Political economy and political philosophy are different fields. — Jamal

Are they? In academics, maybe. In life, not so much. In political life, economy is central: it frames so many issues, influences so many decisions, determines so many policies. Is it really possible to keep them in separate arenas?

It’s becoming obvious now that you don’t know right from wrong, or maybe you’re just arguing for the sake of it. — invicta

Not anymore!

A lot of questions there Vera Mont, — invicta

You might consider asking them yourself before demanding clear answers on muddled topics

You’re walking down the road one day and a stranger snatches your phone or handbag.

Good or bad, or neither? — invicta

As usual, it depends.
Good or bad act? Good or bad person? In which category: moral, legal, subjective or social? What is being judged: intent, character, reason or outcome? What POV? Does someone directly or indirectly benefit? Does the event cause direct or indirect unintended harm?

It seems to me by your answers so far that you’re either unsure or just in denial as to what is good or bad. — invicta

I'm trying to convey that "good" and "bad" are concepts subject to evaluation, and that valuations originate in conscious entities, and conscious entities may have different criteria.
As such, there can be no more absolute "good" or "bad" than "big" or "small": they have meaning only in in a specified situational context.




.

The intent itself is to kill.

Is killing another human being at this mall good or bad ? — invicta

In what way good or bad? In which category? Subjective, moral, legal, social or statistical? Intent, causation, character or outcome? From what perspective? What are the consequences of the shooter's success or failure, escape or capture?

say you’re in a mall and someone starts shooting randomly because of some mental derangement and you get shot in the foot, you wouldn’t say you’ve had a good day would you — invicta

That's a subjective judgment, and still can be comparative. If the person next to me was shot in the head, I've had a better day than his. Are we comparing an injury to a random adult foot to the death of a six-year-old bystander? Did the delay cause me to be miss a fatal encounter with a fire-engine?
See, if you mix categories, there can be no single verdict.

would the person though be bad person doing that or would just the action be bad in itself — invicta

Was his intention to start a war or to prevent one? Is he delusional, antisocial or fanatical? Did the shooting spree benefit some political or religious faction, directly or indirectly? Did it finally push a legislature into enacting gun control and thus saving thousands of lives? (Call me crazy, but I'd take a bullet in the foot for that any day!)

I think it’s as simple as that, would the person though be bad person doing that or would just the action be bad in itself ? — invicta

Either, neither or both.

See OP again, in terms of WW2 history, the allies the good guys triumphed. Although it’s not as black and white as that — invicta

Aha. It's about 50,000,000 shades of grey.
There was a bit of human history even before 1939 and a bit of evolutionary history even before humans learned to tell stories about their own creation and magnificent destiny.
The "good guys" always win, because the winners get to designate heroes and villains after the fact, regardless of any inconvenient facts. They even get to hang a whole great big global conflagration on one skinny madman, because icons of Good and Evil are soooo satisfying to the rational, law-making, story-telling human.
And yet, in all that nature's-crowning-glory human history, Good as a force, has not been able decisively, conclusively to defeat Evil. Neither is bigger or stronger or more prevalent in individual humans and human societies; it's just that evil means and methods are more effective in getting results.

You got lost in the detail and missed the wood for the trees so to speak and are no closer to giving the answer to the question in the thread. — invicta

Here was my answer:

Since humans invented both concepts, and humans describe and define the world and everything in it as a reflection of themselves, humans must possess the characteristics they designate as good and bad. What's confusing is that they individually disagree at any given time on which is which, and the majority opinion shifts over time.

The apex of creation was followed by “evolutionary scale” if you two bothered to read that paragraph properly. No theological assumptions granted there. — invicta

If you want this proposition to be taken seriously, you might look to the language you employ.
Also a few of the assumptions you seem to have considered superficially, if at all.

Now, sure, human history is indeed a bloody one, but you also get good deeds there too. — invicta

Whatever the many reasons for man wanting to kill another man may be, we do know that moral frameworks, makes this a punishable offence and a crime. Thus man rises above his animal nature and instinct there by fact of making laws, that guide if not deter such actions. — invicta

Sure there's wars, genocides, crusades and jihads, killing of our own species on a massive scale, but we're so superior to other animals that we also kill one another for killing one another.
And for every thousand people we blow up, we also help one; for every thousand children we let starve to death or sell into slavery, we feed one and rescue another from abusive parents; for every million chickens we slaughter in factories, we save an orphaned fawn.
Sure we're destroying our own habitat along with that of all other species, but we're so much better than other animals that we do so by legal means.
Sure, vast numbers of us follow and obey evil leaders, torture and pillage in their name, but we're so much better than other animals that we recognize them as evil after they're dead and the damage has been done.

