What makes you think you can judge morality by body count? Does this mean that whoever loses more civilian casualties is "right".
What really annoys me about your post is how stupid it is to think that saying "Israel that kills innocents at a 4:1 ratio compared to Hamas and Hizbollah." really says anything at all about the morality of the conflict.
Consider: a - Hizbollah and Hamas are integrated into civilian areas, making it harder to hit them without incurring civilian casualties b - To some extent the question of "innocent" civilians is in the air. To what extent are you innocent if you allow Hizbollah to launch rockets from your back yard? Sometimes people are afraid to stop them, sometimes they are actually supportive. If Israel drops a bomb in the yard and kills the family as well as (or even instead of) the rocket-launching crew (who sped off just moments before) then who's to say if "innocent" civilians were killed or not. I certainly don't know the answer to that question.
Please understand what I'm saying here. I'm NOT saying Israel is justified in killing innocents at a 4:1 ratio compared to Hamas and Hizbollah. I'm not even saying that Israel is more or less right than Hamas/Hizbollah. All I'm saying is that it's stupid and naive of you to think your little soundbite proved anything. It didn't.
We all believe that, all things being equal, killing civilians is bad. But it's just hopelessly childlike to think that this means whoever kills the most civilians is the most bad. There are too many alternative explanations and hypothesis that you are refusing to even contemplate. This leads me to believe that your opposition to Israel is either based on irrational hatred or that you just haven't sat down and really thought this through yet.
It's certainly possible to be rationally opposed to Israel and Zionism, but you have not provided an example of that.
Your logic is fatally flawed. You have committed the same logical error over and over and over again. This is the general logical error you have made:
Fact: X is positively correlated with Y. Conclusion: If we eliminate X, we eliminate Y.
You are simply not warranted in making this jump. What you can say is that if we greatly reduce X (or eliminate X) we will likely greatly reduce Y. So if you want to work for yoga in school, I won't try to stop you. I have no intention of sending my kids to public school anyway, but I think that sounds like something worthy of investigating. This is what I mean when I say we should work to reduce the cycle of violence.
But when it comes to this conclusion you make: Do those things I guarantee you you will eliminate (yes eliminiate) all murders and rapes. People who rape and murder are mentally ill.
I have major issues.
1> As I've shown, the logic is utterly missing, as is the evidence. 2> You're philosophically denying the existence of evil. This is wrong. I don't think people are fundamentally evil, but I do think that some people make morally wrong decisions that can not be accounted for by environment or genetics. People are not fundamentally good or evil - they are fundamentally free and can act for good or evil. We have a fundamentally different view of human nature here. I further think that treating morality as though it is a disease is the equivalent of treating people like trained animals. Your sense of morality reduces the genuine complexity of human interactions to essentially dog-training. I think it's unrealistic, insulting, and dangerous.
You probably think this is some hippy dippy shit but it's not. These things have been studied and backed up by scientific studies. Go read about them and you will be amazed. Not doing them is like teaching creationism when you know evolution is a scientifically proven thing.
Yes, I do think this is some hippy dippy shit. I'm not arguing with your studies. I'm telling you (as a statistical analyst) that they don't mean what you say they mean. It's as though a doctor finds that high level doses of radiation cause cancer, and then concludes "if we eliminate radiation we will have no cancer". I'm not arguing with the fact that high doses of radiation cause cancer, but so does smoking. I'm not even saying that if we avoid high-level dosages of radiation, we'll reduce the threat of cancer. We should avoid high-level doses of radiation. The hippy dippy shit doesn't start until you start making this whacked-out claim that if we eliminate exposure to high-level doses of radiation cancer will go away. I know you have listed more than one cause of violent behavior, so to make the metaphor complete, I can add as many things as I like to the "causes cancer, should be eliminated list". Radiation, smoking, old-school birth control, etc. Add as many as you like, eliminate all of them, and you will be left with the fact that sometimes cancer happens anyway. So what are you going to do about it?
What you are effectively telling us is to trust you, that cancer can be eliminated if we reduce exposure to high levels of radiation. So we should stop researching cancer, shut down the oncology centers, stop producing and distributing anti-cancer drugs, and just build radiation-free habitats for ourselves to live in. And stop smoking. And stop doing every other carcinogen we know of.
That's the equivalent of saying "let's teach children not to use violence". It's a great idea. But when you add "and we should not allow the use of violence anymore" you're taking away our oncology centers. Chemotherapy is the perfect example because it does harm to the body. So it's a great metaphor. And I'm simply saying "you can't account for all human violence using the factors that you've given". So now we've reduced the chance of getting cancer (yay!) but if you get cancer you now have no defense against it (boo!).
You think that you can stop all violent people with violence despite the fact you can observe otherwise.
That's just stupid. I don't think that we can stop all violence under any circumstances without fundamentally changing human nature. And even then I'm not sure. It's like saying "we can stop all disease" or "can we stop all people from being unkind ever".
The real problem isn't that you're an unrealistic idealist and I'm not, it's that your ideals are counter-productive. I think some violence must be met with the threat of violence at the very least. This is just a fact. If you do away with violence you also do away with the threat of violence and at a fundamental level the threat of violence is the only thing that holds our society together. If you get rid of the threat of violence you've destroyed the army (which you'd probably cheer about) and the police. Just think about a society with no police. Not a hypothetical utopia, but America, as we know it, right now, only the police were totally unarmed. You think that would lead to less violence?
In a society that values non violence these types of things could be handled way before somebody becomes a murderer or a rapist.
Sure, sure, people who are abused are more likely to be violent criminals. But do you think ALL rapists were abused? Do you have any evidence for that whatsoever? You think there's no such thing as some rich white kid who just feels like he owns everything and treats girls like property. He'd still be around in a world without violence, and now he would know that all it would take is just a knife and he could have anything he wanted in the world. If you got rid of all violence (which is impossible, since people who've been victimized are already there, and you'd have to constrain them without the threat of violence to break the cycle) there would still be rapists. And now there would be no effective means of stopping them.
What it comes down is that you think we can fundamentally alter human nature easily. You think that if no one ever hits little Timmy, little Timmy will grow up to be someone that will never hit anyone else. Sure, if you abuse little Timmy you're more likely to get an abusive adult out of him, but that doesn't mean that if you don't abuse him he won't be violence. That doesn't follow from the logic or from the evidence or from common sense.
