You have asserted your definition of what people's rights are or should be; it is arbitrary and not a point of fact
It is? According to what? Or are you by definition asserting that everything is and always will be arbitrary?
From where is the fundamental nature of these rights derived?
From the right to life. Your fundamental choice as a living being is to live or to die. If you choose to die, that is the end of you. If you choose to live, you choose to have goals and values that will sustain your life. The whole idea of a moral system presupposes the choice to live. Do you deny that you, or anyone else, has the right to live?
it assumes that the right to life extends to "the right to the fruit of your labor"
So you do not deny that you have the right to survive, but you deny that you have the right to the resources of your survival? Isn't that called slavery? What of the person who is in charge of redistributing resources? How does that person have a right to those resources, but the people who produced it for the fulfillment of their personal goals do not?
this only applies if society is to agree with you that this is indeed a fundamental right
Society cannot vote away individual rights. They can vote to violate those rights, but the violation does not become morally justified simply by the backing of a majority.
Making it voluntary is akin to asking the free market to decide the value of taxation on the basis of its profitability.
How so? How is this related at all to the stock market? I am not arguing for anarchy - ie, private police forces, but for a voluntarily funded government monopoly on the use of force to uphold and protect rights. People value their property and their lives, and would want to support their government in defending those rights.
The result was that many of the museums dedicated to representing an industry, whose impact has been growing ever since industrialisation, were disbanded.
I'm not sure how this relates to government support of individual rights - the proper function of a government. If you believe museums dedicated to these subjects are worthy endeavors, you should donate to their causes and encourage your friends, family, and members of the community to do the same. What you should not do is force everyone to support such a cause through forced taxation. Again, I don't see why you used that as an example. Do you really think museums will just disappear if they no longer get government funding? If people suddenly have extra money in their pockets, do you believe some subset will not give that money to such causes? If so, you'll have to show some evidence to support this claim. If not, then I've misunderstood you and you should clarify.
Now we get deep. You assume that "property" is a right. What is that right based on, if I may ask?
The right to life being a right to survive and pursue the fulfillment of your goals, which means the right to the fruit of your labor. Denying that any of my property is mine is a denial that I have a right to my productivity, which is a denial that I should be able to pursue the fulfillment of my goals, and that I do not have a right to survive of my own free will. I cannot prepare for the possibility of an emergency, whether it be emergency medical treatment or an emergency food shortage, etc, and my survival becomes entire dependent on the whims of government officials.
I challenge that assumption. I say that all rights are agreements of a society.
Individual rights exist even when you're a lone individual on a desert island. It is right for you to survive, to pursue your goals, and to exploit the resources around you in that pursuit. In the context of a society, this pursuit simply becomes limited in that you cannot kill another person or steal their goods. Your right to life in the context of a society is an acknowledgment of others' right to life. Only by voluntary trade to mutual benefit can you have what they have. Mutual benefit means you have what they want, and they have what you want. If it is not true, then it is not a voluntary trade.
Such agreements are entirely arbitrary.
You're simply sidestepping the question of what should be a moral society. Rather than discuss the possibility, you claim the entire pursuit is futile, and you cling to historical examples as evidence to support your position. How exactly do examples of what is imply that it is futile to think about what should be?
"how do we pay for the things that we need to support the rights of property, life, etc. ?".
You suggest that there's only one possible answer to this question, and you imply that a social agreement is one in which everyone agrees with the result. I do not agree with it, but what choice do I have but to move away? Rather than leave the problem behind, I'd rather persuade members of society to eventually bring about candidates willing to uphold individual rights, and then elect those candidates to help reduce the government to its proper roles.
Enforcement doesn't come free. Taxation is one way to pay for it. Certainly not the only one, but the one that our society has (grudingly, mostly) agreed upon.
And voluntary taxation is another way to pay for it.
You can challenge that agreement, but then you also open up the agreement "property" to challenge.
You're mixing up an individual right to property with the agreement not to violate that right.
Your US$ is legal tender because the US government says it is.
Producing currency is also outside the realm of a proper government, for the reasons I have previously stated. As for the value of money, you're right that since the government discarded the gold standard, our money only has value so long as our government is able to say it does. And that's a recipe for disaster.
Isn't it a bit odd to take the good part (money) and refuse the bad part (taxation) ?
You're mixing up the currency with the meaning behind it. Money is simply a means of trading productivity. I produce something you want, and you also produce, but I don't want any of your products. So you give me money instead, ideally money backed by a finite resource as a standard (such as gold), which I can then trade with another individual. Ideally, the currency of this system would be produced in the private sector.
There's quite a difference between me making an appeal to a document, and me asserting a statement that also happens to be contained in a document. Upon investigation, you'll find that if I simply continue to assert the former, I'm committing a fallacy, whereas for the latter I'll be able to explain the line of reasoning behind the assertion. Likewise, if you continue to simply connect my statement with a statement in the constitution, you will continue to attack a strawman (or one might call it an association fallacy). The constitution is not a perfect document, and that is why I don't appeal to it. The constitution claims to promote basic rights, but then permits the government to violate those rights.
Try the reality of between 3.6 and 4.8 million people living under the poverty line in America.
You're promoting increased government control of the economy to fix a problem caused by government control of the economy. Ask yourself what laws might drive companies overseas.
Having socialist elements to government doesn't mean turning the country communist.
That's like saying, "I've only murdered a couple innocent people. I didn't kill nearly as many as some of the worst murderers in history, so I'm not so bad." A fundamental individual right is still being violated. The fact that people are willing to put up with some amount of rights violations is simply an indication of the adaptability to less-than-optimal conditions - it doesn't mean those violations are somehow justifiable. They are not.
Unless you completely disagree with taxation
I have no problem with taxation - only when it is forced from the public on threat of imprisonment or deportation.
(in which case I would say that your argument is woefully untenable)
You've applied a label to my assertion, but have not shown that your label is accurate.
