From the link, emphasis mine: "Kentucky's state-backed $150 million creationist theme park, The Ark Encounter, will allow visitors to explore a literal interpretation of the Bible's story of Noah and the ark."
Is this actually legal? And does anyone have any statistics on how much Kentucky is using on education?
My hand hurts when I write. It doesn't hurt when I type. Go fuck yourself for deciding what is best for me.
This isn't about what's best for you. This is about what can be expected of college students. You find writing inconvenient, others find your computer display distracting. There is no reason why one should take precedence over other, as previous posters asserted.
Once, for an actual assignment, I tried to find some real counter arguments to Ayn Rand's philosophy and all I find is either idiotic ad hominem abuse like this or literary criticisms of her writing style/plot/characters etc which is an epic case of missing the point. If you know of any please feel free to provide them.
Atlas Shrugged - which Rand wrote as an introduction to her philosophy - is a silly superhero fantasy about an ubermensch engineer coming up with a magical generator and retreating from the world along with his equally superhuman businessman buddies, at which point the world collapses. This is accompanied by a rambling speech dozens of pages long, and an apparent rape fetish. Oh, and it also extolls the virtues of smoking, presumably because Rand herself smoked and couldn't keep her personal habits separate from her wrk. What the heck do you expect the responses to be, when this crap is represented as "philosophy" and evidence for the virtues of selfishness - and the evilness of altruism - the woman preached?
Objectivism isn't really a philosophy, it's a bunch of assertions about the nature of reality and human nature, and many of those assertions are flat-out wrong, those about the nature of selfishness perhaps most obviously so: selfish people don't debate whether it's in accordance to their nature as human to take something or not, they simply take and be done with it. That, alone, is sufficient to invalidate her conclusions about what the best political system might be.
None of this would really matter if objectivism was confined to academia; unfortunately, as noted above, it isn't. Objectivism has political goals which, due to the erroneous assertions at its core, tend to create truly destructive consequences when implemented. And, much as I hate to say this, calm and reasoned debate on politics is not effective for stopping said policy, while mud-slinging is.
Anyone in college, should be able to handle the tiny distraction of a active screen in their eyesight. Period.
Anyone in college should be able to handle taking notes with pen and peper and sitting through a class without playing with a computer. Exclamation mark.
Smoking around others harms their health. At most, using a laptop in class will cause some of the weaker-minded students who couldn't concentrate even if laptops were banned to become distracted. Such unmotivated people aren't even worth worrying about, and they're certainly not worth banning a useful tool over.
At most, smoking around other people will cause some of the weaker-bodied peopel who wouldn't remain healthy even if smoking around others was banned to become ill. Such weak people aren't even worth worrying about, and they're certainly not worth banning a luxury item over.
If Ayn Rand books were the ones being censored, then Slashdot would have nothing to say.
I would. Much as I hate the evil little bitch and her fanclub, freedom of speech means that evil little bitches also get to say their piece, no matter how vile it might be.
Amazon is a powerless entity and I give my middle finger to them. If we ALL did that then amazon would soon be like Wards (dead) or Commodore (dead) or Tucker Motors (dead).
And if we ALL voted for third parties in the next elections, the Demopublicans would be ousted from power. It's simply not going to happen.
They are a "90% eBook monopoly" only because we made them that way, and we can destroy them just as easily.
You live in a democracy, so you can destroy your government just as easily. That kinda negates all of your points.
If someone tells me to kill someone else in cold blood, I wouldn't do it. Period. I don't care if they can squash me like a bug. I damn sure hope that most other people wouldn't kill in cold blood either.
Based on how well conscription armies seem to work, I'd say that your hope is in vain. All you have to do is frame the argument so killing becomes your moral obligation, and most people will not only do it but also consider themselves valorous heroes for it. Just like Abraham did. That's human nature for you.
It was not any one reason, and surely not because we could remove an evil tyrant. Heck, we are still propping up many.
