aeonicentity

Before a verbal lynch mob forms, let me just preface this with the fact that I am still for non-agression, and still for libertarian thought, but I got off a date with a girl who used this as an argument for some things, and I find it morally repugnant. Fundamentally, many libertarians, and pseudo libertarians justify certain behaviors as O.K. because "it only effects me." What I am here to say is this: This is fundamentally impossible. This is a poor method by which one determines the morality or immorality of a thing. in consideration of conjecture 1: We live in a causal universe, and if there's anything Gordon Freeman taught us, its to prepare for unforeseen consequences. As a student of history, I find it often the case that small 'inconsiquential' and fundamentally selfish behavior often is the cause of things much greater than the initial intended consequences. But lets get to the issue we're all thinking about, which is of course, drugs. This is a common irrational argument applied to drug use: I'm the only one doing it, therefore, it only effects me, therefore none yo biznazz! But lets pick this apart. Are you really the only one doing it? No. Actually, its pretty well proven that if you live in close proximity to someone doing drugs, you're very likely to wind up doing them yourself because it seems pretty normal, and its easy to access. This is why its so damn hard to quit smoking when one partner still does. So, if you're in an even remotely close relationship, its possible that by doing drugs you're actually encouraging it in others. By living in a causal universe, you simply cannot expect that your drug use only effects you. In fact drug use effects a large number of people, including parents, siblings, loved ones, wives, drug dealers, other drug users, and if you're into hard drugs, the poor bastard that has to scrape your rotting carcass off the carpet when you OD and no one notices for a week.Since there is no reasonable expectation of non-causality, you pretty much have to accept that other people will have opinions, and that they may not appreciate your drug use. Here's a good example: Little Johnny Pothead has no problem with pot. He's usually pretty good about his consumption, and yet one day he comes home having been kicked from the team for sluffing practice in favor of smoking weed. Johnny could have been a good wide reciever, except that now he's not on the team, and the team looses the big game. More importantly, Johnny wasted mom and dad's $300 in football fees that year. I think in this case, mom and dad are perfectly justified in being angry at Johnny and particularly frustrated that he decided to do pot and waste money and time smoking. In this scenario (which I don't expect is all that uncommon either) the argument that "johnny's drug use didn't hurt anyone" is ridiculous. It hurt feelings, hurt groups, and hurt Johnny himself. Self destructive behavior isn't never unhurtful to others especially. While the degree of hurt certainly is small, saying that there is NO hurt is absolutely unrealistic. And this brings me around to idea 3, that its "none yo biznazz!". Anything which effects me, is my business. Since it has been utterly disproven that you can do drugs without generating an effect in others, who are you to say that your pot smoking doesn't effect others, and that it doesn't effect me? All drug use, alcohol, tobacco, pot, hard drugs, shrooms, perscription abuse, it ALL effects others. It effects our credibility, it effects the fact that we have to take random drug screenings at work, it effects the shape and nature of our society. It is one thing to argue that the effect is small, or that the effect is beneficial on the whole. I'm open to that argument. I'm open to the idea of medical necessity of drugs or what not. I knew a guy who had to take meth for ADD for example. But it is entirely another thing to say that you should be allowed to do something because "it only effects me" because that is entirely impossible, and is a very poor reason to do something. in consideration of conjecture 2 So lets make the assumption that we do live in some mystical non-causal universe, where it truly only does effect you to do drugs. Its shitty reasoning. "Its ok for me to do X because it only effects me" is not a good premise for finding good things to do. Its not OK to waste your life playing videogames because it "Only effects me." Why? Because you're still wasting your life. You can't justify something because it only effects me, because if that thing is fundamentally a bad idea, the fact that it only effects you doesn't make it a good idea. Leaping off a cliff attached to a questionable bungee chord isn't made into a good idea because it only effects you. Its still a really, really bad idea. so please, PLEASE, rethink your position if this is in your defense of libertarianism. It doesn't even have to be about the war on drugs, this is a bad argument ANYWHERE. If we want to advance the cause of Libertarian thought, and the NAP, you have to absolutely get rid of this idea that because something "only effects you, therefore x" because it doesn't only effect you and your arguments, but the legitimacy of the entire Libertarian position.

I believe in staying abrest of the dictator-in-chief. My other favorite part was when the entire congress gave massive applause and shouts of joy for single mothers.