Thus it is quite a stretch for you to extend the idea of property to taxable assets
That has to be the starting point. The right to life means the right to survive and to pursue the fulfillment of your goals, which requires the right to the fruit of your labor. The entire concept of property comes from this.
many examples, see Europe, in which these boundaries are clearly defined
I'm not ignoring examples, I'm just waiting for you to make an argument. Simply throwing up the example of a system in which many people are happy and prefer convenience over rights does not imply that such a system is sustainable in the long term.
That depends on your definition of a properly-functioning government. Many people believe that government has a socialist responsibility, in varying degrees, to its electorate. What makes you right and them wrong?
The facts of reality.
You allude to the constitution ("there is only the right to your life and your property"), and I've heard this a million times from Americans [snip]
Yes, indeed, and you will hear a lot of irrational Americans quoting the Bible. As you state, it is an appeal to authority (or appeal to tradition) to simply quote from an old document as your source of morality. I've done neither. What you're grasping at is a straw man.
a right not necessarily having to be enshrined in statute
Putting it in writing doesn't make something valid. Who claimed that?
For example, free universal healthcare (most of Europe).
Nothing can be gotten for free without stealing it. People who argue for free universal healthcare argue for the forced increase of taxes. They argue that their property is not their own, that their productivity is for their own benefit, but for the benefit of the state, for the benefit of others. There can be no right to property under such a system. Indeed "property" loses all meaning - since what's mine is actually everyone's, distributed as decided by a force-backed entity.
how can Americans be expected to show any kind of independent morality?
By thinking. Anyone can accomplish this, not just Americans.
...a broken machine that is driven by falsified ideals designed to inspire religious conviction...
Are you talking about theism or socialism? Both are based in mysticism - with the former, morality (what's "right") comes from God; with the latter, morality comes from subjective innate feelings, intuition, biology divorced from free will, or majority consensus (the last being a mixture of all of these).
"No one since the romans has tried privatized roads successfully."
First, you're going to have to provide a lot more evidence than that anecdote. Second, you cannot rule a possibility out based solely on historical evidence (see appeal to tradition). Whether or not it is less convenient to privatize roads is irrelevant - the purpose is to stop the rights violations that occur with forced taxation.
As for the Romans, they also tried and failed to do a lot of things that we can do and do take for granted today. Human thought, after all, is a process of building-up. It cannot simply be (conveniently) claimed to have stopped at some distant past epoch.
I will not even bother to respond to the rest of your time wasting inanities that follow in your post until you do this.
You've labeled my statements "inanities", but have not shown that that label is accurate.
All your requests require that a society built on a certain government monopoly service be fixed almost overnight through private endeavor, with no inconvenience to existing customers - the same people who built their lives on a need for that monopoly. I never suggested any of these requirements would be realizable - my only concern is that individual rights not be violated.
Besides that, your requests also assume that no other modes of transportation can exist between two points.
Now your turn:
1. Explain to me how a private road owner who artificially inflates his prices can maintain his road despite driving away almost all of his customers, including people who are willing to persuade existing and prospective customers to go on "strike"?
2. Explain to me how you justify the rights violations that come with government-forced, tax-funded monopolies such as this.
Seeing as you disregarded 93% of my last post (really, I did the math), I will not bother continuing this discussion until you reply to the rest of my last post. Feel free to reply to this post with a butt-load of non-sequiturs, straw men, and ad hominems. Unlike Randall, I'm fine with letting someone be wrong all by his lonesome.
The problem with this assertion is the omission of the right to liberty.
I believe the right to liberty follows directly from the right to life.
We tried this already: We gave billions of dollars to Verizon and other former Bell companies when they marketed their bold plan to cover this land in fiber optics.
You're referring to government investment into the economy. What I was originally referring to was government extraction from the economy.
Or how about deregulating the financial, housing, and energy markets to "encourage private industry growth"? That Phil Gramm model of Reaganomics gave us Enron, Worldcom, and the current financial crunch.
You're going to have to explain things in a bit more detail than simple reference to failed corporations. How does preventing the government from restricting corporations relate to specific failed corporations? If a person invests in a company without concern for the stability of that company, should the government save that person from his bad decision? What exactly do you think is going to go wrong if a big company fails?
Just as you cannot have total faith in the government, you cannot have total faith in private enterprise.
I don't. The government should exist, in order to uphold and protect individual rights. But its functions should stop there.
Give the US infrastructure to the American market, and they can bring it to ruin faster than the US Government can.
Again, you're going to have to provide some evidence or rationale to support this claim.
You are of course missing the point entirely. Roads, unlike many other silly "capitalist" products for which the "model" of "free market" is semi-functional (think: plastic mouse-traps), are bound by geographical limitations. Therefore no alternative roads can be built in majority of locations, not by "neighboring property owner", nor by anyone at all.
According to what? Are we just supposed to assume that if a single private road demands people to pay exorbitant prices for use, that nobody would be interested in providing a cheaper alternative? Are we also supposed to assume that a property owner would be able to maintain a road if nobody drives on it because of the high fees? As should be clear by now, you are missing the point entirely.
no one can have 10 highways running in parallel, nor 4 sub-urban roads to every cul-de-sac.
Why would they? You're going to have to show some evidence/rationale that such a situation would be an inevitable reality and a requirement for a fully private system. You're then going to have to justify the individual rights violations that come with the current system.
"Competition" in road building is simply not practical, irrespective of wacky make-believe economic "models".
You've labeled an economic system that you do not understand as "wacky" and "make-believe", but have not explained why those labels are accurate.
And I will not even delve into the game theory background of such scenarios, whereby the optimal outcome for all the "neighboring property owners" is collusion or outright consolidation to maximize profits on their captive (literally!) "customers".
This is the typical shotgun response to total privatization - that someone a person would be locked in his own private prison. Back in reality, that person has the right to life and the pursuit of happiness, and any restriction on that right is open to government intervention (ie, police and courts).
They are a communal property
You have just stripped "property" of all its meaning, and discarded individual rights in the process.
that Libertarian whining of yours
Why the repeated use of the word "Libertarian"? Who claimed to be Libertarian? Libertarians are just as arbitrary in their principles as Democrats and Republicans.
In fact, this is why we have roads today, for they were always in the realm of the "basic necessities" for which the state was responsible, beginning somewhere with Egyptian Pharaohs.