Perhaps you could name a few of these evil tyrants, and the specific means by which US is propping them up? It would allow the specific cases to be looked into, and perhaps something to be done about them.
I never said he was. However, how do you assume a democracy will peacefully resolve such an issue?
Tax oil production, then use the money from that to develop infrastructure and provide public services? Or nationalize the oil fields and directly pocket the money from oil shares. Either way works fine.
I'm betting they won't. There will be civil war.
Only if the central government is weaker than the regional governments. That's one of the reasons why limiting it too much is not necessarily a good idea.
Sorta like Saddam Hussein and his sons running Iraq. But Jesus, did America catch hell for doing something about it. We still are.
It's not ousting Saddam that got you Hell, it's the collateral damage that did. And, from what I've understood, there were quite a few shady financial interests that weren't happy to see Saddam go.
For what it's worth, I am happy that the bastard got (a lot less than) he deserved. However, in the spirit of Wikileaks-level honesty, I think you were also lucky that the country didn't fall into full civil war afterwards. Still, good job, there and in Afghanistan. I guess the world needs a world police, like it or not. After all, stopping Hitler might well be considered British Empire's swansong in that role, and there will always be yet another Hitler.
This does raise some rather disturbing conclusions, seeing how USA is weakening and China is rising. Things could get... unpleasant.
France, USA, had it easy to revolt at the era of the riffle. At this time, a riffle in a hand was worth another riffle in a hand. Numbers gave victory and thus, military victory was often democratic as well. Nowadays you can exterminate protestors with a few assault tanks.
Who makes the ammo and fuel for the tank? Who pays for the maintenance? Where are the troops recruited?
You can exterminate a few hundred protesters with a tank, just like you could exterminate a few hundred protesters with a bunch of mounted knights. You can't stop a real popular uprising simply by killing everyone, since your ability to kill people is ultimately derived from the very same people obeying you who you are trying to kill.
No, military technology does not determine the result of an uprising. Communication does. Anonymous communication let people speak out against a dictator without fear of vengeance, which in turn lets other people know they aren't alone. Why do you think most dictatorships have such mighty secret police and censorship?
Of course, what all of this means is that we should put more resources towards developing TOR, Freenet, wireless mesh networks and so on. That would help stop the decline of our own democracy, and also help opposition to any dictators out there to organize.
People are entitled to have different values, even drastically different values like cannibalism and genocide. Even Hitler could not take and maintain power without the support of the people.
People are entitled to have any values they desire. That does not mean they're entitled to act according to said values. If you agree, we'll stop people who step over a certain line; if you disagree, my values entitle me to both stop people who step over a certain line, and coerce you to help me.
As an aside, while I'm often the first to support some degree of moral relativism, your post is just ridiculous. Values may vary from culture to culture, but some things are absolute... murder and rape are the first that come to mind, but I'm sure (well, I hope) you can come up with a few more.
Why would these values be absolute but other values not? I hope the answer is not some variant of "I happen to find these things bad, so they must be absolutely bad."
Moral relativism has a nasty tendency to lead either to accepting anything, including forcing your own values on someone else, or making arbitrary exceptions based on your personal taste. The former postion is self-refuting and the latter is inconsistent.
We can't exactly poll the entire American people, but maybe if we had some "representatives" of the people elected by a "vote", those representatives could confer with the elected President to determine a policy that, as best as possible, represented the will of the people...
That is, until, some asshat decides to disenfranchise all 300+ million of us by completely derailing that foreign policy.
Indeed! Heaven forbid you actually knew what your representatives were doing in your name! How could voting possibly work if you actually had some idea what effect a given vote might have?
Indeed, transparency is the worst enemy of democracy!
What would have happened if we had a clear unambiguous warning of the sub-prime crisis a year before it happened?
We did. Read old messages on this very site. Everyone knew it was coming. And how could they not? It's not like it takes an Einstein to predict what'll happen when the price of something skyrockets and everyone tries to ride it.
