Not at all. The fact that you have to force this wonderful benefit upon people shows how silly the point is.
Shame on you for "letting this man die", huh?
hey, i did my part with my taxes and didnt bitch all the way to the bank about it. when i graduate, i will make plenty of money. if you hear me bitching about the taxes i pay then, you're free to call me out on it. but i would pay those taxes happily AND advocate for some sort of national health care plan. it doesn't have to be forced on people, people have to be convinced, just as we had to convince people slavery was wrong. it's a social movement and it's gaining traction. if you'd like, you can move to africa. i hear they're pretty lax about governmental oversight of any part of your life. few taxes, little power to force you to pay them. it's working great for them isn't it?
How? Universal Health Care doesn't exist in this country. Not a cent you've given has gone to his cancer. Does this "obligation" you speak of only actually exist when we pass UHC?
How? Universal Health Care doesn't exist in this country. Not a cent you've given has gone to his cancer. Does this "obligation" you speak of only actually exist when we pass UHC?
medicaid will help pay for the remainder of his treatment once he sells the shirt of his back so he can retire with his wife. like i said, we do what we can. at the moment, there's little i can do becos i live on loans not income. in the future, when i have income, i will do as much as i can. in the meantime, i hope others will pick up the slack. in the future, i will pick up their slack. becos nobody can plan for all eventualities and we all need help sometimes.
medicaid will help pay for the remainder of his treatment once he sells the shirt of his back so he can retire with his wife. like i said, we do what we can. at the moment, there's little i can do becos i live on loans not income. in the future, when i have income, i will do as much as i can. in the meantime, i hope others will pick up the slack. in the future, i will pick up their slack. becos nobody can plan for all eventualities and we all need help sometimes.
it doesn't have to be forced on people, people have to be convinced, just as we had to convince people slavery was wrong. it's a social movement and it's gaining traction.
Do you seriously believe this? Do you think that the government will be able to make this voluntary, and have sufficient compliance?
if you'd like, you can move to africa. i hear they're pretty lax about governmental oversight of any part of your life. few taxes, little power to force you to pay them. it's working great for them isn't it?
Africa is a continent. Which country are you thinking about there? Most of the countries I'm familiar with are anything but liassez faire. Most seem to be very authoritarian and oppressive.
"I'll use the magic word - let's just shut the fuck up, please." EV, 04/13/08
im in favor of a flat tax, but that's still a tax.
Are you in favor of a true flat tax, meaning that you take the total budget, divide it by the total population, and start sending out bills?
Either way, yes, it's still a tax. That is until you simply give people the option to not buy your products.
your business is not running the country. you live in a democracy.
My business isn't running the country. But you didn't say anything about "running the country" here:
"the only way to secure funding for necessary social institutions is to force people to distribute that cost evenly"
we hired the government to manage certain collective resources for us.
"We"??? I didn't hire anyone to manage any "collective resources".
we did not hire your business to do shit for us.
Yep. Notice how I didn't send you a bill.
you agreed to the hiring by living here.
HOW???? Seriously, answer me this question and quit avoiding it. How did I "agree" to something simply by existing?
if it's so unjust living here, you're free to get the fuck out, like i said.
I am free to "get the fuck out". So is your government, and so are you. I'd never ask either one of you to "get the fuck out". Why do you feel the need to ask me?
i dont know, why do we have to force you to add money for police and road construction?
You have to force me to pay for police because the possible practical losses I face are less than the price you're charging me.
You don't have to force me to pay for roads. I'd happily pay for them.
you've got it backwards, ive got my way. i call YOUR bluff. let's end taxation and let government disappear. we'll see how long you feel free when you're holed up in an armored compound afraid to step outside your house.
Ok!! I'm not bluffing.
uh... where? this is the weakest point i've ever seen you make. i dont even know what morehouse college is.
It's an all-black school in Atlanta. Figured it would go well with the Klan thing. But if you have the right to sign me up for the government's deals, why don't I have the right to sign you up for the Klan's?
everyone in the united state lives by united states rules.
Oh. In that case, any rule is a good rule, so long as it comes from the United States?
not everyone in the united states lives by klan rules.
If the Klan had enough guns, we would.
why dont you quit your whining about the horrible oppression of taxation and deal with reality.
Hehe....those things go hand in hand. Anyway, I'm not curled up in the fetal position here, if that's what you're implying.
arguing with you is like arguing with a kindergartener...
