By what right does the government compel my brother to action, since we do not endorse slavery? If you think people should be helped, help them with your own money. If I can not persuade my brother to help me voluntarily, perhaps I do not deserve help.
I don't want to depend on friends to help me. It is better to have a general universal rule, as a matter of "principle".
You were the one who brought up Afghanistan. Do you not think they are resisting?
"They" are not resisting. It is just a complex nation it is very costly to govern and control by force.
Perhaps you could try again to convey a meaning or idea. I have not endorsed solipsism in any way, perhaps you mean something different.
Your idea is the vision of a self-sustained individual who hides in his house and soil and defends it with his gun.
Yet you are the one promoting wealth redistribution in the name of "unity". You are the one that promoted the idea of government being "us" instead of "them".
I originally argued that the US lacks such a spirit of national Unity because it is a nation of immigrants, it is not racial homogenous etc. In general you don't have a problem with wealth distribution / pooling within a family, I mean wife and kids. Probably you would help (or be expected to help) a brother or your parents. I was told neighborhood cooperation and church are more important in the US. But you reject a governmental/mandatory distribution scheme, even when it comes to Health insurance.
Do the Americans feel as a people or are they just a population? "People" means there is a common history. The American myth is that your anchesters arrived and gained wealth by your own sweat and tears, equal opportunities. The state e.g. had no role to interfere with their religion or educational preferences. Of course that is a myth.
In english, your statement does not express any idea or argument. Perhaps you were not able to parse my sentence properly as what you think "would be true" is not identified.
Not even a marxist would endorse that.
Then you haven't thought it through. Taxation is compulsory. If you do not pay it, the government will apply force to you, either in property confiscation or prison time.
That is what I meant with the "US is different". For me taxation is more like paying my gasoline bill. And in fact, when I go to the gasoline station I pay gasoline tax. Actually you don't even notice because it is included in the price.
It is force, you can not resist. Therefore any use of government funds, to be ethical, must meet the requirement of ethically justifying the use of force.
I would prefer to generate my own electricity, so I don't have to pay for it.
I do not wish to take others property by force. For that reason I neither commit robbery nor advocate a welfare state.
Take a historical example, people are starving and dying. There is a supply shortage.
People who advocate centralised control of fiat money systems are not free market economists. The Federal Reserve is a government enforced banking cartel that in practice is more similar to the central banking system put forth by Marx and Engels in the Communist Manifesto than anything written by Adam Smith.
It is a lesser evil. All money you have comes from the bank...
So much of what is called "free market" and "capitalism" today is nothing to do with free market economics and everything to do with propaganda to introduce totalitarianism.
In what way, totalitarianism?
My concept of a free market is historically and ideologically accurate, although largely out of fashion right now. Government and economic systems that are now considered "free market capitalism" would have b
It seems from some of your responses that we are not talking about the same thing.
True.
That is significantly different to the government taxing the general population for my benefit. The brother/colleague/friend gets to choose.
Why should a government leave it to the choice of your brother to let you as a citizen live or die.
The site I linked to is for people who oppose both welfare and excessive military spending. Don't let facts get in your way though.
You know, I am for moderate spending. It is just that you see the contradictory radicalism, unique to the US. But when I look at the way your federal level works, and I happened to work with some government officials on your side I probably would join the movement to rest power within the states governments.
Yes, if you like. How do you think they would have gone against the USSR without US help.
So far as I know Afghanistan was able to defend any foreign occupation so far. We don't know what the US did to support the war but at least the wrong guys were funded.
Nevertheless I wasn't talking about them, but Europe, the UK, Australia, Japan, South Korea etc. As for their resistance to the US now, they can only succeed at that because the US avoids civilian casualties. The US has enough firepower to destroy any other country and all inhabitants.
Why should the US tax payer fund the government to kill other people. I am not aware of any "resistence" to the US.
"us" does not preclude individuality. If you make decisions for your life and I for mine, that is "us making decisions for our lives" ie: you and I both undertaking an individual decision making process can be referred to as "us" undertaking individual decision making processes. I suspect this is an english issue, perhaps your language has a different way of expressing this.
Yes, what I notice is that US politicians often speak about "us" and "our" values and what "we" are supposed to achieve. Over here you would ask back: "Who is "we"?"
Your concept of solipsism does not reflect history. It is a fiction, and a useful fiction that serves certain interests within a complex reality, but reality does not prove the fiction.
Any discussion on the merits of collectivism vs individualism involves taking a position on property rights.
No even for a marxist that would be true.