If the infrastructure needed funding, I would have to voluntarily agree to pay for that price that is being charged -- Which is exactly how it happens, your idea that we have to force people to pay for that is ridiculous.
No, what happens is that you refuse to pay, based on a cost-benefit estimation weighing deterioration from losing your share of maintenance to the cost to you. Everyone else does that too, and the thing collapses entirely. That's "tragedy of the commons".
BY DEFINITION it's a violation of individual rights. You can't argue with a by definition argument, sorry.
Of course I can, simply by disputing your definition. Specifically, I'm not buying your assertion that you have a right to not be taxed, or that property rights are absolute.
If that were just, the person who stole it would still have to pay for their crimes. If an alien race threatened to blow up the earth unless we killed someone, well sure, let's find someone who will kill the guy, and then have our little parade celebrating how he saved the earth by murdering someone... and then we would promptly execute him too. But you see how perverted you have to get to undermine liberty?
So first you show your approval of this guys actions by celebrating him, and then you show your disapproval by executing him. That is ridiculous. Either they were okay, in which case no execution, or they weren't, in which case no parade.
And seriously, since when was the last time people died of thirst? We have charities for that, never mind that you can find water free in practically every retail store in existence. It's a false dilemma, we do not need to steal water from people to keep people from dying of thirst.
Wasn't there, just a few days ago, a Slashdot article about someone trying to use a wind-power project as a cover for draining an aquifer? Water is getting rare, these days, and already people do die due to lack of clean water.
Giving the federal reserve more leeway to ruin things is not deregulation, it's interventionism.
Um, I'm talking about more regulation and less leeway for every bank here.
You realize they held interest rates at 1% for years, right? What does economics teach about price fixing, again?
That would depend on who your ask, now wouldn't it ?-) Economics isn't science, it's glorified astrology.
If your choices are making the exchange or starving to death, is that voluntary?
False dilemma. The only way death would be the only option is if a gun were pointed at your head in which case... that's coercion.
No, it isn't a false dilemma, I'm sad to say. It's exactly the dilemma factory workers faced during the Industrial Revolution and minimum-wage workers face today.
I understand it's difficult to accept something that will undermine your entire belief system, but... that's just the way it is. Libertarianism doesn't work, since it fails to acknowledge resource starvation as a form of coercion. That's why the more libertarian an economic system is, the more hierarchical and oppressive its power structures tend to get.
A type of speech that has never been ruled to be protected by the 1st amendment?
Oh, this is just precious. First you have a law protecting all speech. Then you have courts making exceptions on speech they don't like. Now we've come to the point where speech is not protected unless a court specifically declares it is.
Are you people trying to make a mockery of your own Constitution?
And this isn't just an academic point. If their predictions are of any value, they will be incorporated into major decisions made, and thus will be critical for the simulator to predict.
Fortunately, the solution is (relatively) simple: when using simulations in decision making, they run what-if -scenarios. The Earth Simulator can simply save the current state in a checkpoint, then run these what-if -scenarios.
The real problem is predicting the likely parameters used in these simulations. That, and all other parts of the simulator modeling human behaviour, pretty much require either the simulator to be able to simulate human mind(s), or to be interactive.
When will this recession end, and we can get back to building custom-made luxury planets.
Recession is too profitable to be ever allowed to end. You can keep on asking and receiving public financial support, then turn around and loan the public's money back to them at interest, setting them up for a lifetime of debt slavery.
Capitalism for the poor, socialism for the rich. Isn't global economy fun ?-)
If I walked up to you and took (Say) the cell phone you were holding, that would be initiation of violence, it would be theft. unless I am the owner of that phone and there was no agreement for you to hold it, then it's my right to take it from you. That's what "wrongful" is. Just because an entity like the government does it, doesn't make it just.