Man a creature of rational intent whereby better socialisation can turn that intent to good side rather than bad, wants to inherently do good I believe but gets corrupted, turns to hate somewhere along the line and does bad stupid shit, hating his fellow man in the process to the extremes of wanting to kill him, because of petty differences or simply because he slept with his wife. — invicta

"gets corrupted somewhere along the line" .... By what means, whose agency?
If the good is inherent and the evil is not, why hasn't the good triumphed yet, in the apical top peak of evolutionary progress?

There is a lot of that - an assumption of superiority, even supremacy - in all human cultures. It's an almost inescapable tenet of our self-regard as a species. (We must be the best, or we couldn't have killed off most of them, right?) Until we examine it with some degree of objectivity.

But when you start thinking about where our idea of right and wrong, good and bad came from in the first place, it gets really muddy. Guppies have no sense of right and wrong, good and bad - they just swim around looking for food and depositing eggs on plastic foliage.
Chimps, OTOH do some really bad behaving. Do they know the difference between good and bad? Do they have a concept of evil?
All social animals have rules of conduct and means of communicating the rules; of warning a youngster: "You're pushing the limits of tolerance. Back off or get punished."
But I think only humans have come up with so many creative ways to justify and codify antisocial behaviour.

the role of man as the apex of creation, — invicta

That is a serious problem. Creation? Apex? The role of man?
The Biblical delusion?
We should have been able to come with something more plausible by now!

To rise above the animal nature is to understand that man need not kill man. — invicta

Good luck with that one! Men kill a lot more men than zebras kill zebras or tigers kill tigers.
Rise above animal nature... what vanity!

Yet these two facets of human beings raise question as to man’s nature are we inherently bad or good ? Or perhaps we are both ? — invicta

Since humans invented both concepts, and humans describe and define the world and everything in it as a reflection of themselves, humans must possess the characteristics they designate as good and bad. What's confusing is that they individually disagree at any given time on which is which, and the majority opinion shifts over time.

1). Let's assume that reality is ordered - consistent. Governed by laws and constants. (objective). — Benj96

Given. I can't imagine life, or any other ongoing process in nature, taking place in the absence of consistent order and constant laws.

2). Lets also assume that the mind can perceive reality, receive data or input from it and store that data. — Benj96

Also given, that being the definition of "mind".

3). Finally, let's assume that the mind can store said data in any number of relationships/associations with one another. — Benj96

That number, I think, would depend on the complexity and development of the mind under consideration. A fruit-fly mind would have the capacity for more limited observation, less data storage and fewer associations than an elephant mind. Further, I believe all organic minds - at least on this planet - have innate limits on their capacities and capabilities.

It can create an internal structure or "operative paradigm" to any "nth degree" of accordance or discordance with reality as it actually is — Benj96

Allowing for the above reservation, I can agree to a high degree - perhaps ath to jth, but well short of the nth. I'm puzzled by the insertion of

(ie degree of subjectivity or "bias" ) — Benj96

in that sentence. I see normally functioning minds at any level of complexity creating internal models of reality according to which they make decision regarding situations, phenomena and other entities they encounter - if that's what is meant by "operative paradigm". I can also see that the more closely that internal model accords with objective reality, the more effectively that organism is likely to function.

Proof of such a case is in predictive value — Benj96

I don't quite follow predictive value. In some situations, accurate prediction is the path to survival, which would give accuracy - and alignment with objective reality - a very high value. But there are also situation in the social life of highly complex, imaginative animals, where some kinds of bias, some emotional factor or even illusion would serve their interest better. (Pascal seemed to think so, anyway.)

For one, psychopathology or psychiatric illness would likely be the result of disordered mental paradigm. A failing to correctly place associations and relationships into logical (true or "realistic" ) order - likely due to previous trauma the consequent irrational emotional influence on subsequent beliefs and finally the paradigm they create. And therefore delusions (untruths) prevail. — Benj96

Convoluted as that sentence is, it's too simplistic to sum up mental illness. So: ye-e-es, partly, sort of.

