smarterthanone

Not really. Most people don't pay taxes and you cannot take taxes paid vs benefits received and calculate what you may take because it is only partially fungible (federal vs state vs local vs other local etc) and often not measurable. If I pay $10,000 in taxes, how much can I buy from walmart before I get more than $10,000 in benefits back which would then become theft? You cannot measure that. Plus calculate in things like use of roads etc. But again, most people pay net negative into the system, they would all be stealing, whether they are a citizen or not.

Edited my first post for more sensitive readers.

Self knowledge is about knowing yourself, if you fall into these kinds of behaviors you OUGHT to consciously realize you do instead of being confused by life. But if you think self knowledge is only about recognizing the good things about yourself you may be a narcissist. Something to look into. If I voted first, people would know what my vote was. It is supposed to be anonymous. I intend to vote (if I haven't already). What does this have to do with the post? Are you simply just trying to poison the well? Said in a southern accent, "We don't take kindly to fallacious arguments around here, boy." I said "we" so whatever I said I felt it was ok to use to talk about myself and I don't often go around being disrespectful to myself. Maybe you just get offended easily by semantics. So self knowledge is an insult. Got it. Thanks for sharing your viewpoint.

I don't know if you remember before you considered government but I am sure before you did you didn't understand the concept either. If I do agree with what you are saying I would also say just as much you would know walmart relies on government subsidies and shopping there is also theft.

So you are saying everyone who regularly buys things at swap meets and flea markets and such are ALL thiefs. If one buys enough things from places like they they will eventually buy at least one stolen item. That would make them a thief. Even though they have no involvement in coercive activity and no knowledge of it. So if you ever shopped at walmart you are a thief too. They get tax money in subsidies, they use that money to lower the costs of their goods. You buy discounted goods, discounted using tax funds. Anyone who ever shopped at walmart is a thief. I am not buying your logic. I don't think someone who is only committing what is believed to be a legal and consensual and voluntary activity can be accountable for theft. For example if you own a car and its parked in your driveway with the key in it. You are inside taking a shower. I stop a guy named Joe on the street and offer to sell the car for $1000. He agrees. I hand him the key and he drives off. Joe did not steal the car, I stole it and sold it.

Just curious if there is a greater, lesser or different spread of personality disordered individuals versus the standard population, who are of the mindset of this kind of community (libertarian, conservative, ancap, etc) My background is in philosophy, psychology and economics. So I do have a hypothesis of what the results might be and if the data says anything interesting I will be happy to share my thoughts.

Taxation is theft. The IRS and government agencies collecting and enforcing collection are the thiefs, not Jose blow drinking a cerveza and busy planning a family get together for his daughters quincenera. If I robbed a bank and I said "Hey jpahmad, I did it for you!" Are you now a thief?

I don't completely agree with Adam but I do on this point. People who move here and get welfare or other services are not stealing. They are dumb, they don't know where it comes from. The IRS and other people running the government entities are the ones stealing. If I am a known thief in town and you just move here and I say "Hey buddy, I am just a nice guy, I sell all new people to town a beautiful 75" TV for only $20. Do you want it?" and you buy it, you are not knowingly part of my criminal enterprise. Now if you purposely know, then sure. I don't think people who are low IQ AND uneducated have thought one second about how government even works.

I believe in Adam's strategy of localization. For example, if California wants to have Hillary for president still and bring in refugees, they should be their own country and DO IT. But in the meantime a wall wouldn't hurt anything.

I think we should cut the budget in half starting yesterday and withdraw all troops in foreign countries home EXCEPT where the home country asks us to stay. Then we can look into more fine tuning of what to do over the next year to further cut it and change it. As the world exists at this moment, we need a strong government military. Too many people hate us from the past and we have our fingers in too many pies where we might need to do something soon somewhere.

