dsayers

Could you offer a case for it? As I understand it, you own yourself and people are not fundamentally different from one another. As such, everybody owns themselves. If everybody owns themselves (and therefore the effects of their actions), then theft, assault, rape, and murder are immoral as the require exercising ownership over that which is owned by somebody else. In this context, moral evaluation requires choice and other people. Again people being moral actor/those who can reason. Look, I'm against being a sadist towards animals. Plants sense injury, but you would never speak of plant torture, eh? I'm not saying that plants are animals are directly comparable in this regard. Just pointing out that in order for the abuse of animal to be immoral, it would have to be a moral actor. But if that were the case, owning, using, eating them, etc would also be immoral. Is that your position as well or do we disagree on that?

I don't think there's a best. Inflation is an increase in the money supply. Increase in prices, which is often mischaracterized as inflation, is an effect of inflation. I've never heard the borrower over lender thing.

I grew up amid divorced parents who both inflicted Christianity on me. So I've been exposed to the concept of humility almost all of my life. To me, it seems as if humility is mostly encouraged to reduce the amount of effort parents, priests, and politicians have to put into shrinking you as a person. I made this case to a friend and he had a reply that I really like, but am not so sure how accurate it is. It was used in the context of being the opposite of narcissism: "[humility] means that you do not think yourself better than others" I decided to look it up for some clarity and as I suspected, it's synonymous with lowliness, meekness, and submissiveness. For the sake of accuracy, I wanted to look deeper into this. I was hoping you guys could help by offering your perspective. Thank you for your time.

To be more precise, morality comes from property rights. Self-ownership (the root of property rights) requires reasoning. Children are transitional. They are incomplete and born into a guardianship. Would it help to phrase it as morality requires an interaction involving two moral actors? A horse is not a moral actor. Nor is a psychopath. A child might not be, but we know that humans almost always are and they are underdeveloped humans. So while a child cannot enter into a binding contract for example, it would be immoral to assault one. It would not be immoral to apprehend a psychopath or eat a cow. Please don't take my word for it. I am certainly open to correction.

How do you know? Maybe you missed the null hypothesis bit. You are saying, "That bird is a banana because it's yellow, curved, can be peeled, and is a sweet source of potassium." How many times do you have to repeat something in order to make it true? I've never tried so I'm curious.

Before the quote you offered, YOU referenced fast food three times. YOU said "[subway] doesn't nourish you in any significant way" which is false. "It is devoid of the nutrients that we humans require to stay healthy" which is false. "just like [subway], it makes you happy in the moment, but if you [eat nothing but it], it will slowly kill you from the inside" which is false. By the by, happiness isn't achieved by eating food, watching movies, or listening to music. Hopefully you will appreciate that feedback since it supports your central premise of pop culture as an artificial substitute. While I'm quoting amid weathering ad hominem, let us also review: I do not think you are out of your mind. I think you unwittingly engaged in the very trend you're addressing. I think the case you're making could be improved with more precise and consistent words and concepts. This is true of everybody. You solicited feedback while 100% of your follow up has been a rejection of that very feedback. If you were the least bit open to self-criticism, you would embrace this as an opportunity to make your case sharper and more effective. Are you trying to influence critical minds or capture people who submit to appeals to emotion? I think if you can answer that, you can arrive at a valid assessment of how useful my input is.

I never suggested it has to be "bad" for both parties. It just has to violate self-ownership, which a horse does not have specifically because of its inability to reason. If a horse had self-ownership, it would be immoral to own one, ride one, or do anything that the horse didn't consent to in advance. Truth is objective, but not everything objective is true. If I say that gravity causes things to be repelled, I am making a claim that is independent of my consciousness (objective), but is objectively disprovable (false).

