dsayers

Now your list breaks down at step one. Value is not objective. I'm using my time right now to communicate to you by way of this forum. Does this mean this is how everybody should spend their time? I could make a reasoned argument for personal and societal benefits For what it's worth, when you say next attempt, it comes across as you're more interested in making an idea work than you are in whether or not that idea conforms with the real world.

Ah, I see that now. Those two sentences back to back made it seem as if you were equating countries to security agencies. I don't follow. If there were a degree, wouldn't it be the limited aggression principle? If so, how could we universalize this? If you own yourself and people are not fundamentally different from one another, then theft, assault, rape, and murder are immoral. To challenge that theft, assault, rape, and murder are immoral, you'd have to challenge self-ownership or that people are fundamentally different from one another. Lack of real world examples? What percentage of your pursuits in life (friends, jobs, significant other, car, home, etc) do you accomplish by initiating the use of force? If the answer is a very low number, is this only because you believe a government will level consequences upon you for doing so? You would assume wrongly that I could understand how non-violent people whose lives are a series of non-coercive interactions with others would find the idea of non-coercive interactions as far-fetched. Don't get me wrong, I do sympathize with the propaganda. However, the moment you consider that maybe the propaganda is wrong, you're already there. Your examination of voluntary security forces is lacking the two most important characteristics: competition and consequences. The reason why government coercion withstands the test of time is that they get others to accept that to compete with them or for them to suffer any consequences for their actions is impeding their "providing a service" that the public needs to not be impeded.

When considering such things, I think precise language is important. What makes us human is our biological classification. You're exploring what makes us people, not humans. If such a day comes that we're exposed to another species that can reason, they will be people too. I too have wondered this. I don't put too much thought into simply because we are omnivores. However, our ability to reason will likely lead to a day when we choose more efficient sustenance. It's more efficient to eat the things we feed to animals to be able to eat them. It's unfortunate that most people that think this way operate from a morally superior standpoint, which would turn off people they might otherwise be able to convince. Most of the reason I spend any thought on it is because of government subsidies.

"It's okay to murder because somebody offered me stolen money to do it" isn't the real world. What's the difference between rape and love making? The violence. I happen to provide armed security services for a living. The difference is that people pay me with money they've earned and ask me to do things they actually have the power to do themselves, and therefore can morally delegate to others as part of a voluntary exchange of goods and services. Bunnies, puppies, blow children up... your use of vague language is all the proof anybody would need to understand you're just shoveling propaganda.

Your opening paragraph makes no fewer than three unsubstantiated claims. I think the question as to whether you seek the truth or for your idea to be true is an important one, which you have not answered. The US, UK, and Iraq are neither products nor examples of a market.

I guess I've got my answer. By the way, saying you have a choice and can identify a standard by which to exercise that choice upgrades you from culpable to responsible. In other words, you are not a victim of propaganda, but somebody who victimizes with propaganda. I doubt you'll find many minds open to that abuse here. Nationalism is a religion and therefor irrational. Proximity does not equal virtue. I tried to help you with this when I said: Somebody who isn't critical after it being suggested that they are party to genocide is a monster.

You might say the same thing about smells if we didn't have a sense of smell. We build transmitters and receivers, so there's nothing that says they couldn't exist as a biological component. Nor does the word "telepathy" in a thought experiment have to equal a force of will. Babies can communicate with their expressions. Hell, I am able to interpret quite a few things my cat tries to communicate.

Actually, the current system is utopian. The belief that if you steal from everybody and threaten everybody, every problem will go away and if it doesn't, you need to steal more and make bigger threats. THAT is utopian. How will we deal with polio? Simple: Figure out where it comes from and prevent it. Violence is no different. It's not utopian to believe that once you prevent violence, there will hardly be any violence.

If it didn't claim ownership over you, there wouldn't be anything to evade. These claims are incompatible. Just to be clear, you said this as a direct reply to it being pointed out that if it's willful, it doesn't need to be violently imposed.

I just wanted to add that I would not put any stock into your promise itself anymore than I would a person's signature on a document while under duress. A mysticist and a rationalist will only slowly run out of things to share. Whether this means to separate or encourage him to think, I don't know. Just wanted to point out that a promise born of guilt and coercion should be the last factor to be considered, if at all.

I think it's the sort of thing that is exacerbated by the state destroying the family to breed dependence. It leads to warped senses of virtue and accomplishment. Children, being blank slates, tend to mirror and therefore expose this nonsense, so they have to be broken with near lethal doses of propaganda and subjugation. So I guess in that regard, it's probably always been that way given how old religion is. It's very exciting that humans are just about enlightened enough to break this cycle once and for all. I really wish it was the sort of thing that would happen in my lifetime.

