In America Them that got gets, the rest pay taxes

[Az]

ugh, good call , GV.

[Adalbertus]

Don't be ridiculous. There are methods other than taxes for paying for police, such as contributions and user fees. I also rather like the idea of unpaid or low paid voluntary police, who supplement the small regular police force when needed.

Police is exactly one reason why I prefer to pay taxes for it. In Germany, there are (unfortunately, you'll soon see, why) private security companies. It may be a personal style of mine, but usually body language says much more about personalities than their status. I don't feel safe with those guys from private companies. I feel safe with policemen. This is simply because the tax-payed police has much higher requirements to the personality than private security companies, who I suspect they take anyone. And it is usually those who want to exert power that volunteer for a police duty. For me, these are the worse policemen, and often I prefer a simple drunkard next to me in the train over them.

[Ramo]

Well, first of all, the Habsburgs and Bourbons were a bunch of absolutist monarchs,

The corporation is about as absolutist organization I can think of. Besides, it's their property, right? Don't they have the moral justification to do whatever they want with it?

who murdered thousands of people either directly or through their numerous wars.

Like United Fruit?

If you either kill these people or throw them in prison for life, then no, I see little problem in appropriating their land, because they can no longer use it.

What about their heirs? Didn't they have moral rights to the land? Wouldn't taking it be unjust?

But, if they had done nothing particularly wrong, and a bunch of peasants woke up one day and decided they wanted some land, THAT would have been immoral.

I know I shouldn't be suprised by this response, but.... You have some "interesting" political ideas, David.

But this is only possible if the nation either claimed unclaimed land, or purchased claimed land.

What's "claimed" land? And what if the state took land through force, but it happened generations ago, and no one directly affected is still alive? Shouldn't that be ok?

[David Floyd]

Vel,

DF: The crux of where I'm going with my statement is this. When problems arise, they need resolution. They don't need to be debated, or politicked, or sub-committeed at the next regional meeting, they need fixing. It's as simple as that.

The corollary to this premise, of course, is that the ends justify the means. Fix the problem, don't worry too much about how you fix it or who you hurt in the process. I can't accept that.

Using your own statements in various places on this thread, I get the distinct impression that you would spend so much time and energy worrying about, and fretting over who's fault it was that there's a problem to begin with, that by the time you actually got around to doing anything about it (assuming, of course, after a careful evalutation of the facts that you had any obligation to act in any case, and after you came to some reckoning about "who's fault" it was), it would be too late to make one whit of difference.

I would spend no time debating. If someone is starving, for example, they should go to charity, church or family. They shouldn't use force to take my money.

The reason laws exist to tell society what to do in certain situations (feed the poor, heal the sick, etc) is not because we are not capable of coming to those decisions on our own, but rather to prevent debate on the issue.

And that's the whole problem, the issue of pre-existing coercion.

GV,

So kind of like a protection racket? If a business doesn't pay it's "user fees" it can expect to get robbed?

I seriously doubt it - I expect business owners to (heavily) arm themselves, same as the rest of the population. If someone breaks in, the store clerk pulls out an AR-15 and makes them look like Swiss cheese.

Ramo,

Challenging me as always - at least YOU'RE making me think this stuff through, anyway

The corporation is about as absolutist organization I can think of.

How so? Corporations are responsible to the board of trustees, and ultimately the stockholders. That's not very absolutist.

Like United Fruit?

Find a quote where I said corporations should be able to go around killing people, and I'll drop this right now. But of course I never said that, and people within a corporation should be held responsible for murder the same as anyone else. I don't believe in exemptions in justice for the rich and powerful either, you know

What about their heirs? Didn't they have moral rights to the land? Wouldn't taking it be unjust?

It depends. Are their heirs involved with the crimes of the rulers? Are they using their power to rob and kill and rape? That would certainly be relevant, I think.
In any case, I don't know enough about the seizure of the lands of the Bourbons and Habsburgs to adequately comment, but if you provide a link or a book suggestion I'll be more than happy to read up on it

What's "claimed" land? And what if the state took land through force, but it happened generations ago, and no one directly affected is still alive? Shouldn't that be ok?

A state doesn't have rights in the same way you or I do. A state has the responsibility to protect the life, liberty, and property of those people living within the state, and that's it.

[Velociryx]

DF, the core of my disagreement with your position is now, what it was at the start.

You say that we should rely on charitible organizations and churches to fix the problems. I maintain that this is impractical, if not patentily impossible, because such orgnizations are, by their nature, localized. Non-scalable.

Your solution would work well if we lived in an America composed of small, scattered, and largely self-sufficient argiculturally based communities, and in fact, the wide spread social problems we're seeing today were all but nonexistant in America as it was pre-industrial revolution.