I mean if I owned a porn company sure, I might be biased. When a 23 year old who lives in in moms basement tells me how businesses work, and me having started multiple successful businesses, I ignore him completely. When a business owner tells me their opinion about how businesses work, I listen. Do you trust your friend who never went skydiving to tell you about sky diving, or do you trust the instructor who has done it for 5 years to tell you about skydiving? The original topic is about if it is moral or immoral to consume pornography and specifically mentioned funding the business because it "makes" other people do immoral things like watching porn. In regards to anything, when wouldn't it be good to have every key available and every door available? Why so concerned with other peoples behaviors instead of our own behaviors? Source 1 didn't appear to support your argument at all. Here is a nice quote "This lack of research is notable given the number of stereotypes about porn actresses, particularly that they have high rates of childhood sexual abuse and psychological problems. Though it's hard to know for sure without more extensive studies, early explorations have found these stereotypes fail to hold up." Secondly "Porn actresses had tried more drugs than other women, though the only difference in recent drug use was a higher prevalence of marijuana smoking." Source 2 was pure speculation as written by its own author "The ideas in this article are necessarily speculative." Source 3 I just skipped it seemed boring. Source 4 does have data and such but it is from an anti porn group so its certainly a biased source. The article offers rebuttals at the bottom, I think the key one being "If you compare adult performers to the population as a whole (that is, including a data set that includes preteens, monogamous couples and seniors), you can manufacture data that looks intimidating. However, if you compare adult performers to other sexually active adults in their age range, you actually see a lower incidence of STIs." I mean almost the entire population drinks at least occasionally, that alters your mind and doesn't allow for full moral agency just as much. Are you part of some Marijuana Panic group? Why is using a mind altering substance bad anyways? If you advise to not consume porn because it is addictive, why not these other things that are addictive as well? It is a serious question. How is a shopping addiction morally acceptable to you but a porn addiction is not? I would argue a shopping addiction causes way more damage to you both you and your family than excessive porn does.

Well this particular example leaves quite a few loose ends which I can't help but bring up. 1. If there is no rain or any other water, a drought could dry up a well. So for every person who drinks today from such well, deprives its owner of one more day of water in the future. Like it may last just the owner 3 weeks but if everyone drinks it, it may only last the owner 1 week. In this case, I would say he is right to keep the water and they would not be on firm moral grounds to take the water by force. 2. Why do they not have an option to leave the area? This is often brought up in cities, such as you closed the one factory that kept the city up and it violated me to do so. No, you may move somewhere else. In this case, get in your car and drive somewhere, even if its far away, even if you own a house here, even if you need to spend your life savings doing it, to leave. 3. If there truly is no option, say the entire world exploded in fire and this is all thats left and say it is not running out. I think it would be moral under the NAP to steal the water because I think its a solid argument to say if one ought to do something, they must be able to actually do it AND its not reasonable to have someone kill themselves when what they need is in front of their face so you cant say one ought to die instead of drink water that is readily available HOWEVER, it would also be moral for the owner to shoot or otherwise defend the water. So the actions could be moral but the outcome would be unclear, if they succeed or if the owner succeeds.

It's a definition. You may not understand it and get confused or have your own take on it, it cannot change who initiated violence vs who responded in defense. There is an objective truth. If me and you are drunk and get in a fist fight, we may the next day have forgotten who threw the first punch but objectively one of us did throw a first punch, period. One of us must have. Even say neither of us is sure, I think you did, you think I did. Still, objectively one of us must have thrown the first punch. It just must be. Why doesn't the NAP say we should punch people who have blue hair, we can initiate violence if they have blue hair. Well, this goes back to the biological reasons. NAP comes from biological reality. You know when maybe someone punched you in the face and you physically see red and punch them back? Well seeing someone with blue hair does not trigger that kind of response, so its not biologically reasonable and thus why its not a part of the NAP or morality. You may be offended or upset or even mad someone has blue hair if it really upsets your delicate sensibilities however that is not the same thing because you choose that response, its not universal and innate. Hope that responds to your direction Siegfried.

If that is your understanding of Google Translate, I don't think it does what you think it does.