Stop acting as though I think the only appropriate response to violence is violence. I don't. I just think that sometimes the threat of violence is necessary to prevent greater harm and that (even more rarely) actual violence is necessary too. If you can change human nature, then this will change. But if you try to act as though human nature has been changed before it has been changed the results will be catastrophic. And, until it's been changed, violence will be necessary. I know it's a Catch-22, but the only way to end violence in some distant future is to reduce the cycle. You try to quit "cold turkey" and the organism we call society will die.
If you want to work to reduce violence than I'm with you 100%. But if you try to eliminate violence then you only give more incentive to those who are willing to use it as a means to their ends while reducing the capacity of society to defend itself and its most vulnerable members.
If you really think you can stop ALL violent people without violence I'm just not going to waste my energy talking to you anymore. I've beaten this issue to death too often. You're not even idealistic, you sped past idealistic on your way to delusional.
Just imagine, for one moment, that a serial rapist (they do exist) has broken into your house to kill you and rape your wife and then kill her too. Are you honestly telling me you hope the police show up and promise the rapist, who has you at gunpoint, that they won't hurt him no matter what. You really want that world?
Yes, non-violent solutions work 99.9% of the time. Yes, great, OK. But what about when they don't work?
Your presumption is that the only way to respond to violence is with more violence.
No. It's. Not. I'm so tired of this. Like the first post I had to deal with was someone accusing me of the fallacy of the excluded middle (they were wrong) and ever since then I've been cursed with people actually using it against me.
Proposition: "You can always respond to violence effectively without violence."
Negation: "You can not always respond to violence effectively without violence."
Equivalence of Negation: "Sometimes the only way to respond effectively to violence is with violence."
THAT is what I'm saying.
Law of Excluded Middle Fallacy: "If you can't always respond to violence effectvely without violence, then you can never respond effectively to violence without violence."
That is NOT what Im' saying. Do you see the difference?
In any case, I think your counterexample is pathetic:
There is one violent person and he kicks somebody or kills somebody. You presume that the only appropriate response to that person is to react violently towards them. The society could do many other things. They could shun him for example. They could stop interacting with him
Guess what - shunning him and not interacting him are not going to prevent him from killing somebody else. The problem is not how to respond to violence retroactively. The problem is how to respond to ongoing violence. In other words, imagine that the pacifist society discovers that this guy has taken over the local day care. He's barricaded himself in, and is killing the children at a rate of one every 15 minutes. Your pacifist society, if it comes up with an effective non-violent response at all, is going to watch this guy kill several children. A non-pacifist society would be able to stop him faster, and thus save lives.
Being a pacifist does not mean you just stand there and get hit. It's your inability to conceive of any non violent response that is messing you up here. You only see a world where only response to everything is violence.
No, I don't see such a world. And the real problem is that you only see a world where the negation of "always" is "never".
If I spent a year of my time building something to give to the world, I'd feel pretty shitty if it ended up being used to oppress someone or enable governments to spy on my fellow man
Isn't that just one of the risks you run with open source software? I imagine there are a lot of things you'd rather people not do wth your software, but there are only a very few that you can actually prevent (if any).
I'd agree, and further say that "extremist anyones who think that X is [never|always] in any circumstances justified" are also idiots.
Good, then we are in agreement. Just to point one final detail out, this does appear to be exactly the type of pacifism espoused in the anti-military GPL that started this whole debate. I wasn't just assuming all pacifists are the extreme edition out of nowhere, it was directly motivated by TFA.
Have you read the play "Julius Ceaser"? You know, by Shakespeare? Brutus was Julius' good friend. He killed him because he thought it was necessary for the empire.
If you had any confusion about whether I was referring to history or to the play, the bit about "just to bring in fiction" should have given it away.
It was merely an illustration of the fact that sometimes people kill people they actually like. Unless you disagree with that statement, you're just nitpicking and doing a poor job of it.
Pacifism is the opposition to war or violence as a means of settling disputes. From wikipedia. So when you say "I am a pacifist" you are saying "I oppose violence/war as a means to political ends. No exceptions."
If that's not what you're saying, you're not really a pacifist. You're just someone who dislikes violence. Like me.
To be fair, wikipedia also says: "Pacifism covers a spectrum of views ranging from the belief that international disputes can and should be peacefully resolved, to absolute opposition to the use of violence, or even force, under any circumstances." So I suppose you could be a moderate pacifist, but I think that's just a stupid use of the term. Saying war should only be used in times of necessity is NOT the hallmark of pacifism, it's a hallmark of decency.
Privatization doesn't necessarily lead to increased efficiency. I'd say capitalism does, but it requires (at the least) private property, freedom, and a free labor market. Privatization only gets you one of the three.
I don't know why you are defining competition to mean that someone must lose. That's just not what the word (necessarily) means. Apple and MS are competing right now, yet both are making money. It's not as though in competition one business makes money and the other goes out of business.
In any case, you can "lose" a round without being any worse off than before. Example: if you go try to sell lemonade today and the lemonade stand across the street does 100 times more business - you lost. But as long as you sell enough to get your costs back, you're not out of pocket. And if you learned from the experience than you're actually better off than before.
Ideal cooperation would be more efficient, but I think the imitation of ideal cooperation is less efficient than robust competition.
Please provide some kind of proof that competition spurs creativity or efficiency
Ever heard of a monopoly?
In standard economic theory (see analysis above), a monopoly will sell a lower quantity of goods at a higher price than firms would in a purely competitive market. In this way the monopoly will secure monopoly profits by appropriating some or all of the consumer surplus, as although the higher price deters some consumers from purchasing, most are willing to pay the higher price. Assuming that costs stay the same, this does not lead to an outcome which is inefficient in the sense of Pareto efficiency; no-one could be made better off by shifting resources without making someone else worse off. However, total social welfare declines compared with perfect competition, because some consumers must choose second-best products.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monopoly
If what you said about cooperation were true, we woudln't have multiple coorporations. I'm not saying competition is always needed at every level, I'm saying some competition is needed to incent creativity, etc.
You said initially that you are living my life personally by pacifistic means If by pacifistic means you meant that you're not a pacifist, you just haven't used violence in your life (since your time of conversion or whatever) then great. You're not a pacifist, why are we arguing?
However, I interpreted your statement to mean you are a pacifist. So let's define pacifism:
Pacifism is the opposition to war or violence as a means of settling disputes. (Wikipedia).
So if there's a dispute, and the only effective means of settling it is violent, the pacifist can't settle the dispute. This is simple logic. The question then becomes, are their situations where violence is the only effective means to a good resolution?