The problem is that the sprawling urban centers we have today (as a direct result of our industrialization) do not fit the old agrarian society models we used before with such effectiveness. As such, other means are necessary.

Now you, as a person who is staunchly against laws mandating help for the poor and sick who cannot afford to pay their own way, may be the very person to devise a provable, workable, scalar system to handle such things. Until such time, however, it would be folly of the worst kind to simply throw the baby out with the bath water, and nix all the laws we have in place, or may put in place in the future simply because you "think" there might be a better way.

Modern society is about results. The laws work. Inefficiently....ineffectively, non-optimally, but they do some good.

Find another way, and prove it works, and I think you'll find ready and quick adoptation.

Until then tho, the laws are necessary to maintain a binding social contract, given the nature of modern society and its vast scale.

-=Vel=-

[Sikander]

Originally posted by blackice
(DF)"no reason a group of poor people can't come together and form their own private bank."

Right

I don't understand why you think this notion is crazy, there are thousands of Credit Unions in the U.S. which are basically collective non-profit banks. They provide much better service than banks, and tend to be a lot cheaper as well. Of course they are limited by law, so they cannot offer services to businesses, only individuals.

[Sikander]

Originally posted by GePap
The most interesting thing about Libertarianism is that it can only work in a world of perfect cooperation: everyone would have to agree to follow the rules and never be bad and never cheat, and only under such a system could Libertarianism flourish. The sesond anyone cheats, the whole system collapses.

Er, no.

Originally posted by GePap
I always find it intersting that one never hears about Libertarians from dirt poor states... only from relatively well off crowds.

I haven't noticed this at all, rather it's opposite. Libertarian ideals flourish in fact in rural areas which are the poorest in general. You may be a bit misled in that you only run into the philosophical types who tend to be more highly educated / suburban / netizens, but I guarantee you that there are a lot of Libertarians in the rural south and especially the west.

[David Floyd]

Now you, as a person who is staunchly against laws mandating help for the poor and sick who cannot afford to pay their own way, may be the very person to devise a provable, workable, scalar system to handle such things. Until such time, however, it would be folly of the worst kind to simply throw the baby out with the bath water, and nix all the laws we have in place, or may put in place in the future simply because you "think" there might be a better way.

Again, you're problem here is seeming to think that a new way needs to be devised at all. That's the whole problem. Welfare, Social Security, etc., - those ARE the new way, and they rely on coercion and forced charity.

I say, go back to the non-coercive way things used to be. Churches aren't gonna turn people away if they need help, and neither is the Red Cross or someone's family.

Ultimately, though, if all these methods fail, and if someone is still unable or unwilling to get a job, I still shouldn't be coerced into helping them.

[Velociryx]

DF: Without unbuliding the cities and dismantling the industrialized apparatus, there IS no going back. Our industrialization changed our social structure in dramatic and insane ways. It created a human society on a scale that nobody ever DREAMED of.

Agrarian fixes DO NOT WORK!

The reason they do not work is this:

Churches are communal in their nature. They have paritioners, members, or whatever term you wish to ascribe to them. Those members pay a tithe, and some (not all, but some....perhaps even many) churches have outreach programs to help the needy. The caveat being that they help the needy in their local...communal...area

Industrialization has created massive population centers. Overcrowded, sprawling cities. People have NEVER, until most modern times, lived in such numbers, so closely packed together. There was never a need. Agrarian based societies aren't on such a vast scale that this has ever been necessary.

It is now.

So....if you want to reap the benefits of our industrialized society (which include, among other things, our ability to even hold this conversation to begin with), then you've got to pay the full price for that.

The full price for that includes a government mandated social contract....at least until some other, viable alternative can be found.

We are the united states of America, not a collection of farming communities.

-=Vel=-

[David Floyd]

I have never said that churches and churches alone can solve problems. The number one solution should be one's family. No one's family is gonna let a down on his luck son starve, you know? Outside of that, there is the Red Cross and other charity organizations, and outside of that are churches.

But again, in any case it wouldn't matter if there were NO options open. I STILL wouldn't support a legalized system of theft and coercion.

[Velociryx]

If you have a job right now, you pay taxes. You are, therefore (whether you acknowledge or like it or no) supporting the existing system.

In an agrarian-based society, problems are seldom so large and sweeping that the family unit, or the community at large, cannot handle them.

This is clearly no longer the case.

Society has gotten too big for itself. Too big to support itself as a series of standalone communities.

I get the sense that this dissatisfies you, but Dave....it's the truth, bro.

-=Vel=-

[David Floyd]

If you have a job right now, you pay taxes. You are, therefore (whether you acknowledge or like it or no) supporting the existing system.

