I didn’t think I’d have to explain why theft was wrong. I’ll pass, either way.

Necessary or not it has it. I cannot defend my property or take it back by force. At any rate, I’d prefer it wouldn’t take my wealth in any fashion.

For a moment there I thought you were above the most basic of strawmen.

Tax laws…We know what that means in practice: use the monopoly on violence to exploit the labor of others so you can spend their dollars on your investments, whether it’s war, infrastructure, or other ineffectual pork. You steal my income, steal it again when I buy something, steal it more when I make some gains. No private man has done that to me or anyone else but a rank thief.

I’m not sure why someone would defend Stalin. It’s difficult to find a favorable quote about collectivism, I’m afraid.

I'm Australian and value our 'compulsory voting'. To me it's not a tyranny - it's just a reminder that we have responsibilities as well as freedoms. But no one actually has to vote. We show up for 10-15 minutes and have our name ticked off. Then you are perfectly able to write, "Go fuck yourself!' or some anarchist missive on the ballot paper if you wish to demonstrate how much you hate the system.

A protest vote is still a vote. You have to go to a poll and cast a ballot.

It isn’t clear that voting is the “civic responsibility” we are often told it is, though. And if one believes that no man is good enough to be another’s master, voting might come off as objectionable.

The conceit is in the idea that so long as you can form a ruling class of your proles all will be right and well. Of course, this idea has ruined every society it has touched. So much for thriving together.

The idea of class war need not demonize the rich but only describe a tendency of the rich to maintain their luxuries and privileges at the expense of outsiders. Indeed, the poor are often encouraged to emulate the class consciousness of the rich. One way to clean my own room as a shrewd prole is to form free associations with other such proles and do what the rich do, team up explicitly in order to better squeeze politicians for tax money, protections, and privileges.

Collectivism in a nutshell. Make hasty generalizations and form a politics around it.

On “direct” vs “indirect” perception, JL Austin makes some great points regarding the language of the debate in his manuscripts Sense and Sensibilia. The use of these terms in my own and in other’s arguments admittedly sent us off in wild directions. I’m going to quote them here.

1. First of all, it is essential to realize that here the notion of perceiving indirectly wears the trousers—'directly' takes whatever sense it has from the contrast with its opposite while 'indirectly' itself(a) has a use only in special cases, and also (b) has different uses in different cases—though that doesn't mean, of course, that there is not a good reason why we should use the same word. We might, for example, contrast the man who saw the procession directly with the man who saw it through a periscope; or we might contrast the place from which you can watch the door directly with the place from which you can see it only in the mirror. Perhaps we might contrast seeing you directly with seeing, say, your shadow on the blind; and perhaps we might contrast hearing the music directly with hearing it relayed outside the concert hall. However, these last two cases suggest two further points.

2. The 'first of these points is that the notion of not perceiving 'directly' seems most at home where, as with the periscope and the mirror, it retains its link with the notion of kink in direction. It seems that we must not be looking straight at the object in question. For this reason seeing your shadow on the blind is a doubtful case; and seeing you, for instance, through binoculars or spectacles is certainly not a case of seeing you indirectly at all. For such cases as these last we have quite distinct contrasts and different expressions-'with the naked eye' as opposed to 'with a telescope', 'with unaided vision' as opposed to 'with glasses on'. (These expressions, in fact, are much more firmly established in ordinary use than 'directly' is.)

3. And the other point is that, partly no doubt for the above reason, the notion of indirect perception is not naturally at home with senses other than sight. With the other senses there is nothing quite analogous with the 'line of vision'. The most natural sense of 'hearing indirectly', of course, is that of being told something by an intermediary—a quite different matter. But do I hear a shout indirectly, when I hear the echo? If I touch you with a barge-pole, do I touch you indirectly? Or if you offer me a pig in a poke, might I feel the pig indirectly—through the poke? And what smelling indirectly might be I have simply no idea. For this reason alone there seems to be something badly wrong with the question, 'Do we perceive things directly or not?', where perceiving is evidently intended to cover the employment of any of the senses.

4. But it is, of course, for other reasons too extremely doubtful how far the notion of perceiving indirectly could or should be extended. Does it, or should it, cover the telephone, for instance? Or television? Or radar? Have we moved too far in these cases from the original metaphor They at any rate satisfy what seems to be a necessary condition—namely, concurrent existence and concomitant variation as between what is perceived in the straightforward way (the sounds in the receiver, the picture and the blips on the screen) and the candidate for what we might be prepared to describe as being perceived indirectly. And this condition fairly clearly rules out as cases of indirect perception seeing photographs (which statically record scenes from the past) and seeing films (which, though not static, are not seen contemporaneously with the events thus recorded). Certainly, there is a line to be drawn somewhere. It is certain, for instance, that we should not be prepared to speak of indirect perception in every case in which we see something from which the existence (or occurrence) of something else can be inferred; we should not say we see the guns indirectly, if we see in the distance only the flashes of guns.

