dsayers

Where is this coming from? With no mention of methodology, this would be a conclusion that's been inflicted upon you. It's not a surprise; There are many purveyors of the idea of subjective morality. Sadly, those that do this are often trying to subjugate your mind so that you will be unable to identify their immorality. Morality is merely a way to identify the validity of a behavior that is binding upon another person. You have consciousness and the capacity for reason, so you own yourself and the effects of your actions. This is true of other humans, so they all own themselves and the effects of their actions. Theft, assault, rape, and murder are behaviors that are binding upon others because they're the exercising of ownership over that which is owned by somebody else. They are immoral behaviors because they are the simultaneous acceptance and rejection of property rights. It is axiomatic that X cannot equal NOT X. As you can see, this is a standard that is unescapable and is true independent of individual consciousness. It is a principled, objective conclusion backed by sound methodology. What you were referring to are known as values, which are by definition subjective and therefore not binding upon others.

That's not surprising. Even those who join the police that aren't already aware of their desire to lord over other humans go through a mental warp where they start to believe in their own moral separation from the remainder of human kind. I've read Larken Rose's book The Most Dangerous Superstition and by far, the most value I got from the book was the part that talked about the way the most dangerous superstition will alter "good cops" into bad cops. We're social creatures and survival and social acceptance often requires coalescing with the lowest common denominator. As for when is it a lost cause, I don't think there's any clear answer. You would need to get to the root of his desire to hurt people. I imagine he was abused as a child. That it was modeled for him that size (physical or metaphorical) is the standard and that by artificially increasing his size, he gets to be the initiator. Which means he doesn't have to be the receiver. He'll gain the control he's never had, that he so desperately needs. The only control that will have any meaning in such a person's life is identifying the abuse of his parents and getting angry about it so he can begin to heal. This path also has the nifty side effect of not hurting other people. I used to hurt other people out of similar motivation. The most power I've ever experienced was when I broke the cycle of violence in my own life.

Would rape be so bad if you could opt out of it? The moment you can opt out of sexual intercourse, it's not rape. Consent is the key element of voluntary interaction and with governments, consent is not present. The moment consent is present, you're not talking about government. Minarchy is an unprincipled conclusion. It's the belief that there are some problems that require violence to be solved. But the only thing that you can achieve with violence that you cannot achieve without violence is violence itself. Either theft, assault, rape, and murder are immoral or they are not. If they are, there's no reason to abide any amount of State. If they're not, there's no reason to limit any amount of State.

No. Because it's not a law at all. Laws are binding which is why those in power want us to think of their whims in unavoidable terminology. What I'm saying is that it doesn't matter what legislations are (not) present, they're going to do what they want anyways. If voting no on something actually meant that for the remainder of human history, one human COULD NOT enact the immorality in question, THEN voting no could actually be construed as defensive. As it stands, voting no on something is as futile as buying pants because you're hungry. Perceived legitimacy is the problem, not the minutia of how it manifests. Participating in voting adds to the perceived legitimacy. If you catch a bear ransacking your camp, you only endanger yourself further by trying to take your sandwich back. Recognizing the scope of your aggressor and staying out of sight for the sake of self-preservation is not pacifism.

As a communicator, the onus is on you to convey your ideas. A little empathy would dictate that having text only, certain cues for what could be construed as humor are not present. I also know that a lot of truth is said in jest AND that it's a common defense mechanism for somebody to backpedal and claim humor to escape responsibility. I didn't take it as such because it's similar to a very valid question/scenario. For example, let us say that a human is both a psychopath and a serial killer. From a moral standpoint, they are no different than a feral beast loose in a civilized area even though they are biologically a human being. This is hard for some people to grasp, so I could totally see somebody seriously asking such a question. When I said that it's hard to take you seriously, it's not because you asked if we should kill off all the evildoers. It's because you shift from absent to strong-arming and from serious to joking and back. I don't think that philosophy or integrity are of interest to you.

A statist is somebody who believes in the validity of the State. Beliefs are not the initiation of the use of force. Killing is not only irreversible, but the largest debt you could create to somebody. In order for it to be a justified reaction, what it's a reaction to must be similar in scope. Somebody that votes to have a dollar stolen from me every year to fund X, Y, or Z for example has not initiated the level of force that would justify lethal force, even if they're of the mind that they would do it again if they had the opportunity. I want you to know that I'm only participating at this point for the benefit of others. You make it very hard to take you seriously.

Pardon the nitpick, but I think "open to reason" applies to everybody. Even people who cling to the irrational can change their mind. Unless they're a psychopath, saying somebody is open to reason is pretty meaningless. It doesn't provide any information about the interaction other than your bias that he's a good person. I'm not saying he's not, but if you're to have any luck in your goal, you need to try and maintain a clear picture of what you're working with. He is lying to you. The way to survive a threat is to avoid or neutralize it, not bathe in or add to it. Besides, if he wanted to get in good with the "bad guys" in an attempt to avoid their ire, wouldn't the ruling class be more seductive than the enforcer class? The ruling class gets to point their finger from afar while the enforcer class endangers themselves to make it so.