1. I have no idea what you are talking about. My entire point uses only facts. If you disagree with them, just show proof, or be irrational. You certainly can disagree with the logic or importance of the facts I have chosen to come to a different conclusion but it doesn't change the facts. How is the scientific method messy? You are claiming this, it doesn't seem reasonable or intuitive to me. In fact it seems like the ONLY acceptable thing to me. But go ahead, prove it. 2. Might doesn't equal right. Do you have a claim to the bananas or not? If so then whether you win or lose an altercation makes you rightful in engaging in the altercation. If you do not have a claim to the bananas then you would not rightfully be able to engage in an altercation. If I landed on an island with unowned banana trees with someone else, I would damn sure have a claim to some bananas, but if you don't think you do then that is your right. 3. Nah, I don't read anything you write. 4. Fallacy of Division. There doesn't need to be a specific person or people who started what is known as WW1. Each instance of violence was initiated by someone against someone else. For example, if you get shipped to country ABC to engage in war, you land on the beach and you see some dude walking around so you shoot him because obviously he is part of country ABC since he is there, did some magic president or king or whoever initiate that violence or did you? Clearly you did. You could have just stayed home. If a criminal gang is taking on new members to rob a bank, did you rob the bank? Yes. You did and you will face the consequences of it. Whether the gang organized it or not is irrelevant. Now you could also claim, what about if Country A is on one side of a battlefield and Country B is on the other side of a battlefield and they both intent to kill each other because the other side wants to kill them (self defense), well depending on the situation it could be clear, if country A wants to capture country Bs land and its taking place in country B, obviously country A people are all initiating force. In a more unclear situation where say it is unowned or extremely disputed lands such there is no clear owner, you could say both sides have entered into an agreement of violence, everyone knows what they are getting into and what the rewards of winning and the penalty of losing is, that could actually be considered voluntary. Now if they kill a civilian or knock down his house that is right next to the war zone, that civilian has a right for damages from the armies just as individuals. The person who shot that civilian would be accountable for murder and face the full penalty and the person who knocked down the home would be responsible for paying for a new one, AND the entire army may be held responsible for both actions on top of the individual depending on many other circumstances. 5. Ad hom is the best way to win an argument on FDR, didn't you know? lmfao. a. This is due to massive violation of NAP. In actual NAP practice, this would not be a thing, it was because of the USSR. b. Ok, well this would make sense of why they would violate other people. The only problem is they don't have a right to do so still and ought to be killed in self defense from the property owners to such an extent that they would be safer staying out in the cold. But sure they may have instincts telling them they need the shelter. Yet they have no right to the shelter. This is one of those things you have to get in your head about the world. Sometimes there is no win/win and its ok, it happens. I don't think anyone in that situation is immoral per se if they are simply seeking shelter (not raping and murdering home owners) but just because they can't help themselves and are trying to live doesn't mean its not immoral to also shoot them.

Most women actually prefer men who will beat them, although not badly per se. Many girls will say like "F you" to you and if you do nothing they will be like "You would let me talk to you like that? What a cuck, you won't even hit me". Then if you don't hit them they will cheat on you. If you do hit them, they will be even more into you than they were before. This is why they stay, they want a relationship like this. So don't be a white knight beta. If a man is actually abusing her (beating her in a way that is too much or may actually kill her), she will leave, women are not helpless.

Impossible to answer question. The reason being the same reason why we cannot introduce laws and things to change economics the way we want. Nobody can predict human behavior on such a mass scale. Economics is related to psychology in that way, just like a doctor can't say some specific thing or give you a specific medicine to cure your bipolar disorder, they can take good guesses but that's really it. When it comes to economics its like that but times 325 million or however big the US population is right now.

When you discuss rape (and "rape"), you ought to define what you are talking about. There is a big difference between having sex with a girl where it is somewhat mistaken or unclear, maybe even a girlfriend or someone you are dating, maybe she changed her mind half way through or at the last second but it wasn't communicated that great, or even if it was its still very different THAN taking a gun and beating a random woman on the street and telling her you will kill her if she doesn't do what you say. What about statutory rape where one party is 17 and the other is 18? That is illegal in some places you know. What about female rapists? Are they also to be served the same penalty? What if they are super hot? lmfao I am just saying, one ought to not just say "I support the death penalty for rapists", we have no idea what you are talking about.

