They wouldn't need asylum if the US hadnt neoliberalised their societies.

Isn’t President Obrador a socialist?

It was caused by US exploitation of South America. President blaming is a sideshow.

I don’t think so. They bring children to the border in order to exploit the asylum system.

The crisis at the border is getting little press. When children were held in facilities during the Trump administration, celebrities cried, the United Nations virtue-signalled, and the world was aghast. When it happens under Biden we get none of that.

Biden administration says 14,000 migrant children in its custody as it refuses to call border situation a 'crisis'

Give this buffoon the nuclear codes.

It makes sense to have some allegiance and affinity to the territory in which you reside, the languages, history and institutions of the people who reside there. These are meaningful things in the world which contribute to any life.

It makes no sense to have allegiance or affinity to a race, which is devoid of such content.

Thanks for writing that. It was a good read.

This leads to a gray zone in which it is uncertain if people can be held culpable, and it seems to me that until it is proven that determinism is false we should withhold judgement on whether or not people can be held morally responsible for their actions.

We can determine who is responsible for his actions simply by witnessing who acts. The being who acts is responsible for the action because it is he and no other who performed the act. If he is responsible for his actions, he is also morally responsible for his actions. I don’t think I need to prove determinism false when I could simply witness and point to who is responsible.

Bertrand Russel said it best: “In a democracy it is necessary that people should learn to endure having their sentiments outraged”. We should be able to talk about these things but we get caught up in the pathos of it.

But I am optimistic. I see these as the growing pains of an ever-expanding freedom in speech and thought. People now have access to information unlike any time in history, and also many means by which to express their views. If we can come to grips with this, perhaps after a generation or two, we’ll have both the freedom and the thick skin required to handle it.

Every guidance on mask wearing I’ve read stipulates that mask wearing alone cannot prevent the spread of the virus. So alone, it is an unreasonable way to prevent transmission. And if preventing transmission is the sole purpose, we might as well do what China did and weld people into their dwellings.

What are the dynamics of droplets coming from the nose? It would be an interesting study to read. But all talk of droplets, masks, breathing, are nugatory when it comes to people not carrying the virus. Removing the ignorance might be a more prudent measure, but we are happy not knowing and covering that ignorance with a cloth fig-leaf.

Property rights override my right to wear what I want and say what I want to say, in my opinion. If I wish to spend time on someone’s property, I respect their rules or will go elsewhere. Rights don’t conflict so much as they overlap.

It does seem a little trivial on the surface, but then I think about someone choosing what I can and cannot wear in public and am reminded of how banal and arbitrary totalitarianism is, that I dare not cede any ground on the matter.

I wear a mask wherever the rules require me to. But I’ve never been much of a mouth-breather or spitty-talker, so my lips suffice to have the same affect wherever no mask is required.

nos4. Go get infected with covid. Spread it to your family and friends. And when you recover, come back and tell us about your experience; maybe then you'll know something. Until then, you're not even making sense.

I know how to care for myself and my family and unlike yourself I don’t need bureaucrats and officials to hold my hand while doing so. I also don’t need to sacrifice mine or my children’s rights to protect Tim from a virus any grown adult can avoid on his own accord.

Unless they have the force of law behind their edicts, then you can’t ignore it.

Yup, so we outlaw the ones that have risks we deem high enough. Like stealing. Or killing. Or not wearing a mask during a pandemic.

Until someone comes along and deems masks to be risky, then you’re left wondering why you gave up your right in the first place.

So does going outside. So does playing baseball. Everything we do has a chance to negatively affect other people’s bodies.

The question goes not to what you can clothe yourself in, but what you want to wear. You claim a right to wear what you want. I simply want to know what you base that claim of right on, because I am pretty sure that no such right exists.

As a practical matter and within broad limits, of course you seem to, and that agreed. But the question here goes to right.

I have the right because it is my body. What gives you or anyone else the right to force me what to wear?

