Moral or not, justified or not, the decisions of the group of people calling themselves the government are enforced by armed men that are willing to use deadly force to compel obedience. If you try tell me that they won't use deadly force to compel obedience then you are lying, not disagreeing.
Look, before we end up writing a political blog, can we call truce? As I've said... I won't sway you, nor you me. I doubt anyone else much cares.:-P
I'm not the one holding the gun.
As long as you assert that one group of people have the right to use violence to force another group of people to purchase a service that they do not choose voluntarily I will continue to point out the gun in the room. If you want a truce then all you need to do is put the gun away.
If I have given you consideration and you fail to perform as specified by the contract that you consented to then I have the right to recover my property.
If I pay my taxes, and you don't, you are stealing from me and the government, and getting the benefits of a civil society without paying for it.
You would be outraged if I came by your house at night and painted it without your knowledge or consent and then handed you a bill. I could make the same claim that by failing to pay the bill you were stealing from me. You'd be even more outraged if I told you that I was coming back next month to paint the house and the only way you could refuse this service was to move to a different neighborhood.
If you'd call it extortion when I sent a squad of armed goons to your house to extract the bill from you in the above scenario then can not refuse to apply the same label to taxation and remain intellectually honest.
Okay. How about contracts? Because that's all the government is. It's a contract, created by the people, of their own free will (by virtue of them staying in the government, not overthrowing it, and not leaving it for a different government, as I said you were free to do above). The contract provides services in exchange for money, like a lot of other things. It's just not between an individual and another individual, or even between and individual and a collective. It's between one collective and another collective.
There's no such thing as "the people". The only thing that exists are individuality persons.
The government can not justify itself based on the claim of a "social contract" because the contract is invalid based on the government's own standards.
If you plan on armed insurrection against the "revenuers", well, that's a principled stand you can choose to make.
I plan on doing nothing of the sort. I simply refuse to lie about what is happening.
Morality is universal. If it would be armed robbery for me to do it then it's armed robbery when an IRS agent does the same thing.
A group of people established the government of their own will at some point in history. You are either a) a descendant of that very group of people, b) a descendant of someone else who, again of their own will joined that group of people, or c) you yourself, of your own will joined that group of people. It's ethical for that group to enforce their will because they were given that authority by the people themselves.
What exactly to a) or c) have to do with anything? No person is a party to an agreement made by his or her ancestors.
In fact I just gave you the definition of government. Do you not agree with having a government?
I believe in universal morality. If murder is wrong for one person then it's wrong for everyone. If theft is wrong for one person then it's wrong for everyone. If you can make up some kind of organization that does not violate the very same moral principles that it claims to enforce upon everybody else then go for it. If you can't do that and still persist in maintaining that the institution has any moral legitimacy then I will denounce you as evil.
So if you don't think that I should get shot if I choose not to pay for some government program that I disagree with then you oppose mandatory taxation? Because as it stands right now if I choose not to pay after a series of letters armed men will come to my house to kidnap me and if I resit them in the same way as I would resist any other home invader they will shoot me.
It protects the strong and wealthy, and leaves everybody else as grist for the mill... you really thing that would make a better society? Your system is Neitzsche run amok, and will foster an environment in which you will face the threat of violence from every body else who wants your stuff.
That's the most accurate description of a government I've read in this thread.
When that restraint is removed, the strong begin to take the weak
In order for this argument to be valid you'd have to prove that having a government results in less instances of the "strong taking the weak" instead of more instances. The empirical evidence does not appear to be in your favor.
Let's face it, living with other people is hard. Really hard, based on history. So far representative democracy under the Westphalian system is the best way we found to do it without killing each other. Going back to anarchy seems like a bad idea, based on experience. Lots of death and such.
During any given month how many times do you personally resort to violence in order to resolve disputes that arise with the people you interact with? Of all the people you know how many often do they use violence to resolve interpersonal disputes? What percentage of disputes that you personally witness require violence to resolve them?
I can't imagine why I am feeding you, troll, but here it goes: for the sake of argument, let's suppose you are raping and pillaging the countryside. A group of citizens decide to use violence to impose their will that you stop. Who has the moral high ground there? (answer: not you)
Congratulations, you've discovered the difference between self defense and compulsion.
Since you have not moved to Somalia, I conclude from that you're not really an anarchist, you're just a freeloader who hates the idea of having to pay for the social order from which you so greatly benefit.
Somalia is not an example of an anarchist society. Just because a government collapses doesn't mean that people respect the non-aggression principle any more than blowing up all the churches in a country turns everybody into atheists.
Yeah. I mean, I can respect both the position that I should hand over my wallet to a mugger and the position that theft is immoral as belonging to two differing schools of thought and ideology, and just because I don't agree with one of those schools doesn't render the other position "morally unsound".
We're mostly pretty intelligent people here. We don't need a line of ethical reasoning shoved down our throat.
Well, the vendors of goods and services that you take or use and are unwilling to pay for are more than happy to use the force of the law and threat of violence to get you to pay for those goods and services as well. If not the police, than Luigi and Mikko will do it.
