posted
Mattp: Social programs that "reduce crime" stick around whether they're successful at their stated goal or not. Such is the nature of government. The pass mierda to show they are "doing something" and the fact that it doesn't work doesn't matter. The program just keeps getting it's automatic funding increases each year anyway. Or worse, they decide that the reason it's not working is they're not throwing enough money at it. So in order to be "doing something" they vote it more funding... Which means even bigger automatic increases every year.
Lisa: I'm sorry for using the word "retard" but, honestly, can you think of a better description of someone who puffs their chest out and happily proclaims they got FIVE HUNDRED dollars back from the federal government instead of looking at the fact the government took enough money from them to buy a couple of cars?
Also, I'm a little L libertarian as well. The parties priorities are out of whack. (of course, I might end up voting Libertarian this year anyway...)
All you statists out there: Never thought I'd hear so much "love it or leave it" coming, predominately, from the left.
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quote:I have already. It's directly derivable from my absolute right to my own life.
Right, that's the one I mean. Please point to it.
quote:There was nothing in the papers I signed that said any such thing.
Then that contract is not enforceable, because no court has jurisdiction.
Wrong. Take your gum example. You call that a contract. I pay for the gum, and the guy refuses to let me have the gum. Now, I'll repeat that that is not a contract, because he can give me my money back, which a contract wouldn't necessarily allow. But never mind that for now.
There's nothing in my transaction with the storekeeper that says that either one of us accepts the authority of the US government to tell us whether we may or may not engage in the trade. However, if he doesn't let me have the gum (or my money back), he has committed an act of theft.
You keep doing this bait-and-switch thing. One second you're talking about liens that exist only in your mind and are not enforceable in a court. The next second you're saying that nothing is valid unless it's enforceable.
quote:Originally posted by The Pixiest: Lisa: I'm sorry for using the word "retard" but, honestly, can you think of a better description of someone who puffs their chest out and happily proclaims they got FIVE HUNDRED dollars back from the federal government instead of looking at the fact the government took enough money from them to buy a couple of cars?
It's a kind of blindness. Don't make fun of the handicapped.
quote:Originally posted by The Pixiest: All you statists out there: Never thought I'd hear so much "love it or leave it" coming, predominately, from the left.
It's not their fault. I forced them into a corner, and their choices basically amounted to (a) concede that I'm right, (b) leave the discussion, (c) pull out the "might makes right" and "love it or leave it" card.
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quote:Is the YMCA funded by the government? I doubt it.
I actually had the same question so I looked it up before I posted. I quickly found a few articles about cities deciding how much to budget for YMCA. I doubt they are entirely funded by the government, but they are certainly subsidized, at least in some areas.
quote:You keep skipping that basic concept. It's my choice. What if I don't think that basketball courts will decrease the need for police? What if I think there are better ways to do it?
What if I don't choose to support the police? What if *I* think there are better ways to do it? Most libertarians support mandatory taxation for police, but I don't understand why the mechanisms of a police organization for preventing crime by fear of punishment is automatically superior to other mechanisms that may prevent crime through other means.
I support empirically determining the most effective means of achieving our goals as a separate issue from determining whether we should be involuntarily taxed to support those means.
If I must be taxed, I don't want the purpose of the tax to be "To staff and fund a police department". I want the purpose of that tax to be "To reduce crime." If police presence is empirically determined to be the best method to do this, then great. If some other method (or combination of methods that likely include an element of policing) proves to be more effective, then that's what I want.
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quote:The pass mierda to show they are "doing something" and the fact that it doesn't work doesn't matter.
Police departments do this as well. Much of Giuliani's cleaning up of NYC can be traced to accounting games. Any agency that receives funding is going to be motivated to justify their existence. What is necessary is some sort of objective oversight, but that's more government...
quote:It's not their fault. I forced them into a corner, and their choices basically amounted to (a) concede that I'm right, (b) leave the discussion, (c) pull out the "might makes right" and "love it or leave it" card.
posted
Let us see, you're ignoring the 'disagree with your assumptions' card and the 'point out that the current society is pretty similar to what could (and IMNSHO, likely would) arise using purely libertarian justifications'.
