everyone is so mean to him.
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Receiving welfare or taking it from someone? The second is done by the state. Don't blame the recepients.
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And when you point it out to a lefty (which is almost everybody nowadays), they will say, so what, it's preferential treatment, so it's still like a subsidy. But before you pointed out that little fact, they had no idea what they were ranting about, and they will keep repeating that claim as if nobody ever corrected them. At this point they will defend themselves saying, it's OK to spread bullshit because it "wakes people up".
I'm done debating, at least without a worthy audience.
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Preach it, brother. I have a similar background and in fact supported the idea of a BIG before (6-8 years ago maybe) I developed a basic understanding of economics, i.e. before I had a clue about how the world works.
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I think the BIG supporters would say that cutting taxes is inferior to their BIG scheme because simply cutting taxes doesn't guarantee that people with no income (or very little) can afford the basics, eg shelter, food and water.
If I have no income, the BIG scheme operators will give me money to buy food.
If I have no income, a tax cut will leave me with no money to buy food.
You are correct, that would be their argument. However, that's the false dilemma fallacy, since we can have both, eliminate taxes on food, water and shelter *right now*, regardless of the BIG, and then you would need a smaller amount of BIG because the basic necessities would be much cheaper already. It would also be much easier to implement being a much smaller change of structure and it would help people *right now* in this moment. Then again, I don't see them asking for lower taxes at all, for anything, tbh. They think a higher BIG is better, regardless of rising prices. It really speaks to the economic illiterate majority.
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Don't even get me started in Sweden. Whatever you do, do not Google "Sweden Rape" and click on images. You will regret it.
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why not just cut taxes, along with announcing a permanent tax cut?
That's a good question, and in fact, what the BIG supporters are thinking, is this: let's drastically raise some taxes (VAT for example) in order to fund the BIG - when in fact it should be the other way around, why not just cut taxes so you need less of a sum to pay out. They seriously believe that you can pull yourself up by your bootstraps.
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how we can say for certain none were the refugees.
No, you're right, I mindlessly blabbered back some official politically correct non sense. I apologize. It turns out, they were lying to us, it was most probably groups of refugees. they had to backpedal after individual policemen publicly contradicted the official storyline.
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The attacks weren't perpetrated by 1000 people. There were something like 20 incidents in Cologne, perpetrated by a group of men within the bigger group of 1000 people. Also, they were not refugees, but they were foreigners (dark hair, arabic / north African) that's what the evidence and the eye witness reports suggest.
But, yes, it was terribe. What happened to these once (comparably) civilized societies?
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> But crime is not counted as humans committing evil against other humans, so what is the practicality of your question?
Government did not come up with the words "crime", "rights" and "theft". A crime is and has always been a rights violation. Before you say anything, no, the government doesn't define what rights are, either (although it hands out privileges and steals from you).-
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if you want people to read the whole thing, put a short version on top. Readers read the headline and think "hey, five quick points, with five quick rebuttals, I can get into that" only to be greeted with somebody's life story in a wall of text. Unless they know the author, they're not going to want to get into all of that. You're responding to a very well-structured article, so you should think about abiding by the structure. Start with one or two introductory sentences and get right to the meat.
#1. Rights are guarantees
Example:"There's only one right, and that is the right to be left alone" or "all rights are property rights" (elaborate here)
#2. An anarchist society is unable to protect its citizens from foreign invasion.This is a prediction based on an opinion which is based on a misunderstanding of the words "anarchist", "society", "protect", "citizen", "foreign" and "invasion". (elaborate here)
#3. Anarchy means the non-aggression principle is optional.This is almost literally the opposite of what "anarchy" means.(elaborate here)
#4. The Non-Aggression Principle? I didn’t sign sh*t!Well, too bad, then I'm not going to do any business with you, including selling you housing, water, energy, security services. You'd probably not even get through our borders. (elaborate here)
#5. Private PropertyWhat it is and what isn't will be set by contract, and enforced by people, with guns who have signed contracts with each other. (elaborate here)
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> In my example the people of A are extremely scared for a reason, are they not?
There's a reason why "being scared" is not among the three elements I listed. Evidence for intent is usually something that is *outside* someone's imagination.
> there was intelligence of a missile project.
That's capability, i.e. one of the other two. Being armed is not evidence for bad intent. What evidence is there for intent?
> I see a problem with intend also because it's not clear
Well then maybe you can come up with a clearer example or a better standard than the one I layed out. What's yours? How do you determine if it's OK for you to strike someone?
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The only way I would support a BIG is if its funding was voluntary, meaning, ALL participants are willing.
Is Voting Immoral?
in Libertarianism, Anarchism and Economics
Posted
You need to establish a causal chain for these types of claims.
Did the mafia boss initiate a causal reaction by sending a man? Meaning, did he cause a man to go kill somebody? yes/no/why?
Did he initiate a causal reaction by threatening an agent? yes/no/why?