You can not vote for them.
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?
Maybe it seems that way to you, but plenty of others would contest that that is removing the tenant from their rightful property at the behest of an unjust claim over it by another, because use justifies ownership. — Pfhorrest
The underlying moral principle is that it is wrong to confiscate and plunder the earnings of someone else. — NOS4A2
A small government that protects those individual rights that we deem important enough to accept the necessary evil of coercion. — Tzeentch
Shall we? — Tzeentch
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. — NOS4A2
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.
I'm assuming that you live in a democracy - i.e., not Saudi Arabia, North Korea, etc. If I'm mistaken in that assumption, then I apologize because you have a whole different set of problems.When I compare power-hungry individuals occupying a corporation vs a government, I prefer the mercantilist to the dictator. — NOS4A2
Not when the mercantilist has monopoly control of an essential item - food, water, clothing, housing. And remember that this will happen in your hypothetical unregulated economy.At least I can refuse to work with or purchase the services of the mercantilist, — NOS4A2
In a democracy, however flawed it may be, you are the government. In a democracy you and your fellow citizens have the final say on what the government does. If you do not like the decisions your fellow citizens have made, if you do not like the policies your government is pursuing, you can pick up and move to another state/province/country where things are run more to your liking.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. — NOS4A2
For taxation to be theft, there must be a right to pre-tax income. Legally, this is clearly not the case.
A moral right to pre-tax can only be said to exist if earned income results in a fair and equitable payment for labour rendered. This too is false. Market circumstances are not concerned with the moral worth of labour or who needs the job the most or who is most deserving of fulfilling the assignment. So a moral right to pre-tax income is incoherent.
Since no rights are infringed, there's no theft. — Benkei
Maybe it goes back then to what we understand as the proper role of government. Is the overarching goal of government to provide everyone a level playing field or is it something else like to try to ensure the population life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness? — BitconnectCarlos
Well, with that mindset, I think nobody would rent anything and we would often have to spend way more money buying something. The benefit of being able to rent is that sometimes you need to use something for a short amount of time and it wouldn’t be worth buying that thing. I’m not sure how radical your viewpoint on this is. Would you go as far as to say that a hotel who has a guest that just stayed there for one night owns that hotel room? For how long do you have to use something for you to think that the user of that thing owns that thing. — TheHedoMinimalist
That's also, in my view, the main ethical discussion. What's the role of government? I'm partial to John Rawls approach with the veil of ignorance and reflexivity. — Benkei
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.
Really? I thought he brought it down to earth quite well. You're one of the negotiators at a table, each of them represent a group of people (age groups or physical characteristics, whatever) but they don't know which group they are representing but they are still to get the best deal possible for whoever they're representing. — Benkei
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. — NOS4A2
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. — NOS4A2
The government, on the other hand, confiscates and distributes wealth based on amoral factors, such as income. — NOS4A2
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. — NOS4A2
During our discussion we have worked from the assumption that governments produce mostly positive outcomes, to counterbalance their usage of unjust means. — Tzeentch
In reality, we see corruption, propaganda, shameless disregard for individual (and sometimes human) rights. We see governments that with every attempt to solve a problem create a dozen new ones. What we see is governments playing political games with often war as a result. Wars that have only increased in scale since history has been recorded, that have killed hundreds of millions in the last century, and that during the Cold War were literally on the verge of wiping out humanity. — Tzeentch
I do not need more proof that governments cannot be trusted with power, and that everything must be done to curb what little power they should be allowed to hold. — Tzeentch
history shows what power does to individuals. It inevitably corrupts. First it attempts to consolidate, then it attempts to grow. Corruption is a process that simply cannot be avoided, and it ultimately secures the fate of a nation, just like is now visibly happening in the United States. — Tzeentch
In some ways, that's the point I'm trying to draw out. That you criticise government structures simply because you don't like some of the things your current government is doing. — Isaac
All of which are perpetrated by democratically elected governments. The people of your country elected these spineless morons to run things. So what on earth makes you think that putting decisions back into the hands of these very people is going to improve things? — Isaac
You have to also demonstrate that one of the other would handle it better. If you want power returned to provincial governments, you have to show that provincial governments, collectively, make less of a mess than federated governments do, otherwise you're just re-arranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. You've yet to make such an argument. — Isaac
Yes. And political power is not the only form of power. so you make your small government... whose then to stop Google, Amazon and Facebook from accumulating vast power? — Isaac
I think the things we have discussed are all fundamentally a part of government structures. — Tzeentch
I see absolutely no argument for giving governments and individuals within governments the power over millions of citizens. We know where it leads. — Tzeentch
The argument for decentralizing power, is that ultimately it makes dysfunctional power structures escapable. The question may become, how do we keep decentralized power from centralizing itself? Perhaps it requires a continuous effort. — Tzeentch
The only reason one even needs to worry about these types of companies, is because they try to control people by trying to control powerful governments who have the mandate to violence and coercion. Powerful government is the enabler here, not the remedy. — Tzeentch
Even so, part of what is considered moral is also cultural so different societies would reach different conclusions. — Benkei
Like it's impossible for a government not to do those things? — Isaac
The whole raison d'être of centralised government is to prevent a repeat of the very bloody process of centralisation happening all over again. — Isaac
You're basically willing to risk mass warfare and global environmental crisis just so that a government can't use your taxes to support gay marriage (or whatever progressive government scheme it is you disapprove of). — Isaac
Nonsense. Amazon provides appalling working conditions, comes close to breaching human rights in developing world sources and pollutes common resources. None of this is done by appropriating government coercion. It's done because the laws allow it. Worse is not done because governments prevent it. Without centralised government, what is to stop Amazon from removing even further worker's rights, from ignoring sustainable resource limits in their supply chain, from driving developing world workers into slavery? How do you propose to prevent these things without centralised government? — Isaac
Like it's impossible for a government not to do those things? — Isaac
The use of violence, coercion and the process of corruption and wherever those may lead it, yes. Undoubtedly. — Tzeentch
The whole raison d'être of centralised government is to prevent a repeat of the very bloody process of centralisation happening all over again. — Isaac
Centralized government has to do with consolidation of power, not with preventing bloodshed. And it has done none of the sort over the course of history. Again, the greatest atrocities in our history have been committed by centralized governments. — Tzeentch
Violence is self-perpetuating. Hence, why I fundamentally disagree with its use. — Tzeentch
Developing countries usually struggle with a myriad of other problems, government corruption undoubtedly one of them. And your answer is to give such corrupt governments a further mandate for violence and coercion. — Tzeentch
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. — NOS4A2
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. — NOS4A2
So the assumption that only law can determine renumeration is a false and one. — NOS4A2
The notion of “common resources” seems to me unappealing. — NOS4A2
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. — NOS4A2
The only one who stole land, in fact, is the state. — NOS4A2
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. — NOS4A2
The claim is that your wages have been negotiated with the expectation that some portion of them will be paid to the government, hence that portion does not belong to you by contractual agreement (it doesn't belong to you ethically, nor legally either, but those are other arguments addressed separately).
Incorrect.Capital gains tax is terrible and disincentivizes investing and also makes taxes extremely, extremely cumbersome here in the US. — BitconnectCarlos
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