Des

Why shouldn't I kill you? [i think this question will help clarify moral reasoning. Please throw in an answer, and let us all take it from there]

Let me re-state my earlier post in the inverse: I can't come to any profitable (to me) agreement with any of you, that includes from your side, immoral aggression towards me, now can I? Visa-versa applies. We either keep distant from each other, or you agree to treat me morally, or I'll consider killing you. Which option do you like best? How many humans do you prefer to have contemplating killing you? My preference is zero.

Principle/principal soph·ism (sŏf′ĭz′əm) n. 1. A plausible but fallacious argument. 2. Deceptive or fallacious argumentation If definition above is accepted, then there needs to be the form of an argument (e.g.: Nearly 7 billion humans can tell you that the earth is not flat, therefore it is correct to say that the earth is not flat"). The statement "The earth is not flat" is without argumentative form, and does not qualify as sophistry. By definition 1 you can call my above example of argumentum ad populum sophistry - without reference to intent. Definition 2 implies intent. How do we make a determination of intent (the intent internal to the mind of another person)? We guess it. That is what happens in a murder trial. If we are honest, we admit we do not know the intent of the killer. We just guess that that reason plus evidence points very strongly in the direction of the intent being murderous (or it does not point strongly enough in that direction). Does not mean there is nothing rational in the process of guessing, just means that at the end it is still a guess. Why do we do reasoning and philosophy? because we predict that philosophy will lead to some personally beneficial outcomes compared to doing sophistry or religion. Do I know that philosophy will benefit me personally, more than religious or political machinations could benefit me? No, it is a guess. I hope it is the correct guess. I could give reasons, which you could also probably give, in support of my guess, but it (by "it" I mean my/your guess) is not knowledge, it is the end purpose of knowledge: The end purpose of knowledge is to provide the best guess of the decision of most personal benefit, out of all possible decisions. The purpose is prediction.

Okay, take the hypothetical proposed, flesh it out like this: You live in a community in which all are rational, except this one intolerist. You have just heard of the situation, from someone you trust, so you know the facts about the intolerist are correct. There has been no time since learning of the facts, for anyone to suggest a course of action. Given that the community members are (except for one) all rational, if you propose the best rational course of action, they will follow it. You have a suggestion ready, because you thought about the possibility of such a predicament, long before it came about. You have the first turn to make a suggestion about a course of action (or inaction). What is your suggestion?

There are currently charity organisations which go identify needs and distribute donations (Assessing needs is a process which takes human effort), and this assessment cost is the overhead which comes with charity. In addition, charities move goods around, and decide on behalf of their recipients, which items or services to provide. I do comprehend that an important reason for this, is that donors (in general) don't want to give addictive substances to addicts. So, the efficiency of re-distributing a survival stipend to everyone, is in the reduction of need for assessment. There would be fewer people asking for charity, because most people who have just ordinary dietary needs and medical needs and need for shelter, can meet those needs from the stipend. If they want more, they can trade their labour to buy something more. It would be people who have extraordinary medical needs, without the capacity to earn and pay accordingly, who might then still ask for charity to meet their medical bills. So, only extreme cases require charity, and if (as I estimate will happen) the people who would be the more typical case for charity (those who make planning errors and can't immediately correct those errors without incurring new costs, and those who have disabilities but are without high medical costs). You are correct that there is a cost to auditing the contractual system of contributing, and a cost for lawsuits where members do not keep their word. Yes, charity does not have the cost of auditing to see who has or has not paid in, but on the expenditure side, there is (typically) an auditing cost, so that donors can check how their money is spent. This expenditure-side auditing is not needed with the BIG system. No one needs to interfere with (or audit) how the receiver of stipend spends the stipend received. To revisit my remark above on planning errors: I was with a charity organisation when they distributed food to people who were relocating their shacks from flooded ground to higher ground. They can't do casual labour for a few days while rebuilding, so the food substitutes for the income shortfall. Oh, and on the overhead cost, we were in the settlement of shacks accompanied by about 20 armed policemen who were only there to protect the charity workers (a charity hand-out is a high-visibility target for the criminals in a shack settlement). I am considering people who are not categorically disabled, but suffer from planning ability problems to the point where siting a shack below the floodline seems like an okay plan. These people have value, and I want them to survive. I just don't see that you and I can buy enough from them (to offer them survival wage) in a world of the future where technology converts energy and matter into whatever I need, when I speak a few commands or press a few buttons (and my bank account gets an automatic debit). What happens when I/we no longer need anything packed, unpacked, delivered, cooked or cleaned by the people who do those jobs now (because nanotechnology will replace all that)? My answer is: BIG happens (by voluntary contract).