Of course not. However, forcing you to pay your share of maintenance of the social and physical infrastructure which made it possible to manufacture that cell phone, deliver it to you, build and maintain the cell phone network, and do the exchange without having to barter... now that is entirely just. Also, since you obviously have already met your basic necessities, it's entirely just to tax you to help those less fortunate than you; after all, why would should you have a greater right to resources than anyone else?
Whatever you want to call it, it's a violation of individual rights, period.
Adding the word "period" at the end of your sentence doesn't prove your assertion. Sorry.
You can't be plundered of something you never owned! You realize the difference between allocation and rationing, right? It's the same difference between scarcity and shortage.
Coming to think of it, this whole concept of "owning" natural resources is pretty interesting. On what would you base such ownership claims? That someone, somewhere, claimed them as his? That sounds pretty much like the definition of plundering to me.
You cannot give up individual rights, by definition! They are yours alone. You can't give them away even if you wanted to!
So what about, say, non-compete clauses? Which one wins, your right to enter into any deals you wish, or your right to work where you will?
If there's a "corporate overlord" who is telling me how to run my Internet... oh wait that sounds a lot like the government doesn't it? Government, corporation, it doesn't matter, coercion is bad, immoral, period.
Again, adding "period" to the end of an assertion doesn't prove it. I can think of many situations where coercion is good and moral. For example, if people are dying of thirst because some rich plutocrat has claimed all fresh water for his opium plantation, the situation clearly calls for coercive methods of correction.
In that sense yes, power is bad, but show me the last cooperation that was breaking into people's homes threatening to forcefully take money from workers -- It's really only something the government does (the State is the monopoly on the means of coercion, after all).
The State holds the monopoly on force precisely to keep it from being used arbitrarily - whether it actually does a good job on this is arguable. However, force is not the only means of coercion. Resource starvation - such as literal starvation - is just as efficient. Failure to acknowledge this is why Libertarianism keeps on falling flat on its face, and why it causes such catastrophic effects every time any sliver of it manages to make its way into public policy.
This latest economic crash is a good example of what happens when you give the powerful more liberty to exercise their power: they loot the economy, and the poor end up paying the bill.
The weak aren't suppressed by freedom, they are empowered by it, because of this thing called comparative advantage maybe you've heard of it.
The weak are suppressed by the powerful if the powerful have the liberty to do so. That's what's happened every time there's been a huge power inbalance in the society.
p>It doesn't matter how small and incapable you are, you still benefit from voluntary exchange, it's a logical consequence of the act of exchange.
If your choices are making the exchange or starving to death, is that voluntary? And if it is, why would having a gun to your head not be? After all, in either case, your alternative to doing what the other party says is the same: death.
I find it funny you say "taxes are stealing" (it is, it's legalized theft) and then don't argue against it.
Theft, noun: the act of stealing; the wrongful taking and carrying away of the personal goods or property of another; larceny.
Notice the key word "wrongful" there? Taxes are rightful taking property or, more generally, diverting some of the economic activity of a society towards its maintenance and development, thus avoiding both the tragedy of the commons and dictatorship of the owning class.
Apparently you completely missed the point of the GP: The left advocates stealing from the rich, or at least disproportionately from the rich,
No, the left advocates taxing the rich, and the more radical left advocates not allowing a handful of people a near-total control of resources in the first place.
and suddenly the "Right" is all of a sudden "only concerned with the rich" which is complete BS, equal justice under law means the "Right" don't care if you're rich, poor, you have the same individual rights everyone else does, to not be plundered.
Except that I am plundered. A small minority of people have plundered most natural resources for themselves, thus leaving me without. This same minority wields disproportionate political power, thus leaving me powerless. And, as an icing on the cake, they have also plundered the economy as a whole, leaving millions unemployed as factory after factory closes and is moved to China, where they'll run on cheap slave labour.
Also, quoth Encyclopedia Dramatica: "The genius of the free market is that both the rich and poor get the choice of paying for expensive health care or dying."
These terms are nonsense anyways, liberty and individual rights are neither left nor right.