Yes, there are. And here's what you seem to thick to realize: the absence of pacifism enable the absence of violence. Let's say the LAPD are pacifists. They don't use violence. They find a child molester holed up in his house with a bunch of kids. They ask him nicely to give up. He doesn't. So they start getting creative. They try sneaking up on him and tackling him with their zen judo skills. So he shoots a few. They try sneaking up not so close and tazering him. So he kills a few more. They finally try tear gas. So he kills the hostages, walks out of the house, kills a few more cops, and takes their car. Wow. Sure am glad they looked for non-violent solutions. Too bad he wasn't as obliging.
On the other hand, if the LAPD shows up with guns drawn, a sniper on the roof, etc. and the molester knows they are not pacifist, what is he going to do? Likely give up.
The problem with pacifism is that by precluding the use of force you hand ultimate power to the person who is not afraid to use it. In your life you've found that most of the time people don't really want to use force. It's all about posturing. And confronted with firm, non-threatening, non-violent resistance they aren't willing to engage in violence themselves. That's great. And it highlights the effectiveness of non-violent resistance. It does NOT prove anything about pacifism.
Because if you ever run into someone that actually wants to hurt you, and not just scare you, they will hurt you. If they want to kill you, they will kill you. You're posturing will do nothing to stop them - literally - if their mind is made up already. That's your choice to make. If you would rather be killed than kill in self-defense, I can respect that. If that's what "personal" pacifism means to you, then great.
But pacifism in general means the LAPD don't carry guns any more (for starters), and that's what I think is stupid.
I call BS. Just as one example, the entire field of Operations Research (e.g. the mathematical study of efficiency) was born directly as a result of WW2.
We have enough manpower to ensure that every human being is clothed and housed, yet we don't.
Agreed 100%. But violence is not the problem. Violence is the symptom. There are enough people out there willing to hurt you to get ahead that you have to take precautions. Precautions are extremely inefficient. That's one problem, and it's not a result of violence at all. It's a result of having some people willing to get ahead. You could still have those inefficiencies even with no violence.
Another problem is simple motivation. People don't work very hard unless motivated. That means that if everyone just gave away the goods they produced, less goods would be produced. It's a sad fact of human nature. Competition spurs creativity, efficiency, etc. It would be nice if we all just produced goods and services and gave them away - and theoretically it would be far more efficient - but it won't happen because we're generally lazy and don't want to work harder than we have to (myself included).
People who blame war as the problem are totally missing the point. Violence reflects the deficiencies in human nature. It's human nature that is the issue - not violence.
OK, I see how you mis-interpreted my original point. Allow me to rephrase.
A capitalist can only become rich in proportion to the people he sells too.
My phrasing "as rich as" implied that there was a 1:1 ratio between the wealth of the capitalist and of the people he was selling too. This is, of course, false, and now I understand your counterexample regarding the lexus vs. the candy. This misunderstanding was my mistake for poor communication. The point I was originally trying (ineptly) to make is this: it's in a capitalists best interest for the people he sells too to have more wealth since that's where he gets his wealth.
I would guess that "good" capitalists (who want the best for everyone, instead of the most for themselves) are about as rare as "good" communists (who want the best for everyone, instead of taking everything away from everyone). Human nature (mainly "short term thinking" and "self interest") stands in the way of either kind of utopia.
The problems with capitalism vs. communism are not about intent. Both have good intentions. The problem is systematic. In capitalism you are rewarded for re-investment. As you reinvest, your capacity to produce increases. As the population in general produces more, there is greater wealth. This is why in capitalist nations you may have huge disparities between rich and poor but: a. the poor are not stuck in poverty (see evidence for this claim here: http://www.townhall.com/columnists/WalterEWilliams /2006/01/04/the_poverty_hype) and b. even the poor tend to be better off over time (e.g. people in America below the poverty line have higher standards of living than average people in, say, Eastern Europe).
Even short-sighed and greedy capitalists will at least become more efficient. When they get too much power, gov't regulation is required to prevent them from abusing their power. But I think gov't regulation should be restricted as much as possible to let greedy bastards be greedy bastards as long as they're not actually overpowering and hurting vulnerable people.
Capitalism and communism are not just two imperfect but equal doctrines. Capitalism is superior in terms of wealth generation. As long as you're willing to trade economic disparity for higher standard of living (and I am) it's the choice to go with. I'd rather be "dirt poor" in America then "middle class" in China. And this is leaving out the political freedom that is required for capitalism and not for communism...
You're still saying the same thing: if only pacifism had been widely accepted, we wouldn't have violence. The fact remains: if someone wants to use violence to achieve their ends, sometimes the only response is violence. Aside from ridiculous notions that Hitler would have accepted a couple hundred thousand American peace protesters in his borders in 1939 without violence, we can go to a simple micro-level example.
If a man has a gun and a lot of ammunition and decides he wants to start killing people would you rather:
a - look for a non-violent solution while he kills 10 people or b - kill him after he fires the first shot.
Even if pacifism could get him to stop, would it be worth it if 10 people had to die?
I never meant to imply people were violent because we're hard-wired for it. People are violent because we have the capacity and the circumstances of the world inevitably lead to it (e.g. limited resources). I'm not saying it's human nature, I'm saying it's a combination of human natural and the reality of the world we inhabit.
Oh, hm, yeah. And what does this have to do with how wealthy the seller is vs how wealthy the buyers are ?
I didn't think I'd have to spell it out for you. You can't get rich unless you can sell your goods. And the more goods you can sell the richer you can get.
Look at your own silly example. Your options are sell the luxury car for $100,000 and make $20,000 profit, or sell the candy bars and make $20,000 profit. Wouldn't you rather sell 100,000 luxury cars? So why don't you? Because there aren't enough buyers with that much wealth. But if there were, you would be making $20,000 X 100,000 = more than $20,000.
So clearly, obviously (pick your additional adverbs) it makes more sense for the capitalist to want everyone's wealth to increase. That's all I'm saying. People act as though capitalism is the enshrinement of greed. At the very worst it's the enshrinement of enlightened self-interest, and that means that every good capitalist wants the best for every other human so that they can all generate the most wealth.
This is stupid. I'm sorry, there's no polite way to say it.
You're saying "if everyone was pacifist, there would be no war". True, and "if everyone had hair, no one would be bald". So what?
The question here is: "if someone starts using violence to achieve their evil ends, who will oppose them?" YOu, as a pacifist, are saying "no one should". Then guess what - he wins. No one is saying "no one should be pacifists" (Note: THIS is an actual example of the excluded middle, folks.) What we're saying is that there should be enough people who are not pacifists to oppose the ones who are using violence to do evil things.