I predict there will be borders in a free society, as a practical way to deal with some dangerous people by firstly sending them into exile (rather than locking them up in cages). Exile should probably not be the only step in dealing with the dangerous few (because missiles, and because of possibility of rehabilitation). It is likely to be a necessary step, however, if dangerous people exist. Exile without any secure borders, is tricky. Also, it is a case of choosing between caging dangerous people, or exiling them (and spying on them), or living in danger, or killing them (and perhaps then also living in danger of being killed in revenge). Pick your poison.

My mild irritation with how you grasp what I explain, is something I should mention. I am not blaming you, please don't get me wrong. I understand I have typed a lot, and actually I am smiling, as usual, as I type this , just like in my profile pic. So, given that I have typed much, it is easy to miss the parts where I have said essentially: without government, by voluntary contract. I did explain this before, and I am happy to explain it again, perhaps I can do a better take on it anyway: A bunch of people (1000, 5000, 10 000) have similar values (in this case it includes a specific value for a specific level of "sharing"). They relocate to be physical neighbours (buy up a small town or a suburb or some farms). They all sign up to one contract (with each other, not with some government). In the contract, they firstly agree what morality is, and agree to abstain from immoral action towards other members of the contractual society. Additionally, they agree to other community standards (in this case, we have the specific standard for "sharing"). Now if you don't agree to this standard for "sharing", you would not join this community. I don't get where you are coming from with the idea of bending reality. The people we are discussing here, are people who would want bank accounts anyway. How is everybody doing one monthly transfer out and getting one monthly transfer in, a big overhead?

Mmm. there seem to be daughters in some families, parentally prepared to be carers for the time when her parents will be elderly. One of my 5 sisters, for example, and a few of my ex-lovers (from an earlier version of myself). The preparational indoctrination is the problematic part. If a woman really liked her parents so much she wanted to be close with them, that would be another thing - which would not match my past experience. If they don't want her to move fully into her own life, they are dysfunctional, and she is not seeing that.