@title: My initial thought is ye olde "If they can get you to ask the wrong questions, they don't care what your answers are." People who are focusing on local vs global aren't focusing on moral vs immoral. I don't have the right to steal from, assault, rape, or murder my fellow moral actors. It is unclear how I can be expected to give that right that I do not possess to somebody else. When you vote, you are directly giving somebody your blessing to steal from others under threat of violence up to and including murder. It IS the initiation of the use of force by proxy. Plus, as Mr. Chapman pointed out, you legitimize the State's claim over you by participating in any of its programs that you don't have to. Meaning that people who vote, by way of ANY motivation, are not free even in their own minds. We need to get past this.

The only thing you can know about a person who doesn't have a donator badge under their name is that they haven't donated recently. It doesn't tell you why. Please understand that the following is meant for understandings's sake and that I'm not defending the lack of exchange of value for value. We live in a world of broken people. This means a few things. For one, the integrity of exchanging value for value is not a prevalent one. This is due in part to the next item: the impact of the State. Not only does the State take from everybody, giving everybody less to give, but it also justifies a lack of self-responsibility. "Somebody else will take care of it." Notice how they're always asking what OTHER PEOPLE would do? Finally, the people that benefit the most from FDR are the people that were isolated and abused to the point of crippling their ability to store value and function socially and in society. Again, not defending the lack of integrity that is failing to exchange value for value. I do however think it's dismissive and a bit counter-intuitive to refer or even think of them as freeloaders. Free will means that some people will give less than something's worth and some will give much more.

What does "open to reason" mean? For what it's worth, your post had a lot of talk about you. Unfortunately, you cannot use logic, reason, and evidence to talk somebody out of a position they didn't arrive at by way of logic, reason, and evidence. So the most important pieces of information here would be WHY he wants to become a cop and what his childhood was like that he accepts the suggestion that he could have moral rights/immunities that people do not have. If all you're looking for is a logical proof that police are a work of fiction/patently immoral, does a good job of walking you through it. You could also check out Stef's Bomb in the Brain series to reinforce the idea that you cannot convince somebody of something until you know why they think what they do.

Where the use of force between moral actors is present, there is an initiator. Am I supposed to ignore that just because you didn't use those specific words? Of course you're not going to be able to influence the world when you don't take things that are important seriously.

That is not what I said.

"Tires are not new, which means you're building off of the work of others while expressing a desire to FORCIBLY prevent others from building off of the work of others. How do you rationalize this self-contradiction?" I don't see where you've answered this. All I have to go on is the information you provide. You made a topic about an invention/discovery and that is what WE are talking about. I accept that I don't have the power to condemn anything. I do have the power to understand that the initiation of the use of force is immoral. If you do not initiate the use of force when you provide/store/spend value, then I have no opinion on how you choose to do so. But patents ARE the initiation of the use of force to artificially cull competition. So far, the only effort you've put into addressing this is to say that because you don't trust the market to compensate you, oh well.

"Should we initiate the use of force to establish a society where there will be no initiation of the use of force?" Asked and answered. It is unclear what you are talking about. You use the words want and addiction, but what a person wants or craves is not important. It's how they behave. A guy can adore Corvettes as much as he likes as long as he doesn't steal one, eh?

It is manipulative to try and manage the reactions of others before they can even provide a reaction. That is an objective claim. If it is untrue, you are welcome to refute it. I asked you direct questions and you refused to answer. Your adherence to your bias that violence is a valid means to an end means (as I've maintained) that you are NOT looking for voluntary alternatives, but rather confirmation of your bias. We have nothing further to discuss. I'll end by addressing you bringing up investing a million dollars into a lab. I can understand why you would want to see returns on your investment. Not everybody is a savvy investor though. Not everybody is a chemist. Just because you invested a large sum doesn't mean you're entitled to succeed. If you accept that violence is immoral and put forth hard work, I hope that you will succeed. But the fact is that many investments fail and a free market needs them to so that the investments that are better can flourish. Just as the market needs competition for the sake of innovation. These again are utilitarian arguments and are not meant to supersede the fact that the simultaneous acceptance and rejection of property rights (which is an accurate description of a patent) is self-contradictory.

So you're not going to answer the questions and instead will resort to baseless personal attacks. Got it. I'll leave you with something you'll just ignore anyways: Money is stored value. Those who don't engage in immorality store this value by providing value for others. Not having stored value is not an accident of nature. It's directly related to how much value a person provides for others.

What is meant in the title of the article by the word "support"? And isn't "post-birth abortion" a contradiction of terms?

