I’m not a conservative. But I do know the difference between the abstract “future child” and the real one. I also know the difference between preventing life and preventing suffering.

How can one alleviate the suffering of a child while at the same time wishing it was never born?

There must be some painful dissonance involved in explicitly waging war against potential suffering in some abstract future while doing nothing to alleviate flesh-and-blood suffering in the concrete present. The amount of suffering he has prevented remains zero, but he no longer has to feel worse for doing nothing.

The problem with these sources are that we enter into relationships with them voluntarily. One need not use Google or Facebook, whereas we see what happens if you do not comply with police or government. So I cannot see how these entities can be a source of any denials of freedom, let alone anything on par with those who possess the monopoly on violence.

Some other thoughts is that if philosophers want to feel good about themselves then shouldn't or ought they not to concern themselves with the need of the many; yet, at what point as to entertain the need of the few vs. many?

Rousseau’s pitié extended to the many, but apparently not to his own children, 5 of whom he deserted in foundling hospitals. So I get suspicious when I see the common refrain of reducing some abstract notion of suffering. One might do best to alleviate the suffering of flesh-and-blood human beings, the people around him, instead of the abstract people he imagines in his skull.

I wager such a sentiment is the necessary result of comfort. People are too busy enjoying their rights to want to fight for them, perhaps forgetting the hard-fought battles required to bring them into reality. Hopefully the recent authoritarian takeovers of entire societies will jog their memory.

I do not believe there is a single good argument for the proposition that our minds are our brains.

I think you’re right on this. I believe the same but perhaps for different reasons, for what is the brain without the myriad systems that support it? All of it is so interconnected that it even makes the concept of “organ” seem inadequate. So instead of postulating a soul I would merely extend the concept of “mind” to throughout the entire body, or better yet, eliminate the notion of mind altogether since it essentially the same thing as the body.

Is that really true though? White supremacists would certainly disagree and say that being "white", however we want to define that precisely, is very much associated with a specific history, culture and institutions. That's after all why they keep using the term "western culture" in place of "white supremacy".

We easily dismiss this mode of making sense of the world as a transparent veil for racism. But we don't seem to apply that same scrutiny to nationalism.

It's also interesting to note that one might argue that both the concept of the nation and the concept of human races in it's modern form developed around the same time frame - the period when Europe transformed from a collection of fragmented kingdoms into nation states, which then started to colonise the globe.

I’m not sure how “western culture” can be construed as “white supremacy”. Europe, like Africa, Asia, North America, was never some melting-pot where everyone who had similar skin-tones carried a common culture into the future. The nations were often at war and sought to annihilate each other, even if by all outward appearances some of the soldiers looked alike.

Though it may have taken much time and bloodshed, “western culture” did much to overcome racism, slavery, discrimination, etc. as it did to spread it. The ability to criticize the past, learn from the mistakes and self-correct is one of the boons of being a part of it.

Some, maybe. But that was never Trump's purpose, or Miller's, and is therefore one of your lying red herrings.

That’s a lie. The DHS had no blanket separation policy. The only reasons the DHS would separate children from the adults is 1) when DHS is unable to determine the familial relationship, 2) when DHS determines that a child may be at risk with the parent or legal guardian, or 3) when the parent or legal guardian is referred for criminal prosecution. You would see that they are kept with their abusers, or otherwise jailed with their parents.

You say “separate families”, without mentioning the fact that many of them weren’t families at all, but child traffickers and the children they used to get across the border. You effectively promote keeping trafficked children with their traffickers, and have zero care for that crime and the children it exploits.

Putin challenges Biden to debate after president calls him a 'killer'

I love this idea. Leaders should settle their disputes with a good old debate, or absent that, a duel. I wager Biden wouldn’t do too well in either, however.

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.