One of the problems that BIG is mooted to solve, is the disincentive effect of means-based social security. The concept is to give every [adult] the BIG (including Bill Gates, Donald Trump, Paris Hilton). It is very clear that this tiny drop into those bank accounts is in no way a disincentive for such people. For those currently living on social payments, the idea is they can go and do something which pays money, and they will still get the BIG. Another problem it solves is the problem of overheads. There need be no bureaucrats or charitocrats deciding which person or project needs funding. Those people can go get real jobs (so I benefit because one of them does something for me at a fair price, and I benefit because I can pay less contribution [net of stipend] into BIG, for the same benefit to the needy). The problem of how much to give, can be solved by allowing people to self-sort into communities: some with zero BIG, others with varying non-zero level of BIG. When people have criticisms of the level I choose, I will say: yes, well that is the level at which I also will receive - so it is fair. Above ends my reply to you. Below, more general reply on this thread: Focus a little on sexual market value: Men (in general) will still go do something to get the bigger chunks of cheddar to impress the ladies. If most women quit bothering to get (additional) income (by market participation), and instead stay home and peacefully parent the children, that is a benefit (to me, and probably to you) in the form of fewer dangerous criminals and more men of good (and productive) nature. The man who sits home and video games all day, does not get to impress a quality woman. If he makes no children, this problem disappears over time. If he makes children, the demands of the children press him to go work to buy them things. Keep in mind, wealthy employers need not care whether they pay directly to their workers, or pay some portion indirectly to all (workers and non-workers alike), and then pay only the incentive money to the workers. I am saying that costs of hiring unintelligent people go down, because the employer is not (directly) providing bread money, he is providing cheese money as the topping for the bread. Another likely benefit (to me and probably you) is that people will be more likely to choose work that they (slightly) like. It will benefit me when people are not serving me whilst hating there job - I'll get better service. Why we are discussing this here under economics, not under morality, is that this is an economic idea (if one takes away the moral issue by allowing this system to form by contract). I did not assert that BIG is charity. I say BIG is a better idea than non-contractual charity. With BIG, as with all community specific rules, I predict that communities will form around rulesets. I can't see any way that any rule can [morally] change except by unanimous agreement by all members of the community. How to deal with that lone holdout in a community of 10 000 people? Buy him out of the community and then change the rule. Voting is bogus wrt rules. Voting is for shareholders voting their share of a company, on a company decision. Because it is not moral to change a rule except unanimously, the percentage can't just creep up. The communism of the community can't grow in extent unless everyone agrees to that. It could grow if people ignore the requirements of morality, sure, but it is our place [as FDR-informed/improved philosophers] to remind people what is and what is not moral (thank you to those of you who are doing that). Note this: 0.0001% contributions to BIG is definitely affordable [and completely pointless and wasteful of the overhead]. 100% contribution to BIG is full-on communism and will fail (economically), except in a few cases [e.g.religious communities]. Somewhere between 0.0001% and 100% BIG there is a perfect number, which benefits me by ensuring I need not ponder how much to give to charity, and benefits me by having people around me take on the right level of risk to make me the most and best goodies at the best possible prices. Term: stipend - a term I am using for the grant every member receives. Term: BIG - Basic Income Grant (it is not some kind of guarantee that kicks in only if employment fails, each member is granted it even if employed, even if super-wealthy).

Let me clarify. I already clarified that it is not one select private entity. Each person who wishes the contract enforced, pays his chosen insurer. You won't have 10 000 people paying 10 000 different insurers (you know how market efficiencies work, so you know that). Force is the last resort, the insurers will preserve their reputations by avoiding it as far as possible. If you have a hire-purchase contract to buy a car and you don't fulfill your part of the contract, the other party forces you to return the car (but they very seldom get into actual use of force - you'd have to be rather irrational to end up in handcuffs). Let me point to what is consistent through what I suggest here, and into a different area: I suggest a contract for moral behaviour, and I suggest a contract (along BIG lines) as an alternate to financial donations to charity. What is the common theme? I don't end up hoping for ordinary human reciprocity to kick in, The ordinary human reciprocity is formalised into contract. Sharing (a little of) my stuff, with a contractual re-assurance that others will do likewise, makes me less of a sucker, and the same applies to restricting myself to moral actions only, with contractual re-assurance that others will do likewise. Charity (or incharity) will be a cause of dispute in a free society, and this is a dispute resolving suggestion. After signing, you'd be out of line calling your neighbour incharitible when he is paying his contractual dues (if you don't like 10%, go look for a 15% community and sign up there).

It would not be less complex. Charities pay people to assess who needs charity and who is lying. Giving charity to everyone, including those who don't register it as a blip in their bank account, is really efficient, compared to trying to do lie-detection. 10%, or 5% is not everything, it is probably less than people now pay in taxes. Do you dislike people being immoral, or do you dislike people re-distributing money? The wealthy benefit, because they can say to anyone who wants a hand-out: Join up and participate, or else don't. Either way I don't need to assess your particular need, I have other things to do with my time, and things to do with my money other than pay charitocrats to assess you. Because they get this benefit, they stay. They also stay to sell stuff to people who get a stipend. You say "over a certain amount" but the BIG idea is separate from the "income cap" idea, which I do not support - though I do think that rather than giving to charity, wealthy people would do us more of a favour by giving money back to the companies from which they receive dividends, with the request and suggestion to drop the product prices a tiny fraction, accordingly. For example, malaria won't kill me or Bill Gates, old age will. I'd rather have a few cents off some MS product, thanks.