I simply described what would have happened if you had it your way and the government was to be excluded from providing such "basic necessities" to the society, exemplified by roads.
No, you fantasized about an absurd reality and then rejected it on its absurdity alone.
Incidentally, this is also why even the very notion of a "toll road" is a vicious travesty which goes against the very foundations of the society. It forcibly deprives everyone in the society from their common rights
There is no right to roads. They are however very beneficial and likely to be created in most any society, just like sanitation and education.
It is called: History. In the past, the core Libertarian principles were actually put in motion (in very early stages of human civilization) and were quickly (and inevitably) transformed into their natural end-product: the feudal order.
You'll have to be more specific about what you're referring to. I do not support a feudal system.
The fundamental implication of Libertarianism is that property (note that enforcing the rules of property is the main responsibility of the Libertarian state) is far more importa
"That doesn't refute what I said. Weather a company is hindered by government regulation has nothing to do with it."
It has everything to do with it. If the government has set up a situation by which people can game the market and drive out competitors, and if some people irrationally use these "services", then the rest are more likely to also take part in the game in order to save themselves. Your entire argument is that we need government intervention because the private sector has failed us, but you can't even give a historical example of a fully private sector, totally unimpeded by government intervention? Then on what is your argument founded?
"1 simple answer for both questions, I'm not one of their primary stakeholders, with government I am a primary stakeholder and have a measure of control."
Back to reality. You have a vote among millions, just as you are one person among millions of customers buying a product. If you choose not to buy a product, and persuade your friends, family, neighbors, and community to follow suit, you will have a substantial impact on that company. It's like a "customer's union", threatening to go on "strike" (ie, switch to a competitor).
"You are also assuming under a true "laissez-faire" system there will be competition (I'm not a believer in the free market fairy)"
What about the free market do you not believe in, and for what reasons? Simply labeling it a fairytale does not explain why that label is correct.
"if there is no competition there is no restriction on what they can do"
Can you please think about things a little more deeply before you reply. If there is no competition, because a company has bought up all the competitors, what happens when the company decides to provide poor service and increase their prices? Think about it. What would happen? There would be a lot of pissed off people, wanting an alternative. Does the world just stop there? Why would it stop there? Wouldn't there be a huge incentive for a related company, or a new startup, to expand into that market and provide exactly what the people want, at a lower price? Do you agree that there would be such an incentive - if not, why not? If even one single small company starts up and offers those services, suddenly there is competition, and the large company will be pressured by its customers to increase quality and reduce price.
"Telco's are good examples of this, in many nations they own the copper running under the street and into your house so unless regulated they are able to dictate who you are serviced by."
And who prevents others from laying additional copper lines, or water and sewage pipes? A magic elf? Or the government?
"This arrangement I have no issue with because I can still wrest control of the government while the corporation can ignore me."
As you have repeatedly done already, you're again arguing against the private industry with examples of private monopolies maintained by government restriction on the existence of competition.
"So when Microsoft decides you are a pirate and implements the WGA system... This is OK when talking about your operating system but when Sanitation is involved then what?"
Then you switch to a competitor. If no competitor exists, ask yourself why not. If service is so bad, why wouldn't someone want to come along and "steal away" the customers from the poorly-run company.
"contrary to your limited Libertarian view"
You repeatedly use the word "Libertarian". I am no Libertarian. At least in the US, Libertarians are just as arbitrary in their principles as Democrats and Republicans. They have randomly-intersecting short-term goals, but with contradictory long-term individual goals.
"Because time and time again private corporations have proven to be unreliable when providing these services."
Can you give me examples of truly private sectors - pure laissez-faire capitalism unhindered by government regulation?
"Same difference, I don't care that the council outsources my sanitation or road construction so long as they are in control of it (and I am in control of them). Its maintaining the service level that's important here."
And what prevents you from maintaining control of a private service? Wouldn't this mean that you were being forced to pay for such a service? Otherwise, you could simply demand better service on threat of switching to a competitor.
"not the price this is why government it better than private corporations."
I didn't mention only price. I also mentioned efficiency.
"Corporations are quiet happy to let quality levels slide if a bigger profit is to be made"
You're making no sense here. What prevents customers from switching to a competitor willing to offer higher quality? Do you not understand how competition reduces costs while at the same time maximizing efficiency and quality of service?
"I don't really have a choice to go without Roads or Sanitation?"
You're using the status quo as supporting evidence in your argument for the status quo. Again, why would you have to go without roads or sanitation in a private system? Don't people want these things? Don't they need them?
"Now I have a choice who provides theses sevrices, a bureaucratic institution which only has its own self interests or a private entreprise which has a specific and ever increasing profit motive"
How can a company maximize profit if they drive their customers away by increasing prices while reducing quality of service?................
"What rights violation? You don't like having your rubbish hauled away?"
No. I do. Who said I didn't? What I don't like is being forced to pay for overpriced, low quality, government-appointed service.
"What about my right to live in a clean neighbourhood, how do you justify that "right" violation."
I'm not sure what you're referring to. I'm talking about individual rights - life, liberty, pursuit of happiness. Note the "pursuit of" before "happiness".
"In actual fact, there is no right violation."
So then you're saying taxation is voluntary?
"Just as you would pay to protect your car you will cherry pick the services that you want to receive for your money."
I think you're confusing buying legislators (the current system) with buying rights protection. Individual rights are universal. The violation of someone's right, anyone's, is the violation of a right, and the government is granted a monopoly on the enforcement of that right. There is no cherry-picking. You pay into a system that protects everyone, a system independent of your personal interests.
"How do you equate the reduction of government to the protection of rights, places like Finland have far more rights that you Americans or We Australians but also have more government."
They have more government-mandated "rights" at the expense of individual rights. I didn't simply say "reduce government", I actually said to reduce the "role of the government down to the protection of rights."
"Less government != more rights, if that were true than 0% government would equate to100% rights but this isn't true as you said, "who is in favour of anarchy"."
Indeed. You've attacked a straw man. Well done.