If you, personally, would rather let violent people do whatever they want to you, that's your problem. But someone has to be willing to stand up and prevent the violent people from, for example, raping children. You can't always non-violently stop a rapist. When you can use non-violent means, you should. When you can't, you should use violent means.
I appreciate the distinction that you are making, and it is worthy of addressing. Killing the person that wants to kill you is not morally the same as killing the kid that was sent by someone else to kill you. This doesn't make me wrong, however.
Consider, if you will, an episode of 24 from season 3. There are 100 or so innocent civilians in a hotel where a biological agent has been released. If they leave the hotel, they take the weapons-grade disease with them. So the CTU agents have orders to prevent people from leaving with lethal force if necessary. Sure enough, some guy figures out what is going on, breaks a window, and tries to run for it. Michelle tells him she will shoot him if he tries. He doesn't believe her, he tries to run anyway, and she kills him.
He had 0 negative intention. He didn't want to hurt anyone. But, in my mind, it was still justified to kill him to prevent the deaths he would have caused. This is the same logic that you can use to fight wars (obviously not wars of aggression). Even with a total separation of violence and intent violence is (sometimes) still justified.
In the end Gandhi's resistance worked because the elite thinkers had no inclination to kill Indians, and he made it cost too much. I'm sure at least some would have happily killed Gandhi if it meant putting an end to his troublesome movement. But his passive resistance was effective because it relied on the humanity of others who turned out to have at least (some) humanity.
But just because Gandhi's method worked in that circumstance does not mean it will always work. It would not have worked to combat the Nazi's in WW2.
Wow man, I'm really, honestly sorry. I just didn't expect you to be so thin-skinned (and that's not an insult!)
There's generally a pretty rude give-and-take in Slashdot debating. If you really want to be civil, I respect that and apologize for my lack of civility. I'm actually more interested in the discussion than in the insults. I just got carried away (take a look at how many posts I've put up in this discussion).
So please, by all means, rejoin the discussion and respond to my posts. I sincerely promise not to call you an idiot again. I'll do my best to check your name when I respond, but you should realize that it's silly to take what I said personally, I'm generally not even aware of the name of the person I'm responding to - just the comment.
If no one opposes the violent, the violent have no one to be violent to.
Tell that to the victims of child rape, my friend. You don't have to be violent to be a victim of violence. Period.
Your own experiences have only taught you one thing: truly violent people are rare. Even soldiers in combat have to overcome the psychological inhibitions of taking another human life. Humans like to fight more than they like to kill Fighting is competitive and consensual. It's what all higher animals do to compete for resources. You should not oppose fighting with fighting.
Trouble is, not all violence is fighting. Imagine that your current, Buddhist self ran into your former, violent self. If your former self was as violent as you say, then would he really stop from being violent because you say "I am not afraid of you?" That works for school yard bullies. It does not work for people who already want to kill you.
Some of us beat the violent by out-witting them before they got out of bed this morning.
You have never faced the violent. You've face run of the mill animalistic aggression. If you'd faced someone truly violent, you'd be dead. Or are you saying that innocent, non-threatening people are never killed?
Does not mean that it is not opression or totalitarianism but it is peace.
Very well then. In that case I simply stand by the proposition that sometimes violence is preferable to peace. I'd rather be risking my life in a war for freedom than sitting at home knowing that there is none.
No, I do not think that the cop and the robber are on the same moral ground. However, it is because both you and I share the idea that killing random people in a bank for financial gain is a bad thing
OK. I really don't understand the relevance of everything you wrote after that. Do you believe then, that the cop was justified in using violence? If you do, then you're not a pacifist and we don't have a problem.
The war is *started* by the rich to remain in power and get richer. Those who send the armies of the poor to slaughter each other on the battlefields are *not* the poor - they are inevitably the rich, for they are in power and want to stay that way and get richer
This is where your logic completely breaks down. Let's say we have country A. A poor nation led by a rich tyrant. Clearly he fits your profile. So he starts a war and invades country B. Clearly A has done everything you said, but of country B? Now a way has been started but B had no say in starting it. If B responds to A's attack, is it doing so for economic reasons primarily? Your fatal mistake is that you think all wars are wars of agrees ion. I'm not going to argue with you if you say wars of aggression are about money. I'd say "power", but money and power are pretty closely related, so it's not a huge difference. But wars of aggression by definition require a victim. I'm not saying the victim is always innocent, or a saint, but the idea that there's no such thing as self-defense is purely false.
Well, America did not went to war to stop Hitler. Hitler could marrily prounce around in Europe killing whomever he wanted. Japan attacked the US and that was when America joined the party and didn't care much about Hitler as such until Normandy.
This is false, but grounded on truth. We're talking about pacifism. So even though America didn't send troops until after Pearl Harbor, they were sending weapons and ammo to the UK well before that to support the UKs opposition to Hitler. That's not "entering the war", but it's decidedly not being pacifist either.
interestingly enough very many of them became pacifists: they thought that there should not be war on this planet, never again.
That is not the definition of pacifism. Every good person thinks there should never be another war. That doesn't make the pacifists, that makes them decent human beings. The difference is that if there was a war, if Hitler rose again, the pacifists would not oppose him with violence (e.g. with result) and the rest of the decent human beings would.
Yes, it was unnecessary. It should not have been started at all. The 60-something million people who died in that war died for no reason.
It was unnecessary in the fantasy world where Hitler could have been stopped another way. But this is lunacy. If you are willing to give someone everything they want to avoid violence, you may avoid war, but think of what some people want. Think of what child molesters and rapists want. Are you willing to sacrifice innocents to avoid violence (not to mention that rape is pretty violent?) I'm not. And that means I'm not willing to appease evil people. Not all people are evil, but some are. And if they are not appeased, they will get violent. So there will be violent, evil people. Given that premise, do you still think WW2 was unnecessary?
Well, have you realised that totalitarian regimes usually get to power when there is sort of a shortage of pocket money?
Yes, I do. The difference is that I think economic parity can reduce violence, you think it can eliminate violence.
Slashdot Mirror
What makes you think you can judge morality by body count? Does this mean that whoever loses more civilian casualties is "right".
What really annoys me about your post is how stupid it is to think that saying "Israel that kills innocents at a 4:1 ratio compared to Hamas and Hizbollah." really says anything at all about the morality of the conflict.
