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If it didn't claim ownership over you, there wouldn't be anything to evade. These claims are incompatible. i didn't say there wasn't anything to evade. i asked where in the constitution it claims ownership of you. 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. and just to be clear, i am pointing out that you can't choose what you're born into, but at least you could leave the good ole USA if you wanted to, back in the old days. are you still living in the USA? i'm not. i left because of the growing police state. i left while you can still get out. So you can force everyone into contracts as long as you do it when they are born? you can still leave. what contract were forced to sign? obamacare maybe? Could you renounce your citizenship without leaving? If you could not then you were not allowed to own land and thus others owned you, if you could then there was no need for the constitution. renounce citizenship in any country and you have to leave. you have to be a citizen of a country to live there and be afforded the benefits of living there. and you'll find out how quickly you need a country if you have none. "Well X was pretty nice to his slaves, who would you have rather had as your slave-owner X or somebody else?" Would you consider that a relevant statement about the morality of slavery? same question over and over.. where does the constitution claim ownership of its citizens. You mean like when people come together to invest in or create an enterprise? you mean like when they are safe enough under the protection of law to be able to create an enterprise?

i don't know how old you are, but you sound relatively young. don't take this the wrong way, but you are too concerned with yourself. socrates famously said "the unexamined life isn't worth living". but i think he was wrong. j. krishnamurti said "self examination always leads to depression". it's been my experience that he was right. i went through something similar (i think) to what you're going through. here's another thing from krishnamurti. someone asked him if he was happy. he told them that he doesn't think about it. he ask if you've ever noticed that when you're happy, that as you notice it, it immediately goes away. what you're going through is very hard. some people don't make it through it. concerned you're self with your work. get your mind off yourself. i once talked with a guy that was hospitalized for clinical depression. when he got out, he said he wasn't helped. he thought of suicide just as often. then one day, he said in order to keep from bringing everyone down at work, he was going to pretend he was happy, just for them. everyday at work he pretended he was happy. when he got off work, he reverted to depression. but he kept doing it everyday, so he didn't depress fellow workers. then one day, it began to change. he noticed that he was starting to actually be happier little by little when he was pretending to be happy. just something to think about. learn not to be so concerned with or about yourself.

OK, so are if I were begging for it I'd willfully agree to it and there would be no need to impose it upon me. you can't agree to anything when you're born. and you have to be born somewhere. people have always come together for common defense whether a tribe or a country. but if you were lucky enough to have been born in the USA a hundred years ago, you could have left any time you chose. you could have freely renounced your citizenship. no one would be imposing it on you if you didn't want it. Not to mention that this claim does not address the fact that the constitution is a tool to claim ownership over people living in a geographical area. where in the constitution does it claim 'ownership' over you? all it says is that you're a citizen with the protected personal and property rights of the country. if you didn't like the country, you could leave at any time and renounce your citizenship. yes, it's different now, but that's not the fault of the constitution. it's the fault of socialist ideology that has been sweeping the country. This is totally irrelevant and subjective. yes, it's subjective. where would you have rather been born a hundred years ago? why do you say it's irrelevant? if there is a group of people living somewhere and there is no government, they will come together in some fashion to form the rules they agree to live by. but rest assured they will come together if for no other reason than for common defense. the ones who don't will get wiped out by some kind of raiding party or army. the only way out would be to live in an area so remote that there are no people living anywhere near you. spontaneous order doesn't last long when under attack.

I don't need my neighbors or you or even my parents or wives to unilaterally come up with a document that that describes what I am allowed and not allowed to do and even what I must do, no matter how permissive it is. if you had lived in a land that was constantly plundered and overrun by foreign armies, you'd be begging for a constitution that protected your life, liberties, rights and property. you couldn't have found a place on earth that was as good to live as the USA a hundred years ago..