"I do consider education one of these things, this ensures that everyone has the same minimum level of education when competing for jobs, if education is skewed then those who could not afford education will be denied the same opportunity than those who could"
"Never mind about roads, sanitation, electricity... [etc]"
Why do these need to be provided by a government? All of the work is done through private contract with the government. Why does forced taxation need to get involved for these specific services, and how do you justify the rights violations that come with such an endeavor?
"Definitely not about Law enforcement, access to representation, customs and quarantine and most definitely not the military."
Who is in favor of anarchy? Of course we need the government to uphold and protect the rights of the citizenry - this is accomplished through the police, military, and courts, ideally funded voluntarily (just as you are willing to voluntarily insure your car to protect that investment, you would likely be willing to volunteer funding for the entity charged with upholding your fundamental rights as a rational human being). However, any move toward the reduction of the role of the government down to the protection of rights is a plus.
"The fact is, the idea behind the United States is that the government is the people. And if we decide we want to provide ourselves with "basic services" or what-have-you, then we can and we will."
So you've plummeted into subjectivity. Rather than question what should be done, you've rejected morality altogether and favor letting the majority decide whether or not individuals have rights. And what if two large majorities (say 45% vs 45% - larger majorities than has ever favored a single president in an election) hold such strong competing interpretations of reality (regardless of what those interpretations are - after all, you care not for specifics!), and bring the country to war with itself, half the states versus the other half? Which one is correct??? - is it simply whoever wins? Again, simply siding with the outcome is not stating an opinion either way - it's nothing more than siding with the outcome.
You still have not stated an opinion. You have simply sided with the status quo, upholding it as correct for being the status quo - blind faith in a misunderstanding of the founding principles of the Republic. It's nice that you were able to look up "democracy" in the dictionary, but it's a bit more complex than the "tyranny of the majority" that you have illustrated here.
"Just because it is your opinion that government shouldn't do that doesn't make it an invalid idea that it should."
Again, you've identified that I have expressed my opinion, but it is an opinion based on rationale and the facts of reality. Either ignore that rationale and continue to label it "just an opinion", or refute the reasoning behind my opinion: How do you justify the rights violations that are necessary for the majority to hold power over the minority?
"(Man, do I ever get tired of explaining this to libertarians...)"
As do I. Libertarians are just as arbitrary in their principles as Democrats and Republicans.
"But it's not up to you, nor up to any specific ideology. The people as a whole may decide what the government is reponsible for, and what it is not responsible for."
I'm not following you. I am aware that in the US, the people decide their government's responsibilities. You are question begging - the whole purpose of my discussing it here is to try to persuade people to understand why government services should be restricted to upholding and protecting individual rights. All you've done is identify what everyone already knew - that this country is based on democracy.
"The people as a whole have the right to sell off or nationalise telco or oil companies as they see fit."
No, they do not. You cannot legislate rights out of existence. The government does not grant individual rights - rather individuals come together to permit the government a monopoly on enforcement of those rights. When the government nationalizes a company of ten, one hundred, or one thousand employees, those rights are being violated in every case. As for your "argument" - it is simply an exaltation of the powers of the majority to control the minority, founded on the false premise of the existence of said powers.
"If the People do not retain the power over their own land and laws..."
You've stripped property of all meaning, and in turn have destroyed any meaning behind life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
"Every road a private toll-road, with $100 entry fee."
Who would pay that much? If someone demanded that amount to use their road, wouldn't there be a huge incentive for a neighboring property-owner to construct a road at a much cheaper fee, given the desire of most individuals for transportation?
Keeping on the subject of roads - where do the current roads come from? How are they maintained? Is it magic? Or are you already paying for them through taxation? In addition, what incentive is there for the government to provide the most efficient services at the lowest cost to the public? Does the government have any competition in that market?
"If there is no public roads, they are all private, owned by Mega Super Monopoly Roads Inc."
Can you provide any evidence that such a reality would not only be inevitable but sustainable? This is the oft-cited shotgun response to the idea of total privatization - that you would somehow be stuck in your own private prison and there would be nothing you could do about it... except that back in reality, such property owners would be violating your rights by preventing you from getting what you need to survive and interact with the world, and it is the responsibility of the police and courts to uphold such rights.
The rest of your post is a continuation of this line of reasoning - a FUD-piece supported by rationalization divorced from reality. It is quite similar to trying to bring God into existence through rationalization alone: it sounds convincing, but at the end of the day, no amount of thought is going to make it an actuality.
"The function of the government is whatever we say it is."
Who is this "we"? The majority? Are truth and factuality contingent upon popular opinion?
"Why is your opinion more important than mine?"
I don't know what your opinion is. You haven't stated anything. Your only statement is in regards to a misguided notion of reality, to which I would simply respond that my understanding of the world is grounded in reason and the facts of reality, not in something even more subjective and arbitrary: the sway of popular opinion.
I think I covered part of that in the rest of my post, to which you have not responded. In any case, I do not disagree that "general welfare" has a long-standing history. I just disagree with its current implementation, and whether or not forced taxation is the only means by which such services can be provided.
Where did I mention the Constitution? The Constitution is not a perfect document. Humans did in fact exist for at least a few centuries before the Constitution was written, and while they existed, they occasionally wrote about the proper functions of a government. With that said, the government spending referenced general welfare clause you refer to was originally intended to be general in nature, not favoring any specific class or group of individuals. That is quite different from what we have today - spending allocated to specific classes for the (unstated) purpose of buy votes.
"Things like this are very easy to say for people who have grown up on these basic services."
I haven't grown up on Social Security. I do see my income going towards it though. And what is the point in your comment? Is the status quo justified by being the status quo?
"Having a "right to life and property" doesn't do you much good when you have no money or facilities to defend that life and property."
Did you miss the part of my post where I described the proper function of the government?
Slashdot Mirror
You have asserted your definition of what people's rights are or should be; it is arbitrary and not a point of fact
It is? According to what? Or are you by definition asserting that everything is and always will be arbitrary?
From where is the fundamental nature of these rights derived?