Consider:
a - Hizbollah and Hamas are integrated into civilian areas, making it harder to hit them without incurring civilian casualties
b - To some extent the question of "innocent" civilians is in the air. To what extent are you innocent if you allow Hizbollah to launch rockets from your back yard? Sometimes people are afraid to stop them, sometimes they are actually supportive. If Israel drops a bomb in the yard and kills the family as well as (or even instead of) the rocket-launching crew (who sped off just moments before) then who's to say if "innocent" civilians were killed or not. I certainly don't know the answer to that question.
Please understand what I'm saying here. I'm NOT saying Israel is justified in killing innocents at a 4:1 ratio compared to Hamas and Hizbollah. I'm not even saying that Israel is more or less right than Hamas/Hizbollah. All I'm saying is that it's stupid and naive of you to think your little soundbite proved anything. It didn't.
We all believe that, all things being equal, killing civilians is bad. But it's just hopelessly childlike to think that this means whoever kills the most civilians is the most bad. There are too many alternative explanations and hypothesis that you are refusing to even contemplate. This leads me to believe that your opposition to Israel is either based on irrational hatred or that you just haven't sat down and really thought this through yet.
It's certainly possible to be rationally opposed to Israel and Zionism, but you have not provided an example of that.
-stormin
Your logic is fatally flawed. You have committed the same logical error over and over and over again. This is the general logical error you have made:
Fact: X is positively correlated with Y.
Conclusion: If we eliminate X, we eliminate Y.
You are simply not warranted in making this jump. What you can say is that if we greatly reduce X (or eliminate X) we will likely greatly reduce Y. So if you want to work for yoga in school, I won't try to stop you. I have no intention of sending my kids to public school anyway, but I think that sounds like something worthy of investigating. This is what I mean when I say we should work to reduce the cycle of violence.
But when it comes to this conclusion you make: Do those things I guarantee you you will eliminate (yes eliminiate) all murders and rapes. People who rape and murder are mentally ill.
I have major issues.
1> As I've shown, the logic is utterly missing, as is the evidence.
2> You're philosophically denying the existence of evil. This is wrong. I don't think people are fundamentally evil, but I do think that some people make morally wrong decisions that can not be accounted for by environment or genetics. People are not fundamentally good or evil - they are fundamentally free and can act for good or evil. We have a fundamentally different view of human nature here. I further think that treating morality as though it is a disease is the equivalent of treating people like trained animals. Your sense of morality reduces the genuine complexity of human interactions to essentially dog-training. I think it's unrealistic, insulting, and dangerous.
You probably think this is some hippy dippy shit but it's not. These things have been studied and backed up by scientific studies. Go read about them and you will be amazed. Not doing them is like teaching creationism when you know evolution is a scientifically proven thing.
Yes, I do think this is some hippy dippy shit. I'm not arguing with your studies. I'm telling you (as a statistical analyst) that they don't mean what you say they mean. It's as though a doctor finds that high level doses of radiation cause cancer, and then concludes "if we eliminate radiation we will have no cancer". I'm not arguing with the fact that high doses of radiation cause cancer, but so does smoking. I'm not even saying that if we avoid high-level dosages of radiation, we'll reduce the threat of cancer. We should avoid high-level doses of radiation. The hippy dippy shit doesn't start until you start making this whacked-out claim that if we eliminate exposure to high-level doses of radiation cancer will go away. I know you have listed more than one cause of violent behavior, so to make the metaphor complete, I can add as many things as I like to the "causes cancer, should be eliminated list". Radiation, smoking, old-school birth control, etc. Add as many as you like, eliminate all of them, and you will be left with the fact that sometimes cancer happens anyway. So what are you going to do about it?
What you are effectively telling us is to trust you, that cancer can be eliminated if we reduce exposure to high levels of radiation. So we should stop researching cancer, shut down the oncology centers, stop producing and distributing anti-cancer drugs, and just build radiation-free habitats for ourselves to live in. And stop smoking. And stop doing every other carcinogen we know of.
That's the equivalent of saying "let's teach children not to use violence". It's a great idea. But when you add "and we should not allow the use of violence anymore" you're taking away our oncology centers. Chemotherapy is the perfect example because it does harm to the body. So it's a great metaphor. And I'm simply saying "you can't account for all human violence using the factors that you've given". So now we've reduced the chance of getting cancer (yay!) but if you get cancer you now have no defense against it (boo!).
You think that you can stop all violent people with violence despite the fact you can observe otherwise.
That's just stupid. I don't think that we can stop all violence under any circumstances without fundamentally changing human nature. And even then I'm not sure. It's like saying "we can stop all disease" or "can we stop all people from being unkind ever".
The real problem isn't that you're an unrealistic idealist and I'm not, it's that your ideals are counter-productive. I think some violence must be met with the threat of violence at the very least. This is just a fact. If you do away with violence you also do away with the threat of violence and at a fundamental level the threat of violence is the only thing that holds our society together. If you get rid of the threat of violence you've destroyed the army (which you'd probably cheer about) and the police. Just think about a society with no police. Not a hypothetical utopia, but America, as we know it, right now, only the police were totally unarmed. You think that would lead to less violence?
In a society that values non violence these types of things could be handled way before somebody becomes a murderer or a rapist.
Sure, sure, people who are abused are more likely to be violent criminals. But do you think ALL rapists were abused? Do you have any evidence for that whatsoever? You think there's no such thing as some rich white kid who just feels like he owns everything and treats girls like property. He'd still be around in a world without violence, and now he would know that all it would take is just a knife and he could have anything he wanted in the world. If you got rid of all violence (which is impossible, since people who've been victimized are already there, and you'd have to constrain them without the threat of violence to break the cycle) there would still be rapists. And now there would be no effective means of stopping them.
What it comes down is that you think we can fundamentally alter human nature easily. You think that if no one ever hits little Timmy, little Timmy will grow up to be someone that will never hit anyone else. Sure, if you abuse little Timmy you're more likely to get an abusive adult out of him, but that doesn't mean that if you don't abuse him he won't be violence. That doesn't follow from the logic or from the evidence or from common sense.
Stop acting as though I think the only appropriate response to violence is violence. I don't. I just think that sometimes the threat of violence is necessary to prevent greater harm and that (even more rarely) actual violence is necessary too. If you can change human nature, then this will change. But if you try to act as though human nature has been changed before it has been changed the results will be catastrophic. And, until it's been changed, violence will be necessary. I know it's a Catch-22, but the only way to end violence in some distant future is to reduce the cycle. You try to quit "cold turkey" and the organism we call society will die.