Am I getting it wrong? I understand "red flag" as "dig here, see what is underneath. If it is okay, it is okay". I think "dealbreaker" is the word for: "don't even dig, just run". Mmm. If I pop up a red flag myself, I should probably do the digging and see if I can settle what is under it, before a lover or friend steps on it and triggers it.

Thanks, yes, I was thinking about the distribution of funds issue, after typing my previous reply, and I thought: The contract says each contracted party is personally responsible for distributing the x% of his year-end asset value, to each of the other parties to the contract, in monthly sums. The distribution may be delegated by each party, to an agent (a bank), but each party retains his personal responsibility. This way you get maybe 3 good bankers doing the distribution efficiently, through free market action, because rational people won't typically be personally walking door-to-door every monthend making tiny payments, they will appoint someone who can do efficient distribution. Insurers insure parties against liability arising from misconduct of agent, so the agents (banks) end up answering to insurers, and that keeps them honest. Let me repeat in concrete example: I pay an insurer to insure me against being sued for failure to distribute (breach of contract), or failure to auction my assets. My insurer is going to vet my distribution agent and my auctioneer, and only insure me because they trust these agents. I pay my insurer and my auctioneer, I pay the agent for his service, and I transfer the x% from my account into the agent's distribution account. I also insure against not receiving my full stipend. Now if someone does not pay (me), my insurer pays me and bundles together the suit by others who like me, have insurance with him against not getting full stipend. The insurer sues, I just get the stipend as per contract. Whoever did not chip in, answers to a handful of insurers (who will probably join their lawsuit into one action). [credit Hans-Hermann Hoppe for pointing to the conclusion that it is the innovation of insurance which actually makes government obsolete] Stated differently, government was a primitive version of insurance (and the innovation of government is now obsolete).

The distinctions are "raping" and "abstaining from rape". If I am very focussed on stealing something, and no other actions are included in my current theft, then the theft is an evil I am doing at the same time that the "abstaining from rape" aspect of my current action represents an aspect of my current behaviour that happens to be good (as in not evil). UPB explains how "abstaining from rape" can be good, whereas "raping" cannot be good (against the standard of universality).

1. Valid answer to Topic question is: be moral with all who have agreed to be moral with you because they are more likely to hold up their end of the deal if you hold up your end - and then you are more likely to survive. 2. You are being moral in the interest of your survival (to be neither murdered nor robbed to death [by starvation or exposure]), therefore anyone who expects you to not steal or to not trespass, in any situation when you must do either one to survive: computed incorrectly. 3. The guy who owns the balcony under the flagpole (from which you hang by one slippery hand), and has a contract with you to treat you morally- assume there are other people contracted to be reciprocally moral with him: Will they still want that contract with him after he blows you away for trespassing (by eventually falling onto his balcony)? No claim of technical compliance with morality can get them to want that contract, or to want to be anywhere near him. If he were being technically moral for the valid reason as in (1) above, then he was wasting his freedom to kill at his pleasure (and take the same consequences as killing when "technically moral"). I have a careful answer to the topic question, and this careful, atheist and self-interested answer also leads to answers the lifeboat type questions. I'll stop typing and take questions on this if anyone has any.

What do you conclude, if a woman tells you she is not looking for a relationship, while at the same time she has some level of emotional desire to be in a relationship? Sure, I can honestly say I am not looking for a gold ingot, and in this case my purpose in telling you that is illustrative. In the case of a woman making the technically honest statement that she is not looking for a relationship in the way that I am not looking for a gold ingot, what would be her purpose in doing that? Do we usually list all the items we are not currently searching for, but would grab with both hands if offered them?