There's two things that are true about every salesman: They are liars and they do not care about you. In short, don't be a liar or somebody more interested in the money they can make off a person than the fact that it is a person they are talking to. Yes, I've been in sales a couple times myself and actually did quite well the time it was in regards to computer hardware. I did well there because I knew the products as well as the industry in general. And because I didn't fall into the generality above. YMMV.

I've been thinking about how to respond to this. Upon my initial reading, my biggest concern was your personal investment. I'm not sure what you aim to get from this thread. If it's the objective truth, the subjective opinion and anecdotal evidence have no place here. However, I've decided to base the bulk of my reply around a single word that you used: Necessary. From an epistemological standpoint, "necessary" is an enormous word. It's like law. "How do you feel about gravity?" "Who cares, we're bound by it either way." If something can be identified as necessary, there's not too much to gain from talking about it. There's not too much responsibility to accrue when utilizing it. Most people who use the phrase "necessary evil" are trying to avoid responsibility for said evil. I'm in the middle of a discussion with a friend of mine as to whether or not such a thing exists. If you accept self-ownership, then you understand that "necessary evil" could be categorized as either necessary theft, assault, rape, or murder. Keeping in mind that these words denote the initiation of the use of force and not killing somebody who's trying to kill you in the moment. I for one cannot see how there could be a necessary evil. However I do know that the moment somebody calls something a necessary evil, they believe they've found the answer and will stop looking for the right answer. For clarity's sake, let us break down "all soldiers are murderers." I don't know if Stef has said this. I don't think anybody could say it's absolutely true. Let's be honest though. Even if a given soldier is not murdering, they're lasing a target to be murdered, or watching a satellite to aide in the murder, fixing a machine that will aide those aiding the murderers, etc. While this might not make any given soldier a murderer, he is culpable just as the wheel man for a bank robbery is. Bottom line is that it is the initiation of the use of force and of the highest human order. I sympathize. We were all fed the same lies from the same percentage of people we were told were to be trusted. The difference is that the lie I bought into was that nations and the psychopaths that claim ownership over them are worth fighting for while a soldier has bought into the lie that murder is okay because a stranger offered stolen money to do so. To be clear, in this consideration, there are three actors of importance: The soldier, the person whose commands the soldier is obeying, and the person who is effected by the soldier's actions. In the US, the commander in chief is not acquainted with 99.9% of the soldiers he commands. For argument's sake, this means that the commander and the soldier are strangers. Saying there's bad people out there isn't justification for being one of the bad people out there. Why are the people you care about more important than the people who are victims of your (collective military) destruction, whom somebody cared about? Issuing a command with a "please" is not the same as negotiating. I'll leave you with a parting thought. For me, the path of self-knowledge has been easier than anybody else I've heard talk about it. Do you know why? It's because I hurt people I cared about. Even after I was aware of this, I was powerless to stop it. I was desperate and was willing to do anything to stop hurting people I cared about. I even withdrew socially so as to not hurt any more people. As such, I cannot imagine how the hint of being party to genocide would not move somebody to at least consider that maybe all the vague rhetoric they were fed and in fact repeat was worthy of re-examination.

I read as much of that guy's article as I could stomach and then I read your article. I like that your style was personable. I didn't much care for the guy's use of the word retaliation as if it means the same as self-defense. I've never like the way people use "checks and balances" when referring to governments as if both sides of the scale don't occupy one side of a much larger scale. "they must answer to those people who don't want to be subject to that force" This was my favorite point you made. I've never really known how to answer that concern because it's one I don't feel is real, but I can't seem to answer it without making it sound like everybody has to be packing heat. Seems like a lot of people don't understand that the reason crime is what it is right now is BECAUSE people largely cannot fight back due to state monopoly and if they do, they're treated like the criminal. In a free society, violence comes with very large personal risk both in the moment and later on down the road.

Welcome. It's always good to re-examine that which we concluded to be true before we could think enough to arrive there accurately. Not really. Thought it does kind of go against your thesis in that "fast food" is one of those phrases that's meant to invoke a negative presupposition. A six inch veggie sub from Sub Way is just as fast food as the triple with cheese biggie sized combo meal.

That's what my original point was. Armed forces are offensive. Police are involuntary. Both violate property rights. One might as well ask if there's a place for rape and murder in a free society. There's value in sex and euthanasia. It's the coercion that is the problem.