If you want to work to reduce violence than I'm with you 100%. But if you try to eliminate violence then you only give more incentive to those who are willing to use it as a means to their ends while reducing the capacity of society to defend itself and its most vulnerable members.
-stormin
If you really think you can stop ALL violent people without violence I'm just not going to waste my energy talking to you anymore. I've beaten this issue to death too often. You're not even idealistic, you sped past idealistic on your way to delusional.
Just imagine, for one moment, that a serial rapist (they do exist) has broken into your house to kill you and rape your wife and then kill her too. Are you honestly telling me you hope the police show up and promise the rapist, who has you at gunpoint, that they won't hurt him no matter what. You really want that world?
Yes, non-violent solutions work 99.9% of the time. Yes, great, OK. But what about when they don't work?
-stormin
Your presumption is that the only way to respond to violence is with more violence.
No. It's. Not. I'm so tired of this. Like the first post I had to deal with was someone accusing me of the fallacy of the excluded middle (they were wrong) and ever since then I've been cursed with people actually using it against me.
Proposition: "You can always respond to violence effectively without violence."
Negation: "You can not always respond to violence effectively without violence."
Equivalence of Negation: "Sometimes the only way to respond effectively to violence is with violence."
THAT is what I'm saying.
Law of Excluded Middle Fallacy: "If you can't always respond to violence effectvely without violence, then you can never respond effectively to violence without violence."
That is NOT what Im' saying. Do you see the difference?
In any case, I think your counterexample is pathetic:
There is one violent person and he kicks somebody or kills somebody. You presume that the only appropriate response to that person is to react violently towards them. The society could do many other things. They could shun him for example. They could stop interacting with him
Guess what - shunning him and not interacting him are not going to prevent him from killing somebody else. The problem is not how to respond to violence retroactively. The problem is how to respond to ongoing violence. In other words, imagine that the pacifist society discovers that this guy has taken over the local day care. He's barricaded himself in, and is killing the children at a rate of one every 15 minutes. Your pacifist society, if it comes up with an effective non-violent response at all, is going to watch this guy kill several children. A non-pacifist society would be able to stop him faster, and thus save lives.
Being a pacifist does not mean you just stand there and get hit. It's your inability to conceive of any non violent response that is messing you up here. You only see a world where only response to everything is violence.
No, I don't see such a world. And the real problem is that you only see a world where the negation of "always" is "never".
-stormin
If I spent a year of my time building something to give to the world, I'd feel pretty shitty if it ended up being used to oppress someone or enable governments to spy on my fellow man
Isn't that just one of the risks you run with open source software? I imagine there are a lot of things you'd rather people not do wth your software, but there are only a very few that you can actually prevent (if any).
-stormin
I'd agree, and further say that "extremist anyones who think that X is [never|always] in any circumstances justified" are also idiots.
Good, then we are in agreement. Just to point one final detail out, this does appear to be exactly the type of pacifism espoused in the anti-military GPL that started this whole debate. I wasn't just assuming all pacifists are the extreme edition out of nowhere, it was directly motivated by TFA.
-stormin
Have you read the play "Julius Ceaser"? You know, by Shakespeare? Brutus was Julius' good friend. He killed him because he thought it was necessary for the empire.
If you had any confusion about whether I was referring to history or to the play, the bit about "just to bring in fiction" should have given it away.
It was merely an illustration of the fact that sometimes people kill people they actually like. Unless you disagree with that statement, you're just nitpicking and doing a poor job of it.
-stormin
Pacifism is the opposition to war or violence as a means of settling disputes. From wikipedia. So when you say "I am a pacifist" you are saying "I oppose violence/war as a means to political ends. No exceptions."
If that's not what you're saying, you're not really a pacifist. You're just someone who dislikes violence. Like me.
To be fair, wikipedia also says: "Pacifism covers a spectrum of views ranging from the belief that international disputes can and should be peacefully resolved, to absolute opposition to the use of violence, or even force, under any circumstances." So I suppose you could be a moderate pacifist, but I think that's just a stupid use of the term. Saying war should only be used in times of necessity is NOT the hallmark of pacifism, it's a hallmark of decency.
-stormin
Privatization doesn't necessarily lead to increased efficiency. I'd say capitalism does, but it requires (at the least) private property, freedom, and a free labor market. Privatization only gets you one of the three.
I don't know why you are defining competition to mean that someone must lose. That's just not what the word (necessarily) means. Apple and MS are competing right now, yet both are making money. It's not as though in competition one business makes money and the other goes out of business.
In any case, you can "lose" a round without being any worse off than before. Example: if you go try to sell lemonade today and the lemonade stand across the street does 100 times more business - you lost. But as long as you sell enough to get your costs back, you're not out of pocket. And if you learned from the experience than you're actually better off than before.
Ideal cooperation would be more efficient, but I think the imitation of ideal cooperation is less efficient than robust competition.
-stormin
Please provide some kind of proof that competition spurs creativity or efficiency
Ever heard of a monopoly?
In standard economic theory (see analysis above), a monopoly will sell a lower quantity of goods at a higher price than firms would in a purely competitive market. In this way the monopoly will secure monopoly profits by appropriating some or all of the consumer surplus, as although the higher price deters some consumers from purchasing, most are willing to pay the higher price. Assuming that costs stay the same, this does not lead to an outcome which is inefficient in the sense of Pareto efficiency; no-one could be made better off by shifting resources without making someone else worse off. However, total social welfare declines compared with perfect competition, because some consumers must choose second-best products. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monopoly
If what you said about cooperation were true, we woudln't have multiple coorporations. I'm not saying competition is always needed at every level, I'm saying some competition is needed to incent creativity, etc.
-stormin
Let's break this down.
You said initially that you are living my life personally by pacifistic means If by pacifistic means you meant that you're not a pacifist, you just haven't used violence in your life (since your time of conversion or whatever) then great. You're not a pacifist, why are we arguing?
However, I interpreted your statement to mean you are a pacifist. So let's define pacifism:
Pacifism is the opposition to war or violence as a means of settling disputes. (Wikipedia).
So if there's a dispute, and the only effective means of settling it is violent, the pacifist can't settle the dispute. This is simple logic. The question then becomes, are their situations where violence is the only effective means to a good resolution?