What does corruption of environmental resources and lifeforms have to do with NAP? NAP has a prime directive and its to not initiate force, has nothing to do with good judgement such as not feeding a bear or giving cheese cake to a child. One can follow the nap and shoot up on heroin all day, pay for prostitutes, become obese, chop off their own arm and pay for a commercial on tv advocating everyone else ought to do the same. That is perfectly ok under NAP. And why does it not work in the train track scenario? I mentioned the train track precisely because it does follow the NAP. Even if the train were to be heading towards you first, you always have a right for self defense, it cannot be infringed. Nobody ought to be able to realistically expect you to get run over by a train if you could stop it. The fact other people get killed is irrelevant, the people responsible for locking everyone to the track comes into play, and /or maybe the train driver if he purposely is not stopping (depending on how you want to fill in the details for the scenario). For example: you live in your home, a criminal with a gun breaks in and tries to kill you, you shoot one time and the bullet goes right into his head, dead! BUT the bullet continues onto your neighbors property and hits him in the kneecap, he is now has extensive hospital bills and a disability. The person responsible is the criminal and all his assets ought to be split between both you and the person harmed by the bullet at some proportion because you are both the injured parties to varied degrees. People cause the initiation of force. Biological imperative such as to live and reproduce. Not sure how SAW comes into play, although I love those movies. If you mean because he sets up the trap and they kill themselves and/or others, he is the one killing them, not the person in the trap. You must understand that coercion is a form of violence. If you do not agree with that, how can you say government and politicians violate the NAP?

Women have so much anxiety and depression and stuff because they DON'T WANT TO MAKE DECISIONS BUT ARE FORCED TO DO SO. I've written about this on other posts and usually everyone laughs at me and down votes me but find some feminist girl, grab her by the hand and drag her where you want to go, tell her what to do when you get there and she will go right along and love every second of it. This is why women WILL NOT LEAVE CONTROLLING ABUSIVE MEN, the pleasure they receive from having no responsibility or choices is so great, they won't leave because other men are too nice and don't keep them under their thumb and its terrifying for them to face responsibility. Test if you don't believe me. Next few times you go out with a girl, try the following things: 1. Ask where she wants to go out to eat. 2. Tell her where she wants to go out to eat. See which works better. 9 times out of 10, telling a woman what she wants is what she wants.

1. Testing is how you prove who is correct. The end. If you are going to do a test if gasoline lights on fire, and you do testing and see it does light on fire, but then claim it does not light on fire, we can safely assume you are mentally deficient and ignore constructive conversation with you. I have no idea what you are talking about with climate change debate. Safe bet that 99% of people would consider a situation in which they die bad. Feel free to do testing and prove me wrong, do you honestly think that would be worth your time? 2. Ancap theory does take it into account. If he sits on the side of the island and just doesnt cooperate with you but leaves you alone, do nothing. If he burns down the banana trees, you may kill him in self defense. If you do not think you have a right to the bananas then you may not kill him in self defense. This is where many ancaps go wrong, how do you think one acquires property and holds possession anyways? If you go into the woods which nobody is claiming it, you simply need to ENFORCE PROTECTION of it to make it yours. You cant just say its mine, everyone else will just use it anyways, hire 10 guys with guns to protect it and its yours. Once you step foot on that island you have every right to say "I have ownership (of some amount) in the banana trees and will enforce my claim with force." It's that simple. If you believe he has more of a right to burn the trees down then you may not stop him using force. The matter is up to you. 3. They "could" figure it out, it doesn't mean they will. And no I will not discuss shooting your baby who bites your finger, that is not relevant. 4. Today's society I mean where almost all land is controlled by government, and overall society wealth is as high as it is. For example, in the United states, there is no reason to steal food since there are plenty of soup kitchens and food banks, SNAP food stamps, etc. Regarding who decides if its self defense, see the definition, you are just nitpicking things and not making arguments. Either you responded in defense, or you initiated with an attack. There is no other option. You can lie about it, make things up. Objectively, you did do one or the other, even if you obfuscate or make things up, there is a truth. 5. If you are homeless in the cold and your option is to stay in the cold or break into private property... YOUR BEST OPTION WOULD BE TO NOT BE HOMELESS IN KRASNOYARSK and that would give you the best chance of survival. How does one need to test it? Its proven. Give me one example in which one is never in a violent situation, in which violence kills the person? Never. Not possible. By not being in violent situations, you are not going to die from violence. Now in the real would you can't 100% remove yourself from violent situations but if you could, you would never die from violence. Just like if you live in the woods where there are no roads and you never drive a car or got in a car, it would be impossible to die from a car accident. This is just common sense. I think you are trying to make trouble.