Yes, you're correct - my money is being stolen at gunpoint.

In an agrarian-based society, problems are seldom so large and sweeping that the family unit, or the community at large, cannot handle them.

This is clearly no longer the case.

For a large percentage of the people having trouble, this isn't correct. What you are doing is looking at poverty and all that as one big problem, rather than thousands of individual problems. Most individuals have a family of some sort that can help them at least to some extent. Many of these individuals have access to church food banks. Many of these individuals have access to the local YMCA/YWCA. And many of these individuals are also just lazy bums who either squander what little money they have (hell, I saw one bum smoking the other day with a sign in his other hand saying "Please Help" - needless to say, I did not, seeing as how his money would probably just go to his smoking habit), or just don't want to work because they can make as much or more money off of welfare programs.

Yes, I grant you that there are a few people in this country who are unable to take advantage of any of the above solutions. What these people then have to rely on is the charity of individuals who are better off than themselves. If these people genuinely need help, and show themselves not to squander their money (I don't want to see them buying cigarettes or anywhere NEAR a liquor store), then people will be likely to help them out a bit, give them $5, if they are not already being taxed out the ass for social services.

[Velociryx]

Your money is not being stolen at gunpoint, but that's an intriguing image. The fact is that no one (okay, I'll say almost no one to allow for those bizzare rare possibilities) in your age group who was born, and lived his life in the USA has ever had to worry about such things. Death squads and government goons are good plots for episodes of the X-files....conspiracy theories are fun to talk about, but they seldom *really* reach out an touch the lives of everyday citizens.

I understand your disatisfaction with the current system, but if you don't like it, then propose a workable fix and then demonstrate that it works. Talking about it....getting all worked up about it, accomplishes nothing.

Poverty cannot be tackled one case at a time. Doing so treats the symptoms, not the disease. In order to attack the root causes, it is *required* that you take a macro-level view.

Putting bandaids on individuals won't fix it.

-=Vel=-

[Wraith]

Wow. Yet another one of those threads that covers the same ground as a million like it before.

There is no way I am going to read through this fully, but there are a couple quick comments.

--"Your money is not being stolen at gunpoint, but that's an intriguing image."

Well, if you try not to pay taxes, see what gets shoved in your face. In the US, the most significant taxes (federal income and entitlement) are taken away before you even get your hands on it.
This is, IMNSHO, one of the main problems really. You never get to see the money itself, so most people don't understand what they're paying out. The numbers on the tax returns are too abstract for most. What should happen is we have to sit down once (or twice, or four times, whatever) a year and write out a check for the whole shebang.

Do this and I bet you Libertarian ideas become a whole lot more popular reaaaaally quickly.

Edit:
Note also the mindset the current set up implies. It certainly makes it look like the government believes it has first dibs on everyone's money, and whatever they don't want we're allowed to keep. Don't know about you, but I find that rather distasteful, especially when others in the thread are whinging about corporate slavery, etc.

--"Poverty cannot be tackled one case at a time."

Isn't this exactly what the government does? (Side argument, I'd suggest instead that the government is causing a large portion of the problems, from (dis)education to farm subsidies designed to artificially inflate food prices.)
In any case, how can you claim that private organizations don't scale well? Okay, no organization scales well, but that applies to governments as well. And there are several corporations larger than most governments.

Wraith
"A government which robs Peter to pay Paul, can always count on the support of Paul."
-– George Bernard Shaw

[Velociryx]

Hey...I'm right there in the boat with you! I'm all for finding another way. I'm simply saying that until we do find another proven effective way, let's not ditch the whole system, you know? Rattletrap or no, flaws and all, it works.

Perfectly? 'course not, but what does?

Is there a better alternative? Not presently, but theoretically there should be, yes.

As to scalar, I did not say that private organizations do not scale well....only that churches (the common theme of DF's counterargument) aren't scalar, because churches by their nature are small scale, communal things. They have limited reach and most prefer to keep what funds they generate for outreach programs close to home. This kind of "down home, community takes care of itself and doesn't need the help of outsiders" does not work in an environment with sprawling urban centers. That's why we drifted away from it. If it had worked, we would, no doubt, still be continuing its use. In this way, societal evolution is not dissimilar to natural selection and biological evolution. The idea would not have fallen by the wayside had it continued to be effective in the face of a changing society.

I also at least partially agree with you that the government is at least in part, responsible for a slice of the problem, but in general, I'd say they fix more than they break, for a net gain. Again, not perfect, but better than anything else that's been tried.

The burden of proof tho, clearly lies with those who would change the system. Policies don't change "just because." There needs to be compelling proof behind the argument to prompt the change, and when such is provided, change WILL come. I have no doubt of that.

-=Vel=-