Thank you. I've held many kindergarteners in high esteem.
you both live in your own happy little fantasy world that has nothing to do with how the real world operates. it's easy to bitch about taxes when you know you'll never actually get what you want and have to live without a government.
If that were the case, I'd be bitching about not being married to Alessandra Ambrosio.
Actually the US does have universal medical coverage, called Medicaid.
It should be peoples last resort though as there is a means test to it. Which basically means that if you have the means or resources to pay for the treatment any other way then that is the first option.
So the least people can do on this board is ask for a revamoing of the current universal medical coverage where it loses it's means test. Of course premiums will go up significantly but that's a choice for people to make.
“One good thing about music,
when it hits you, you feel to pain.
So brutalize me with music.”
~ Bob Marley
Africa is a continent. Which country are you thinking about there? Most of the countries I'm familiar with are anything but liassez faire. Most seem to be very authoritarian and oppressive.
Either way, yes, it's still a tax. That is until you simply give people the option to not buy your products.
I thought I understood your points, but I really don't.
What do you think a government is? What should be it's duty? What do you owe it and what does it owe you? And finally do you believe you vote to have someone represent your ideas?
edit :
Africa is a continent. Which country are you thinking about there? Most of the countries I'm familiar with are anything but liassez faire. Most seem to be very authoritarian and oppressive.
I think what he meant is many countries in Africa will let you have it your way with your money as long as you have enough money. And some actually do.
HOW???? Seriously, answer me this question and quit avoiding it. How did I "agree" to something simply by existing?
are you or are you not a citizen of the united states? if you are, you have agreed to be part of their citizenship and thus to live by the rules the majority promulgates. if you do not sanction this government, like i said, you are free to leave and join a country that better reflects your anarchist ideals.
now i suggest you join the local militia. that there big scary government is a-fixin to deny you your rights. better be ready to defend them to the death.
is also advise you to be careful about saying you don't recognize the legitimacy of the us government. you could end up in gitmo the way things are these days.
A government is a monopoly on force, used to dictate rules and regulation upon a population. I say that completely without any negative connotations. Government, at its fundamental level, is not necessarily evil and can be, in fact, a good thing.
What should be it's duty?
To protect the rights of all its citizens. The fundamental human rights are quite simple:
Creation of mind and body
Freedom of mind and body
Ownership of mind and body
Those rights can be reasonably extended to "Life" itself and a more nuanced subset of Freedom called "Liberty". Furthermore, in some cases, those rights may also be reasonably extended to property rights, the individual ownership of things not directly part of the mind or the body but rather products of them.
What do you owe it and what does it owe you?
Government "owes" me a protection of my rights. However, it only "owes" me that so long as I recognize that those rights exist in my fellow men. That is my base payment, a requirement for the same recognition of my rights. If I forfeit that payment, the government has absolutely no duty to me.
And finally do you believe you vote to have someone represent your ideas?
Theoretically, yes and, typically in American practice, to a much greater extent than pretty much anyplace else in the world.
However, I don't need anyone to represent my ideas. These "representatives" have little to offer me except freedom from their schemes. Since their very existence and position is based on those schemes, I doubt very much they'll actually represent my interests there.
I think what he meant is many countries in Africa will let you have it your way with your money as long as you have enough money.
No. What he meant is that his government owns this nation and has the right to decide who may occupy the arbitrary borders it has laid down based on nothing more than whims. Since I don't like the terms of the relatively one-sided offer I've been given, I should leave. "Africa" is irrelevant to the point.
If you have any other questions, feel free to ask.
are you or are you not a citizen of the united states?
Yes, I am a citizen, by the classification of those United States. But I've never "agreed" to anything.
if you are, you have agreed to be part of their citizenship and thus to live by the rules the majority promulgates.
How? "Agree" implies consent, given by me. When have I consented? Where did I consent? Where is the contract?
if you do not sanction this government, like i said, you are free to leave and join a country that better reflects your anarchist ideals.
Hehe...your government is free to leave too. Why do either of us have to leave?
now i suggest you join the local militia. that there big scary government is a-fixin to deny you your rights. better be ready to defend them to the death.
Are you listening? I reject violent aggression. Why would I sign up with the "local militia"? What do they have to offer me?
is also advise you to be careful about saying you don't recognize the legitimacy of the us government. you could end up in gitmo the way things are these days.
Gitmo, and the machine behind it, is the legitimacy of the government.
If you have any other questions, feel free to ask.