From the right to life. Your fundamental choice as a living being is to live or to die. If you choose to die, that is the end of you. If you choose to live, you choose to have goals and values that will sustain your life. The whole idea of a moral system presupposes the choice to live. Do you deny that you, or anyone else, has the right to live?
it assumes that the right to life extends to "the right to the fruit of your labor"
So you do not deny that you have the right to survive, but you deny that you have the right to the resources of your survival? Isn't that called slavery? What of the person who is in charge of redistributing resources? How does that person have a right to those resources, but the people who produced it for the fulfillment of their personal goals do not?
this only applies if society is to agree with you that this is indeed a fundamental right
Society cannot vote away individual rights. They can vote to violate those rights, but the violation does not become morally justified simply by the backing of a majority.
Making it voluntary is akin to asking the free market to decide the value of taxation on the basis of its profitability.
How so? How is this related at all to the stock market? I am not arguing for anarchy - ie, private police forces, but for a voluntarily funded government monopoly on the use of force to uphold and protect rights. People value their property and their lives, and would want to support their government in defending those rights.
The result was that many of the museums dedicated to representing an industry, whose impact has been growing ever since industrialisation, were disbanded.
I'm not sure how this relates to government support of individual rights - the proper function of a government. If you believe museums dedicated to these subjects are worthy endeavors, you should donate to their causes and encourage your friends, family, and members of the community to do the same. What you should not do is force everyone to support such a cause through forced taxation. Again, I don't see why you used that as an example. Do you really think museums will just disappear if they no longer get government funding? If people suddenly have extra money in their pockets, do you believe some subset will not give that money to such causes? If so, you'll have to show some evidence to support this claim. If not, then I've misunderstood you and you should clarify.
Really? I've turned it off everywhere I could find. It's still there in the top right. Idle Pics. Idle Vids.
Now we get deep. You assume that "property" is a right. What is that right based on, if I may ask?
The right to life being a right to survive and pursue the fulfillment of your goals, which means the right to the fruit of your labor. Denying that any of my property is mine is a denial that I have a right to my productivity, which is a denial that I should be able to pursue the fulfillment of my goals, and that I do not have a right to survive of my own free will. I cannot prepare for the possibility of an emergency, whether it be emergency medical treatment or an emergency food shortage, etc, and my survival becomes entire dependent on the whims of government officials.
I challenge that assumption. I say that all rights are agreements of a society.
Individual rights exist even when you're a lone individual on a desert island. It is right for you to survive, to pursue your goals, and to exploit the resources around you in that pursuit. In the context of a society, this pursuit simply becomes limited in that you cannot kill another person or steal their goods. Your right to life in the context of a society is an acknowledgment of others' right to life. Only by voluntary trade to mutual benefit can you have what they have. Mutual benefit means you have what they want, and they have what you want. If it is not true, then it is not a voluntary trade.
Such agreements are entirely arbitrary.
You're simply sidestepping the question of what should be a moral society. Rather than discuss the possibility, you claim the entire pursuit is futile, and you cling to historical examples as evidence to support your position. How exactly do examples of what is imply that it is futile to think about what should be?
"how do we pay for the things that we need to support the rights of property, life, etc. ?".
You suggest that there's only one possible answer to this question, and you imply that a social agreement is one in which everyone agrees with the result. I do not agree with it, but what choice do I have but to move away? Rather than leave the problem behind, I'd rather persuade members of society to eventually bring about candidates willing to uphold individual rights, and then elect those candidates to help reduce the government to its proper roles.
Enforcement doesn't come free. Taxation is one way to pay for it. Certainly not the only one, but the one that our society has (grudingly, mostly) agreed upon.
And voluntary taxation is another way to pay for it.
You can challenge that agreement, but then you also open up the agreement "property" to challenge.
You're mixing up an individual right to property with the agreement not to violate that right.
Your US$ is legal tender because the US government says it is.
Producing currency is also outside the realm of a proper government, for the reasons I have previously stated. As for the value of money, you're right that since the government discarded the gold standard, our money only has value so long as our government is able to say it does. And that's a recipe for disaster.
Isn't it a bit odd to take the good part (money) and refuse the bad part (taxation) ?
You're mixing up the currency with the meaning behind it. Money is simply a means of trading productivity. I produce something you want, and you also produce, but I don't want any of your products. So you give me money instead, ideally money backed by a finite resource as a standard (such as gold), which I can then trade with another individual. Ideally, the currency of this system would be produced in the private sector.
See above. You implied it.
There's quite a difference between me making an appeal to a document, and me asserting a statement that also happens to be contained in a document. Upon investigation, you'll find that if I simply continue to assert the former, I'm committing a fallacy, whereas for the latter I'll be able to explain the line of reasoning behind the assertion. Likewise, if you continue to simply connect my statement with a statement in the constitution, you will continue to attack a strawman (or one might call it an association fallacy). The constitution is not a perfect document, and that is why I don't appeal to it. The constitution claims to promote basic rights, but then permits the government to violate those rights.
Try the reality of between 3.6 and 4.8 million people living under the poverty line in America.
You're promoting increased government control of the economy to fix a problem caused by government control of the economy. Ask yourself what laws might drive companies overseas.
Having socialist elements to government doesn't mean turning the country communist.
That's like saying, "I've only murdered a couple innocent people. I didn't kill nearly as many as some of the worst murderers in history, so I'm not so bad." A fundamental individual right is still being violated. The fact that people are willing to put up with some amount of rights violations is simply an indication of the adaptability to less-than-optimal conditions - it doesn't mean those violations are somehow justifiable. They are not.
Unless you completely disagree with taxation
I have no problem with taxation - only when it is forced from the public on threat of imprisonment or deportation.
(in which case I would say that your argument is woefully untenable)
You've applied a label to my assertion, but have not shown that your label is accurate.
Thus it is quite a stretch for you to extend the idea of property to taxable assets
That has to be the starting point. The right to life means the right to survive and to pursue the fulfillment of your goals, which requires the right to the fruit of your labor. The entire concept of property comes from this.
many examples, see Europe, in which these boundaries are clearly defined
I'm not ignoring examples, I'm just waiting for you to make an argument. Simply throwing up the example of a system in which many people are happy and prefer convenience over rights does not imply that such a system is sustainable in the long term.
That depends on your definition of a properly-functioning government. Many people believe that government has a socialist responsibility, in varying degrees, to its electorate. What makes you right and them wrong?