He said he still would have married his wife if she had already had kids from a prior partner. Ummm ok, how about no. He does say some good stuff but some is just wrong.

1. Why should it matter if scientists or anyone else disagrees? Everything I am saying are all objective facts. Humans, like almost all organisms, have an instinct for self defense. People cannot help but enter fight or flight mode for example. It is fact, if you go around violating people, some will fight back. No matter how prepared you are to do battle, there is no such thing as 100% chance, even if say it was 99% chance you would win a confrontation, after 100 confrontations, you will statistically end up dead. Everything I just said is how the world IS. I don't understand what there is to disagree with or argue about but if you were to, you would just be wrong. 2. You said "You scenario assumes that we CAN cooperate." No, my scenario does not have to require cooperation. One possible scenario does include cooperation, the guy could be cooperative, that is certainly possible. You gave one specific example about burning down all the banana trees or whatever. I responded, saying that is an initiation of force which you could defend against. I personally find that to be the least likely example that the guy you sit next to on an airplane thinks he should burn all the banana trees but this is philosophy, we can explore all options. I then listed out a few more scenarios and explained the answer to each. They are not all one example. In regards to it burning your food. You would die on the island if you don't think you have a claim to the banana trees on the little island and the crazy food burner does. SMH I try not to be rude but this is like ancom level property right theorizing you are doing... how would one establish it? Start a small government and file a deed? LOL YOU NEED FOOD TO LIVE, YOU ARE IN A CLOSED ENVIRONMENT WHERE NOBODY ELSE HAS ANY SUPERIOR CLAIM TO THEM, OBVIOUSLY YOU HAVE A CLAIM TO THE FOOD. 3. Every human has a mental capacity to understand this. Exceptions being people who are say mentally retarded or something, which intuitively to most people is unnecessary to address (just as it is unnecessary to address, what if my 1 year old bites me, should I shoot him and it be ok under the NAP). 4. The majority kill and steal for not necessarily fun but for superficial reasons. Absolutely. The minority do not. In today's society, the only people who HAVE TO kill are those responding in self defense. Even in the past it was mostly true as well. There is no evidence the USA would cease to exist or be genuinely harmed if they had not invaded lets say Iraq, this is a fact. The entire reason for invasion was little to no evidence of WMD which turned out was really no evidence at all. You are confusing the initiation with self defense. You can come up with any reason you want, and claim it to be as important as you want, it doesn't rise to self defense unless its in response. By invading Iraq, more people in that part of the world, now hate the USA more than they did before. More Americans are now injured and killed than if we had not invaded Iraq. Those dead Americans are not better off, they will not be reproducing any further, it was a stupid decision on their part. 5. You don't need historical example. It can be proven logically. If you do not join the army, and you move away from war areas, you are most likely not to be killed in war. If you join an army, even a far superior force, you have a chance of dying in war. By avoiding conflict you are more likely to live. Another: If you rob houses, any given house the occupants my defend themselves with deadly means. If you were to do this 52 times, say once per week, to pay your bills, feed your family etc. you have 52 chances to die. On the other hand, if you have a job and simply live in a home, and you only get robbed once that year by that one crook, you only have 1 chance to die. In both situations, by being in less conflict, you have more chance to not die.