I disagree. It’s never reasonable to give a government the power to force people what to wear, and to sacrifice human rights on the alter of the “common good”. Some are forced to wear hijabs by law and for the same specious reason, some version or other of the “general good”, the existence of which can be seriously questioned.

I would also argue that if you need police powers to protect you from someone not wearing a mask, you’re doing it wrong, and probably shouldn’t be out in public anyways.

The use of police powers is a failure of public health policy in my mind.

I do for the simple reason that I am able to dress myself.

See Australia, Israel, Singapore...

But then you have long had a disregard for evidence, so I'm not expecting much.

What about them? You claim you have evidence for something, but for what you do not say.

When people think, e.g., that being required to wear a mask is a violation of their "rights" I don't think we can expect much of them in the way of personal morality, if that includes any sacrifice or conduct on their part for the benefit of others.

Do you believe a government should be able to force you to wear clothing you do not like?

Blaming deaths on such a belief is rather silly. If anything, the opposite belief was promoted. But as they found out the hard way, you cannot police a virus by denying people’s rights.

The idea that any people who believes in a minimal state must also believe they have no obligations beyond those necessary to the preservation of their rights, that they may do what they please without care for others, and that they have no conception of the common good, is not entirely accurate. Proponents of the minimal state simply don’t believe the state should (nor could) decide what one ought to believe, to dictate how we should treat or what we owe others. Such choices are best left to personal morality, whether derived from religion, philosophy, tradition, etc.

I would argue the opposite: that statism leads to the moral bankruptcy you describe. Paying a tax in the hope the state will work for the common good is no substitute for morality. Such behavior delegates moral obligations to others. Statists want the state to care for others precisely where they themselves refuse to. Really, I cannot blame them. Why should they feel an obligation to their fellow man when they already pay the government to do it for them?

I think you’re right, a deterministic world implies an infinite universe. If the present state of the universe is the effect of its anterior state, a finite universe would never arrive at any present state at all.

Can and will China promote communism once it becomes the leading economic superpower?

What are your thoughts?

Yes it can and will. The realization of communism is the highest ideal and ultimate goal of
the Party.

I wonder if this would cause someone to stop and think more when considering procreation and putting more people into the world.

First, they would wonder what was wrong with the writer. Second, they would wonder why they are being forced to acknowledge his beliefs. Third, they wouldn’t sign it.

Lockdowns are unjust, cruel, stupid, and designed for the purpose of protecting their own interests, which in many cases is their “universal” healthcare systems. Where quarantining was once a method of containing a virus, now it is a method of containing an entire citizenry, whether they have a virus or not. The use of prison terms to describe it, at least, was not euphemistic.

But it also reveals the incompetence of the state. Forcing the citizenry to stop working, to put them under house arrest, and to deny them the basic freedoms they were all promised was not the best method of containing a virus—it was just the easiest one. How quickly they sacrificed our most basic human rights to their ignorance.

In some developed countries minimum wage is determined by collective bargaining rather than law, and one could argue employees there get better wages and benefits because of it. Bargaining has been the mainstay method of determining renumeration since time immemorial, after all, whether there is law, taxes or not.

I agree that bargaining for renumeration necessarily includes taxes wherever taxation exists, but people do not do so because it is right and moral. They do it because they have to or risk punishment. This to say nothing of under-the-table employment or black markets, where taxes need not apply at all.

So the assumption that only law can determine renumeration is a false and one. Worse, it risks filling heads with the stupid idea that one cannot haggle over wages with employers and should run to authorities instead.

The notion of “common resources” seems to me unappealing. I live in a very vast country. I don’t claim any ownership over the territories and resources of the Inuit peoples, for example. I would not go there (nor could I) and take their resources just because I claim to have some share over it, because I just so happen to live within the same border. Their land is owned by them, not the common public. It was once the state’s land, sure, all of which has been acquired by the divine right of kings and conquest, but I can no less work to receive my own parcel without stealing anything. The only one who stole land, in fact, is the state.