In your first sentence there is not a clear meaning in english, except "Yes" indicating that you consider applying force to gain people's money superior to gaining it through their voluntary co-operation.
Firstly, I am aware that US tax enforcement is different and forceful. For me the term "force" does not make any sense. Secondly, whether you are taxed or not depends mostly on the banking system. In regimes without a working tax regime we have usually high inflation rates. Any government around the world, small or large in spending, needs a certain budget. As the national economy is circular process there is nothing which gets "lost".
For this reason your ideology and mine will never be reconciled by debate as it is clear that those who hold to your position will resort to force regardless of the outcome. No wonder the socialists hate the 2nd amendment to the US Constitution.
In my nation it was socialists which always raised the demand for individual gun ownership to prevent a dispotic government.
The weird aspect to me is that the United States lack a conservative movement.
You think you'll provide a high general welfare by rewarding lack and punishing production? Those who produce the goods others need must be rewarded or they will stop doing so.
No. We are in a state of massive excesse production. There is no production bottleneck anymore for
That doesn't in the slightest improve the validity of your argument. You still need to be able to break free of your family and form different associations.
True. All I am saying is that our life is social. We don't sent our children with a knife in the jungle and wonder whether they will return. We decide to marry the person we love. We celebrate Christmas with our family. etc.
There is no possibility that we would submit to having them help make our decisions on anything, particularly the welfare of our children.
If you have no state guaranteed social network then you depend on family and community. E.g. a hurricane destroys your house. Maybe your brother or colleague or close friend lets you stay at his place. Such catastrophic events happened to Europeans en masse. E.g. displaced persons. E.g. airial bombine. E.g. war orphanage.
There are plenty of people in the US that oppose excessive military spending.
But those who agitate against standard welfare spending like health insurance don't. Personally US military bureaucracy looked very inefficient to me. So I fully understand the anti-government bias but basically that is because your public services lack quality.
It will, however, be a shock to those countries that despise the US for their military spending if it gets scaled down, because they'll have to defend themselves.
For instance? Afghanistan?
The "socialist west" has been dependent on US military spending for their well being for decades, as all socialism depends on capitalism to pay its way.
West is not socialist.
The important thing to keep in mind is the notion of "individuality". It is not "the state" or "the government" but "us" to decide for our lives.
us != individuality.
Why should others be able to impose by force (through the government) rules for your life in cases which do not involve you harming another?
That is what I mean with "unity". For you, the government is a "they" and a "them".
Would you let your "family" plunder your wage and give it to your lazy cousin to enable him to live a lifestyle he isn't willing to work for himself? If so, by what right do you consider that you can plunder MY wage to give it to your lazy cousin? Or your hardworking but unlucky cousin, for that matter? The ONLY justification is "because we can, we have the numbers to force the product of you labour from you and give it to others", in which there can be no ethical condemnation on any who successfully evade that property confiscation.
Who spoke about "property"? Would you agree on such a scheme if it increases your property?
You're saying that taking from people by force in order to help others is "more fair" than people giving voluntarily?
Yes, because voluntary spending is no base. And your concept of property and income is wrong.
Why do you only consider fairness to those in need and not fairness to the producer?
In general the role is to ensure a high general welfare.
That's a view of fairness that I don't acknowledge as valid. It is inherently unfair.
The amusing aspect in the States is that people defend the teaching which do not profit from it. Interest driven brainwash of course. What I meant with solidarity is exactly that.
Why do you think that someone having an illness imposes an obligation on me to pay for their care? I didn't cause their problem.
The most simple assumption is that an illness may affect anyone, including you. The insurance distributes the risk. As we know from Stiglitz-Rothschild only a mandatory health insurance is efficient, everything else leads to insurance market failure.
In the EU Article 15 TFUE applies which gets citizens access to these documents. So the only legal grounds is protection of interests of nations outside of the European Union.
Ironically the United States ideology opposes public welfare but does not oppose excessive military spending.
The important thing to keep in mind is the notion of "unity". It is not "the state" or "the government" but "us" to define the rules.
Solidarity, the essence of social democratic mind set common in all Western nations except the US, comes from a community paradigm. People help each other but it is more fair if individuals don't rely on "charity". It seems cynical to say, people don't need our help and assistence. I mean, everyone is free to not accept these public benefits.
When I applied to a job from an United States employer they talked about a "benefits package", that was "health care". I mean, seriously, that is so fundamental, how can there be an employee without health care, a civilized nation without universal health care? If you have get health problems you are "free to die" or decide not to get medical treatment...? That is just disgusting. I mean, you don't even think about it.
In fact they could wide spread the idea to fund open source development to lower these nations strategic dependencies from the United States.