I liked the part where Obama said that women 'should be able to take days off to take care of their kids' -RIOTOUS APPLAUSE- 'and men should too!' -One clap-

It would be analogous if someone threatened to throw you in jail for not paying your Home Owners Association fee. At best they can find you in breach of contract, and take you to court for either reparations, or eviction. Most of the time you just suffer the wrath of peer pressure.

why do you feel that your "Marginal, malleable" traits are somehow less important than your core beliefs? In fact, why do you feel that these traits contribute to you 'less' than others?

apparently 'I am not my reality' got skipped. Also, very shitty website. Brought to you by ObamaCare ©®™ <3!

well, the statistics you cite are 'true' in the sense that all statistics are 'true'. But like so much more in statism, the true story is MUCH more interesting. To begin: Poverty is an arbitrary distinction. You're only as poor as you feel. We imagine and artificially create poverty as a statistic to track things we THINK are important. For some reason we have it in our heads that income == wealth. Therefore: NOT income == poverty . This assutmption, is totally untrue. many people earn great gobs of money, but their expenses make them functionally poor. Many people have wealth, but don't have income. The US poverty statistic is based off of income, and is therefore, the shittiest means of measure for the poverty or wealth of Americans. But wait, there's more! in addition, the 'poverty line' has moved upwards ever since its inception. Not only do we have no idea about what the statistic of income level actually means, but we also have no idea what the defenition of poor is! For example, if I had a ride, and a crowd of evenly distributed 0 to 16 year olds and said "You must be four or younger to enter", about a quarter of the people in line crowd could ride that ride. However, if I said the next time the ride came around "You must be EIGHT or younger to enter" the ride population would double. The exact same thing has been done to the poverty line. just in the last 12 years its been shifted up, almost 50%! So of course poverty is increasing in America, increasingly more people are considered 'poor'! And what's worse, is that the distribution isn't even. The rate of growth actually grows more exponentially the further up you move the poverty line. http://aspe.hhs.gov/poverty/01poverty.htm http://aspe.hhs.gov/poverty/13poverty.cfm So lets begin by dispelling the illusion. Poverty in America, is entirely imagined. There are very few actually poor people. When people are truely poor, they lack resources to even live a basic life. This absolutely doesn't happen on the imagined scale social planners would have you believe. this year, roughly 24 people will die of starvation in the US. 24. TWENTY-FOUR. Its safe to say we've erradicated starvation in America. Hunger however unfortunately still happens. But how do so many people in America go hungry, but not starve? Two reasons. 1) Hunger in America is never cronic. Largely thanks to capitalism (producing both jobs and affordable, year round foods) and charity (both private and governmental). 2) Hunger in America is much better than hunger in Afganistan. Here we consider children to be 'going hungry' when school lunches are the only meals they're served. While this is unfortunate, this means American children constistantly eat 10 meals a week on minimum. This is more than enough to survive. So if life is so much better now than before, and the poverty rate hasn't gone up except that the government made it, why do they wan't us to think we're poorer now than before? Doesn't that foster disastisfaction? Wrong. It fosters dependence. By redefining poverty as higher and higher incomes, they'll slowly errode previously wealthy people into 'poverty' even if they were getting richer before they were redefined as 'poor'. They'll look to the government to right this wrong as they have in the past, and thus dies freedom.

I would argue that most people DO hate the other, and that the example you gave is entirely untrue. In fact, most people spend billions of tourism dollars to go places they've already been, or places recommended by people they trust. They usually either go with or to family. Rarely do we decide to go alone to a strange place with no associates simply because we want to experience 'something else'. I know in my case I have never actually taken a vacation without going to family. This is often because I can't rationally justify to myself the idea of spending thousands of dollars to fly to thailand to do who knows what when I could spend those thousands of dollars on several flights to california to meet my cousins. we like the exotic for the exoticness of it, but we don't like to do it alone with The Others. We want to observe them from afar, not sweat with them and rub shoulders. This is a natural human tendency, and is divorced from race. You wouldn't want to be a stranger in Paris any more than a stranger in Beijing. race absolutely is a social construct. Fundamentally my genetics are functionally identical to just about everyone else on the planet, and my physiology only differs minorly from everyone else's. Race exists purely from inbreeding (albeit on a larger and less destructive scale). This inbreeding is created by social construct wrapped around some physical neccessities. For example untill recently it was impossible for a man born in China to have babies with a Latino. He had to marry a chineese woman who looked like him because they were culturally similar, and lived in the same artifically defined social state. Thus is born race. over time this constant isolation of culture caused people to begin to look similar within their own social groups. This merely accentuates our fear of the other, not replaces it.You will see as our society becomes increasingly more global and less restricted in mobility race will play a significantly smaller role in mate selection than issues like socioeconomic status, social objectives, politics and religion. These issues transcend something as superficial as geographic region of origin (for example I'd never marry a crazy statist, no matter how white she was.) Actually this is already very much the case within both Latino and Black and poorer white communities with many women having multi-racial children.

