untermensche
Contributor
If I take your car I am not justified.
But if I sell you mine you are obligated to pay for it.
If you are given a decent society you have to pay what is owed for having one.
Paying what is owed is not stealing.
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If I take your car I am not justified.
But if I sell you mine you are obligated to pay for it.
If you are given a decent society you have to pay what is owed for having one.
Paying what is owed is not stealing.
untermensche
Contributor
You do not live in a free society if others are free to take what you have and you have no recourse.
That is not freedom.
It is freedom for some and a lack of freedom for others.
A free society is where everybody is somewhat equally free. As free as possible.
Not just a few people.
Crazy Eddie
Veteran Member
Your recourse is stop them from taking it. Or, failing that, go and take it back.
Of course it is. You do what you want and I do what I want. No one can tell you you can't.
Incorrect. Freedom is the ability to make unrestricted decisions, not the ability of your decisions to be successful. I could decide to kill bengal tiger with my bare hands, but I am unlikely to survive the attempt, for reasons that have very little to do with freedom.
You're still confusing freedom with comfort. Just because you're free to take what you want doesn't mean you GET what you want.
But the purpose of civilization isn't to make people free. The purpose is to make people HAPPY. So we restrict the freedoms of the strongest and the fastest so the weakest and the slowest can still get what they want and need. The strong are NOT ALLOWED to take it from them; they are not free to do this. The weak aren't allowed to take from the strong either, even if they could.
Freedom is free. It's the price we pay for civilization.
Crazy Eddie
Veteran Member
That's because you're not free to take my car.
That's because I am not free to take your car.
And a decent society remains decent because there are certain things you are not free to do. To wit:
... therefore, you are not free to steal.
ronburgundy
Contributor
That is all irrelevant to whether force is being used to extract the payment. Your argument only speaks to whether the force with the threat of physical violence that is inherent to taxation is justified. If you try to steal from a store and they tackle you and take $ from you equal to the product, that may be justified but it is still forcing you to do something you did not choose to do. That is no less true than if a government forces you pay some share of its expenses under the justification that you got some benefit. And note, that such a benefit is far more uncertain than in the case of a tangible product you took from a store. People often don't ask for those benefits and even strongly oppose how the money is used, and almost always a portion of the money is used in ways that actually harm the interests of some of the people from whom taxes are extracted. Yet, people have no direct choice in what product they get in return. Those in the minority are forced by the majority to pay for things they don't want, and that is the best case scenario where legislators actually heed the will of the majority rather than special interests.
IOW, a more apt analogy is I make some product and I kick down your front door and "give" it to you whether you want it or not, then I threaten you with violence if you do not give me $ for what I gave you. Now, we need a system of taxation to have a civilized society that progressively serves the common interests. But it always entails force. Denying that its force and pretending that you are giving people a free choice in the matter is delusional and the kind of thinking that promotes dictatorships and authoritarian abuse.
The key is making sure that force is used to actually create real benefits for the common good. One way to do that is to have a Democracy along with a Constitution that limits government powers. Another is to have that Capitalism you despise, so that their is a marketplace that is directly reactive to what each individual wants, allowing each person the liberty to pay for products they want, whether most people want them or not, which in turn requires other people have the liberty to create an sell any product that others want so long as there is no direct harm to others by doing so. This limits what government forcibly extracts taxes for to basic universal needs and things that have widespread benefits but are not well provided by private enterprise. The reasonable humane debate is over where those lines fall, not whether or not their should be both some free market capitalism and some government regulation and publicly supplied products and services.
untermensche
Contributor
You cannot just claim that facts are not facts.
A society where some can take from others and there is no recourse is a society where some are very free and others are not very free.
It is not a free society.
The jungle is not society.
Crazy Eddie
Veteran Member
Then why do you keep doing it?
Incorrect. As I just told you, the recourse in such cases is to simply take the thing back. You are both, therefore, on equal footing with what you are free to do. That he is more likely to succeed than you are doesn't change the freedoms you have; that is as true in anarchy as it is in democracy.
So a totally free society is one in which ALL choices are acceptable and all outcomes are considered socially valid.
A less free society is one in which MOST choices are acceptable and outcomes reached by the approved means are socially valid.
An unfree society is one in which FEW or NO choices are acceptable and only select outcomes are considered socially valid.
To the original point: a choice made under duress or the implicit threat of violence is not a "free" choice. We DO NOT live in a truly free society, because there exist among us certain entities (namely, the state and its instruments) who have the monopoly on violence and the power to use it against us whenever they see fit. So taxation is mandatory, and obedience to the law is mandatory. Those are not free choices, those are choices imposed on us by an entity we created specifically to restrict our freedom and the freedom of those around us, theoretically for our own protection.
No, but it is completely free.
untermensche
Contributor
I'm talking about a free society.
It is not free.
If one wants to go live in the middle of some jungle that is.
Crazy Eddie
Veteran Member
A "free society" is a society that lacks compulsion or duress. The extent to which a society is said to be "free" or "unfree" is the extent to which that society can forcibly restrict the actions of its members through the threat of violence.