A message that seems worth to spread around. I want my government to spend one billion on Linux Desktop and OpenOffice development, so we finally stop public tax payer money to end up in the pockets of an unethical American company.
Why shouldn't the goverment simply do what Google SoC does. Or they could spent 80 million to do a "winter of code" in their name. In government terms that is peanuts but it would make a huge difference to internet development and raise international attention.
I mean, when you think of international conferences, most ^evil^ lobbyists use the wi-fi in the conference hotel. The presentation is boring, so 60% of them read their mails during the conference. Of course a criminal could just monitor their traffic, read their mails and grab their access passwords, then sent their mails and stuff to wikileaks. It is a danger to our national security because it is technically feasible but no one does. So the protection against criminal action is actually ethics not technology. The real danger is that Robin Hack gets famous and popular, and these pratices get spread by kiddies who enjoy to "Hack the Banksters". Or maybe the Chinese do, no idea.
Honestly, I would suggest, get us a Billion EUR for the European Windows bailout. That would save European markets, citizens and businesses a whole lot of money transferred to the United States.
The EU governments should invest in Linux Desktop, OpenOffice development and so forth to get rid off our Redmond dependency. So far only Munich and Spain gets it while other agencies get corrupted by lobbyists.
Who says that I want to support users of IE6? Just detect and redirect them. They can install IE8, Firefox, Safari, Chrome, Opera whatever, and come back. IE6 users are invited to stay out.
Nevertheless, I wonder if there is some cut and paste code to automatically ban ie6 users from your website and redirect them to a browser choice website.
Slashdot Mirror
Why not? Who said that Christ was against sex?
In fact "human freedom" is a grant, a wilful limitation of absolute power. As a result things may go wrong
The land of the slain Indians and broken contracts...
By what right does the government compel my brother to action, since we do not endorse slavery? If you think people should be helped, help them with your own money. If I can not persuade my brother to help me voluntarily, perhaps I do not deserve help.
I don't want to depend on friends to help me. It is better to have a general universal rule, as a matter of "principle".
You were the one who brought up Afghanistan. Do you not think they are resisting?
"They" are not resisting. It is just a complex nation it is very costly to govern and control by force.
Perhaps you could try again to convey a meaning or idea. I have not endorsed solipsism in any way, perhaps you mean something different.
Your idea is the vision of a self-sustained individual who hides in his house and soil and defends it with his gun.
Yet you are the one promoting wealth redistribution in the name of "unity". You are the one that promoted the idea of government being "us" instead of "them".
I originally argued that the US lacks such a spirit of national Unity because it is a nation of immigrants, it is not racial homogenous etc. In general you don't have a problem with wealth distribution / pooling within a family, I mean wife and kids. Probably you would help (or be expected to help) a brother or your parents. I was told neighborhood cooperation and church are more important in the US. But you reject a governmental/mandatory distribution scheme, even when it comes to Health insurance.
Do the Americans feel as a people or are they just a population? "People" means there is a common history. The American myth is that your anchesters arrived and gained wealth by your own sweat and tears, equal opportunities. The state e.g. had no role to interfere with their religion or educational preferences. Of course that is a myth.
In english, your statement does not express any idea or argument. Perhaps you were not able to parse my sentence properly as what you think "would be true" is not identified.
Not even a marxist would endorse that.
Then you haven't thought it through. Taxation is compulsory. If you do not pay it, the government will apply force to you, either in property confiscation or prison time.
That is what I meant with the "US is different".
For me taxation is more like paying my gasoline bill. And in fact, when I go to the gasoline station I pay gasoline tax. Actually you don't even notice because it is included in the price.
It is force, you can not resist. Therefore any use of government funds, to be ethical, must meet the requirement of ethically justifying the use of force.
I would prefer to generate my own electricity, so I don't have to pay for it.
I do not wish to take others property by force. For that reason I neither commit robbery nor advocate a welfare state.
Take a historical example, people are starving and dying. There is a supply shortage.
People who advocate centralised control of fiat money systems are not free market economists. The Federal Reserve is a government enforced banking cartel that in practice is more similar to the central banking system put forth by Marx and Engels in the Communist Manifesto than anything written by Adam Smith.
It is a lesser evil. All money you have comes from the bank...
So much of what is called "free market" and "capitalism" today is nothing to do with free market economics and everything to do with propaganda to introduce totalitarianism.
In what way, totalitarianism?
My concept of a free market is historically and ideologically accurate, although largely out of fashion right now. Government and economic systems that are now considered "free market capitalism" would have b
I mean honestly, who expected Flightgear to take the place of FlightSimulator... That is the advantage of such open source software. It develops.