You didn't say "your solution." You said "your patentless society." I see this all the time. It's a way to internally marginalize the input as personal to avoid having to address its merits. Also, the fact that you did this initially instead of in response to something somebody said demonstrates you're bringing unresolved trauma to the table. It's manipulative. You're basically saying from the onset that you cannot be convinced and everything you've said since only substantiates this. "...and if people won't give it to me, I'll take it from them." How do you know that this is what your effort is worth? Why wouldn't the vanilla guy be able to start his own bakery or sell the idea to an established one? I wish to qualify my next question by pointing out that I accept that utilitarian arguments are subservient to the moral consideration. How do you feel about the fact that you didn't create/discover what you did in a vacuum? Tires are not new, which means you're building off of the work of others while expressing a desire to FORCIBLY prevent others from building off of the work of others. How do you rationalize this self-contradiction?

Practicality dictates that you can not solve a problem that you don't understand. You could flip a light switch in your home if all you wanted was to see change. To address the problem of dependence on State violence, it's going to take making the case for peaceful parenting. This is a multi-generational change, so it's impractical to expect results in our lifetimes. Even if the enforcer class told the ruling class no today, we wouldn't experience peace because there are too many broken people who haven't processed their trauma. It takes time to build. What have you done about this? You mentioned their religiosity, so I don't anticipate you'd be able to make much progress. Still, I'm curious as to what you have done to address that.

1. You have consciousness. 2. You have the capacity for reason. 3. Therefore, you own yourself. 4. Everybody else has consciousness. 5. Everybody else has the capacity for reason. 6. Therefore, everybody else owns themselves. Therefore... 7. Theft is the use of the property of another person without their consent. 8. Assault is the use of the body (property) of another person without their consent. 9. Rape is the sexual use of the body (property) of another person without their consent. 10. Murder is the taking of the life (property) of another person without their consent. The non-aggression principle is the summary of ALL OF THAT. Not everybody understands it as such. This is the problem. To some, non-aggression only means not getting physically violent. But consent is the key, not what we might typically describe as "aggression." Do you not agree that precise is more valuable than imprecise? In my outline in this post, are any of the individual points NOT an accurate description of the real world? You mean that the immoral have no interest in non-aggression. They cannot escape morality. This is why it's important to be precise with what you're talking about. Those who "rule by might" demonstrate their acceptance of property rights simply by exercising ownership over their own body. In other words, to find the ought you're looking for, you need look no further than the very actions of the people not conforming to that ought. They're demonstrating their acceptance of property rights while behaving as if they reject property rights.

I enjoy playing videos games. That doesn't mean I get to have people steal from you and give it to me if I can't find somebody to pay me to do that. Your response didn't answer my question. Can you give an example of what "social pressure" looks like? Can you elucidate as to what is meant by "the elite"? How are they fundamentally from those who do not meet your criteria of being the elite that the non-elite are free to steal to meet their goals? Would you be willing to abandon these conclusions if they were shown to not be an accurate description of the real world?

Your use of the word "your" here reveals the bias you were trying to conceal. Kind of like your last topic where you (a month later) came back to essentially say that unless we can tell you who will pick the cotton, you reject that slavery is immoral. Meaning you will reject any other answers provided to you that doesn't conform to your bias. For the benefit of others struggling with this minutia: If what you produce is of value to people, then people will exchange value with you. Your question stems from the common faulty premise that just because somebody spends time on something, they MUST be compensated for it.

Thank you for making my point about confessing you don't think you could meet your goals by way of voluntary means. Another question I now have is: If you had the expectation that you could not thrive in that industry, why would you choose that as a means of making money at all? What kind of doctor has the authority to order you to steal from your countrymen?

It is a mistake to focus on "NAP" which is just shorthand. It would be like trying to analyze a forest without looking at any trees. I've actually come to despise this anagram because it helps so many good people lose sight of what even they are talking about. "Theft, assault, rape, and murder is immoral" is descriptive. You mentioned getting an ought from an is and how this requires an if. Well in the context of self-preservation (IF you wish to survive), then it is also normative. It should also be noted that ought/is doesn't really matter here because in any discussion of morality, "IF you wish to live virtuously" is a given as it is the framework in which the analysis takes place. Anyways, I should clarify the link between self-preservation and not initiating the use of force. When you aggress against others, you welcome aggression unto yourself. I've made the case for peaceful interaction as the default for this reason alone. There are very few things that can honestly be said about "human nature," but one is that we seek out the most resources with the least amount of risk/effort. While it may seem easier to take a car rather than to earn it, taking a car means you will forever be watching over your shoulder, unable to sleep easy, always wondering who/when/how you will be caught. Theft is immoral (descriptive). If you wish to survive, you ought not to steal (normative). As we cannot escape our own biological imperative for survival, it is essentially the same thing. What distinction were you looking for?