Liberty does you no good if you lack resources to exercise it, nor do individual rights when you have to give them up to be allowed to eat by your corporate overlords.
It's becoming painfully obvious that while liberty is a necessary prerequiment for freedom, it's not sufficient. The powerful simply use it to oppress the weak, and we end p with the law of the jungle, without even the free bananas. We need to hold each entity to an increasingly strict code of conduct as their power grows, from near-total freedom for Joe Average on one end to the Constitution for the Government on the other, and various organizations each being allowed less and less freedom as their size and power grows.
Slashdot Mirror
From the link, emphasis mine: "Kentucky's state-backed $150 million creationist theme park, The Ark Encounter, will allow visitors to explore a literal interpretation of the Bible's story of Noah and the ark."
Is this actually legal? And does anyone have any statistics on how much Kentucky is using on education?
This isn't about what's best for you. This is about what can be expected of college students. You find writing inconvenient, others find your computer display distracting. There is no reason why one should take precedence over other, as previous posters asserted.
Now go live up to your username.
Atlas Shrugged - which Rand wrote as an introduction to her philosophy - is a silly superhero fantasy about an ubermensch engineer coming up with a magical generator and retreating from the world along with his equally superhuman businessman buddies, at which point the world collapses. This is accompanied by a rambling speech dozens of pages long, and an apparent rape fetish. Oh, and it also extolls the virtues of smoking, presumably because Rand herself smoked and couldn't keep her personal habits separate from her wrk. What the heck do you expect the responses to be, when this crap is represented as "philosophy" and evidence for the virtues of selfishness - and the evilness of altruism - the woman preached?
Objectivism isn't really a philosophy, it's a bunch of assertions about the nature of reality and human nature, and many of those assertions are flat-out wrong, those about the nature of selfishness perhaps most obviously so: selfish people don't debate whether it's in accordance to their nature as human to take something or not, they simply take and be done with it. That, alone, is sufficient to invalidate her conclusions about what the best political system might be.
None of this would really matter if objectivism was confined to academia; unfortunately, as noted above, it isn't. Objectivism has political goals which, due to the erroneous assertions at its core, tend to create truly destructive consequences when implemented. And, much as I hate to say this, calm and reasoned debate on politics is not effective for stopping said policy, while mud-slinging is.
Distractions shouldn't be allowed simply because a few people can't sit through a lecture without playing with toys.
Anyone in college should be able to handle taking notes with pen and peper and sitting through a class without playing with a computer. Exclamation mark.
At most, smoking around other people will cause some of the weaker-bodied peopel who wouldn't remain healthy even if smoking around others was banned to become ill. Such weak people aren't even worth worrying about, and they're certainly not worth banning a luxury item over.
In short, fuck you, you darwinist shit.
I would. Much as I hate the evil little bitch and her fanclub, freedom of speech means that evil little bitches also get to say their piece, no matter how vile it might be.
Amazon is a powerless entity and I give my middle finger to them. If we ALL did that then amazon would soon be like Wards (dead) or Commodore (dead) or Tucker Motors (dead).
And if we ALL voted for third parties in the next elections, the Demopublicans would be ousted from power. It's simply not going to happen.
You live in a democracy, so you can destroy your government just as easily. That kinda negates all of your points.
Based on how well conscription armies seem to work, I'd say that your hope is in vain. All you have to do is frame the argument so killing becomes your moral obligation, and most people will not only do it but also consider themselves valorous heroes for it. Just like Abraham did. That's human nature for you.
That's a very serious accusation. In fact, it might be serious enough to count as libel. Do you have some evidence to back your claim?
Perhaps you could name a few of these evil tyrants, and the specific means by which US is propping them up? It would allow the specific cases to be looked into, and perhaps something to be done about them.
Tax oil production, then use the money from that to develop infrastructure and provide public services? Or nationalize the oil fields and directly pocket the money from oil shares. Either way works fine.