It seems from some of your responses that we are not talking about the same thing.
True.
That is significantly different to the government taxing the general population for my benefit. The brother/colleague/friend gets to choose.
Why should a government leave it to the choice of your brother to let you as a citizen live or die.
The site I linked to is for people who oppose both welfare and excessive military spending. Don't let facts get in your way though.
You know, I am for moderate spending. It is just that you see the contradictory radicalism, unique to the US. But when I look at the way your federal level works, and I happened to work with some government officials on your side I probably would join the movement to rest power within the states governments.
Yes, if you like. How do you think they would have gone against the USSR without US help.
So far as I know Afghanistan was able to defend any foreign occupation so far. We don't know what the US did to support the war but at least the wrong guys were funded.
Nevertheless I wasn't talking about them, but Europe, the UK, Australia, Japan, South Korea etc. As for their resistance to the US now, they can only succeed at that because the US avoids civilian casualties. The US has enough firepower to destroy any other country and all inhabitants.
Why should the US tax payer fund the government to kill other people. I am not aware of any "resistence" to the US.
"us" does not preclude individuality. If you make decisions for your life and I for mine, that is "us making decisions for our lives" ie: you and I both undertaking an individual decision making process can be referred to as "us" undertaking individual decision making processes. I suspect this is an english issue, perhaps your language has a different way of expressing this.
Yes, what I notice is that US politicians often speak about "us" and "our" values and what "we" are supposed to achieve. Over here you would ask back: "Who is "we"?"
Your concept of solipsism does not reflect history. It is a fiction, and a useful fiction that serves certain interests within a complex reality, but reality does not prove the fiction.
Any discussion on the merits of collectivism vs individualism involves taking a position on property rights.
No even for a marxist that would be true.
In your first sentence there is not a clear meaning in english, except "Yes" indicating that you consider applying force to gain people's money superior to gaining it through their voluntary co-operation.
Firstly, I am aware that US tax enforcement is different and forceful. For me the term "force" does not make any sense. Secondly, whether you are taxed or not depends mostly on the banking system. In regimes without a working tax regime we have usually high inflation rates. Any government around the world, small or large in spending, needs a certain budget. As the national economy is circular process there is nothing which gets "lost".
For this reason your ideology and mine will never be reconciled by debate as it is clear that those who hold to your position will resort to force regardless of the outcome. No wonder the socialists hate the 2nd amendment to the US Constitution.
In my nation it was socialists which always raised the demand for individual gun ownership to prevent a dispotic government.
The weird aspect to me is that the United States lack a conservative movement.
You think you'll provide a high general welfare by rewarding lack and punishing production? Those who produce the goods others need must be rewarded or they will stop doing so.
No. We are in a state of massive excesse production. There is no production bottleneck anymore for
Oh yeah, why not use GNUSTEP...
That doesn't in the slightest improve the validity of your argument. You still need to be able to break free of your family and form different associations.
True. All I am saying is that our life is social. We don't sent our children with a knife in the jungle and wonder whether they will return. We decide to marry the person we love. We celebrate Christmas with our family. etc.
There is no possibility that we would submit to having them help make our decisions on anything, particularly the welfare of our children.
If you have no state guaranteed social network then you depend on family and community. E.g. a hurricane destroys your house. Maybe your brother or colleague or close friend lets you stay at his place. Such catastrophic events happened to Europeans en masse. E.g. displaced persons. E.g. airial bombine. E.g. war orphanage.
There are plenty of people in the US that oppose excessive military spending.
But those who agitate against standard welfare spending like health insurance don't. Personally US military bureaucracy looked very inefficient to me. So I fully understand the anti-government bias but basically that is because your public services lack quality.
It will, however, be a shock to those countries that despise the US for their military spending if it gets scaled down, because they'll have to defend themselves.
For instance? Afghanistan?
The "socialist west" has been dependent on US military spending for their well being for decades, as all socialism depends on capitalism to pay its way.
West is not socialist.
The important thing to keep in mind is the notion of "individuality". It is not "the state" or "the government" but "us" to decide for our lives.
us != individuality.
Why should others be able to impose by force (through the government) rules for your life in cases which do not involve you harming another?
That is what I mean with "unity". For you, the government is a "they" and a "them".
Would you let your "family" plunder your wage and give it to your lazy cousin to enable him to live a lifestyle he isn't willing to work for himself? If so, by what right do you consider that you can plunder MY wage to give it to your lazy cousin? Or your hardworking but unlucky cousin, for that matter? The ONLY justification is "because we can, we have the numbers to force the product of you labour from you and give it to others", in which there can be no ethical condemnation on any who successfully evade that property confiscation.