5· Rather differently, if we are to be seriously inclined to speak of something as being perceived indirectly, it seems that it has to be the kind of thing which we (sometimes at least) just perceive, or could perceive, or which—like the backs of our own heads—others could perceive. For otherwise we don't want to say that we perceive the thing at all, even indirectly. No doubt there are complications here (raised, perhaps, by the electron microscope, for example, about which I know little or nothing). But it seems clear that, in general, we should want to distinguish between seeing indirectly, e.g. in a mirror, what we might have just seen, and seeing signs (or effects), e.g. in a Wilson cloud-chamber, of something not itself perceptible at all. It would at least not come naturally to speak of the latter as a case of perceiving something indirectly.

6. And one final point. For reasons not very obscure, we always prefer in practice what might be called the cash-value expression to the 'indirect' metaphor. If I were to report that I see enemy ships indirectly, I should merely provoke the question what exactly I mean.'I mean that I can see these blips on the radar screen'-'Well, why didn't you say so then?' (Compare 'I can see an unreal duck.'-'What on earth do you mean?' 'It's a decoy duck'-'Ah, I see. Why didn't you say so at once?') That is, there is seldom if ever any particular point in actually saying 'indirectly' (or 'unreal'); the expression can cover too many rather different cases to be just what is wanted in any particular case.

Thus, it is quite plain that the philosophers' use of 'directly perceive', whatever it may be, is not the ordinary, or any familiar, use; for in that use it is not only false but simply absurd to say that such objects as pens or cigarettes are never perceived directly. But we are given no explanation or definition of this new use—on the contrary, it is glibly trotted out as if we were all quite familiar with it already. It is clear, too, that the philosophers' use, whatever it may be, offends against several of the canons just mentioned above-no restrictions whatever seem to be envisaged to any special circumstances or to any of the senses in particular, and moreover it seems that what we are to be said to perceive indirectly is never—is not the kind of thing which ever could be—perceived directly.

Yet such is democracy.

It seems that what you really want is that your political stance should prevail with ease.

When democracy is indistinguishable from tyranny we’ve lost the plot.

And whose problem and fault is that?


This whole topic is about people who don't understand their role, their rights and their responsibilities as citizens of democractic countries. They are citizens of democractic countries, but they have the mentality of people living in a monarchy (or a cynical dystopia).

The power imbalance in so-called democratic countries is obscene. We’ve seen it in full action during the most recent pandemic, where most of these states seized the economy, ruled by dictate, and froze our precious human rights at their whim and fancy. I have no responsibility to any official in any of these states. I conceded no power and blended no knee.

Another day a government failure, another call for the government to fix it. By now we’ve relinquished so much social power, and converted what little responsibilities we used to share with one another into state responsibilities, that I fear it’s too late to do anything about it. So far gone are we that we now pretend voting for this-or-that politician or this-or-that piece of legislation is tantamount helping The Poor, even though politics and charity are wildly divergent activities.

The problem with the class war idea is that it isn’t true, and worse, pegs as good or evil one who may be the opposite—it’s unjust. Better to approach the blame game on an individual basis, to witness if one helps the poor or not, rather than making such determinations from which tax bracket or party they occupy. I wager you’d be surprised.

Yep

Then in terms of wages, benefits, you’ve had what others thought you deserved. It’s like having two employers, except you pay dues to only one of them.

I made the point in the original post that “representative democracy” isn’t rule by the people.

Though it’s true that a right to vote should be universal, and lords and landowners ought not to be the only ones able to elect who has the power and who makes the rules, the representative system, the relationship between a representative and his constituents, differs only in degree to the lords and land owners representing the landless tenantry in the decision making processes. That we get to vote for who should rule us seems more a consolation prize than any tangible enfranchisement.

Anti-social individualist-minded people who constantly feel they're oppressed, and who were heavily brainwashed with Cold War era propaganda, will predictably feel this way -- about any institution, in fact. Not a surprise.

But your feelings and anecdotes don't really say much about the labor movement. I know plenty of people who had bad union experiences who are very much in favor of union efforts -- they see their importance and stick around to make them better. Disowning and fleeing is an option, of course. Comes down mostly to temperament. As I said, anti-social personalities aren't a good fit anyway.

Have you ever worked for a union?

Grasping for straws. It’s so stoic I love it.

No.

It’s still a vote. If a vote is a concession of power to the state, it makes little sense to concede power while at the same time wasting a vote.

I always hated working for a union. Union dues was another tax. Shitty workers never got fired or reprimanded so we all just stooped to their level. It was just another layer of control and bureaucracy. I’d much rather bargain on my own or find better employment.

In my view that the choices are lousy isn't a reason why not to vote.

It isn’t a reason to vote, either.

I think that is a clever point but I have to disagree.

Two politicians, Alice and Bob, are running for city mayor. I refuse to vote. Which one am I indirectly supporting, Alice or Bob?