Only if the central government is weaker than the regional governments. That's one of the reasons why limiting it too much is not necessarily a good idea.
It's not ousting Saddam that got you Hell, it's the collateral damage that did. And, from what I've understood, there were quite a few shady financial interests that weren't happy to see Saddam go.
For what it's worth, I am happy that the bastard got (a lot less than) he deserved. However, in the spirit of Wikileaks-level honesty, I think you were also lucky that the country didn't fall into full civil war afterwards. Still, good job, there and in Afghanistan. I guess the world needs a world police, like it or not. After all, stopping Hitler might well be considered British Empire's swansong in that role, and there will always be yet another Hitler.
This does raise some rather disturbing conclusions, seeing how USA is weakening and China is rising. Things could get... unpleasant.
Who makes the ammo and fuel for the tank? Who pays for the maintenance? Where are the troops recruited?
You can exterminate a few hundred protesters with a tank, just like you could exterminate a few hundred protesters with a bunch of mounted knights. You can't stop a real popular uprising simply by killing everyone, since your ability to kill people is ultimately derived from the very same people obeying you who you are trying to kill.
No, military technology does not determine the result of an uprising. Communication does. Anonymous communication let people speak out against a dictator without fear of vengeance, which in turn lets other people know they aren't alone. Why do you think most dictatorships have such mighty secret police and censorship?
Of course, what all of this means is that we should put more resources towards developing TOR, Freenet, wireless mesh networks and so on. That would help stop the decline of our own democracy, and also help opposition to any dictators out there to organize.
People are entitled to have any values they desire. That does not mean they're entitled to act according to said values. If you agree, we'll stop people who step over a certain line; if you disagree, my values entitle me to both stop people who step over a certain line, and coerce you to help me.
You're holding a self-refuting position.
Why would these values be absolute but other values not? I hope the answer is not some variant of "I happen to find these things bad, so they must be absolutely bad."
Moral relativism has a nasty tendency to lead either to accepting anything, including forcing your own values on someone else, or making arbitrary exceptions based on your personal taste. The former postion is self-refuting and the latter is inconsistent.
Indeed! Heaven forbid you actually knew what your representatives were doing in your name! How could voting possibly work if you actually had some idea what effect a given vote might have?
Indeed, transparency is the worst enemy of democracy!
Ban everything and let the Dean sort it out!
We did. Read old messages on this very site. Everyone knew it was coming. And how could they not? It's not like it takes an Einstein to predict what'll happen when the price of something skyrockets and everyone tries to ride it.
No, what happens is that you refuse to pay, based on a cost-benefit estimation weighing deterioration from losing your share of maintenance to the cost to you. Everyone else does that too, and the thing collapses entirely. That's "tragedy of the commons".
Of course I can, simply by disputing your definition. Specifically, I'm not buying your assertion that you have a right to not be taxed, or that property rights are absolute.
So first you show your approval of this guys actions by celebrating him, and then you show your disapproval by executing him. That is ridiculous. Either they were okay, in which case no execution, or they weren't, in which case no parade.
Wasn't there, just a few days ago, a Slashdot article about someone trying to use a wind-power project as a cover for draining an aquifer? Water is getting rare, these days, and already people do die due to lack of clean water.
Um, I'm talking about more regulation and less leeway for every bank here.
That would depend on who your ask, now wouldn't it ?-) Economics isn't science, it's glorified astrology.
No, it isn't a false dilemma, I'm sad to say. It's exactly the dilemma factory workers faced during the Industrial Revolution and minimum-wage workers face today.
I understand it's difficult to accept something that will undermine your entire belief system, but... that's just the way it is. Libertarianism doesn't work, since it fails to acknowledge resource starvation as a form of coercion. That's why the more libertarian an economic system is, the more hierarchical and oppressive its power structures tend to get.
Oh, this is just precious. First you have a law protecting all speech. Then you have courts making exceptions on speech they don't like. Now we've come to the point where speech is not protected unless a court specifically declares it is.