Who spoke about "property"? Would you agree on such a scheme if it increases your property?
You're saying that taking from people by force in order to help others is "more fair" than people giving voluntarily?
Yes, because voluntary spending is no base. And your concept of property and income is wrong.
Why do you only consider fairness to those in need and not fairness to the producer?
In general the role is to ensure a high general welfare.
That's a view of fairness that I don't acknowledge as valid. It is inherently unfair.
The amusing aspect in the States is that people defend the teaching which do not profit from it. Interest driven brainwash of course. What I meant with solidarity is exactly that.
Why do you think that someone having an illness imposes an obligation on me to pay for their care? I didn't cause their problem.
The most simple assumption is that an illness may affect anyone, including you. The insurance distributes the risk. As we know from Stiglitz-Rothschild only a mandatory health insurance is efficient, everything else leads to insurance market failure.
Here is my
In the EU Article 15 TFUE applies which gets citizens access to these documents. So the only legal grounds is protection of interests of nations outside of the European Union.
Sharing a Wi-FI connection should be common pratice. This is what Freifunk is about.
Still there is a difference between artistic works and reproduction ("kitsch", "epigonal works").
Say "family".
Ironically the United States ideology opposes public welfare but does not oppose excessive military spending.
The important thing to keep in mind is the notion of "unity". It is not "the state" or "the government" but "us" to define the rules.
Solidarity, the essence of social democratic mind set common in all Western nations except the US, comes from a community paradigm. People help each other but it is more fair if individuals don't rely on "charity". It seems cynical to say, people don't need our help and assistence. I mean, everyone is free to not accept these public benefits.
When I applied to a job from an United States employer they talked about a "benefits package", that was "health care". I mean, seriously, that is so fundamental, how can there be an employee without health care, a civilized nation without universal health care? If you have get health problems you are "free to die" or decide not to get medical treatment...? That is just disgusting. I mean, you don't even think about it.
But these IIPA guys are just bloody trolls.
In fact they could wide spread the idea to fund open source development to lower these nations strategic dependencies from the United States.
A message that seems worth to spread around. I want my government to spend one billion on Linux Desktop and OpenOffice development, so we finally stop public tax payer money to end up in the pockets of an unethical American company.
Get us our money back!!!
Direct funding, not tax incentives. In fact the EU funds a lot of development, just that it is not open source.
Why shouldn't the goverment simply do what Google SoC does. Or they could spent 80 million to do a "winter of code" in their name. In government terms that is peanuts but it would make a huge difference to internet development and raise international attention.
That is basically because the US is an immigrant state and you lack a solidarity paradigm.
E.g. it is nonsense to say parents should not care for their children, right?
I mean, when you think of international conferences, most ^evil^ lobbyists use the wi-fi in the conference hotel. The presentation is boring, so 60% of them read their mails during the conference. Of course a criminal could just monitor their traffic, read their mails and grab their access passwords, then sent their mails and stuff to wikileaks. It is a danger to our national security because it is technically feasible but no one does. So the protection against criminal action is actually ethics not technology. The real danger is that Robin Hack gets famous and popular, and these pratices get spread by kiddies who enjoy to "Hack the Banksters". Or maybe the Chinese do, no idea.
Not in charge, just pay the bill, not the Bill.
There are many ways for effective Open Source promotion cmp. Google Summer of Code.
The government should provide operating systems as a public service. That would make a whole lot of sense.
Honestly, I would suggest, get us a Billion EUR for the European Windows bailout. That would save European markets, citizens and businesses a whole lot of money transferred to the United States.
The EU governments should invest in Linux Desktop, OpenOffice development and so forth to get rid off our Redmond dependency. So far only Munich and Spain gets it while other agencies get corrupted by lobbyists.
Who says that I want to support users of IE6? Just detect and redirect them. They can install IE8, Firefox, Safari, Chrome, Opera whatever, and come back. IE6 users are invited to stay out.
As long as html5 is patent-free, ok. Otherwise it is clearly unacceptable.
Microsoft does not support Opera.
Nevertheless, I wonder if there is some cut and paste code to automatically ban ie6 users from your website and redirect them to a browser choice website.
Indeed it makes sense to support certain software infrastructure elements by the government.
Operating systems and office productivity software are examples. Open solaris and Open Office could be developed and supported by the military.
Solaris is VERY common in the enterprises. Freebsd shows what a community driven Operating System may achieve.