thank you for your thoughtful response!This statement indeed is controversial, for example, Is a man justified in self defense if he can prove that the other person had malfeasant intentions? I think that this is the premise of certain state's "stand your ground" laws which enable someone to strike first with lethal force based off of the intentions of the malfeasor. To be clear, I don't want to retry George Zimmerman here, but it is a legitimate example.

That is because there is no real motivation for teachers to create marginally utility in their students. They get payed the same regardless if their students succeed or fail. I suppose many teachers are motivated by the higher aspiration of making kids reach their potential, however these teachers are not always the ones you have.

I think that racism is merely a subset of a larger human programming: The fear of The Other.The Other is pretty much anything that we percieve as not ourselves, or similar enough to us to pass as not The Other. This is why humans fundamentally try to seek out social groups, and adopt practices and behaviors to blend in. We hate The Other, and don't like to be around them. This is seen both in our immediate social structures, and in larger more societial ones. In our personal social lives this is exhibited as the outcast. The Other is usually someone not of your familily or close friend group. Usually The Other is treated differently because he lies outside of the rules of the social group. Inside larger societal constructs this is usually exhibited as shunning, against people who lack the same philosophical/religious/moral views as the rest of the group, or against people who obviously come from different cultures or social backgrounds. This is exhibited often as Zenophobia, and its cousin, racism.Fear of The Other however is a fundamental part of being human. Its actually one of our best safety mechanisms. Imagine if you were naturally and blindly trusting of everything everyone said! Or if you got into the van for some candy! We use fear of The Other as a tool in our society to teach caution, and judgement to children because its one of our most powerful evolutionary tools. As odd as it may sound, the human race is united in its hatred of non-humans. Fundamentally, this is what keeps us safe from predatory behavior. Unfortunately like all aspects of the human mind it has a downside at its extremes. People who ignore the fear of The Other in favor of tollerance often loose the fact that some times, people really ARE out to get you. Conversely, people who fall too far down the rabit hole of fear of The Other are called paranoid. Most of us exist somewhere on a spectrum in between. Now, racism is a tough one, since we've now proven that there is fundamentally no difference between the 'races' of humanity, its fair to say that the color of one's skin hardly determines anything about them. Indeed, poverty is what defines most blacks, not their skin color. The problem comes in our tendency to anthropmorphize a thing which doesn't have a physical face to it. For example, its much easier for a black man to say "I'm opressed because I'm black" then it is for him to tell the truth: "I'm opressed because of my socioeconomic status." this is because you can't easily put a color to a thing which doesn't physically exist. You can't make it part of a person to demonize, or sympathize. To think of racism as an evolutionary artifact is over simplification of the problem. The problem is that it is hard for us to understand complex problems, and the way our brain works to understand complex problems is to visualize them as related to something similar to what we already know. A new born child doesn't have the understanding to know about money, and economics, however it MUST process discrimination somehow. Skin color is an easy way to process this as it is a characteristic shared by all of the people important to you in early life, and seems as good of a fit as any for the problem of discrimination, even if its not the real cause of the discrimination.