I notice you still have not replied to either my post about how a libertarian society could easily be functionally equivalent to our own, or my earlier post about how the Federal Reserve is completely and obviously legal.
And Pixiest, it sounds like many of the things you consider reasonable Lisa still considers morally reprehensible, so don't be too congratulatory .
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Btw, regarding the contracts have power outside the existence of a controlling legal authority, I agree, but only in a limited way. Modern contracts are almost always so complex that they are unspecifiable except by reference to pre-agreed definitions.
So unless a contract happens to reference another set of jurisdictions (which they frequently do), it is considered to, by default, be interpretable under the laws the people who it is made between follow. Because otherwise it would not be fully interpretable.
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quote:Originally posted by fugu13: So unless a contract happens to reference another set of jurisdictions (which they frequently do), it is considered to, by default, be interpretable under the laws the people who it is made between follow. Because otherwise it would not be fully interpretable.
Do you think that it would follow from there (as KoM apparently thinks) that if you enter into a contract of that sort, it implies a general agreement to accept any and all laws made by the same people?
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If you've made them the arbitrating authority, that pretty much obligates you to follow all laws they deem relevant (or risk the contract being decided against you).
All the laws? No, not in the usual case. However, there is a definite case to be made that land transfers predicate on adherence to the laws governing the land. That is long standing legal tradition, derives from how private land ownership originated in European law (it didn't exist, originally), and a practice that could easily arise out of an ideal libertarian state, where a group voluntarily decides to follow more restrictive 'laws' via joint contract, and predicates the sale of property by members of the contract to those who enter into the original joint contract. They might furthermore require that anyone moving over such land must agree to the contract or be subject to the trespassing penalties. Strikingly similar to how states arose in the real world.
And note that it could well be that all land would find its way into such more restrictive, wholly voluntary states, until there is nowhere to go that isn't more restrictive, despite arising out a set of libertarian ideals. Such that there still isn't anywhere to go.
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fugu: well, we started with much more localized government in this country. That's why we're caused "States" instead of "Provinces."
But some of the states were doing something the rest of the states thought was immoral (and, of course, it was.) so a big war was fought and afterwards we became states in name only. The federal government had final say in everything.
This is why government needs to have a philosophical base, rather than pure democracy. This is why we have a Constitution that details exactly what the government MAY do, and why it needs to be followed MUCH more closely than it currently is.
Going back to local government would be great. Actually following the Constitution would also be great. Doing both at the same time would be Perfect.
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posted
I'm pretty sure you know you're exaggerating, because the federal gov't still doesn't have final say in everything.
However, it isn't very clear why you're bringing it up.
I mean, plenty of states in other parts of the world are of about the sizes of US states and have gov'ts that exercise great power. There's nothing particularly special about scale in these questions.
I would also like significantly more local control of issues. I consider that almost entirely orthogonal to discussions of libertarianism constructed as a moral imperative; a libertarian state in that model could be large and unified, large and fragmented, small and unified, or even small and fragmented.
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posted
Just for the record, I'm not suggesting "love it or leave it." What I am suggesting is that of all the possible governmental systems, the countries with relatively high taxes tend to be great places to live, and the ones with low or no taxes, and as a result weak infrastructure, are often terrible places to live.
I'm suggesting that there is no such Magical Libertarian Land possible, and all the wishful thinking in the world won't change human nature such that what Lisa and Pixiest propose would actually produce somewhere that anyone would want to live.
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MightyCow: don't forget that there could be governments . . . sorry, I mean governing boards of private organizations members are mutually agreed to follow . . . that could have high taxes . . . sorry, I mean membership fees . . . even in magical libertarian land. And that this could even be in all of magical libertarian land.
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posted
I wasn't just drawing attention to your occasional disagreement regarding practical application, but that these disagreements signal a fundamental disagreement in principle. Some things Pixiest is not just willing to accept, but considers preferable, as part of a good gov't are things Lisa has stated are morally repugnant.