It would also mean that these could be "cured" with re-education, or rational psychotherapy. Reformulation of one's perception of reality. — Benj96

The Russian and Chinese governments have applied this method extensively, with very limited success. Even if your motives are pure and your aim to guide the patient toward a more accurate or healthier internal model of reality, external logic doesn't work. The patient knows that your reasoning is different from his; what he cannot accept is that your model of the world is superior or preferable. He can be assisted, but ultimately, he is the only one who knows the language and structure of his own internal model of the world: he's the only one who can rebuild it.
So again: yes, sometimes, partly, if....

What would this mean for the current pharmaceutical approach to psychiatric illness? — Benj96

Very little. There are already many other therapies in the field.
Pharmaceuticals serve various uses, though they are usually not proffered as a cure.
Not the least important of their uses is calming violent or self-destructive impulses, to afford the patient some degree of control over his actions and his life, while other, slower approaches are attempted to reach the root causes of the malfunction.
Are drugs overused in western psychotherapy? Yes, definitely, as they are in all branches of modern medicine: we're always looking for the quick and easy solution. You can't altogether blame the profession: it's very hard to let a patient suffer, or be forced to restrain him, when you have a possible means of relief within your power to grant.

Culture changes.
We have become so many and so technological that distance communication is more common now than face-to-face. I wouldn't be surprised if family members texted one another in the same house. "Jason, dinner's ready." "Busy. BTS" Everyone is always too busy. And in a hurry "GYADH. Now!"

Social mores also change. For adults, the pace of change can be disorienting, even embarrassing, for example when we're not sure what's the correct form of address for a young person who appears female, or the socially accepted description of a person's ethnicity. It gets even more complicated, when you're not sure a new person you've met is in a sympathetic or hostile political camp, or a similar or antithetical world-view. If I say something that seems to me obvious about evolution or the prime minister, will they be offended or provoked into an argument? Standards of courtesy and vocabulary can't even be taken for granted - for example, my own idiom has coarsened over the past decade or so, routinely using words that were shocking in polite company when I was younger, but I'm still aware enough to avoid them among my contemporaries. It's just so much easier to practice our new-found laxity of expression on a keyboard, and in the confines of a known medium, than risk confrontations in person.
Convenient, too.

OTOH, when I write fiction, which is farther removed from the person who reads it, I clean up my language and syntax, because my name is on it, and I still care what people think of me.
That's probably what it boils down to: we care whether people think well or badly of us.
Curse and redemption of the social animal.

I don't think it's 'covert'; just more palatable than preaching.
In authoritarian regimes, any expression counter to the administration's narrative poses a danger to the speaker, which makes anonymity advisable (if hard to maintain); in societies with relatively free legal speech, protest songs, rebellious poetry, provocative paintings and anti-establishment novels are published openly.
Moreover, something fiction does that direct communication can't, is allow the reader a glimpse into the experience of a characters who live, think and feel differently from himself, and thus expand the reader's understanding of other people and explore new ideas and attitudes - in an entertaining way.

You held that equal treatment according to a certain category is What justice and fairness meant. — Tobias

No, I said that's the best that can be expected in large, diverse populations.

It is not 'anything goes'. That is why philosophy of law is a mature philosophical subject. — Tobias

Right you are.

My question works equally well with an omnibenevolent machine. — RogueAI

No, that would make it a completely different problem. Machines, however omni and benevolent they eventually become, began their evolution from adding machines made by humans to count relative values set by humans. (Gods had and have a quite different function, a quite different etiology.)
Its reasoning would probably be stated in terms of benefit to the human society: calculated as useful hours of future/expected contribution per unit.

What if no human has more or less value to the god than any other human life, or any other life, or any life at all? You can't know. What if the god doesn't think in terms of bargains, but of souls (essence, spirit, selfness, atma - whatever you like to call the kernel of a unique being)?
Until you make the decision to weigh one life against another, the situation is not within your control: you are merely a witness, a bystander.
When you make the decision which life to sacrifice, and for what reason, you do three things: take on the prerogative of a god, place other lives in a scale of your own valuation and assume responsibility for a death.
The decision alters the configuration of your soul. Do you then become more or less valuable to the god?