Yes, there are. And here's what you seem to thick to realize: the absence of pacifism enable the absence of violence. Let's say the LAPD are pacifists. They don't use violence. They find a child molester holed up in his house with a bunch of kids. They ask him nicely to give up. He doesn't. So they start getting creative. They try sneaking up on him and tackling him with their zen judo skills. So he shoots a few. They try sneaking up not so close and tazering him. So he kills a few more. They finally try tear gas. So he kills the hostages, walks out of the house, kills a few more cops, and takes their car. Wow. Sure am glad they looked for non-violent solutions. Too bad he wasn't as obliging.
On the other hand, if the LAPD shows up with guns drawn, a sniper on the roof, etc. and the molester knows they are not pacifist, what is he going to do? Likely give up.
The problem with pacifism is that by precluding the use of force you hand ultimate power to the person who is not afraid to use it. In your life you've found that most of the time people don't really want to use force. It's all about posturing. And confronted with firm, non-threatening, non-violent resistance they aren't willing to engage in violence themselves. That's great. And it highlights the effectiveness of non-violent resistance. It does NOT prove anything about pacifism.
Because if you ever run into someone that actually wants to hurt you, and not just scare you, they will hurt you. If they want to kill you, they will kill you. You're posturing will do nothing to stop them - literally - if their mind is made up already. That's your choice to make. If you would rather be killed than kill in self-defense, I can respect that. If that's what "personal" pacifism means to you, then great.
But pacifism in general means the LAPD don't carry guns any more (for starters), and that's what I think is stupid.
-stormin
Violence and competition are not efficient.
I call BS. Just as one example, the entire field of Operations Research (e.g. the mathematical study of efficiency) was born directly as a result of WW2.
We have enough manpower to ensure that every human being is clothed and housed, yet we don't.
Agreed 100%. But violence is not the problem. Violence is the symptom. There are enough people out there willing to hurt you to get ahead that you have to take precautions. Precautions are extremely inefficient. That's one problem, and it's not a result of violence at all. It's a result of having some people willing to get ahead. You could still have those inefficiencies even with no violence.
Another problem is simple motivation. People don't work very hard unless motivated. That means that if everyone just gave away the goods they produced, less goods would be produced. It's a sad fact of human nature. Competition spurs creativity, efficiency, etc. It would be nice if we all just produced goods and services and gave them away - and theoretically it would be far more efficient - but it won't happen because we're generally lazy and don't want to work harder than we have to (myself included).
People who blame war as the problem are totally missing the point. Violence reflects the deficiencies in human nature. It's human nature that is the issue - not violence.
-stormin
OK, I see how you mis-interpreted my original point. Allow me to rephrase.
s /2006/01/04/the_poverty_hype) and b. even the poor tend to be better off over time (e.g. people in America below the poverty line have higher standards of living than average people in, say, Eastern Europe).
A capitalist can only become rich in proportion to the people he sells too.
My phrasing "as rich as" implied that there was a 1:1 ratio between the wealth of the capitalist and of the people he was selling too. This is, of course, false, and now I understand your counterexample regarding the lexus vs. the candy. This misunderstanding was my mistake for poor communication. The point I was originally trying (ineptly) to make is this: it's in a capitalists best interest for the people he sells too to have more wealth since that's where he gets his wealth.
I would guess that "good" capitalists (who want the best for everyone, instead of the most for themselves) are about as rare as "good" communists (who want the best for everyone, instead of taking everything away from everyone). Human nature (mainly "short term thinking" and "self interest") stands in the way of either kind of utopia.
The problems with capitalism vs. communism are not about intent. Both have good intentions. The problem is systematic. In capitalism you are rewarded for re-investment. As you reinvest, your capacity to produce increases. As the population in general produces more, there is greater wealth. This is why in capitalist nations you may have huge disparities between rich and poor but: a. the poor are not stuck in poverty (see evidence for this claim here: http://www.townhall.com/columnists/WalterEWilliam
Even short-sighed and greedy capitalists will at least become more efficient. When they get too much power, gov't regulation is required to prevent them from abusing their power. But I think gov't regulation should be restricted as much as possible to let greedy bastards be greedy bastards as long as they're not actually overpowering and hurting vulnerable people.
Capitalism and communism are not just two imperfect but equal doctrines. Capitalism is superior in terms of wealth generation. As long as you're willing to trade economic disparity for higher standard of living (and I am) it's the choice to go with. I'd rather be "dirt poor" in America then "middle class" in China. And this is leaving out the political freedom that is required for capitalism and not for communism...
-stormin
You're still saying the same thing: if only pacifism had been widely accepted, we wouldn't have violence. The fact remains: if someone wants to use violence to achieve their ends, sometimes the only response is violence. Aside from ridiculous notions that Hitler would have accepted a couple hundred thousand American peace protesters in his borders in 1939 without violence, we can go to a simple micro-level example.
If a man has a gun and a lot of ammunition and decides he wants to start killing people would you rather:
a - look for a non-violent solution while he kills 10 people or
b - kill him after he fires the first shot.
Even if pacifism could get him to stop, would it be worth it if 10 people had to die?
-stormin
I never meant to imply people were violent because we're hard-wired for it. People are violent because we have the capacity and the circumstances of the world inevitably lead to it (e.g. limited resources). I'm not saying it's human nature, I'm saying it's a combination of human natural and the reality of the world we inhabit.
-stormin
I think it would make people angrier than it would make them terrorized.
-stormin
It was purely for fun. I was venting.
-stormin
Oh, hm, yeah. And what does this have to do with how wealthy the seller is vs how wealthy the buyers are ?
I didn't think I'd have to spell it out for you. You can't get rich unless you can sell your goods. And the more goods you can sell the richer you can get.
Look at your own silly example. Your options are sell the luxury car for $100,000 and make $20,000 profit, or sell the candy bars and make $20,000 profit. Wouldn't you rather sell 100,000 luxury cars? So why don't you? Because there aren't enough buyers with that much wealth. But if there were, you would be making $20,000 X 100,000 = more than $20,000.
So clearly, obviously (pick your additional adverbs) it makes more sense for the capitalist to want everyone's wealth to increase. That's all I'm saying. People act as though capitalism is the enshrinement of greed. At the very worst it's the enshrinement of enlightened self-interest, and that means that every good capitalist wants the best for every other human so that they can all generate the most wealth.
-stormin
You're right, my bishop would be sad. Note that I at least self-censored.
I'm not a model Mormon, but I do try.
-stormin
This is stupid. I'm sorry, there's no polite way to say it.
You're saying "if everyone was pacifist, there would be no war". True, and "if everyone had hair, no one would be bald". So what?