But again, this is all beside my point, which is that taxes are immoral.

To abuse Nozik’s argument, In order to pay a tax one is forced to labor for the benefit of others. If 20% of my income goes to the government, that means 20% of my labor is forced to serve the benefit of someone else. If 100% of my labor is forced to serve the benefit of someone else, we might call that some degree or other of slavery. Nozik calls it forced labor.

I don’t believe “forced labor” suffices, simply because I am not forced to work. In my own case, the government simply comes along like a loan shark and demands I pay what is owed to him (an amount only they can define), or else I receive some sort of punishment. So I prefer “extortion” or “theft”. Either way, this transaction is an immoral one because there is no consent and it is enforced by coercion.

For a moral right to exist to pre-tax income, the moral worth of the person and the services ought to be valued and thereby lead to a just and fair distribution of work and pay. There is no such valuation, so whatever you get paid is not the morally correct outcome. So if the outcome is unjust, you cannot claim a moral right to the results of that unjust outcome.

For example, where there are 2 workers with the same skill, it would be morally correct if the one that's starving gets the job. Since the market system is incapable off taking such moral issues into account, you cannot claim a moral right to whatever earnings you make as a result.

I am unable to see how the market system prohibits such hiring. Any employer can easily decide the “moral worth” of a person, and decide who to hire based on his own conscience or on the possibility of just outcomes. People can, and have, run companies that explicitly hire the homeless or convicts, for example.

The government, on the other hand, confiscates and distributes wealth based on amoral factors, such as income. They take the money because you have it, not because you are more deserving or in need of it or the outcomes would be more just. Also, where I live I have two different sales taxes on general goods and services, the provincial sales tax (5%) and the general sales tax (7%). Everyone has to pay them, rich and poor, young and old, with zero valuation of moral or even financial worth. Considering these I would argue the opposite. It is the government that is incapable of taking moral issues into account. How could they? We are little more than SIN numbers to them, after all.

For fuck sake. It's not your earnings, we've been through this. You can't just make things the case by ignoring all contradiction.

Your earnings do not belong to you. Some portion of them belongs to the government.

Right, and slaves once belonged to their masters by law. The point isn’t whether they do or don’t, but whether it is right or wrong to do so, something you’ve consistently avoided.I think of all the times those in power claimed they had this or that right to take from their subjects, and I picture you there cheering them on.

This reply doesn't address what I raised. If you have no moral right to those earnings, there's no plunder or confiscation going on.

Why would I have no moral right to my earnings? I didn’t quite understand that part.

You can not vote for them.

I don’t see why I’d want to.

Begging government is taking on the task. If you want a hammer do you attempt to make one yourself, or do you ask the blacksmith?

I don’t beg the blacksmith for a hammer. We agree to a price and I purchase his services. This is free exchange. It would be comparable to government only if I had already payed the blacksmith and now had to beg to receive a hammer.

There's no underlying moral right to pre-tax income because that would mean people should be paid based on moral worth of their services and their own moral worth or needs. But that's not what's being established in the market.

The underlying moral principle is that it is wrong to confiscate and plunder the earnings of someone else.

In your hypothetical regulation free society you're screwed.

I’m not so sure of that.

When I compare power-hungry individuals occupying a corporation vs a government, I prefer the mercantilist to the dictator. At least I can refuse to work with or purchase the services of the mercantilist, while I have no such choice under state power. On top of that, there is no comparison between corporate power at its worse and state power at its worse.

As for environmental concerns, we should note that governments have also contributed to our current situation, and that we have arrived to it under the yoke of state power. Anything else is counterfactual, so at best we can speculate at what might have happened otherwise. The desire for change, however, has always occurred from the bottom up. That we have to beg our governments to address these concerns instead of taking on the task ourselves is just another hurdle to seeing it through.