very good questions, here's the answer: For an employee to be hired, they MUST produce some ammount of money relative to the ammount of money they cost. If a worker only produces $4.00 an hour worth of labor, then they're only worth at most $4.00. An employer has no choice but to do any of the following:1) Keep the employee, and take the losses as neccessary to operate someone else's productive job. 2) Fire the employee, and invest in labor saving devices, or cut the job entirely. 3) If there are more than 1 $4.00 an hour value employees, fire one of them, and merge the responsibilities of the job. 4) Fire the employee, and redistribute his job among other employees and raise wages accordingly (its much easier to pay for a few hours of overtime for min-wage employees than pay for a whole new employee). It is often considered that profits are evil in corperations, as if profits are some how excess money that doesn't do anything, and goes under the matresses of rich fatcats. This is a giant lie. Profits are like wages for lenders. All buisnesses operate on some level of credit. It is imperative to have this kind of capital to make large purchases, and manage growth. No one wants to invest in a company that doesn't grow (Because all investors are looking for gain). Profit is an indicator of how much a buisness has left over to pay investors. Since many investors pay for mcdonalds to operate, mcdonalds has to provide a significant ammount of money to its shareholders to keep them invested, and continue positive growth. So that money isn't being withheld from the employees, its being used to pay people who have much more value to the company, the shareholders. So the reason why mcdonalds can't just pay their investors less and their employees more, is that investors who have invested in the company would leave in droves if the company took a 33% cut in profitablity. Imagine if your investment lost 33% of its value! You'd be outraged! You committed money to these people for them to return value on! Over the last year McDonalds has returned 10% on the investment, and constistantly grown by about that every year for 5 years. but what if that was only 6%? That's not much better than returns on municipal bonds. More people would invest in those instead of McDonalds, and the company would loose capital. This would be the end of mcdonalds, you might as well fire everyone now. Just from my own rough estimates You'd have to cut profits by 10 BILLION dollars to afford a $15/hour wage (this is my rough estimate, so its not 100%, but it should be in the ball park). so you'd have to cut profits by 66% to afford this pay increase, which would mean McDonald's stock would be worth slightly more than T-Bills. This pay rase for employees would litterally DESTROY McDonalds. There's no way around this. if a buisness offers a 3% return over 5 years to investors NO ONE WILL INVEST IN IT, which means that they won't be able to afford their now 25 billion dollar operating expenses as investors sell their stock like the shit it is. But what about those rich bastards on the top? Can't they cut their sallaries? Sure, except if the CEO of McDonalds cut his ENTIRE WAGE to $0 and gave it back to mcdonalds employees, you'd buy everyone a $0.12 pay raise for that year. You'd need to fire 10 ceos an hour for the entire year to effect a $1 pay raise for the entire mcdonald's staff. How many CEOs does McDonald's have on the pay rolls? Not 87,600, that's for damn sure. McDonalds is actually a company running on a razors edge. They can't raise wages without cuting into profits, which would make their company uncompetative in the market

If you have too much fat, it can interfere with the storage of many fat-soluable protiens and vitamins. By ammending our standards of beauty I mean this: Many people feel as if an untainable body-style is beautiful. While certainly, some people do look like super models, if my sister who's 5' 0" tried to look the same, she'd have to weigh 60 lbs, and spend at least 40 hours a week doing carb burning exercizes as well as a diet. Its simply unattainable. What i'd like to see is a more natural standard of beauty. For example in almost all cultural art from the middle ages, women were depicted as average height, with slighty round bellies and average breasts. This seems a more natural standard of beauty, since the vast majority of women would find this easy to obtain considering the restrictions of lifestyle, diet, and physical limititaions. Men were not depicted as rampant mucle men either. This is not to say that everyone should just consider their own weights healthy, but rather that people should realize that their health is not determined by pants size, or hip-to-waist ratio. There is a reasonable ammount of fat we all NEED, and should expect to have. and i was being a little dramatic about the 3 grand, although I suspect there are gyms out there with that price structure.

I think a more realistic defention is to perform an action primarally for the beneiciary and not for the benefactor. True selflessness is not when you have no self motivations, but rather when you consider the benefits to others before your own. While it is true that there is no action which exisits without personal benefit, but there are people and actions which prioritize others over self. In summary, selflessness is in the state of mind of the benefactor, not the action its self.

Functionally, the human body is already designed to compensate for deficits in vitamins and fluxuations in their intake. This is what fat is for. Humans should have slightly rounded bellies (washboard abbs might look nice, but you really do need this fat, especially in winter), and reasonably sized butts to store this fat. Exercize and fitness is good, but I think people over-emphasize fat burning to an unhealthy level. You after all, need the fats to store vitamins. It is possible that vitamin defficiency in the west is related to the fact that many people play the 'extremes' game, They either have an unhealthy diet of pure lard, and lots of fat, or a healthy diet with no fat that makes them too skinny to have normal body chemestry. I feel like the real problem with health in the 21st century, is we're using it as a way to manipulate our bodies, not maintain them. Oh, you have a headache? Don't cut out work stress or eye-strain, take this pill! Oh, you feel fat? Don't ammend your ideals of beauty, spend $3000 a year on gym memberships!