If that is the case, the only way to stop C's violence towards A is to force him to help. i'm not trying to force a solution. i'm just saying that not helping when you are able to help, is violating the person being raped. In reality, it is a group of people claiming ownership over a geographical area and its inhabitants. but the US constitution never claimed ownership over its inhabitants. just the opposite. people were free to leave any time they wished. not only that, they could take all their property with them. back then, the government wasn't allowed to limit anything you decided to bring with you. you can't leave with more than $600,000 without the government taxing you. Sure, If I had to be violent to defend myself or someone else from the initiation of force then I would not be initiating force but I would still be violent. i'm saying that measured aggression against violence, isn't violence. yes, semantics is a problem when we're striving to be accurate in our definitions.

Magnus, services would not exist without production. that's because without production nothing can be paid for. and it doesn't matter that the buyer never meets the maker. without production we would not just suffer, but die. even the cavemen had to produce. they made spears and animal hides. the food they harvested was also part of what they produced. and although they mostly consumed their own production, they probably enhanced their 'wealth' and increased their 'standard of living' which increased their chances to survive, by trading their excess production. their excess production was their currency of the time.

it isn't. what improves the quality of life is production. the more production we have, the better and easier life becomes. automation is a great way to increase production.

I don't debate relativists, you didn't debate anything. much like leftists, feminists or creationists. cop out. And I recommend that to the whole board for what it's worth. not much.

but i do know an absolutist when i see one. why don't you take the political quiz and see where you stand? bet you're further to the left than you think.

evidently you don't.

i'm the farthest thing from leftist you've ever seen. ad hominem all ya got? here's political spectrum quiz. we're on the honor policy, but i'll bet you nearly any amount that i'm to right of where you are. i have my score posted on another website. it's just a few minutes. take it and tell me what you scored and i'll tell you my score. i guess you don't know a leftist when you see one. http://www.gotoquiz.com/politics/political-spectrum-quiz.html

In the past it was very hard to produce much more than you needed to sustain yourself and your family, as technology advanced that became easier and now it is possible to live in great luxury that wasn't afforded to the wealthiest people 100 years ago.If you simply want to sustain yourself you could probably get by only working 10 hours a month.In the future there will be better technology, and perhaps you'll be able to sustain yourself on 1 hour of work a month, and looking far into the future 1 hour of work a year... you show a deep understanding of economics. automation has been mankind's greatest boon and will continue to be, as long as we don't let socialism overwhelm us. in addition to all you've said, automation adds to the value of the dollar, since it makes things cheaper. of course other things like taxation and over regulation reduce the value of the dollar. so it's a constant tug-of-war between value and devalue. the stronger a nation's economy is, the stronger their currency is. they go hand in hand.

For instance, if I were tied to a post and watched my wife being raped. There is nothing I can do. if there's nothing you can do, then you're not being violent by doing nothing. Violence requires either some physical attack or restraint. i say it requires neither. Stop confusing good dictionary termas please. the dictionary is under constant revision. not only are new words added, but old words get revised with better definitions. violence needs a better definition.

i believe i can describe the start of evil. but it requires the definition of a few words that must be agreed upon first. that's why i'm in an argument with other posters about the definition of violence. violence is the most important word to be defined. without an accurate definition of violence, the start of evil can't be understood, or at least it will be misunderstood. it looks like it will be very difficult to agree on a definition of violence. a definition is like a boundary. it must include everything that the defined is, and at the same time, exclude everything that it is not. is there an accurate definition of violence that we could all agree on? probably not..

However, the thoughts I had on the matter were numerous enough that I thought it warranted its own topic. then as you know, whatever your position is, it will become stronger. Ask that same woman if her perception is that the world is flat. non-sequitur It doesn't appear that you're interested in the truth or are at all open to the possibility that your prejudice could be wrong. i have considered this question for years, always looking for where i might be wrong. Appeals to emotion are not sound argumentation. correct. but asking her how she felt is relevant.

incentives aren't protection from the possibility of attack. and it's not that others must be forced to provide security for a restaurant. the point is that using force in defense is not violence. I'd agree that a community is free to hire a group to protect them. that was my point. You are not considering the implicit contradiction. In order to make the person help, you would have to initiate force against him. i never said anything about forcing anyone to help. And this is an argument against anarchism? N. Korea is certainly not an anarchist paradise. it was not an argument against anarchism. it was an argument that countries do indeed exist. I agree that the polish people have the right to defend against germans. good. There is no initiating force in defense. my argument is that sometimes there is. for that and other reasons "the initiation of force" is not an accurate definition of violence. Defense may be violent but it certainly is not the initiation of force. if someone that you know to be innocent is about to be attacked and in your estimation the only thing that will save him/her is force, would you consider the use of force violence?