That's not the same thing at all. I choose whether or not I want to buy something from Kroger. They don't send Luigi and Mikko with machine guns around the entire neighborhood to inform me that I will purchase $100 of groceries from them every week whether I want to or not and if they did they'd be correctly labeled as evil for doing it.
You haven't addressed why it's moral and ethical for one group of people to use violence to enforce their will on another group of people regardless of any prosperity that may or may not result.
He really shouldn't throw terms like "intellectually sound" around if he's in favor of taxes because the idea that's it's ethical and moral to use the threat of violence to force people to purchase services that they are not willing to purchase voluntarily rests on pretty shaky ground itself.
The idea that congress would let an untraceable currency minted by the public get going in any serious way... that's just delusional.
Is it really?
Personally I think that before long they'll start falling over themselves to start accepting untraceable bribes and kickbacks no matter what kind of noise they make on camera.
Slashdot Mirror
Moral or not, justified or not, the decisions of the group of people calling themselves the government are enforced by armed men that are willing to use deadly force to compel obedience. If you try tell me that they won't use deadly force to compel obedience then you are lying, not disagreeing.
There's still a gun in the room, no matter how inconvenient it is for you to admit it.
I'm not the one holding the gun. As long as you assert that one group of people have the right to use violence to force another group of people to purchase a service that they do not choose voluntarily I will continue to point out the gun in the room. If you want a truce then all you need to do is put the gun away.
If I have given you consideration and you fail to perform as specified by the contract that you consented to then I have the right to recover my property.
You would be outraged if I came by your house at night and painted it without your knowledge or consent and then handed you a bill. I could make the same claim that by failing to pay the bill you were stealing from me. You'd be even more outraged if I told you that I was coming back next month to paint the house and the only way you could refuse this service was to move to a different neighborhood. If you'd call it extortion when I sent a squad of armed goons to your house to extract the bill from you in the above scenario then can not refuse to apply the same label to taxation and remain intellectually honest.
Too bad there's no way to test that proposition.
I notice that you didn't supply your own definition of theft - you simply asserted that what the government does isn't theft.
There's no such thing as "the people". The only thing that exists are individuality persons. The government can not justify itself based on the claim of a "social contract" because the contract is invalid based on the government's own standards.
I plan on doing nothing of the sort. I simply refuse to lie about what is happening. Morality is universal. If it would be armed robbery for me to do it then it's armed robbery when an IRS agent does the same thing.
What exactly to a) or c) have to do with anything? No person is a party to an agreement made by his or her ancestors.
I believe in universal morality. If murder is wrong for one person then it's wrong for everyone. If theft is wrong for one person then it's wrong for everyone. If you can make up some kind of organization that does not violate the very same moral principles that it claims to enforce upon everybody else then go for it. If you can't do that and still persist in maintaining that the institution has any moral legitimacy then I will denounce you as evil.
So if you don't think that I should get shot if I choose not to pay for some government program that I disagree with then you oppose mandatory taxation? Because as it stands right now if I choose not to pay after a series of letters armed men will come to my house to kidnap me and if I resit them in the same way as I would resist any other home invader they will shoot me.
All that I ask from you is that you don't advocate that I get shot for disagreeing with you.
That's the most accurate description of a government I've read in this thread.
In order for this argument to be valid you'd have to prove that having a government results in less instances of the "strong taking the weak" instead of more instances. The empirical evidence does not appear to be in your favor.
Why exactly is this a problem?
Utilitarianiam is't morality - it's just "might makes right".
During any given month how many times do you personally resort to violence in order to resolve disputes that arise with the people you interact with? Of all the people you know how many often do they use violence to resolve interpersonal disputes? What percentage of disputes that you personally witness require violence to resolve them?
Congratulations, you've discovered the difference between self defense and compulsion.
Somalia is not an example of an anarchist society. Just because a government collapses doesn't mean that people respect the non-aggression principle any more than blowing up all the churches in a country turns everybody into atheists.
Yeah. I mean, I can respect both the position that I should hand over my wallet to a mugger and the position that theft is immoral as belonging to two differing schools of thought and ideology, and just because I don't agree with one of those schools doesn't render the other position "morally unsound". We're mostly pretty intelligent people here. We don't need a line of ethical reasoning shoved down our throat.
That's not the same thing at all. I choose whether or not I want to buy something from Kroger. They don't send Luigi and Mikko with machine guns around the entire neighborhood to inform me that I will purchase $100 of groceries from them every week whether I want to or not and if they did they'd be correctly labeled as evil for doing it.
You haven't addressed why it's moral and ethical for one group of people to use violence to enforce their will on another group of people regardless of any prosperity that may or may not result.
He really shouldn't throw terms like "intellectually sound" around if he's in favor of taxes because the idea that's it's ethical and moral to use the threat of violence to force people to purchase services that they are not willing to purchase voluntarily rests on pretty shaky ground itself.
I installed Gentoo on an Ultra 5 last week just to see if it still works.
Is it really? Personally I think that before long they'll start falling over themselves to start accepting untraceable bribes and kickbacks no matter what kind of noise they make on camera.
The reality of the situation is that government is organized crime.