Are you people trying to make a mockery of your own Constitution?
Fortunately, the solution is (relatively) simple: when using simulations in decision making, they run what-if -scenarios. The Earth Simulator can simply save the current state in a checkpoint, then run these what-if -scenarios.
The real problem is predicting the likely parameters used in these simulations. That, and all other parts of the simulator modeling human behaviour, pretty much require either the simulator to be able to simulate human mind(s), or to be interactive.
Recession is too profitable to be ever allowed to end. You can keep on asking and receiving public financial support, then turn around and loan the public's money back to them at interest, setting them up for a lifetime of debt slavery.
Capitalism for the poor, socialism for the rich. Isn't global economy fun ?-)
Of course not. However, forcing you to pay your share of maintenance of the social and physical infrastructure which made it possible to manufacture that cell phone, deliver it to you, build and maintain the cell phone network, and do the exchange without having to barter... now that is entirely just. Also, since you obviously have already met your basic necessities, it's entirely just to tax you to help those less fortunate than you; after all, why would should you have a greater right to resources than anyone else?
Adding the word "period" at the end of your sentence doesn't prove your assertion. Sorry.
Coming to think of it, this whole concept of "owning" natural resources is pretty interesting. On what would you base such ownership claims? That someone, somewhere, claimed them as his? That sounds pretty much like the definition of plundering to me.
So what about, say, non-compete clauses? Which one wins, your right to enter into any deals you wish, or your right to work where you will?
Again, adding "period" to the end of an assertion doesn't prove it. I can think of many situations where coercion is good and moral. For example, if people are dying of thirst because some rich plutocrat has claimed all fresh water for his opium plantation, the situation clearly calls for coercive methods of correction.
The State holds the monopoly on force precisely to keep it from being used arbitrarily - whether it actually does a good job on this is arguable. However, force is not the only means of coercion. Resource starvation - such as literal starvation - is just as efficient. Failure to acknowledge this is why Libertarianism keeps on falling flat on its face, and why it causes such catastrophic effects every time any sliver of it manages to make its way into public policy.
This latest economic crash is a good example of what happens when you give the powerful more liberty to exercise their power: they loot the economy, and the poor end up paying the bill.
The weak are suppressed by the powerful if the powerful have the liberty to do so. That's what's happened every time there's been a huge power inbalance in the society.
If your choices are making the exchange or starving to death, is that voluntary? And if it is, why would having a gun to your head not be? After all, in either case, your alternative to doing what the other party says is the same: death.
Theft, noun: the act of stealing; the wrongful taking and carrying away of the personal goods or property of another; larceny.
Notice the key word "wrongful" there? Taxes are rightful taking property or, more generally, diverting some of the economic activity of a society towards its maintenance and development, thus avoiding both the tragedy of the commons and dictatorship of the owning class.
No, the left advocates taxing the rich, and the more radical left advocates not allowing a handful of people a near-total control of resources in the first place.
Except that I am plundered. A small minority of people have plundered most natural resources for themselves, thus leaving me without. This same minority wields disproportionate political power, thus leaving me powerless. And, as an icing on the cake, they have also plundered the economy as a whole, leaving millions unemployed as factory after factory closes and is moved to China, where they'll run on cheap slave labour.
Also, quoth Encyclopedia Dramatica: "The genius of the free market is that both the rich and poor get the choice of paying for expensive health care or dying."
Liberty does you no good if you lack resources to exercise it, nor do individual rights when you have to give them up to be allowed to eat by your corporate overlords.
It's becoming painfully obvious that while liberty is a necessary prerequiment for freedom, it's not sufficient. The powerful simply use it to oppress the weak, and we end p with the law of the jungle, without even the free bananas. We need to hold each entity to an increasingly strict code of conduct as their power grows, from near-total freedom for Joe Average on one end to the Constitution for the Government on the other, and various organizations each being allowed less and less freedom as their size and power grows.