Thanks for the answers, I think I understand better, but we have radically different views on governments. It's hard to grasp your points without knowing what your views are on rights and duty in a nation. We're both on one side of the atlantic so I don't mind agreeing to disagree with you, I'm not ready yet to give up the tutoring my government represents to me and my fellow citizens.
Thanks for the answers, I think I understand better, but we have radically different views on governments. It's hard to grasp your points without knowing what your views are on rights and duty in a nation. We're both on one side of the atlantic so I don't mind agreeing to disagree with you, I'm not ready yet to give up the tutoring my government represents to me and my fellow citizens.
You shouldn't have to give up your government. I'd never suggest that, nor would I suggest soulsinging should give up his.
I have no right to tell you which government you wish to submit yourselves to.
How? "Agree" implies consent, given by me. When have I consented? Where did I consent? Where is the contract?
the day you got your social security number and applied for a driver's license. you availed yourself of the protections and rights of the united states government and thus entered into a contract with them. they gave you benefits including social security, medicaid, public schooling, police protection, national defense, streamlined commerce procedures, use of their roads and national parks, and international support from the us government via their embassies in foreign lands. in exchange, you pay them taxes. regardless of whether or not you use all of those services, that is the contract and it's tough shit if you don't like it. you can leave.
Hehe...your government is free to leave too. Why do either of us have to leave?
becos the collective governing body of the united states was here first and owns the piece of land you sit upon. you are only allowed to exercise dominion over it by that government's leave. you don't own it, you're borrowing it.
Thanks for the answers, I think I understand better, but we have radically different views on governments. It's hard to grasp your points without knowing what your views are on rights and duty in a nation. We're both on one side of the atlantic so I don't mind agreeing to disagree with you, I'm not ready yet to give up the tutoring my government represents to me and my fellow citizens.
he doesn't have any. he has no reality based ideas of governance. only abstract intellectual masturbation about how he yearns to be free of the tyranny of taxes and running water.
he doesn't have any. he has no reality based ideas of governance. only abstract intellectual masturbation about how he yearns to be free of the tyranny of taxes and running water.
Hehe....ironically, you stole the term "intellectual masturbation" from me many moons ago.
Anyway, I apologize for not having more "reality based ideas", such as the ones you seem to hold that say without taxes I wouldn't have running water, or that without taxes we'd all perish in some kind of unholy Armageddon.
Hehe....ironically, you stole the term "intellectual masturbation" from me many moons ago.
Anyway, I apologize for not having more "reality based ideas", such as the ones you seem to hold that say without taxes I wouldn't have running water, or that without taxes we'd all perish in some kind of unholy Armageddon.
i did? ive been saying intellectual masturbation since high school, before i knew what the internet was. must be my telekinetic powers. shall i pat you on the back to stroke your ego then? anarchy is an ineffective form of social organization. just like communism. we've got a pretty happy medium here... your ideas are as ridiculous as stalin's were. humans have NEVER been "free" in the sense you use it. this is abstract philosophical, pseudo-religious psychobabble about the nature of humanity and has no basis in reality. the state you believe in does not exist and never has.
the day you got your social security number and applied for a driver's license. you availed yourself of the protections and rights of the united states government and thus entered into a contract with them.
I did not "get" a social security number. One was simply assigned to me, by law. And when I applied for a drivers license, I saw nothing in those documents about "availing" myself of the protections and rights of the state.
I suppose my draft card also signs me up for those protections too? How about my corporate registrations and licenses? All those things you require me to do constitute my "consent" to let you do as you wish to my life and my freedoms? That's a nice racket you're running there.
becos the collective governing body of the united states was here first and owns the piece of land you sit upon.
Hehehehe...it wasn't here "first". It was here fifth or sixth, roughly. And it simply took that land by force, for the most part. Now it has the audacity to say it "owns" it??? How can it "own" something after demonstrating that it doesn't respect the concept of ownership in the first place?
you are only allowed to exercise dominion over it by that government's leave. you don't own it, you're borrowing it.
By your rules, you are entirely right.
they can help protect you from the big bad government that's stealing your toys and kicking sand in your eyes :(
By resorting to that very same government's tactics and morality? No thanks.
I did not "get" a social security number. One was simply assigned to me, by law. And when I applied for a drivers license, I saw nothing in those documents about "availing" myself of the protections and rights of the state.