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posted
fugu: She also believes in God and I don't. So what? We both share the same goals. Freedom for the individual.
I think Lisa rocks and has thought out her positions probably more than anyone else here at Hatrack. She keeps her cool much better than I do and I'm happy to have her carry the weight of most of the libertarian arguments here (since I pretty much gave up on you lot years ago.)
So here's to Lisa! *raises a glass*
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quote:Just for the record, I'm not suggesting "love it or leave it."
Also, you don't need to "leave it" as in leaving the country, you can simply refuse to benefit from the system. That's why I brought up Ted Kaczynski. He didn't live in a cabin just in order to hide out from the law, it was part of his personal philosophy that he refused to benefit from the system that he despised. He didn't need to leave the country to do it, though.
quote:Even if someone wants to be paid in chickens, they'd be forced, under threat of punishment, to accept my currency.
...
It's legal if agreed upon by both sides. The point is that if someone owes me a debt, I'm required to accept Federal Reserve scrip in payment of that debt. I can ask to be paid in something else, but if the other party wants to use Federal Reserve notes, I'm powerless to say no. Even though I don't trust them.
Originally I accepted this, because it wasn't what I was considering at the time, and it seemed a valid point. In fact it's ridiculous. The government will not punish you for refusing to accept payment in dollars, it will simply fail to offer you the benefit of enforcing your debt. That's part of the deal. If someone owes you a debt, monetary or otherwise, the government will enforce that debt. That's a benefit of the system. But once again, if you want that benefit, you have to play by the rules.
But if you refuse to accept the debt in dollars, you simply forfeit the benefit. No one is going to punish you for refusing to be paid in dollars.
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quote:Originally posted by Glenn Arnold: Originally I accepted this, because it wasn't what I was considering at the time, and it seemed a valid point. In fact it's ridiculous. The government will not punish you for refusing to accept payment in dollars, it will simply fail to offer you the benefit of enforcing your debt. That's part of the deal. If someone owes you a debt, monetary or otherwise, the government will enforce that debt. That's a benefit of the system. But once again, if you want that benefit, you have to play by the rules.
But if you refuse to accept the debt in dollars, you simply forfeit the benefit. No one is going to punish you for refusing to be paid in dollars.
Bad answer. Because it's only been a very short time (less than a century) since the government started forcing us to accept one currency.
Prior to that, a breach of contract was a breach of contract. Because it is, whether the government chooses to recognize it or not. But the government declared that you have to be willing to accept their bills as payment for all debts.
You want to say that this new rule trumps the obligation of the government to enforce a contractual obligation. I can't imagine where you got such an idea from.
Posts: 12266 | Registered: Jul 2005
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posted
Libertarianism has four major obstacles to consider before we jump on the bandwagon.
The purpose of government, you say, is to stop harm from coming to the people. That harm could be murder, assault, or loss of property among other harms.
Taxes, you claim, are a harm that is not only allowed by the government, but enthusiastically pursued by them.
Instead you envision a world where a very small and limited government that enforces the protection of the people via a volunteer donations to the "Protect America" fund for the military and a "Protect the Home" fund for police protection. While taxation is not mandatory, volunteer payments to those funds are accepted.
This brings us to hurdle number 1--Defense and Protection
Would those agencies be allowed to advertise for payments? In other words, the military wants new tanks. Can they run an ad on TV asking for donations? Can they hold a telethon? Can policemen knock door to door asking for payment? Does this start to look like extortion, or would having armed men asking for money to insure your safety not be allowed?
If Tom happens to be rich, and basically donates 94% of the police budget, are they police or are they Tom's militia?
The US has a history of underfunding its military in times of peace. Every war up until the 1950's was met with need for cash to get us up to speed. This usually took years to work its way into the field. Can we afford to do that in this era of instant warfare?