This raises a question in me that I would appreciate some insight into. I'm really sorry if it comes across as having implications as my inquiry is for the purpose of exploration. I had considered sitting down with my father and asking for an arrangement of him letting me live here longer (2 years give or take) so that I could use the money I'm making to pay for therapy. I quickly abandoned the idea because I just assumed that any therapist worth their salt would tell me within the first few sessions that I need to get the hell away from active abusers before healing could properly begin. Any insight on this admittedly perceived conundrum would be appreciated. I'm skeptical because I'm all too familiar with the way my father in me can talk me out of things before giving them a proper go.

Be precise please; You doubt I have much to add... that would suit your purpose. You're right. If you use a phrase for the purpose of invoking a predetermined emotional response, somebody who is interested in the truth would not be of much use to you. Do you think this could be why other people who frequent a forum dedicated to truth had nothing to add? Something I didn't notice at first but now is clear to me: Your first reply identified problem of lack of responses as a problem, but immediately explained the source of the problem as external. I point this out to substantiate my claim that you had a purpose in posting this other than seeking the truth.

No, june, YOU made the claim that the agent/talent relationship is a good example of structural violence. I pointed out that their interaction was voluntary and asked where the violence was. You continue to demonstrate that you understand that the violence you claimed to be there is not actually there.

We don't apply objective standards to reality, objectivity is derived from reality. Philosophy is used to determine the truth value of objective claims. You used the words belief and culture, but those words denote a deviation from objective truth. We don't say, "I believe 2+2=4" or "We were raised as if 2+2=4" or "people from that part of the world put 4 after 2+2=". If it's an objective truth, belief never enters into it and it will be true throughout the world. If it can be described as a belief or culture, it is not objective nor a truth claim. "I believe unicorns exist." That's fine, it just doesn't conform to the real world. A case could be made that it is sadistic to torture a horse, but there is no moral component. If I kept you in a stable, you were only able to eat what I gave you to eat, and I used you as transportation or for work that your body could produce, this would be highly immoral. We do not consider identical behaviors towards a horse to even be torturous. This is why I identified that a clarification was necessary.

Again, if they use aggression, they're not libertarians. The use of aggression is literally the null hypothesis for the evaluation of libertarian. It's like talking about the purples that are yellow.