Great comment. Looking at such a situation from the viewpoint of dispute resolution methodology, in the sense in which "the owner decides on use of property", "the aggressor is in the wrong", and "women and children first into the lifeboats", are dispute resolution methodologies, I can't propose any resolution of the dispute between the hypothetical intolerist, and "other people", which does not involve either convincing the intolerist that his loyalty is misdirected, or, stealing or destroying the weapons of the intolerist, so that he cannot implement his desire to be loyal to Intolerah. Does anyone have a better suggestion for this hypothetical dispute?

If you are saying government as in a state, as in a territorial monopoly on the use of force - you and I agree that a state is a moral error, because whichever situations allow me to morally use force, also allow you to morally use force (if you were in the corresponding situation). Correct me I am wrong, in saying you agree. No, get disputes resolved in private courts, hire private security to enforce a court decision, if you choose to (within the limits of force set by the court). I don't want to live in a community where there is any community property over which members would vote on how to use the property. I prefer that each asset has a private owner (which private owner may be a set of shareholders, each of whom can sell their share if they can't agree with the majority vote of the other shareholders [shareholders vote their share, not by head count]). So, no government, no community assets as such (assets get bundled together, and unbundled, by market action). Merely a contract between perhaps 1,000 or 10,000 landowners who have bought near to each other for the purpose of restricting each other's behaviour in additional ways over and above basic moral proscriptions - a contract for each member's personal benefit of not having neighbours do things distasteful to him. So if a lack of charitible contribution by neighbours, is distasteful to me, I am agreeing to the mutual restriction (myself and every neighbour) that our annual charity to neighbours not go below x% of assets at year-end, and this charity be distributed equally among all members, paid as a monthly stipend for the following 12 months. Also, new rules are by unanimous consent. Ask me more about that, if you like, but the answer may be off-topic. What is on-topic above, is my explanation that there need be no government, for there to be basic income as an additional ethic for a community to voluntarily and unanimously adopt, over and above the non-optional ethics of non-aggression. As to what you say about community services, in general, people voluntarily get shared services for efficiency (e.g. a housing complex with a gate and security guards [common in South Africa], has shared security. If the value-for-money on the shared service were really low, residents would sell-up and move. They don't - because one entrance and 5 guards, a pool service and a garden service shared among 60 homes gives good value-for-money, when private contractors answer to a committee of homeowners). BIG-style re-distribution is really low-cost on administration, and it is just one of a number of services people will tend to share for efficiency. Let each member hire his own auditor of the BIG, they will soon be sharing that service, hiring only 1, 2, or 3 audit firms between the 10 000 members. Let each hire his own auctioneer, same result. What remains is a simple banking function (and a possibility for dispute about who can be trusted to do that simple function).

Thanks. I am also enjoying the discussion. Thanks that you would support the principle of freedom to associate with and disassociate from people, even if you don't have a taste for my choices. Actually, my advice to people joining communities, is that they check on the exit conditions, and stay away from communities which would expect to keep the property of a departing member (except in settlement of a valid claim for damages). I don't like statism partly because I can't get my share of South Africa's public assets and liabilities and leave here with my share. I understand the basic economic argument against statism, is that we all (in general) prefer to privatise profit and socialise costs. So in statism other people are doing this with greater success than I do, and I am paying their bills. Firstly, somewhere in the future, the actual construction costs of a tall building, fall really low, because cheap energy plus nanotechnology allows cheap building that is really strong and is an active machine, responding to wind or earthquake in an active way that reduces risk to life and property. However, predicting my preference in the event I were in that future world, I would prefer to live in a neighbourhood where our buildings all joined at one uniform level, the garden level, and I can walk or cycle through all of / any of the gardens at any time (motorised transport below the garden level). There would be no buildings above the garden level, and also no drop-offs for residents to fall off or jump off. I don't want to get this by coercion, I want to live where people accept this as the most delightful way to live, and sign up for the rules. I also get it that if people are not coerced, I can buy from my neighbour, favours like not building stuff I don't like. What I am proposing is an organised way to trade favours (you don't put my garden in shade of tall building, I don't put your garden in shade of tall building - all sign up and all stick to the deal - else sell up and buy a place where the unanimously agreed community rules suit me/you better). Without a state to set borders, another option for people who wish to leave, is to buy a property on a border, and re-draw the border by joining the neighbouring community. This is a way that a poor ruleset (poor as evaluated by individual members against their preferences, according to actual outcomes) will cause a community to dissolve over time, so that the communities with better rulesets flourish. Okay, someone builds a skyscraper, it is a business failure, they can't make a good return on the investment. So it gets an auction value which is really low, and the owner, instead of paying a contribution on a really high value, compared to cost input, he contributes a percentage of a value lower than the input cost of building [perhaps on $1, perhaps on zero]. Until the auction value of the skyscraper improves, he contributes very little each year. So what he has done is spend money on a decoration (or eyesore depending on one's point-of-view). But that was his money to spend. If such an event occurs rarely, the impact on the monthly stipend will be low. If it becomes a pattern for wealthy people to "invest" in giant boondoggles, the rest of the community is going to disperse and leave those nuts to each other. Rational people will prefer to associate with other people in a community which builds itself up, financially.