I don't see how feeding a bear is violence. You have to explain that one. I am not sure exactly what you are picking at between aggression and violence. It's called the NAP. Aggression would include things like a verbal threat. But I feel like you are including "being aggressive", such as you could be while playing a game, or by showing boldness even in defense of violence such as stating to a crowd "I am a skilled marksman and a quick draw, I would love to see a criminal try to violate me". Both of these situations are NOT violations of the NAP. To use your definition, "Drill Sergeant dressing down recruits." This is not a violation of the NAP either. I think this is just a definition issue, the specific definition you are using is not the exact same one as is intended to describe the NAP. No matter what you are actually talking about, if its not the initiation, it doesn't really matter as far as the NAP is concerned, self defense is always acceptable according to the NAP, initiation is never acceptable according to the NAP. If humans have an instinct (essentially a biological intuitive urge typically aiding in evolutionary process) to kill their offspring then it would be the moral way to behave. Two things one against one for: 1. Just because it was prevalent in the ancient world doesn't mean it was instinctual. I make my bed in the morning, I could not make it easily if I choose because I do not have a biological urge to make my bed. Just because many people make their beds doesn't mean its some kind of instinctual behavior that we intuitively do caused by genetics. 2. It may be instinctual because it is still prevalent today as available, see abortion. Women who do not desire a specific mates child may have some kind of urge to get rid of it. I don't know enough about biology or women and their choice for abortion to comment on it in actuality, however one could imagine it could be possible to some degree. Think of it this way, if you are standing on a train track and on the other side is 5 people and you have a lever in your hand to divert the train which is already going towards the 5 people to instead hit just you, do you do it? Well in similar problems, where the person being killed is not the decider, about 75% of the population says its ok to kill the one person to save the 5. HOWEVER, when they are also the person on the track, if asked if they would do it, it goes down to like 10% or so. Evolutionary process does not make it easy to kill ourselves to make this same moral judgement. And so everyone MUST behave this way, its not something you can just say, "oh you are right, i will now kill myself", no, your brain, your body, just will not let most people make that choice, its impossible. So should we sentence anyone in this situation to death because of their immoral deed? That would be stupid because they literally could not do anything otherwise. How could the moral choice be an impossible choice?

I don't see how feeding or not feeding a wild animal has anything to do with the topic. You said DEFEND, defense is not an initiation of force, the bear is defending. Aggression and violence are different. I don't see how aggression is relevant really as we are talking about the initiation of force. It could be, however 99% of organisms do not share that instinct. 99% of animal organisms will defend against attack to the best of their abilities. But to use your example, if bears instinctively kill some of their cubs, then that is moral for a bear to behave. We do not have that instinct so it is not a moral way for a human to behave. Ought implies can, meaning if you are biologically wired to behave a certain way, its not reasonable to require you to function another way. Could we say morality dictates men give birth to children 50% of the time so its equal to women? No because its not possible so its not possible for it to be the moral choice. If bears have an instinct such as they cannot not kill their cubs in certain instances, then it must be in bear morals acceptable for them to do so. Just like its impossible for many people to just stand there and get punched in the face repeatedly, so you cannot hold people to a moral standard to not fight back, its unreasonable. 1. It doesn't matter if you disagree. There is such a thing called evolution and instinctual behaviors. You can either recognize the truth or not. If you do it wrong enough where you violate someone, someone may kill you in self defense. 2. You don't HAVE TO cooperate. Even if you don't cooperate today, you may tomorrow. If he his burning your food you would be responding in self defense of your property which is preferable to starving. If he just doesnt want to cooperate and sits on the other side of the island and leaves you alone, you would be stupid to attack him because you both may die for little to no benefit even in the best case scenario. 3. He says God grants humans the mental capacities and such so that they could, without a bible or anything, sit down and reason him and morality and such out. Now we don't need to get into God here at all. I am saying, what I present comes from just sitting down and observing your surroundings, thinking carefully and reasoning. We have the mental capacity to figure this out without external people telling us how it ought to be. And violence is certainly not a tool for someone who can see no other way. If that is true, why do some people kill people for fun? Why do countries attack each other when its not necessary? (Such as the usa bombing guys half the world away with ak47s, not a credible threat) Why do people steal $5 items from a store? (That is initiation of force which one could reasonably expect to be met with violence). They do this stuff because they just haven't thought about it and would mostly be evolutionary failures if society didnt protect them. The best way to advance in reproduction is to be highly prepared to defend against violence, but not to confront others if it is not necessary. You could be Goliath and go around crushing people but there is that one chance David takes you out. Where if you just avoided the conflict, you would not be killed.