This is not an important story, so for those who are pressed for time or just not interested in lesser stories, please feel free to skip the topic. I didn't want to provide a pretense that the length was indicative of some serious emergency. Backstory (Those familiar with my backstory can skip most of it as I imagine only the layout of his house would be pertinent to the thread.) I was abused as a child by both parents and everybody whose care they left me in, including the church and government schools. Due to lack of real world skills, I eventually went bankrupt and moved back into my father's house. This began out of necessity on my part and continues due in part to mutual benefit. He owns a few houses that I've fixed up for him to earn my keep that he rents out. Also, I work during 3rd shift hours mostly for the purpose of security. So he has an armed guard at his home when he and his wife are at work (1st shift) and somebody who is awake and home during most of the time that they sleep. It also means that at his advanced age (and multiple heart attacks), that he has somebody that can tend to landscaping in the summer and deal with the snow removal in the winter, including at hours just before they need to go to work. His home that I live in is ranch style that had an addition built onto it before he bought it. This supports our situation nicely in that they didn't use the addition much before I moved in and it has it's own full bathroom. There is a door that can be shut to this addition for sleeping/privacy's sake. On the other side of that door is the kitchen. On the other side of the kitchen is a pocket door that can be closed for privacy's sake on their part and they have their own bathroom. With the exception of the washer and dryer being on my end of the house, the house itself is conducive to our living arrangement even in light of our schedule differences. A little over a year ago, I began studying philosophy and pursuing self-knowledge. It taught me the horrific extent of how damaging my father really was. Something my subconscious knew if my physical manifestations in anticipation of his arrival home from work despite being an armed adult is any indication. To editorialize if I may, I can never be sure what will set him off or to what degree he will be set off or take even unrelated things out on me. But he has resorted to kicking me out and threatening the same in order to erase me. We had a major fight in the middle of last year where I tried talking to him about the violence of my childhood, that I was studying philosophy, etc. He made it clear that he didn't care, felt violence was necessary, and was more interested in the effects of my labor than in me or my feelings, experiences, or happiness. Since that time, a burden has been lifted from me as I now know for sure that he wasn't just an untrained guy performing the Heimlich. Also, since he is aware that I am aware, his verbal advances tend to be less frequent and of even less substance than before. His signature move is to draw me into "conversations" with his actions, but immediately remove me from the conversation in his own mind. It ends up looking like one person foisting conclusions onto another and letting that other speak only for as long as it is perceived as not disagreeing with him. I have spoken to my stepmother and she sees this need to be right also and has said it seems worse in recent times. Yesterday's lead up Yesterday, the forecast was that the temperature was going to rise above freezing and that precipitation would turn to rain. When I went out for snow removal purposes at 4am, I only bothered doing the walkways for safety's sake even though there wasn't really enough snow to be an issue. I tend to err on the side of not leaving him something he could try to use against me later. I was awoken at 10 am by the sound of my stepmother shoveling snow outside the window where she knew I was sleeping. The addition I live in is very near the garage, so noise that happens around that window tends to be reflected and intensified. This path leads to a back patio and walkway that my father utilizes to leave seed out for the birds. I was upset that this shoveling indicated that birds were more important than me. However, I didn't hold it against her. She is empathetic towards me and I have no doubts that her shoveling (which she almost never does) was by his design. I have difficulties falling asleep despite being able to sleep quite well once I'm asleep. This event and unrelated occurrences left me operating yesterday on about 3 hrs of sleep, which all stemmed from a completely unnecessary action. The driveway was in fact completely rained on and cleared by time I was up for good. Today's topic Today's forecast was that the temperature was going to drop below freezing while it continued to precipitate, turning to sunny skies during the day. Since the snow was coming down on top of water that could freeze, I cleared all the concrete and salted the walkways, knowing that the sunny day would eradicate everything on the concrete areas. I was awoken at 11 am by the sound of my father shoveling vestigial ice (the salted, frail, crumbles beneath your feet rained on kind) that once again didn't actually require any intervention. I was very upset because it once again was totally unnecessary. I should've mentioned before that he does not know how to relax. Even at his age and given his heart condition, his time off (and mine) is populated by make work. Again, due to my difficulty in falling asleep (and this time being quite upset), I wasn't able to fall back asleep until about 2pm, the hour I'm usually getting up during the summertime. No sooner than I fall asleep, a cat is jumping on me. We have a cat that simply adores me because I'm very empathetic towards her. However, when I sleep, I close the door to the addition. Her food and litterbox is not on my side of the door and if I let her in this part of the house, she would wake me occasionally for attention. This means that somebody actually opened the door without my consent for non-emergent purposes. I was furious, but the cat has a way of calming me down, so I was able to get a bit more sleep even with her presence. Once I was finally up for good and had opened the door, my father came out to my end of the house which mostly only happens when he has something to say to me. He informed me that the cat had been scratching at the door, so he HAD TO let her in. He asked me if I had noticed when I woke up that she was out here and I begrudgingly said, while trying to mask my contempt so as not to invite one of his trademark "I'm right, you're wrong" outrages, "she woke me up when she came out here." Thankfully, he walked away at that point as all he needed was his usual confirmation bias that he made the right decision despite it completely erasing me. This is very small by comparison to the many other stunts he pulls. Which to his credit, does not usually include things that wake me up since he does claim to (and mostly conforms to the claim) that he's considerate of my odd schedule and difficulty falling asleep. Still, I wanted to share it since I've taken to documenting these types of interactions and examining it after the fact to study my own feelings and thoughts (and situation). I thought I'd give sharing it here a try to see what others think and have to say. I was just blown away because I know for a fact that if the other cat was meowing up a storm in anticipation of his waking up (a fairly regular occurrence) , and I went to their end of the house and opened up their bedroom door and claimed that I HAD TO let her in, he'd feel violated and would be furious. Rightly so.