The facts of reality.
You allude to the constitution ("there is only the right to your life and your property"), and I've heard this a million times from Americans [snip]
Yes, indeed, and you will hear a lot of irrational Americans quoting the Bible. As you state, it is an appeal to authority (or appeal to tradition) to simply quote from an old document as your source of morality. I've done neither. What you're grasping at is a straw man.
a right not necessarily having to be enshrined in statute
Putting it in writing doesn't make something valid. Who claimed that?
For example, free universal healthcare (most of Europe).
Nothing can be gotten for free without stealing it. People who argue for free universal healthcare argue for the forced increase of taxes. They argue that their property is not their own, that their productivity is for their own benefit, but for the benefit of the state, for the benefit of others. There can be no right to property under such a system. Indeed "property" loses all meaning - since what's mine is actually everyone's, distributed as decided by a force-backed entity.
how can Americans be expected to show any kind of independent morality?
By thinking. Anyone can accomplish this, not just Americans.
...a broken machine that is driven by falsified ideals designed to inspire religious conviction...
Are you talking about theism or socialism? Both are based in mysticism - with the former, morality (what's "right") comes from God; with the latter, morality comes from subjective innate feelings, intuition, biology divorced from free will, or majority consensus (the last being a mixture of all of these).
"No one since the romans has tried privatized roads successfully."
First, you're going to have to provide a lot more evidence than that anecdote. Second, you cannot rule a possibility out based solely on historical evidence (see appeal to tradition). Whether or not it is less convenient to privatize roads is irrelevant - the purpose is to stop the rights violations that occur with forced taxation.
As for the Romans, they also tried and failed to do a lot of things that we can do and do take for granted today. Human thought, after all, is a process of building-up. It cannot simply be (conveniently) claimed to have stopped at some distant past epoch.
It's not just facebook, I've also heard that some ISPs are even blocking mention of BugMeNo[NO CARRIER]
I get it now - it's because he needs 2 legs to walk! Ha! Good show samzenpus, good show!
Yeah. Definitely in the boxes. Well, that mystery's solved........
Now what do we do? I guess we just have to wait for another exciting adventure brought to us by samzenpus!!!
I doubt GP meant that. "basic services" is stuff like the courts, police and the rest of the legal system
I doubt they meant that. If that's all they meant, then we have no debate (except on the source of the funding for these services).
Slashdot, for the love of your user base, for the love of my sanity, please get rid of samzenpus and idle! This place is quickly becoming a shithole.
I will not even bother to respond to the rest of your time wasting inanities that follow in your post until you do this.
You've labeled my statements "inanities", but have not shown that that label is accurate.
All your requests require that a society built on a certain government monopoly service be fixed almost overnight through private endeavor, with no inconvenience to existing customers - the same people who built their lives on a need for that monopoly. I never suggested any of these requirements would be realizable - my only concern is that individual rights not be violated.
Besides that, your requests also assume that no other modes of transportation can exist between two points.
Now your turn:
1. Explain to me how a private road owner who artificially inflates his prices can maintain his road despite driving away almost all of his customers, including people who are willing to persuade existing and prospective customers to go on "strike"?
2. Explain to me how you justify the rights violations that come with government-forced, tax-funded monopolies such as this.
Seeing as you disregarded 93% of my last post (really, I did the math), I will not bother continuing this discussion until you reply to the rest of my last post. Feel free to reply to this post with a butt-load of non-sequiturs, straw men, and ad hominems. Unlike Randall, I'm fine with letting someone be wrong all by his lonesome.
The problem with this assertion is the omission of the right to liberty.
I believe the right to liberty follows directly from the right to life.
We tried this already: We gave billions of dollars to Verizon and other former Bell companies when they marketed their bold plan to cover this land in fiber optics.
You're referring to government investment into the economy. What I was originally referring to was government extraction from the economy.
Or how about deregulating the financial, housing, and energy markets to "encourage private industry growth"? That Phil Gramm model of Reaganomics gave us Enron, Worldcom, and the current financial crunch.
You're going to have to explain things in a bit more detail than simple reference to failed corporations. How does preventing the government from restricting corporations relate to specific failed corporations? If a person invests in a company without concern for the stability of that company, should the government save that person from his bad decision? What exactly do you think is going to go wrong if a big company fails?
Just as you cannot have total faith in the government, you cannot have total faith in private enterprise.
I don't. The government should exist, in order to uphold and protect individual rights. But its functions should stop there.
Give the US infrastructure to the American market, and they can bring it to ruin faster than the US Government can.
Again, you're going to have to provide some evidence or rationale to support this claim.
You are of course missing the point entirely. Roads, unlike many other silly "capitalist" products for which the "model" of "free market" is semi-functional (think: plastic mouse-traps), are bound by geographical limitations. Therefore no alternative roads can be built in majority of locations, not by "neighboring property owner", nor by anyone at all.
According to what? Are we just supposed to assume that if a single private road demands people to pay exorbitant prices for use, that nobody would be interested in providing a cheaper alternative? Are we also supposed to assume that a property owner would be able to maintain a road if nobody drives on it because of the high fees? As should be clear by now, you are missing the point entirely.
no one can have 10 highways running in parallel, nor 4 sub-urban roads to every cul-de-sac.
Why would they? You're going to have to show some evidence/rationale that such a situation would be an inevitable reality and a requirement for a fully private system. You're then going to have to justify the individual rights violations that come with the current system.
"Competition" in road building is simply not practical, irrespective of wacky make-believe economic "models".
You've labeled an economic system that you do not understand as "wacky" and "make-believe", but have not explained why those labels are accurate.
And I will not even delve into the game theory background of such scenarios, whereby the optimal outcome for all the "neighboring property owners" is collusion or outright consolidation to maximize profits on their captive (literally!) "customers".
This is the typical shotgun response to total privatization - that someone a person would be locked in his own private prison. Back in reality, that person has the right to life and the pursuit of happiness, and any restriction on that right is open to government intervention (ie, police and courts).