We were talking about not voting and you said it was an irresponsible political position. Why?

But you won’t say why it is irresponsible. The only one doing the rubbing are your emotions.

Someone is sour and couldn’t come up with anything better to say. Very praxisian of you.

It’s an irresponsible political position, or in a word: libertarian.

I’ll accept that. Statist responsibilities are little different than the slave’s, in my opinion.

Not voting is quite the opposite. Zero support is given. Besides, the effect of not voting is nil, and one doesn’t violate his morality by refraining from participating.

It’s certainly not a winning strategy, and wouldn’t change the results of any election. I think that’s largely the point of refusing to vote.

It’s more a conscientious objection. But it has the potential to effect serious change. In some cases non-voters are a large enough constituency to make moves outside of elections and with other means than the vote, so it’s not a complete waste. The problem is probably organizing other non-voters.

I said there is no mediating factor between experienced and experiencer, between man and the rest of his environment, between A and B. Light is of A which is directly perceived by B, man.

If sense data is of A it is of the rest of the environment. If it is of B it is of man. And if it is of either world or man, it is identifiable, detectable, and measurable. If it does not lie in either, but is a mediating factor between both, where is the evidence for this?

Do you think we directly perceive the light but indirectly perceive apples?

You're not addressing the question. According to your account we don't directly see apples because air, light, and glasses are a mediating factor between the apple and you. Deflecting by saying that we directly experience the light doesn't say anything about whether or not we directly see the apple.

I’ve answered the question already. We directly perceive apples through light. I don’t think we’re viewing sense-data, representations, or images of apples in the light, like we would on indirect mediums like photos and televisions.

How is this relevant to direct or indirect realism and phenomenalism?

I’ve read Stirner and Proudhon and reject both egoism and socialism. I gravitate more towards people like Herbert Spencer, Albert Jay Nock, HD Thoreau, HL Mencken, who are probably more literary than philosophical.

That’s an interesting point about eventually rejecting anarchism, though. I myself haven’t taken the plunge because I’m not quite sure man can govern himself just yet.

That’s what I was looking for. Thanks. I don’t follow too much anarchist literature. There’s often too much collectivism in it for my tastes.

That’s right. We experience light, air, glasses, apples, heat, gravity, pressure, the tree, the leaves and so on. We directly perceive the environment. There is no mediating factor between the environment you experience, and you the experiencer. I’ve said this a few times now.

Then you admit that our visual perception of an apple is mediated by air, light, and sometimes glasses or contact lenses. Therefore, by your own account, we don't directly see apples.

I’m not sure that is the case. We directly perceive apples through light. I don’t think we’re viewing sense-data, representations, or images of apples in the light.

Yes, which is to say that our sensory systems elicit different sense-data.

What sense-data? It’s better to say the biology is different. Then you can point to actual differences.

Air, light, glasses, and contact lenses aren't made up mediums.

Exactly. Sense-data is.

And what does it mean to "see something differently"? It means that we experience different sense-data. I experience white and gold, you experience black and blue. The colours we experience are the medium by which we indirectly see the photo of a dress.

You experience the image your way, I experience it my way. Our bodies are different and occupy different positions in space and time. There is no need to evoke “sense-data” or some other medium to explain it when there are actual things that can account for these differences.

But there's a number of mediums between the apple and the sense receptors in our eyes (air, light, sometimes glasses or contact lenses), so by your own account it isn't direct. You now seem to mean something else by "direct". What is it?

You’re confusing a actual medium in the world with the mediums made up by indirect realists.

We don't know yet, the hard problem of consciousness hasn't been solved. Regardless, there is something which is sense-data, whether physical or not, as proved by the fact that you and I can look at the same photo of a dress and yet see different colours.

It only proves that we see it differently, not that something called sense-data is an emergent phenomenon from the brain.

But do we see the apple directly?

In terms of direct realism, yes.

Sense data is an emergent phenomenon, brought about by brain activity. If you're asking me to point to something that is physically situated between the apple and someone's eyes then your request is misguided.

Does it have a physical structure or chemical make-up? Can we put some of it under a microscope?

The air, light, glasses, and contact lenses are the medium between the apple and one's eyes. Hence why, according to your account, seeing an apple isn't direct.

Of course I’m not speaking of sight only. But you keep limiting it to sight. Nonetheless, we see everything in our periphery, including light, air, glasses, etc. directly.

You can't dismiss the medium of sense data by saying that you can see someone pick up and and eat an apple. As I have repeatedly said, your claim here is irrelevant to the discussion.

Point to me the sense-data. No sense-data appears between observer and observed. Sense-data is irrelevant if it cannot be shown to exist.

Again, viewing things in the world such as air, glasses, light, and so on is direct realism.

The mediums I speak of are the ones that are assumed, made up without evidence. Sense-data is another such medium.

Then explain to me how someone else picking up and eating an apple shows that no medium is involved when they see an apple.

No medium appears at any point in the scenario. The evidence for a medium is zero.