Statements don't end in question marks. This reply of yours also does not answer the question. You are confessing that your claim of structural violence is invalid.

By definition, values, culture, and "what they deem" are subjective. Presumably, his use of the word "right" means best conforms with objective reality. This would be an objective measure which cannot be applied to subjective items. On a lesser note, I would like to see a clarification of consciousness as the only measure for morality. The case could be made that a horse is conscious. However, it is his inability to reason (contemplate an ideal, compare behaviors to this ideal, and consider consequences of behaviors) that makes him ineligible for moral agent status.

Not only are we incapable of creating a world at all, grab what you can (in his context) is the polar opposite of not initiating the use of force. This idea simultaneously accepts and rejects self-ownership. In order to make the distinction of initiating the use of force against a person, self-ownership must be valid. However, if self-ownership is valid, then the effects of that self-ownership is valid, which includes "non-human pieces of the world." We must assume that he meant interrupting since preventing somebody from stealing doesn't even need to include person to person interaction. Still, theft is the initiation of the use of force, so the interruption of it cannot be. A valid principle follows the real world, not the other way around. Burglary is a type of theft and is the initiation of the use of force, so the interruption of it cannot be. This is a very common mistake where a dissenter will see "initiation of the use of force" and focus on force when the operative word is initiation. If somebody is willing to use aggression to impose something on people, they're not libertarians. Vague language. Otherwise, it's stating the obvious. It's not unlike saying that democracy falls when you cut mob rule "out from underneath" them. This is conditional though. It's predicated on the invalidation of the NAP, which is the principle of human interaction that is universalize-able and is the most consistent and sustainable. This statement 1) suggests that the degree of enthusiasm can be used as a measure of validity and 2) implies that he himself would welcome assault, rape, and murder because to do so would prove his own lack of enthusiasm for non-aggression. He has misused the word theory here because once a theory is proven to not conform with the real world, it must be revised or rejected until such a time that it does. That aside, he's actually making the case FOR libertarianism as the fact that other "theories" redefine who owns what you earn to justify the initiation of the use of in the form of taxation or worse for resisting, does not make them true. And yet he is unable to make a case against it. Most of his article is just attaching as many words of negative connotation as possible. He maligns the lack of use of principled arguments while not offering any principled arguments. Near as I can tell from the context, he got into a twitter debate with somebody who accepts the position but isn't efficient in presenting the case, and used it as a baseline "proof" of its invalidation. Again, this is not a principled argument.

I am aware of your parents as inherent aggressors stance. Not talking about parents here. You have an agent and the talent he represents. Something you claim is a good example of "structural violence." To which I've asked this very simple question, which I'm afraid you have not answered.

Your title is why libertarianism (non-violent) and "the free market" (non-coercive) will not work. Yes, let's look at how the FACTS work out by turning to a hypothetical. You mean that the other 4 are less valuable. Happiness is not achieved by installing toilets or paying people to install toilets. The boss and all installers working for him are involved in a mutually beneficial exchange of goods and services. Nothing problematic here. How do you know that installing more toilets in the same amount of time is the product of working harder? How do you know that working harder is a bad thing? I have a buddy who's younger than me. He worked really hard to go to college and make something of himself. He's amassed more wealth in several years than I have in my entire adult life. He doesn't have to work very hard at all and his downtime is more enriching. These are products of his working hard. You have yet to identify a problem or how violence is solving it.