2) Diplomacy. While Libertarian US and its Constitution may be the perfect haven for peaceful profitability, the rest of the world is not. Do we surrender so much of our foreign trade by disbanding our diplomatic missions around the world? Or do the diplomats serve only when someone volunteers to pay for them. Hence Shell will bankroll our embassy in Venezuela, and Wal-Mart will own our embassy in China. I know that "Corporate Entities known as Corporations will cease to have special rights" but they will continue to exist on the world market, and as the profit engines of executives.
We now have a very unfocused "foreign" policy, changing with every administration. Would this be worse if we had no ambassadors or embassies looking after specific corporate interests instead of national interests?
3) Medicine.
Every week I pay into my insurance company, which pays if I get ill.
The Federal Government has rules, regulations, and bureaucracies to make sure that the insurance company I pay into won't refuse to pay when I need the money, or won't go broke and leave me stranded. Will those safety lines remain, or will we once again go back to the days when people died because of faulty insurance companies?
Doctors, medicines, and treatments go under very rigorous tests. 100 years ago, in a time you seem to think was a golden era, medicine and doctors were not trusted because there were no precautions guaranteed beyond the word of the man selling.
As the pharmaceutical industry became more regulated, trust increased in the merchandise it sold, and it became more and more profitable. If we remove that regulation, or create some self-regulation system, that will change, profitability will go down, and more people will be harmed.
By not taxing to pay for the regulation more harm will be done to the people than the harm done by the taxes.
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posted
Well put Dan_raven, and further, the things you mention are just the tip of the iceberg. I won't believe that a Libertarian system is plausible, until someone can account for all the benefits of a strong, tax-funded government.
Besides, if taxes are the main point of complaint, how is it better to be forced to pay "non-tax fees" out of personal safety concerns, rather than to pay them up front to insure against those concerns? You're going to have to pay either way - calling it "not-a-tax" won't keep any more money in your pocket.
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posted
are you sure lisa and other libertarians oppose mandatory taxation for those limited functions of government?
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The difference is between ultimate goals and what needs to be done on the way to them.
I think there's a moral issue even when it comes to involuntary taxation for the funding of valid governmental duties. I think it's the rational thing to fund these things, and that if we raise up a generation of people who look at the world from a more rational, rights-based, point of view, voluntary funding will work.
But until then, I don't have a problem with involuntary taxation for those purposes, provided that it's a head tax. Meaning that every adult human being pays the same amount, regardless of income and personal wealth.
Posts: 12266 | Registered: Jul 2005
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quote:You want to say that this new rule trumps the obligation of the government to enforce a contractual obligation. I can't imagine where you got such an idea from.
Once again you create a strawman argument. When did I ever say that the government wouldn't uphold a contract?
You said:
quote:The point is that if someone owes me a debt, I'm required to accept Federal Reserve scrip in payment of that debt. I can ask to be paid in something else, but if the other party wants to use Federal Reserve notes, I'm powerless to say no.
No you aren't. Just don't expect the government to enforce the debt. If you take the guy to court and he says "I gave her the money but she refused it," what do you expect the court to do?
quote:Even if someone wants to be paid in chickens, they'd be forced, under threat of punishment, to accept my currency.
Just what sort of punishment did you have in mind?
Blayne: You owe me a chicken.
Lisa: I won't give you a chicken, here's $6.
Blayne: I don't want your $6, give me a chicken.
Lisa: Police! arrest this man! He refused to accept my currency!
Posts: 3735 | Registered: Mar 2002
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quote:Prior to that, a breach of contract was a breach of contract. Because it is, whether the government chooses to recognize it or not. But the government declared that you have to be willing to accept their bills as payment for all debts.
This is why discussing something controversial is often so incredibly frustrating with you, Lisa. The only givens are your givens.
Posts: 17164 | Registered: Jun 2001
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posted
Contracts would name units of account. Strangely, just as they often do nowadays, only in a more confusing fashion. For many contracts, the dollar is the default unit of account.
Any contract is free to say that the other party must hand over X chickens. Of course, if it goes to court, unless the contract spells out a penalty (and even then if the person is unable to pay that penalty in the exact form specified) the court is free to require a payment in whatever form of equal value it wishes. Unsurprisingly, it usually picks the most readily available form: dollars.
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