As far as intelligence there should be less redundancy, but I fear one big intell agency without any groups that can investigate them as a safe guard. — TiredThinker

32 intel agencies without oversight are a lot more dangerous and expensive. Nobody can investigate them, by their very nature. And every developed nation has them.

electric companies and things that literally are ridiculous to have redundancy — TiredThinker

I don't understand what you mean by this. Electricity generation seems to be done by power & gas corporations, with feet in at least two energy sectors. And the government involvement, in the Us, seems to be more state than federal level regulation. But I'm not familiar with a lot of the issues concerning electricity.

Another thing that complicates the industry is the fact that there are regulated and deregulated markets. Each state has particular laws relating to the energy market and whether it is regulated or deregulated. So the state you operate in will have a significant effect on what options you have.

Yes, but there is always some kind of arbitrariness in group classification. — Tobias

Yes. In large populations, that can't be helped. In small ones, each person can be considered individually, as can each situation. But even in a systemic procedural, the prosecutor has a degree of autonomy in considering each case on its merits and some flexibility is accorded to the jury in its deliberations and to the judge in sentencing. In a very large, unwieldy, badly designed and corruptible justice system, people of good will can still apply the law more fairly than people with axes to grind.

Is it than fair that those 17 yos cannot vote? — Tobias

No, and that can be helped. As immigrants need to take a fitness test for citizenship, so could all prospective voters. Unfortunately, that, too, is corruptible. Of course, civics should be a standard subject in school anyway.

Even people in the same legal category get treated in different ways. — Tobias

That's nothing to do with meritocracy or equality under the law.

Would you think that criminal law is fair or just? — Tobias

As stated earlier, I don't think punishment is the correct answer at all. I'm in favour of putting a lot more effort into preventing the causes and occasions of crime before damage is done.
Nor do I think it's possible for humans to contrive a perfect system of laws or to administer them perfectly. The more numerous and diverse a population, the more difficult any kind of equality or equity is to reach, and of course, money hugely complicates everything, politics tends to increase difference in treatment of people and disparity of wealth and power skew things horribly.

All we can do is blunder about, trying our best, with the tools at hand, to keep society operating in reasonably good order.

Treating everyone as equals is not possible, over disagreements of what equal means in such respect. Even if that difficulty could be overcome, it might not be socially efficient to do so and sometimes efficiency concerns trump concerns of justice. — Tobias

Justice and fairness require that persons be classified into groups and judged according to a uniform standard for each group. A child, or adult with the mental capacity of a child, would be judged according one set of criteria; fully competent adults by a stricter one; the mentally ill, differently again.

It doesn't require that people within a legal category be equal in any other way; only that they be treated the same under the law: accorded the same rights and burdened by the same degree of responsibility for their actions - which also mean, being tried by the same legal process, by the same rules of evidence, and given the same amount of leeway for mitigating circumstances if they're found guilty.

I worry concern over size is driven by paranoia over being watched like China watches its citizens, or at least AI does. — TiredThinker

It's not just AI. Citizens really are being watched, by several agencies. Paranoia in the US - and, incidentally, but not accidentally, lots of other countries - is not merely in the skittish citizens regarding their government, but in governments regarding their citizens and one another and financial interests and political organizations. There is enough paranoia to go around - and enough bad shit to cause it.

But I really do believe that even the intelligence agencies of which I don't necessarily approve could be more efficient and less expensive if they pooled some of their information, reducing redundancy. One problem, of course, is that all departments and agencies are jealous of their autonomy and funding. This also holds true of welfare agencies: UBI, issued by a single central authority would save a shitload of effort, data storage and processing and money over the half dozen or more social service agencies that now administer pensions, welfare, unemployment benefits, etc. Some other programs, too, could be amalgamated, for example all the departments having oversight of commerce and trade.

If the government programs get things done more efficiently than individuals can than all the better. — TiredThinker

Even with the duplication and overlap of functions, it seems that government services are as efficient as private ones. It depends on the organization and pre-existing system. This is a fairly exhaustive study in various social services in many countries. Both private and public organizations can do things - pretty much everything - better than unorganized individuals can - which is probably why civilization was invented in the first place.

Truth is you and I do not make any laws, and since we are a part of society, society does not make laws. — NOS4A2

Well somebody made them! Evidently, that somebody wasn't you, because laws are quite a bit older than you, but it was somebody who was also part of society, and new laws continue to be made by people who are also part of society.