Another thing about value is I would approach adding greek foods to your arsenal as if you're enthusiastic about it because it's building YOUR value. The fact that it will benefit them also is secondary since if you're pursuing it for yourself, you'll do better for them than somebody that's just trying to satisfy them for a bit of coin. You're interviewing them too, so don't be afraid to ask questions pertaining to how you will know if you're providing value to them, what kind of people would you be working with, etc. Again, even if you're not a grand master world class chef, you'll be worth more to them as a team player that's looking at the big picture than the grand master whose just keeping busy for a couple weeks. I hope that makes sense.

We're all going to get hurt all of our lives. In her case, it's not a bad thing to get a little hurt at a time when she's going to be testing her limits more and more and in an environment where she's pretty safe. The point I was trying to make originally is that telling her presumes you are correct and that she should do things because an authority figure tells her to. If you discuss it with her, you can figure out together if you're right while helping her to come to rational conclusions on her own. It needs to be okay for her to question you. Sorry about the daughter/niece thing. Me cognitive skills no es bueno.

Well if you have no idea, then how are you going to go about determining if answers that are given are valid? Do you think one could answer the question you put forth without examining the ones I put forth first?

Is what an army does immoral? Is what police do immoral?

1) Setting up and legitimizing an ever-present aggressor to protect against a potential threat that nobody would accept is a logical inconsistency. 2) The people who set up and legitimized an ever-present aggressor had just fought to free themselves from the same, which is all the proof you need that it was flawed. 3) If everybody was begging for somebody else to do something, there would be nobody left to do anything, making this claim unsustainable. 4) The claim that if people need something, they will only get it if somebody forces it upon them has no logical basis. 5) The idea that people who would need and people who would provide are fundamentally different is inaccurate. 6) Saying the Constitution protects that which it violates is a deliberate lie. 7) Saying something is the best option does not mean it is a moral one. Please, this weak attempt at an argument might fly in the youtube comments section of a pro-state video, but you'll have to up your game if you wish for you or your arguments to be taken seriously in a place like this.

This is why I stopped having discussions with tjx. All I see is conclusions with no examination, even if the face of rigorous counterarguments. It's like having a discussion with a tape and rewinding it to see if your arguments had any effects on the content on the tape. If person C HAS to intervene or be deemed immoral, this is a positive obligation on C, which disposes of his consent, which is immoral. It is an unsustainable position and therefore must be revised to conform to the real world. Ignoring this because it conflicts with your prejudice is bigoted confirmation bias and has no place in a philosophical evaluation.

K, well I use CO to try and make a point and you read just CO. I use brown to make a point and you read just brown. I'm afraid I'm unable to speak in a way that's useful to you. I apologize and will indeed try to improve upon that for the future.

If I say my shoes are brown, I'm also saying that they have the capacity to not be brown. The fact that my shoes have the capacity to not be brown doesn't mean that they're not brown. I'm sorry if I missed earlier that your claim was that pi is an irrational number. I don't know how to answer that since I don't know what it means. Is 22 an irrational number? Is 7 an irrational number? Is division an irrational process? If you answered no to all of the above, what makes 22/7 irrational? The fact that in base 10, the quotient doesn't terminate? If so, then changing the base does matter. When I brought up CO, I wasn't talking about CO. I was pointing out the importance of interpretation. 22/7 is much clearer than its quotient in base 10. In base 22, .7 is clearer than 22/7. Well, in base 22, I suppose it would be written 10/7. To take a different angle at interpretation, is a dog any less a dog if the French refer to it as chien or the Spanish refer to it as perro? Or that in Spanish, the phonetic gato describes a cat while in French, it describes a cake? Interpretation doesn't alter identity, which is why I reject the claim that pi is goofy since 22/7 clearly isn't.

The capacity for being false is a requisite for being true. To use the capacity for falsehood to undermine truth is paradoxical and self-detonating. You are saying it is certainly true that that which could possibly be false cannot be certainly true. Pi is representative. 22/7 is not an approximation, even if its quotient is. For example, there is nothing unknown or imprecise about 14 pi. To bring pi back inline with your topic, human beings do not possess the capacity to sense carbon monoxide, but we are capable of utilizing technology to interpret it in ways our senses can detect. Similarly, we are capable of utilizing technology to interpret the quotient of pi to eight quadrillion decimal places. Or how about this. Once you introduce the facet of interpretation, you have to take notice of this discussion of pi being in base 10. In base 22, pi is simply written as .7