Your thoughts are clear, but i'm not entirely certain that I can agree with everything you've expressed. For example, I have a hard time considering the idea that a theft out of ignorance or imperitive is still a theft, and the victim merely forgives the 'criminal'. For example, no court in the world would convit a man of theft of a cell phone if he took, even if the other person was a dick and pressed charges anyway.

This probably has to do with women's definition of 'virginity' in modern schools. I had a friend who considered anything but vaginal penetration sex that wouldn't make her loose her virginity. many young girls may think (or were convinced by their boyfriends) that if sex was done with a condom it doesn't count. Concievably a woman could get pregnant by dryhumping her boyfriend, and accidentally getting semen squirted at her, who knows.

I love that old man who obviously smoked his larynx like a brisket in marlbro extra menthols at the end.

Well, lets take an extreme then, if criminality is caused by intent, could I arrest someone for having decided to commit a crime, even though they haven't yet done so? Assuming of course, that I have evidence to support such a claim.

Lets assume for the argument that the laws are moral, since the question at heart is not to determine if certain laws are legitmate, but rather when is a crime comitted, and the nature of crime and punishment.

but since this is a philosophy board, lets discard practicality here =P In all seriousness though, that argument raises the question "does the size of the crime make it a crime", which then requires us to draw an arbitrary level of 'harm' which defines a crime. There is a lot of moral danger there since it could be said that 'as long as I get away with it, its not a crime, and I'm no criminal' Thank you for this thoughtful reply, so If I understand you correctly you're saying that there are two different questions which must be asked , the first being "am I a criminal?" and the other being "should I be punished?" Since these two facts are not neccessarally related, you would say that obviously, crime is inherent in the comission?

that may be true, but You'd have a hard time saying that any human action doesn't necessarally cause effect on others. For example, smoking pot DOES effect others, and often in distinct ways. But that is off topic.

So here is an important moral question: Is a crime found in the accusation of criminality, or in the comission of the criminality? Some examples to illustrate: A man steals a phone. If he is caught, but the person who was stolen from forgives the criminal and gives him the phone out of free choice, was the theft a crime? In this case the lack of accusation causes there to be no crime comitted. However, is the man still a criminal? even though his actions were forgiven, is he a criminal simply by comitting the crime?

There is a problem with the assumption that Capitalistic principals are dependant on capitalism, and that these principals are not present in 'natural' or 'primitive' interactions. The reality is that the conecept of 'profit' is entirely present in the natural world. It isn't measured in money, but value. Valueable things in the animal world include sex, children, food, and other things. Females in the natural world seek males who can provide a surplus of food (the black widow looks for a man to eat, squirrels look for men with big nuts). males seek to provide a surplus of profit to barter for sex and reproductive rights. It is all well and good to look at the 'natural world' (the idea of a distinction between the 'artificial world' and the 'natural world' is more acedemic in my mind) for inspiration on where human relationships come from, but don't think for a second that humans ever in the past, or will in the future, disregard the issue of benefit, and especially the surplus of benefit (aka profit) as a fundamental modifier of human behaviors. This is the instinct born into us at the womb out of neccessity. We are fundamentally at our most basic level organisms which understand that life REQUIRES effort, and if at any time we fail to provide sufficent effort, we will die. So we naturally and intellengently stockpile additional resources gained as profits from good years, to satisfy us in years of bad. Profit is a DIRECT function of the survival mechanism.

"Constant continum of pressures" is not an argument for why a top down illogical approach is the best solution to a problem. TZM doesn't come out and say that they want a statist blob with a beneveloent dictator, but the reality is taht is what they are asking for. this is an idea in philosophy as old as aristotle, who first wrote this idea down. He wanted society to be ruled by infinately wise, and just philosopher kings. PJ has modernized this and stated that he wants society to be ruled by an infinitely wise, and just computer that will some how assure equal resource distribution. The question must ineveitably arise: Who will pay for this computer? Who will maintain it? Who will ensure that resource harvesting is properly distributed? Who will ensure that no organization, individual, or collective is taking more than their share? The state of course! Even if PJ doesn't actively come out and suport some statist outgrowth, that is PRECEICELY what he's talking about. All through that debate even he always came back to how the government handled the problem of wealth distribution. But that's not even the core of my point: my point is this, PJ comes to eronious conclusions by hypothisizing exactly what some idealistic state should look like, then backtracking to the base assuptions. Stephan is right in his approach, by starting with the basic principals, that all people have a right to their property and so on, you can only THEN discover how to build a just and fair society.