My motivation for signing it would be: By signing it, I am allowed to live where other people have also signed it. This gives me the assurance that the other people in that area will either comply with the same community rules (with which I intend to comply), or else they will be expelled (in the extreme case that they refuse to make amends and return to compliance). Some actions are morally permissible, but unpleasant for me to tolerate [for example: my neighbour builds a skyscraper - in the world of the future- this is a likely cause of many disputes]. To get reciprocal agreement between me and each other resident, I agree (on pain of expulsion), to restrict my actions a little, in return for each other resident agreeing to the same restrictions. I think that you and I are on the same page, wrt to government and communism. All government is communistic in nature. A very limited republic grows (as per USA), ever more communist. It is not true to say that the original states of the USA, were doomed to fail because of their (very limited) communist nature. It is correct to say that they were doomed to fail eventually because of their moral error, and contained in their moral error is the seed of ever-expanding communism. It is the ever-expanding part of the original moral error, that dooms the project. Morally, you cannot insist that a man pay 12%, if he agreed to 10% (or 5%). By understanding morality, and by including only people who understand and commit themselves to morality (and also commit themselves to some additional restrictions specific to their preferred community), and by expelling people who choose to quit compliance with the restrictions, a community can have a non-expanding version of limited communism. Putting an asset on auction, and keeping it, are not incompatible. In our social order as it stands, an auctioneer will refuse to auction an item with too high a reserve price (he does not want to waste time). If the auctioneer is offered a suitable contract to pay for his time (different from the current system of commission on sale price), he will agree to attempt to auction goods in a situation where (in many cases), the current owner bids the highest, and there is effectively no sale. If you bid the highest for your home, you have effectively set the value of your home (to you), and thus set the value on which you are contracted to contribute to the community kitty, at the contracted rate. If each member has a home worth $120,000 (and no other possessions) and each thus contributes $12,000 to the kitty at year end, then each will receive $1,000 per month the following year (whether there are 2 members or 2 million members). They could save this to pay towards the next year's contribution. The member who bets his home on a business idea and loses the bet, has survival money, has a chance to keep going while looking for employment - and will not be incentivised to remain unemployed - because the monthly stipend will reflect in his bank account even if he gets a really good job. In this simplified example where members own nothing except their homes, that bet-loser no longer contributes directly to the kitty, but the employer gains from employing him, the employer's assets increase, and so the employer contributes more at end of next year. Though this "broke" member contributes nothing directly to the kitty, the kitty gets a contribution from his effort, and pays his stipend from that. My thesis is that some risks are better covered by limited voluntary communism, than by insurance. My prime example above, is that it is not fiscally appropriate to insure against business failure. A contractual community kitty is more appropriate as alternate to insurance for that risk. Note also, that insured and insurer can count on the contractual stipend, when planning insurance for risks for which insurance is appropriate (e.g. disability). Insurance costs (and payouts) are made lower because of the stipend. Some people go uninsured and hope for charity. In this set-up, they can go uninsured and can count on a contractual payment without needing to ask for charity. In this set-up, you insure to have your preferred level of comfort if disabled, not to merely survive if disabled (the stipend allows survival).