They are a communal property
You have just stripped "property" of all its meaning, and discarded individual rights in the process.
that Libertarian whining of yours
Why the repeated use of the word "Libertarian"? Who claimed to be Libertarian? Libertarians are just as arbitrary in their principles as Democrats and Republicans.
In fact, this is why we have roads today, for they were always in the realm of the "basic necessities" for which the state was responsible, beginning somewhere with Egyptian Pharaohs.
Appeal to tradition
I simply described what would have happened if you had it your way and the government was to be excluded from providing such "basic necessities" to the society, exemplified by roads.
No, you fantasized about an absurd reality and then rejected it on its absurdity alone.
Incidentally, this is also why even the very notion of a "toll road" is a vicious travesty which goes against the very foundations of the society. It forcibly deprives everyone in the society from their common rights
There is no right to roads. They are however very beneficial and likely to be created in most any society, just like sanitation and education.
It is called: History. In the past, the core Libertarian principles were actually put in motion (in very early stages of human civilization) and were quickly (and inevitably) transformed into their natural end-product: the feudal order.
You'll have to be more specific about what you're referring to. I do not support a feudal system.
The fundamental implication of Libertarianism is that property (note that enforcing the rules of property is the main responsibility of the Libertarian state) is far more importa
"That doesn't refute what I said. Weather a company is hindered by government regulation has nothing to do with it."
It has everything to do with it. If the government has set up a situation by which people can game the market and drive out competitors, and if some people irrationally use these "services", then the rest are more likely to also take part in the game in order to save themselves. Your entire argument is that we need government intervention because the private sector has failed us, but you can't even give a historical example of a fully private sector, totally unimpeded by government intervention? Then on what is your argument founded?
"1 simple answer for both questions, I'm not one of their primary stakeholders, with government I am a primary stakeholder and have a measure of control."
Back to reality. You have a vote among millions, just as you are one person among millions of customers buying a product. If you choose not to buy a product, and persuade your friends, family, neighbors, and community to follow suit, you will have a substantial impact on that company. It's like a "customer's union", threatening to go on "strike" (ie, switch to a competitor).
"You are also assuming under a true "laissez-faire" system there will be competition (I'm not a believer in the free market fairy)"
What about the free market do you not believe in, and for what reasons? Simply labeling it a fairytale does not explain why that label is correct.
"if there is no competition there is no restriction on what they can do"
Can you please think about things a little more deeply before you reply. If there is no competition, because a company has bought up all the competitors, what happens when the company decides to provide poor service and increase their prices? Think about it. What would happen? There would be a lot of pissed off people, wanting an alternative. Does the world just stop there? Why would it stop there? Wouldn't there be a huge incentive for a related company, or a new startup, to expand into that market and provide exactly what the people want, at a lower price? Do you agree that there would be such an incentive - if not, why not? If even one single small company starts up and offers those services, suddenly there is competition, and the large company will be pressured by its customers to increase quality and reduce price.
"Telco's are good examples of this, in many nations they own the copper running under the street and into your house so unless regulated they are able to dictate who you are serviced by."
And who prevents others from laying additional copper lines, or water and sewage pipes? A magic elf? Or the government?
"This arrangement I have no issue with because I can still wrest control of the government while the corporation can ignore me."
As you have repeatedly done already, you're again arguing against the private industry with examples of private monopolies maintained by government restriction on the existence of competition.
"So when Microsoft decides you are a pirate and implements the WGA system... This is OK when talking about your operating system but when Sanitation is involved then what?"
Then you switch to a competitor. If no competitor exists, ask yourself why not. If service is so bad, why wouldn't someone want to come along and "steal away" the customers from the poorly-run company.
"contrary to your limited Libertarian view"
You repeatedly use the word "Libertarian". I am no Libertarian. At least in the US, Libertarians are just as arbitrary in their principles as Democrats and Republicans. They have randomly-intersecting short-term goals, but with contradictory long-term individual goals.
"This is an issue with your r
"Because time and time again private corporations have proven to be unreliable when providing these services."
Can you give me examples of truly private sectors - pure laissez-faire capitalism unhindered by government regulation?
"Same difference, I don't care that the council outsources my sanitation or road construction so long as they are in control of it (and I am in control of them). Its maintaining the service level that's important here."
And what prevents you from maintaining control of a private service? Wouldn't this mean that you were being forced to pay for such a service? Otherwise, you could simply demand better service on threat of switching to a competitor.
"not the price this is why government it better than private corporations."
I didn't mention only price. I also mentioned efficiency.
"Corporations are quiet happy to let quality levels slide if a bigger profit is to be made"
You're making no sense here. What prevents customers from switching to a competitor willing to offer higher quality? Do you not understand how competition reduces costs while at the same time maximizing efficiency and quality of service?
"I don't really have a choice to go without Roads or Sanitation?"
You're using the status quo as supporting evidence in your argument for the status quo. Again, why would you have to go without roads or sanitation in a private system? Don't people want these things? Don't they need them?
"Now I have a choice who provides theses sevrices, a bureaucratic institution which only has its own self interests or a private entreprise which has a specific and ever increasing profit motive"
How can a company maximize profit if they drive their customers away by increasing prices while reducing quality of service?................
"What rights violation? You don't like having your rubbish hauled away?"
No. I do. Who said I didn't? What I don't like is being forced to pay for overpriced, low quality, government-appointed service.
"What about my right to live in a clean neighbourhood, how do you justify that "right" violation."
I'm not sure what you're referring to. I'm talking about individual rights - life, liberty, pursuit of happiness. Note the "pursuit of" before "happiness".
"In actual fact, there is no right violation."
So then you're saying taxation is voluntary?
"Just as you would pay to protect your car you will cherry pick the services that you want to receive for your money."
I think you're confusing buying legislators (the current system) with buying rights protection. Individual rights are universal. The violation of someone's right, anyone's, is the violation of a right, and the government is granted a monopoly on the enforcement of that right. There is no cherry-picking. You pay into a system that protects everyone, a system independent of your personal interests.
"How do you equate the reduction of government to the protection of rights, places like Finland have far more rights that you Americans or We Australians but also have more government."
They have more government-mandated "rights" at the expense of individual rights. I didn't simply say "reduce government", I actually said to reduce the "role of the government down to the protection of rights."