That we're not not programmed with the means to do so? Why would assume we are? We're just animals evolved to behave in a certain way. Why would you assume our programming just maps 1-to-1 onto the way the world "is"?

We have the means to directly observe and interact with the world. There is no veil between me and the rest. With such a vast plane of interactivity at my disposal no assumptions are even required here.

Yes, the government confiscates a share of my earnings and does so legally. Yes, I have no recourse within their justice system to argue this is my property, and that they are plundering my earnings for their own benefit. That isn’t in dispute. What I am disputing is the underlying ethics of paying taxes.

Why on earth would you expect that. The other contractee knows full well what tax is and fully expects the appropriate percentage of whatever they agree to go the government. Why would you assume they would want you to have all of it?

I’m not doubting the fact that taxes exist and that we have to pay them. What I doubt is the underlying ethics of taxes.

By sophistication, I mean the idea that what we see is roughly what exists. That's a huge lack of sophistication.

Why? In my mind it takes an unsophisticated leap to believe some barrier or other exists between the seer and what is seen. What is it exactly that prohibits me from seeing what exists?

It's not your property. Flat out and simple. It is the property of the government, by law. The same law by which anything is the property of anyone.

You've yet to give an account of why the 'rightful' amount you're owed in return for your labour is exactly your gross wage and not exactly your net wage. Would this mean if you got a pay rise you'd give the extra money back?

Right, and slaves were the property of slave-holders by law. Appealing to law isn’t at all convincing.

If I sign a contract for a certain wage in exchange for my labor, I would expect the full amount to be paid.

The government can help you to solving problems or... It is them who create those.

I think there are far more subtle problems we will soon have to contend with, if we’re not already. We don’t just hand over our money when the government taxes us; we also hand over our independence and responsibility to one another.

I cringe whenever state proponents pretend taxation is the moral and compassionate thing to do, as if paying a tax was akin to taking care of the ill and feeding the poor. But really they’re handing that responsibility to someone else, in this case some faceless, centralized authority, who may not even exist in the community, let alone know what’s best for the people there. I wager many tax-payers would be more inclined to help the needy in their own community if they weren’t already paying the government to do it for them.

The infantilization of entire generations will become an issue wherever this paternalistic system is disrupted, just as in any relationship where one side is dependant on the other. If the government is forced into austerity, usually by its own overspending, the services the population has grown to become dependent on could be lost.

Well, I think I started a potentially good dialogue on that. After all, it seems to be the case that most of our taxpayer money goes into servicing the public in some way either through medical care or retirement programs or public infrastructure. I think the public usually wants what is being funded by the government and that seems to be a good consideration. Also, taxation doesn’t really make a particular individual less wealthy than another individual only because of taxes under most circumstances. So, it seems that taxation doesn’t disrupt the natural dominance hierarchy of our society that much at all either. So, I’m not entirely sure why people would use the strong language of calling it theft.

I call it theft and use strong language because my property is confiscated without my permission. I do not know whether my money goes to some pensioner or if I’m helping buy some Raytheon missiles.

And when a big polluting industry moves into town and starts polluting the entire town, then everyone would have to relocate to another town. And when multiple industries move into your state/province, then you can re-locate to another state/province.

Eventually you will run out of places to relocate. OK, maybe outer space, but even there pollution is a problem.

Surely a solution to the problem exists outside of government intervention. Perhaps once we relocate we can innovate a cleaner and more cost-effective method and put our former neighbor out of business, without having to give more power and money to some intervening bureaucracy.

Governments are notoriously awful at managing the environment. In the city where I live, our sewage has been pumped into the sea for decades, for example. Our federal government ships much of our plastic to third-world countries.

When we believe the government will take care of these issues, we thereby hand over our responsibility, believing they will take care of it.

In this imperfect world that we live in laws are required.

I’m no anarchist, so I think some laws are a necessary evil. But the only laws required are the ones that defend human rights and limit state power.