The above are valuable criticisms, I will think if I can refine the proposal to deal with that. I would not sign a contract to auction off a child's personal items or playthings, and I would not want to live around other people who did, I'd want to find a way to rescue the children. So, yeah, potential loophole, and a challenge to balance between children keeping their teddy bears and children keeping their 10 favourite gold ingots (because loophole). Mmm, I did not respond to say that I grasp the difference between coerced and voluntary. I could have made more effort, both to type my words in a nicer way (wrt tone), and also to say clearly that I don't want to see people compelled to become members of a community such as I am suggesting (Allow me to slip in my apology here, I'm sorry, sincerely. Also please allow me to continue the current train of thought). On the other hand, you can tell me if I am wrong, that if permission to be in the neighbourhood is a contractually agreed benefit of membership, and a person loses membership in a manner agreed by contract, and if he has agreed he may be evicted by force on losing membership and failing to leave - then if he does not leave, the other members pick him up and carry him out as per contract. Contracts quite normally contain a promise and some alternate promises (e.g. I'll stick to the deal, or, I'll leave, or, you can carry me out [here is my advance permission for you to do so]). You borrow $20,000 and buy a car. You pay $350 / mth on the loan, owe $15,800 at auction time. Because you have a car, you earn $450 more per month than you would if you had to work closer to home. The lender owns the car, he can bid up to $15 800 to keep it as his posession. If someone bids more, the car is still subject to your contract of purchase, and, as per contract, your monthly payments go to the new owner, and when the car is paid up, it is your car, and the new owner has collected $4,200 for each 12 months until he has the $15,800 balance which was due per contract. Actually, someone might buy a car he will probably never get, because of that word "probably". If a prospective owner estimates you may default and he may get a rare car at a good price, he may roll the dice. At end of year 1, the owner will contribute $1,580 to the community kitty if no-one bids higher than the $15,800 they expect to get from you as the hire-purchaser. Subsequent years: $1,160 ; $740 ; $320. Total payment to community kitty: $3 800. Result is you will get the car for $20,000 if the production cost is about $14,000 since the producer will want to have some after kitty-contribution profit. Now if $3,800 contribution on a production effort of $14,000 - is way higher than what statists do, then why not try 5% instead of 10%. Here, the value-added tax alone, on $20,000 : would be $2,456 : that is without the other taxes. Remember, you as the hire-purchaser are scoring $100 / mth with your better job. Also note that the car factory is only fiscally worth a limited (but variable) multiple of what it can generate annually in after kitty-contribution income. The auction price of the factory will be discounted by bidders, based on the owner's contractual obligation to contribute. I can do that example for you too, unless you want to try it. Pick how many cars it produces per year (for $14,000 and sells for $20,000), and I can value it. The producer has his profit. The community has some kitty to re-distribute. When a community member comes begging, you ask for an account of how he spent his share of kitty money, before you reach for your wallet. I am proposing a contractual system of sharing, more predictable than non-contractual charity, and in addition to non-contractual charity. I am stating that this is both morally permissible (being contractual), and way less communal than full-on communism. Benefits include: 1. Greater motivation for members to co-operate with security services, fire services, and other services contracted to protect the assets of the more wealthy members. 2. More optimal risk-taking. I would try a business idea, knowing that upon failure, I need not beg, I can survive on the ex-kitty stipend until I get a better idea. Also, I have some thoughts about what you may think are obvious loopholes created by the hire-purchase contract as above. Will omit those and wait for your first response.

If it were contractual, it would not be looting. Since income is dodgy to determine, I say the contract would need to call for an annual auction of all non-money assets (so that all assets have a money value which gets a percentage levy). Also, probably better to not redistribute to minor children, because that incentivises breeding, and also because they cannot be parties to the contract.