No, not intervening is not violence, but that doesn't mean it's (doing nothing) the right thing to do. then ask a woman who was raped with bystanders watching, if she didn't feel she was being violated by them also.

If person A is raping person B and person B fights back or person C intervenes, they are not INITIATING the use of force. i agree with that. in the case of the rape, if a person that is able did NOTHING to help, that person is being violent to the one in need. to stand and watch or to leave the scene is being violent. Also, countries do not exist tell that to the n. koreans that are held against their will. you might not accept that they exist but most of the rest of world certainly does. Self only accurately describes people. everyone describes the defense of their country as 'self-defense' because they usually identify with their country. that's all that's meant. poland was attacked by germany. did the polish people have the right to defend against germans that were invading their country? self defense is natural law. everything and everyone has a right to defend itself from attack. initiating force in defense can not be called violence. at least not accurately. Polish citizens should flee or defend themselves. They should call for aid. yes, they should be free to act as they deem necessary. Law Enforcement should enforce the law and the law should be thou shalt not agress against, agree. A problem with the constitution being written in stone is that I think women and blacks have the same rights as I do. the constitution had no laws against blacks or women. the right to vote was metered by the states, not the constitution. frederic douglass a former black slave who was hired to write that the constitution was pro slavery, could not do it. after he read it, he said the constitution was an anti-slavery document. Most of all, as demonstrated throughout history, political power is most attractive to people who want to exersize that power. Power corrupts. yes, power attracts the psychos. the framers knew that and did their best to limit federal power. but they didn't do it well enough. the constitution should have been made unchangeable. let the people vote with their feet in the 50 states. if they don't like what one state is doing, they can move to another. all the while their personal and property rights should be eternally protected by the constitution. I'd rather live in a world with a minimalist Federal Government and have 50 laboratories of innovation to pick from, than live in the world as it is. But I'd also rather live in a world with unregulated, unbounded and infinite innovation, then what you want is really the free market. free market capitalism. and the free market works best when it has the protection of common law. what we had would have worked very well if we wouldn't have fiddled with it. but no, the meddlers are always trying to 'do good'. of course it always ends up the opposite.

but i'm asking if you think self-defense is violence. whether it's a group of people or a country, it doesn't matter. if you're saying that self-defense isn't violence, then i agree with you. then it would follow that defending an innocent is not violence either. all this is to say that sometimes the initiation of force isn't violence. it has to be taken into the context of the whole situation.

the initiation of the use of force - force = ? so then the first punch in a fight is violent, and the rest of the punches are force? What force are you initiating the use of in this scenario? none, but i'm not the one saying the initiation of force is violence. as Stefan has asked, are you using violence or force when you push someone out of harms way? it seems to me that i would be initiating force without it being violent.

and is doing nothing when someone is being raped also not violence? if you see a woman being raped and you do nothing to help her, even if it's just a phone call, isn't it another violence on her by you?

is the use of force always violence? if so, what is the difference between violence and force?

War: but how do you stop a large group of people from attacking a smaller group of people and taking whatever they want? Arrest: what if the proprietor wasn't capable enough to stop some people from attacking his customers? who would stop them? how could anyone stay in business if the strongest could always take what they want or just start shooting people? my point is that the right to self defense must be absolute, meaning that you must be free to hire protection if you need it. a community should be free to hire a group, such as a police force to protect them. but commands can be defensive. i think self defense is a sticking point that isn't being considered. throughout history people have lived in fear of some enemy overcoming their own geographical area. force shouldn't be initiated, but the best response to it may be force.

that's what many dictionaries say. but i think the definition is inadequate. can't violence be running away, or inaction? i read about a couple that were hiking in alaska. the wife was attacked by a bear. the guy could have got away clean, but he took out a pocket knife and attacked the bear. the chances of either surviving was small. but he couldn't leave his wife. to him, running away would have been violent to his wife.