I suppose it is hard know the exact benefit of certain government investments in the shorter term. — TiredThinker

Yes, it's hard to know. Ideas grow out of previous ideas, until something that seemed like a benefit to all the people becomes something that benefits a very few people at the expense of many, or something that seemed to protect all the people turns into a money pit that protects nobody. Situations, institutions, innovations and developments tend to get away from us, get out of control. And there is no readily available villain to blame: this is what people do.
If we look closely, however, at some of the developments, we might ask whether certain specific subsidies are serving the people or a special interest; whether some agencies are redundant - whether, for example, the United States really needs 32 separate intelligence agencies.
The problem of deciding what's the right size is discovering what actually exists and what it actually does.

So? It is not in our nature to agree on everything. That’s why I afford them the right to disagree. — NOS4A2

Great. So if they say it's okay to kill the people they don't like, you afford them the right to do so. Even if you are one of the the people they don't like? And if they disagree about affording you a right to to disagree - which people very often do - you're okay with that, too?

This discrepancy of what we consider rights and justice is the reason societies make laws.

How does the word ocean give context ? — invicta

It doesn't. That is a word, and nothing more. If you have a solid (when frozen) definition of ocean, it provides an object or image to place into a senetence, which can then become a communication, which has a context.
But if you've modified the word to where it might as easily be a glass of milk or a barrel of gasoline, then "ocean" no longer refers to large body of salt water. It is meaningless without elaboration: e.g. an ocean of methane, an ocean of counterexamples.

The statement can be easily modified to say

Oceans are made of liquid. — invicta

The sentence can be modified; the definition of "ocean" can be modified. You can even modify both to the point of gibberish, but that still won't make it context-dependent.

The oceans on Titan are methane. — Banno

Are they still technically "oceans", or do we just use the term because they resemble bodies of water that we observe on Earth? The same can be said of family trees and the tree of life - which are metaphors - and artificial constructs made to imitate trees.

Which of the above statements would you like to dispute and get anal with? — invicta

Not disputing the truth of facts. I was asking you whether there is any extra information conveyed by repeating the definition of something, and further asserting that the more approximate information you add, the more farther you get from fact and closer to opinion.

The sun emits light.
Cows don’t make eggs
Chickens have feathers until you pluck them.
The heart pumps blood around the body. — invicta

All of these can be true statements. So can a great many others. Does that make them "context-driven?" Cows won't make eggs, even if you put them in a rocket-ship bound for the moon and translate the sentence to Lunatic.

Triangles have 3 sides. — invicta

Of course it's true: that's how it was invented: What is a triangle? A closed figure with three sides and three angles.

The ocean is made of water. — invicta

What is an ocean? Can you define it anything other than water?

Once you make a general statement beyond the confines of the definition, it becomes debatable; the more description you add and the less precise your language, the farther you wander into subjective territory.

What shape is the Earth?

The earth is round. — invicta

Approximation of a truth; imprecise.

While the Earth appears to be round when viewed from the vantage point of space, it is actually closer to an ellipsoid. However, even an ellipsoid does not adequately describe the Earth’s unique and ever-changing shape.

Facts are not man-made, but they are perceived by humans with variable degrees of accuracy and reported with variable degrees of precision - and sincerity.

One needn’t examine a law to discover that man ought to have a right to life, for example. He can do that by considering his own nature and that of others. — NOS4A2

And yet they disagree, both regarding their own nature and 'rights'.

Children recognize unfairness at a very young age. — NOS4A2

And yet they readily commit unfair acts from a young age, unless their elders prevent it.

In rejection of this, the state should be concerned with securing the natural rights of human beings and making justice accessible. Beyond that it should not go. — NOS4A2

Where do these 'natural rights' of human beings come from? What is 'justice'? In nature, the best adapted genetic material survives in offspring; some organisms find mutual protection in societies and evolve social orders. I do not believe 'justice' exists as anything but a social concept elaborated by humans. How else can it exist? As soon as a concept is defined in human terms, it ceases to be natural. Yet how can undefined concepts be secured?

It’s no wonder that beneath its self-aggrandizement the government is simply a mechanism for taking money from one person’s pockets and putting it in another. — NOS4A2

Is the transfer of it from pocket to pocket not the sole and singular function of money?

I don’t think there is any turning back. — NOS4A2

I agree. For good and ill, civilization exists, mixed metaphors and all. It will not turn, but it can be destroyed.