"20% ROA" If you agreed to auction off all your assets at end of year, and put 10% of proceeds into the kitty, then what you bid for with your 90% of proceeds, you will either expect to get (significantly) more than 11,1% return on the asking price, or, you will bid lower than the asking price. If you are outbid by someone outside the community, then the community benefits by the ejection of an asset underperforming relative to the alternate assets. Remember that the return in ROA need not be tangible, it is in how the (would-be) owner perceives his benefit relative to the alternative of (not buying into) / cashing out of the asset. For car hire purchase, the contract of sale specifies whether the buyer owns the car from delivery, or the seller owns the car until paid for. The owner knows he must auction it off each year, and the parties work this knowledge into the deal. You won't buy the worst item if you get 9% ROA on the worst item, at the would-be seller's bottom price. You have said nothing to support your statement that such a community is unsustainable. Would you like to provide some support? I typed contract. Where did you get initiation of force from what I typed? Please quote what you take issue with, specifically, in what I typed. "ridiculously backwards" is not an argument. Thanks for your participation, I don't rate it as really investigative, curious and well-thought-out, but I appreciate your feedback and would like to discuss further.

I see ethics/morality in the context of a trade [my non-aggressive behaviour for your non-aggressive behaviour], and I would like to have most humans sign up to a contract (I'm compressing and omitting detail) to do that trade. I have proposed a definition of evil such that of every category of action which would have to be prohibited in that trade (by have to I am referring to the logical effect on the attainment of the purpose [higher odds of survival] of doing the deal, were one to fail to prohibit the category of act) - one can say that such act is evil and say that this standard is objective. Of any other prohibitions anyone wishes to include in the deal, they may say they such an act seems evil to me, making it clear that this is a subjective standard (which may be widely accepted and get many people signed up [i.e. it may be popular]). I was really interested in your set of classifications (UPI, etc), and will re-read it another day and reflect on it. Even statist systems use pragmas to deal with the preferences of the victim of what they define as a crime. I am not sure how to advise people on the use of the word pairs good/evil, nice/nasty, right/wrong, and I am interested in getting suggestions. What will communicate ideas better, for the sake of not getting me killed by people with faulty moral compasses? I prefer is evil / is not evil for the objective standard, and seems evil / seems good for the subjective standard, wrong/right to denote presence or absence of some detected error (i.e. not related to ethics or morality), and nasty/nice would be in side comments, not part of the philosophical logic flow. Above, I quoted a question you asked. I link up the answer to that, with the resolution to the lifeboat and flagpole scenarios: I only agreed to act morally as a way to have lower odds of dying (by [your] immoral actions), So I will definitely not choose to die to keep my end of the deal (and this pragma gets written into the deal before we sign, so I'm not even [you are not even] breaching the deal in that event). In favour of the trade view of ethics: Nihilists and theists can trade.

I expect some people who claim to be communists, will in fact agree to live in communes where you don't even get to own non-personal items (e.g. you own personal items like toothbrushes, but not homes or cars). Keeping 90% of what you have at the end of each year is a far less communal way of living, and I expect some people to like that as a compromise really far from full communist. Why it would make sense that all assets go on auction, is that this is the valid way to determine value. Of course, this specific contractual system would influence value: assets which produce 20% annual return (in income or in cost-saving like saving rental), would likely appreciate, whereas assets with low return would probably drop in price until the price reaches the level that yields a return of 20% or more. If you benefit by 20% return on an asset, and then you give away 10% of assets, then even if the full 20% return went into assets, you are still 8% up on the year before. If you consumed the return on one of your assets - well - you didn't agree to some type of levy on consumption, only on the asset which remains. There is some benefit to this system: if any asset in the community is at any risk - you have a little something to lose if it the asset loses value. A community using this system might get innovation advantage over other communities, because there is a safety net guaranteed, so a member can bet the farm on his innovation, and amongst all the losing bets, a few winning bets shared among everyone, could make a rich community. There may be a percentage level for this system, that optimises risk-taking at the sweet spot, and this might push many other communities to adopt it as the winning compromise between sharing everything and sharing nothing.