A society that exists with no compulsion of any kind is a free one. It just isn't a very SAFE one.
Living in a place with no laws, no rules, no government and no taxes... That's literally the exact, strict definition of "free."
You're still confusing "free" with "comfortable." You and fifty people living in the jungle with no enforceable rules of conduct and no obligations or responsibility is going to get uncomfortable really, REALLY fast. But you will sill be completely free, right up until one of you decides to set some ground rules.
Relevantly, a choice made under duress and the clear threat of escalating violence is the strict definition of "unfree." You cannot "freely" chose not to pay taxes in America, because society collectively will impose violence on you in one form or another in order to collect that money whether you like it or not. The only difference between our society and a state of anarchy is that the takers of the taxes are an entity that we collectively approve for the task and not a person who individually decides to do it on his own behalf. There is, therefore no contest between one who seeks to take and one who seeks to keep; you are expected to yield to the taker, because if you do not, you will be imprisoned or killed and everyone will approve of your imprisonment or death.
untermensche
Contributor
A free society is one where a person has redress for harms committed by others.
A free society is one that protects the many from the harms of the few.
I'm talking about real practical freedom.
Not imaginary conceptual freedom.
And real freedom is not free.
You're like a self parody. But I think you actually believe this, so, yikes.
untermensche
Contributor
I'm just rational.
You're the parody.
The parody of the naive brain washed right-wing deluded want-a-be big guy.
Crazy Eddie
Veteran Member
How is "harming them back" not a form of redress?
How does the ability to form a mob and murder someone who causes harm not a form of protection?
You're talking about bullshit rhetorical freedom as rendered in patriotic speeches and fourth of july beauty pageant essays.
PRACTICAL freedom is the extent to which you are able to act without fear of the consequences of those actions. You are, for example, free to marry anyone you want, free to have sex with anyone you want, free to eat anything you want, and the powers that be will not punish you for those choices nor sanction anyone else's attempt to interfere with those choices.
You have freedom of speech, which means you can say whatever you want whenever you want up until your speech knowingly causes a public hazard or incites violence in others. So you have SLIGHTLY limited freedom of speech.
You have freedom of the press, which means you can write and publish whatever you want, just as long as you do not knowingly or deliberately publish a falsehood that defames someone's reputation. So you have slightly limited freedom of the press.
You DO NOT have the freedom to kill someone for any reason you can think of, or even punch someone else in the face; designated authority figures will respond to that choice by visiting violence on you, and will sanction those who respond to your violence with a defensive action. So you have VERY LITTLE freedom of violence.
"Freedom" isn't just a catch-all term for "When things are going well for everyone." Freedom must be balanced with public order. A totally free society is a society with no order, and a totally ordered society is one with no freedom. The struggle is to find the ideal balance between the two.
Of course it is. All you have to do is walk away from order.
untermensche
Contributor
barbos
Contributor
Ok, I will try to bring this thread back to rails which is bullshit publications:
Top US University (top 10 for sure), head of engineering department and couple of his students file a patent and grant application, obtain both ($1mil grant from the government and patent ) Then this information gets pretty randomly and irrelevantly thrown at me during discussion of some "green energy" scam. I read grant application and it sounds as bullshit, but there is not much there to be sure, then I read the patent it is unquestionable BS. I call it such and then the guy calls that professor and tells him about it
That fraud actually takes offense and promise publications within a year proving me wrong. It's been 5 years and no publications, just a couple more patents which are increasingly less grandiose and less linked to the original BS patent. And yes, I forgot, student defends his PhD and goes to work for a startup which claims to be based on that patent. Startup has been pretty silent but linkedin indications are, they abandoned original "idea" and work on ordinary stuff.
This is not social sciences or Trump University, this is real science/engineering fields and top US universities, where peer review supposedly works. And it's not the only case of publicizing of utter BS by top US universities I know.
Top US University (top 10 for sure), head of engineering department and couple of his students file a patent and grant application, obtain both ($1mil grant from the government and patent ) Then this information gets pretty randomly and irrelevantly thrown at me during discussion of some "green energy" scam. I read grant application and it sounds as bullshit, but there is not much there to be sure, then I read the patent it is unquestionable BS. I call it such and then the guy calls that professor and tells him about it
That fraud actually takes offense and promise publications within a year proving me wrong. It's been 5 years and no publications, just a couple more patents which are increasingly less grandiose and less linked to the original BS patent. And yes, I forgot, student defends his PhD and goes to work for a startup which claims to be based on that patent. Startup has been pretty silent but linkedin indications are, they abandoned original "idea" and work on ordinary stuff.This is not social sciences or Trump University, this is real science/engineering fields and top US universities, where peer review supposedly works. And it's not the only case of publicizing of utter BS by top US universities I know.
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Crazy Eddie
Veteran Member
Of course you can. You just move to a more chaotic society with fewer rules and more freedom. People do it all the time.