The president can declassify what he wants. He’s the commander in chief.

Yes, I believe it was politically motivated, because they know people such as yourself will spread it uncritically and use it to guide their activity.

According to his defense he had a standing order to declassify documents so he could take them for work at Mar-a-Lago. The FBI suspiciously waited until before the midterms to retrieve those documents, making a show of it no doubt. This is the same FBI that deceived the country and foreigners like @ssu with Russiagate.

But I can be violent. Am I the exception? Do you find it impossible to be violent? The government do not seem to me to have the monopoly at all.

If I were violent, there would be consequences, it would be difficult...


But if 'difficult' is the criteria for holding a monopoly, then certainly large corporations hold several monopolies.

Which sort of violence can you do?

And then he can brush of this as a politically motivated witch hunt, which not only @NOS4A2 thinks it is.

What else can it be?

Yes, the monopoly on violence is seized and held through violence, essentially. I’m not sure might equals better, in this instance.

No, Amazon does not have the monopoly on internet sales.

If what is my point?

It's not an argument, it's a question. How do governments monopolise violence? I seem quite capable of being violent.

It’s gained the old fashioned way: by brute force and conquest. It’s maintained and made legitimate by law, for instance the “use of force” doctrines in policing. If you or I armed ourselves and forced our way into someone’s home, or pointed our weapons at someone, or cuffed someone and threw them in the back of our car, we’d be criminally charged. The state, however, is well within their legal right to do the exact same thing. This distinction is peculiar to states, but when it isn’t it is only because “the right to use physical force is ascribed to other institutions or to individuals only to the extent to which the state permits it” (Max Weber).

Collectivist groups? I’m not so sure about that. Band societies, maybe, most of them kin.

It’s a document dispute about the National Archives. And if there are classified materials involved the president can declassify whatever he wants.

What I see is two-tiered justice. No FBI broke into Clinton’s house with guns drawn when she stored classified info in her house and destroyed evidence with hammers and bleachbit. They didn’t do it when the Clintons stole furniture from the white house. Trump dares to take a letter addressed to him from Obama and they show up with rifles and vests.

The FBI is stealing something or planting something, one or the other.

Imagine if Trump’s DOJ raided Biden’s house in the lead up to the midterms. He was impeached for simply asking Zelensky to look into claims about Biden’s dealings in Ukraine.

Trump was called a fascist at the mere suggestion of investigating Biden or Clinton. They are everything they accused him of.

No such situation was forced upon me. I don’t think remaining in the womb is a preferable existence.

No one forces me to work, though, except the state. Some of my time and effort is stolen from me. I’m not sure that is the case with what you’re talking about.

I like working. Like you said, without it I die. I can use my myself to sustain myself. It’s amazing when I think of it.

All of which I learned from individuals. I have never met the collective, let alone learned anything from it.

I’m reading what you wrote. We’re talking past each other. I’m arguing about moral behavior; you’re arguing about moral outcomes.

Like I said, I think moral outcomes are illusory in the sense that they are never moral enough, an infinite regress, so one needn’t concern himself with such thoughts. Had you known the woman’s kids might go hungry you might buy the more expensive chair. She spends the money on booze instead. She gets drunk and kills a family in an accident. Regardless of the outcome you acted morally.

There is a lot to be said about it, but one thing is for certain in my mind: the existence of a “collective” can be seriously questioned. It’s abstract, amorphous, mind-dependant, something like a “natural kind”—a “political kind”. Utilizing it as a subject of evaluation focuses value inwards rather than in a direction that would benefit actual flesh-and-blood people. When it comes to the question “what is more natural”, valuing others above our own ideas seems to me more natural

I am dense, I guess. I can’t see how voluntary, consensual cooperation, whether in the market or elsewhere, is not moral behavior. Moral people purchase things in such a manner because against all other forms of exchange (robbery, theft, extortion, forced labor, etc.) it is the moral one.

Your moral behavior seems an infinite regression because it doesn’t end, or at least ends where a vast number of improvements could still be made, and thus never be moral enough. Or it must satisfy some “moral outcome”, or be considered “morally optimal”, which it never does.

The consensual and voluntary exchange is a just transfer of holdings from one person to another, and thus moral behavior. So long as the property is transferred in such a manner, no one else has any moral right to it because they would have to engage in an unjust transfer in order to attain it.

Sorry, but it is moral, right, proper, and virtuous conduct to pay someone for services rendered and to abide by voluntary and mutual agreements. It is immoral to do the opposite. You don’t go to the convenience store and walk out without paying, or refuse to pay the builder after he’s done.

The “market” isn’t a human being. It doesn’t make moral considerations, so we agree. I don’t know how we move from that to the argument that the fruits of my labor shouldn’t be mine when it was procured via voluntary exchange between two consenting parties, as renumeration for work I performed for someone who wanted to buy it. Whose money should it be, if not mine?

Has my labor and wealth not paid for such “benefits”? That the slave benefits from the services provided to him by his master does not alter the injustice of such relationship. He is fed, housed, clothed—how dare he opine that the master exploits him.

First it’s the market doesn’t take into account moral considerations, now it’s the market doesn’t result in “overall just outcomes”. What state has achieved “overall just outcomes”?

Good and sober points.

But they are not party to the contract.

I am only saying it is wrong to take the fruits of someone’s labor, not that good statists cannot voluntarily fund the state and its efforts.

People take into account moral considerations, so your market claim is nonsense, worth ignoring.

You’re using money issued and backed by the government and the government enforces the terms of the contract.

And? They are not a party to the contract.

I cannot nor can anyone else because the state has acquired all power to make decisions in those ventures, even if in most of those cases the contract work out to private people.

No it isn’t.

Your mistake is that you believe only the state can lay asphalt and build bridges and protect our dealings.

Who gets to decide the worth of their labour?

Consenting parties in the transaction.

You repeating it doesn’t make it untrue, either.

Do you really think it is just to take the fruits of someone else’s labor without their consent?

Ah, wisdom dawns!

You only own property if we say you do.

From there, the whole edifice of individual sovereignty collapses.

The rest of my quote magically disappears.

You're missing a premise from which you can then derive the conclusion that you therefore have the legal and/or moral right to that pre-tax income.

It is unjust to take the fruits of someone else’s work and effort for your own benefit. I have the right to my income simply because it was given to me. I acquired through a just transaction.

But it was offered to me and given to me for the services my employer and I both agreed upon.

It was their property. One edict was even called “Decree for the Reporting of Jewish-Owned Property”. Of course, the Nazis would lay claim to it should they need it for the sake of the German economy.

My argument is that it is immoral to take from others, not what they ought to possess. That my money was given to me for services rendered is enough to know that it is mine.

So the capital levy on Jewish wealth imposed in 1938 proves that it wasn’t their property after all?

I haven’t quite worked out a theory of property, but I suppose it would be on the Lockean side. Is your theory of property one of government dictate?

Right, the government declares it can legally take my money, and it is theirs, therefor they are not taking my money. You probably work for the government, don’t you?

You could be right. Communal living wouldn’t allow the sort of power imbalance and organized exploitation present in modern states.