Would you then say that truth is relative in this given scenario.

The temperature is high right now
(at 40Celsius)

Or would such a statement have no relevance to truth relatively or absolutely? — invicta

It is not a T/F proposition; it's an opinion or observation by a conscious entity, made in imprecise language.
In order to be true or false, its non-sloppily worded version would read:
The temperature [ of an unspecified physical substance] is higher [on the Celsius scale] than 39 and lower than 41 degrees.
All comparative descriptions are relative; only true in relation to something else, whether the "else" is stated or not, understood or not. All statements regarding quantity are relative; therefore the term "truth value" is applicable only in a particular context.
It's not the "truth value" of the statement that's in question but the applicability and relevance of the statement to the topic of a communication.

In short, truth is not a property of subjective observations; it resides in the contextual judgment of the observer. The only "truth value" such a statement could have is in the sincerity of the person making it - which can perhaps be verified by a lie detector... if lie detectors were reliable.

Supposing then the farmer utters this sentence in the middle of summer.

Today is a hot day.

The thermometer would agree reading 40Celsius. — invicta

That is not a T/F statement; it is a subjective judgment.
A thermometer measures increments of heat; it does not indicate truth or falsehood.
A day is a measure of time, one rotation of a planet; it has no temperature.

The statement as written is a typical human habit: the imprecise use of terminology.
It would be more accurately stated as: "The air feels hot to me today."
If both participants in a conversation have a similar metabolism and speak the same language, the speaker does not need to phrase it this way to get his meaning across, because the hearer automatically fills in the omitted and information and compensates for the misattribution of property.

And as the truthfulness of such a statement depends on mutual agreement between two or more subjects then it’s no longer subjective (context dependent) but objective (context independent) — invicta

It is just the other way around.
Linguistic intuition and shared experience do not influence objective truth,while subjective truth cannot be verified from independent external sources.

Again this is incoherent — invicta

The whole apple sequence is.
1. Red = sweet: F
2. Apples grow on trees: T
Neither statement, nor their respective falsehood and truth, is affected by farmers, their nationality, cider press or rocketship.
A The statement is either true or false.
B The statement is either responsive to a particular question, or it is not.
A and B are not interdependent: either, both or neither may be true without affecting the truth or falsehood of 1. and 2.
C: Truth is not context-dependent.

So far, nobody wanted to make government smaller - at least in the US. Just more efficient - without suggesting the means whereby it is to be accomplished.
How about the UK? Anything superfluous?

It seems to me easier to say that big government is a problem, or to vote for a candidate who promises to "trim the fat", than to decide which particular services we'd rather do without. If we don't know what our government is actually doing, are we qualified to criticize its performance?

Isn’t that the same thing as untrue, uncertain etc…I think you’re just using different words … — invicta

I'm using different words that mean different things, because I intend to convey different meanings.
The truth or falsehood of a statement, such as "Mammals are warm-blooded animals." is unaffected by the fact that they are not applicable to question such as "Do apples taste like bananas?"
It doesn't matter how convoluted a line from the taxonomy of animals to the chemical components of flavour, the statement remains true.

You are missing the point. Your failure in seeing the relevance of a celestial star map to the cider brewer is about connecting the dots from revenue generation via brewing cider to their ambition to go to space. — invicta

That may be so, but it's not in the example you presented.

But as a general principle and the point of this thread is that decontextualising some statements can alter its truth value from true, too uncertain to completely untrue — invicta

No, it can't.
It can, however, render it inapplicable, irrelevant or nonsensical. Just as you demonstrated.

http://www.netage.com/economics/gov/images-org/gov_chart-landscape.pdf

That's a chart of US federal government departments.
Are they all necessary? If not, which one(s) should be abolished, and how should its/their function be allocated?

There are no legitimate forms of government; no effective method of governance; not even the remotest possibility of an an administration that can organize society; no motivation for anyone to work, except to feed himself and protect his stuff. We'll just have to break up into armed gangs under warlords and fight it out for the last dregs of resources.

Why are you wasting your time complaining on an internet forum? — Tzeentch

Huh? What have I complained about?

I'm happy to pay taxes. I'm at ease with having laws and regulations. I have suggested ways in which one or two who are emphatically unhappy with laws and taxation might change their circumstances or change the society or opt out of their contractual obligations. All positive.