The question here is: "if someone starts using violence to achieve their evil ends, who will oppose them?" YOu, as a pacifist, are saying "no one should". Then guess what - he wins. No one is saying "no one should be pacifists" (Note: THIS is an actual example of the excluded middle, folks.) What we're saying is that there should be enough people who are not pacifists to oppose the ones who are using violence to do evil things.
If you, personally, would rather let violent people do whatever they want to you, that's your problem. But someone has to be willing to stand up and prevent the violent people from, for example, raping children. You can't always non-violently stop a rapist. When you can use non-violent means, you should. When you can't, you should use violent means.
-stormin
I appreciate the distinction that you are making, and it is worthy of addressing. Killing the person that wants to kill you is not morally the same as killing the kid that was sent by someone else to kill you. This doesn't make me wrong, however.
Consider, if you will, an episode of 24 from season 3. There are 100 or so innocent civilians in a hotel where a biological agent has been released. If they leave the hotel, they take the weapons-grade disease with them. So the CTU agents have orders to prevent people from leaving with lethal force if necessary. Sure enough, some guy figures out what is going on, breaks a window, and tries to run for it. Michelle tells him she will shoot him if he tries. He doesn't believe her, he tries to run anyway, and she kills him.
He had 0 negative intention. He didn't want to hurt anyone. But, in my mind, it was still justified to kill him to prevent the deaths he would have caused. This is the same logic that you can use to fight wars (obviously not wars of aggression). Even with a total separation of violence and intent violence is (sometimes) still justified.
In the end Gandhi's resistance worked because the elite thinkers had no inclination to kill Indians, and he made it cost too much. I'm sure at least some would have happily killed Gandhi if it meant putting an end to his troublesome movement. But his passive resistance was effective because it relied on the humanity of others who turned out to have at least (some) humanity.
But just because Gandhi's method worked in that circumstance does not mean it will always work. It would not have worked to combat the Nazi's in WW2.
-stormin
Wow man, I'm really, honestly sorry. I just didn't expect you to be so thin-skinned (and that's not an insult!)
There's generally a pretty rude give-and-take in Slashdot debating. If you really want to be civil, I respect that and apologize for my lack of civility. I'm actually more interested in the discussion than in the insults. I just got carried away (take a look at how many posts I've put up in this discussion).
So please, by all means, rejoin the discussion and respond to my posts. I sincerely promise not to call you an idiot again. I'll do my best to check your name when I respond, but you should realize that it's silly to take what I said personally, I'm generally not even aware of the name of the person I'm responding to - just the comment.
-stormin
I had a hard time believing this was not a joke:
If no one opposes the violent, the violent have no one to be violent to.
Tell that to the victims of child rape, my friend. You don't have to be violent to be a victim of violence. Period.
Your own experiences have only taught you one thing: truly violent people are rare. Even soldiers in combat have to overcome the psychological inhibitions of taking another human life. Humans like to fight more than they like to kill Fighting is competitive and consensual. It's what all higher animals do to compete for resources. You should not oppose fighting with fighting.
Trouble is, not all violence is fighting. Imagine that your current, Buddhist self ran into your former, violent self. If your former self was as violent as you say, then would he really stop from being violent because you say "I am not afraid of you?" That works for school yard bullies. It does not work for people who already want to kill you.
Some of us beat the violent by out-witting them before they got out of bed this morning.
You have never faced the violent. You've face run of the mill animalistic aggression. If you'd faced someone truly violent, you'd be dead. Or are you saying that innocent, non-threatening people are never killed?
-stormin
Does not mean that it is not opression or totalitarianism but it is peace.
Very well then. In that case I simply stand by the proposition that sometimes violence is preferable to peace. I'd rather be risking my life in a war for freedom than sitting at home knowing that there is none.
No, I do not think that the cop and the robber are on the same moral ground. However, it is because both you and I share the idea that killing random people in a bank for financial gain is a bad thing
OK. I really don't understand the relevance of everything you wrote after that. Do you believe then, that the cop was justified in using violence? If you do, then you're not a pacifist and we don't have a problem.
The war is *started* by the rich to remain in power and get richer. Those who send the armies of the poor to slaughter each other on the battlefields are *not* the poor - they are inevitably the rich, for they are in power and want to stay that way and get richer
This is where your logic completely breaks down. Let's say we have country A. A poor nation led by a rich tyrant. Clearly he fits your profile. So he starts a war and invades country B. Clearly A has done everything you said, but of country B? Now a way has been started but B had no say in starting it. If B responds to A's attack, is it doing so for economic reasons primarily? Your fatal mistake is that you think all wars are wars of agrees ion. I'm not going to argue with you if you say wars of aggression are about money. I'd say "power", but money and power are pretty closely related, so it's not a huge difference. But wars of aggression by definition require a victim. I'm not saying the victim is always innocent, or a saint, but the idea that there's no such thing as self-defense is purely false.
Well, America did not went to war to stop Hitler. Hitler could marrily prounce around in Europe killing whomever he wanted. Japan attacked the US and that was when America joined the party and didn't care much about Hitler as such until Normandy.
This is false, but grounded on truth. We're talking about pacifism. So even though America didn't send troops until after Pearl Harbor, they were sending weapons and ammo to the UK well before that to support the UKs opposition to Hitler. That's not "entering the war", but it's decidedly not being pacifist either.
interestingly enough very many of them became pacifists: they thought that there should not be war on this planet, never again.
That is not the definition of pacifism. Every good person thinks there should never be another war. That doesn't make the pacifists, that makes them decent human beings. The difference is that if there was a war, if Hitler rose again, the pacifists would not oppose him with violence (e.g. with result) and the rest of the decent human beings would.
Yes, it was unnecessary. It should not have been started at all. The 60-something million people who died in that war died for no reason.
It was unnecessary in the fantasy world where Hitler could have been stopped another way. But this is lunacy. If you are willing to give someone everything they want to avoid violence, you may avoid war, but think of what some people want. Think of what child molesters and rapists want. Are you willing to sacrifice innocents to avoid violence (not to mention that rape is pretty violent?) I'm not. And that means I'm not willing to appease evil people. Not all people are evil, but some are. And if they are not appeased, they will get violent. So there will be violent, evil people. Given that premise, do you still think WW2 was unnecessary?
Well, have you realised that totalitarian regimes usually get to power when there is sort of a shortage of pocket money?
Yes, I do. The difference is that I think economic parity can reduce violence, you think it can eliminate violence.
Look, here's a metaphor. Y