"Less government != more rights, if that were true than 0% government would equate to100% rights but this isn't true as you said, "who is in favour of anarchy"."
Indeed. You've attacked a straw man. Well done.
"I do consider education one of these things, this ensures that everyone has the same minimum level of education when competing for jobs, if education is skewed then those who could not afford education will be denied the same opportunity than those who could"
According to what evidence? If you belie
"Never mind about roads, sanitation, electricity... [etc]"
Why do these need to be provided by a government? All of the work is done through private contract with the government. Why does forced taxation need to get involved for these specific services, and how do you justify the rights violations that come with such an endeavor?
"Definitely not about Law enforcement, access to representation, customs and quarantine and most definitely not the military."
Who is in favor of anarchy? Of course we need the government to uphold and protect the rights of the citizenry - this is accomplished through the police, military, and courts, ideally funded voluntarily (just as you are willing to voluntarily insure your car to protect that investment, you would likely be willing to volunteer funding for the entity charged with upholding your fundamental rights as a rational human being). However, any move toward the reduction of the role of the government down to the protection of rights is a plus.
"The fact is, the idea behind the United States is that the government is the people. And if we decide we want to provide ourselves with "basic services" or what-have-you, then we can and we will."
So you've plummeted into subjectivity. Rather than question what should be done, you've rejected morality altogether and favor letting the majority decide whether or not individuals have rights. And what if two large majorities (say 45% vs 45% - larger majorities than has ever favored a single president in an election) hold such strong competing interpretations of reality (regardless of what those interpretations are - after all, you care not for specifics!), and bring the country to war with itself, half the states versus the other half? Which one is correct??? - is it simply whoever wins? Again, simply siding with the outcome is not stating an opinion either way - it's nothing more than siding with the outcome.
You still have not stated an opinion. You have simply sided with the status quo, upholding it as correct for being the status quo - blind faith in a misunderstanding of the founding principles of the Republic. It's nice that you were able to look up "democracy" in the dictionary, but it's a bit more complex than the "tyranny of the majority" that you have illustrated here.
"Just because it is your opinion that government shouldn't do that doesn't make it an invalid idea that it should."
Again, you've identified that I have expressed my opinion, but it is an opinion based on rationale and the facts of reality. Either ignore that rationale and continue to label it "just an opinion", or refute the reasoning behind my opinion: How do you justify the rights violations that are necessary for the majority to hold power over the minority?
"(Man, do I ever get tired of explaining this to libertarians...)"
As do I. Libertarians are just as arbitrary in their principles as Democrats and Republicans.
"But it's not up to you, nor up to any specific ideology. The people as a whole may decide what the government is reponsible for, and what it is not responsible for."
I'm not following you. I am aware that in the US, the people decide their government's responsibilities. You are question begging - the whole purpose of my discussing it here is to try to persuade people to understand why government services should be restricted to upholding and protecting individual rights. All you've done is identify what everyone already knew - that this country is based on democracy.
"The people as a whole have the right to sell off or nationalise telco or oil companies as they see fit."
No, they do not. You cannot legislate rights out of existence. The government does not grant individual rights - rather individuals come together to permit the government a monopoly on enforcement of those rights. When the government nationalizes a company of ten, one hundred, or one thousand employees, those rights are being violated in every case. As for your "argument" - it is simply an exaltation of the powers of the majority to control the minority, founded on the false premise of the existence of said powers.
"If the People do not retain the power over their own land and laws..."
You've stripped property of all meaning, and in turn have destroyed any meaning behind life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
"Every road a private toll-road, with $100 entry fee."
Who would pay that much? If someone demanded that amount to use their road, wouldn't there be a huge incentive for a neighboring property-owner to construct a road at a much cheaper fee, given the desire of most individuals for transportation?
Keeping on the subject of roads - where do the current roads come from? How are they maintained? Is it magic? Or are you already paying for them through taxation? In addition, what incentive is there for the government to provide the most efficient services at the lowest cost to the public? Does the government have any competition in that market?
"If there is no public roads, they are all private, owned by Mega Super Monopoly Roads Inc."
Can you provide any evidence that such a reality would not only be inevitable but sustainable? This is the oft-cited shotgun response to the idea of total privatization - that you would somehow be stuck in your own private prison and there would be nothing you could do about it... except that back in reality, such property owners would be violating your rights by preventing you from getting what you need to survive and interact with the world, and it is the responsibility of the police and courts to uphold such rights.
The rest of your post is a continuation of this line of reasoning - a FUD-piece supported by rationalization divorced from reality. It is quite similar to trying to bring God into existence through rationalization alone: it sounds convincing, but at the end of the day, no amount of thought is going to make it an actuality.
"The function of the government is whatever we say it is."
Who is this "we"? The majority? Are truth and factuality contingent upon popular opinion?
"Why is your opinion more important than mine?"
I don't know what your opinion is. You haven't stated anything. Your only statement is in regards to a misguided notion of reality, to which I would simply respond that my understanding of the world is grounded in reason and the facts of reality, not in something even more subjective and arbitrary: the sway of popular opinion.
I think I covered part of that in the rest of my post, to which you have not responded. In any case, I do not disagree that "general welfare" has a long-standing history. I just disagree with its current implementation, and whether or not forced taxation is the only means by which such services can be provided.
I interpret the right to liberty to be a direct result of the right to life.
Where did I mention the Constitution? The Constitution is not a perfect document. Humans did in fact exist for at least a few centuries before the Constitution was written, and while they existed, they occasionally wrote about the proper functions of a government. With that said, the government spending referenced general welfare clause you refer to was originally intended to be general in nature, not favoring any specific class or group of individuals. That is quite different from what we have today - spending allocated to specific classes for the (unstated) purpose of buy votes.
"Things like this are very easy to say for people who have grown up on these basic services."
I haven't grown up on Social Security. I do see my income going towards it though. And what is the point in your comment? Is the status quo justified by being the status quo?
"Having a "right to life and property" doesn't do you much good when you have no money or facilities to defend that life and property."
Did you miss the part of my post where I described the proper function of the government?