Solve... what? The video is a generalization. How is violence solving the issue? Violence impedes innovation. Violence is inefficient. Violence sucks wealth away from the people creating and earning it. VIOLENCE IS IMMORAL. I don't think you understand how much wealthier everybody would be if there wasn't a state. How much more innovative every field would be. How much less you'd have to work in a given year to pay for this and that. How much more you'd be paid for your skills. How much more time, effort, and wealth we'd all have, to put towards more useful and beneficial things. None of this matters because your approach strikes me as disingenuous. You haven't defined the issue, you haven't indicated how violence solves it, yet you claim that you will subscribe to non-violence if somebody can explain how non-violence will solve the issue. All of which suggests that the immorality of violence is less important than the consequences. Sorry, but consequentialism has no place in philosophy.

English class for me started off learning words and structure, which I liked. Then it moved on to creative writing, which I really liked. Then it went on to reading, which I HATED. To this day, I cannot stand to read books, which is hugely detrimental.

Again, you indicated as much. No assumption was made. I'm guessing what's happening is that you're using the word assume because I did. My use of the word assumption was to indicate that I do not necessarily agree with your belief, but it wasn't actually important to the point I was making. Either Jesus was real and the stories about him are passed off as real, in which case they were doing exactly as they were told. Or the guy and/or the stories about him were works of fictions, in which case you might as well be talking about shooting Reagan to impress Jodie Foster. I understand that. To which I'm adding that you are neglecting the critical 3rd element: the prescription of that individual/ideology. You failed to consider it when you suggested that wars could be carried out in the name of peaceful individuals/ideologies. You failed to consider it when you suggested that wars in Jesus/Christianity's name do not accrue to Jesus/Christianity despite their prescription of exactly that.

Human Farms is pretty sick. I don't think the heavy reverb fits though. Can you include The Ghosts of War. It's a groovy beat and such an important message against one of the larger propagandas we face.

Actually, I didn't assume that you took Jesus to be real and the stories told off him passed of as being true. You indicated as much when you spoke of wars being carried out in his name. If he was a fictional character or an author of fiction, then wars could not be carried out in his name anymore than wars could be carried out in the name of somebody who practices and preaches peaceful interaction. Jesus said he did not come to change one word of the Old Testament. He was a willing participant in a system created by the guy that said kill non-believers, tried to exterminate humanity for not obeying him, confusing them for trying to be like him, the list is nearly endless. Then there's the whole father, son, holy spirit as one.

But there's no such thing as a spiritual calling. One doesn't arrive at "self-sacrifice -> freedom" on their own, it's inflicted by external, free will actors. The argument for technology fails on both sides of the coin. In regards to your parents, you don't need the internet to understand that telling a child stories that leads them to choosing how they want to die is damaging. How old is the "teach a man to fish" adage? Bringing accessibility into the equation actually makes my point stronger because it reveals that you were not important enough to seek the truth amid the propaganda even if it meant going to the library. The way the technology argument fails on the other side of the coin is you DO have the internet. And a claim to want to learn. Yet here we are discussing something that could be tantamount to the theft of your children's childhood and you're not even considering the possibility. And as I already pointed out, your children will have access to the technology of tomorrow. The ball is already rolling. It doesn't sound as if you did. There was no mention of your mother, but we know she chose your father. You've already described your father both as teaching you things that led to you choosing how to die at the age of ten and later being instrumental in telling you when to die. Or murder others because a stranger offered you stolen money to do it if you prefer. If you cannot identify that you did not have a loving family environment, then you will be powerless to stop yourself from reproducing it for your own children. If that's not important to you, I'll stop putting more effort into it than you are.

First of all, public school is a misnomer. It is a government school if you want to pretty it up and a coercive institution were one to be honest about it. An elected board doesn't change the fact that money is stolen, residents whose money is stolen cannot opt out, and people who do not vote for the person who wins is bound without consent. In order to even consider if this is better or worse than an alternative, they'd have to say that the moral consideration isn't important. Secondly, the argument is akin to saying that coercive restaurants would be better than McDonald's because people do not vote for it. Except that they do. They vote with their money, feet, and voices. If a privately owned school did something that people didn't like, they would receive less money which would act as a signal that it is a decision with consequences.