I suppose my draft card also signs me up for those protections too? How about my corporate registrations and licenses? All those things you require me to do constitute my "consent" to let you do as you wish to my life and my freedoms? That's a nice racket you're running there.
yup, pretty much. that's availment. shoulda read the fine print. only im not running the racket. we are running the racket, every time we vote. dont like your choices? get off your ass and run yourself. we'll see how your ideas fare in the public market of ideas.
yeah, they took the land by force. such is human history. they own it now. when canada invades, they will own your land. until then, the us owns your land and you're on it by their leave.
im guessing you pay taxes? do you put your money where your mouth is and refuse to pay them on moral grounds? or do you take it like a 2-cent hooker and then just cry about it on here?
i did? ive been saying intellectual masturbation since high school, before i knew what the internet was.
Fair enough. I just used it in the very first discussion I had with you. Perhaps just a coincidence then.
shall i pat you on the back to stroke your ego then?
That's what you've been doing this entire time. You're free to stop whenever you'd like.
anarchy is an ineffective form of social organization. just like communism.
Hehe...yes, anarchy is an ineffective form of social organization in the sense that it doesn't prescribe a singular social organization. Makes if very difficult to inflict a singular will on people. Unlike communism.
we've got a pretty happy medium here... your ideas are as ridiculous as stalin's were.
Then don't subscribe to them. Stalin needed you for his ideas. I don't, and even if I did I wouldn't have a right to force you to live by them. You, however, are proposing something very Stalinistic. You'll force me to live by your rules.
humans have NEVER been "free" in the sense you use it.
Makes you wonder how anyone ever built an airplane, since no one had ever built one before.
this is abstract philosophical, pseudo-religious psychobabble about the nature of humanity and has no basis in reality. the state you believe in does not exist and never has.
Of course it has and does. The state I believe in exists in me, and it exists in you. It's known as self-sovereignty and it's existed since the dawn of the thinking man. Abdicate it, and you'll get exactly what everyone before you has gotten: the state you propose.
yup, pretty much. that's availment. shoulda read the fine print. only im not running the racket. we are running the racket, every time we vote. dont like your choices? get off your ass and run yourself. we'll see how your ideas fare in the public market of ideas.
I don't really understand how that's relevant. Why would I want to "see how my ideas fare in the public market", at least in the context of voting?
yeah, they took the land by force. such is human history. they own it now. when canada invades, they will own your land. until then, the us owns your land and you're on it by their leave.
Thank you. Here it is, in plain English, stripped of all the bullshit. The strongman's philosophy. You've described the underlying morality of proposals such as universal health care. Gone is the bullshit about "common good", the idiocy of "altruism", the insanity of "putting life over property".
This is the world your proposing, the world you want, the world you largely have, and, ironically, the world you're accusing me of wanting. The world wherein force rules. The world wherein ownership is determined by a morality of force.
People like you, for as long as I can remember, have referred to me as "greedy", as "selfish", as "cold", as "inhuman". But this is what you're justifying:
"yeah, they took the land by force. such is human history. they own it now."
im guessing you pay taxes?
Of course.
do you put your money where your mouth is and refuse to pay them on moral grounds?
No. Why should I? I'm not violating my morality by paying taxes.
or do you take it like a 2-cent hooker and then just cry about it on here?
Hehe....hookers get paid. I'm losing in this deal, remember?
Thank you. Here it is, in plain English, stripped of all the bullshit. The strongman's philosophy. You've described the underlying morality of proposals such as universal health care. Gone is the bullshit about "common good", the idiocy of "altruism", the insanity of "putting life over property".
This is the world your proposing, the world you want, the world you largely have, and, ironically, the world you're accusing me of wanting. The world wherein force rules. The world wherein ownership is determined by a morality of force.
People like you, for as long as I can remember, have referred to me as "greedy", as "selfish", as "cold", as "inhuman". But this is what you're justifying:
"yeah, they took the land by force. such is human history. they own it now."
yes, becos force is needed to keep greedy, selfish, cold, and inhuman people like you from abusing the rest of humanity for your own personal wealth and treating your fellow man like a means to an end by spitting on their dying carcass rather than lending a hand in helping them up.
yes, becos force is needed to keep greedy, selfish, cold, and inhuman people like you from abusing the rest of humanity for your own personal wealth and treating your fellow man like a means to an end by spitting on their dying carcass rather than lending a hand in helping them up.
Wow. I really think you have completely and entirely misjudged farfromglorified. He is one of the only truly interactive people I've known, who operates based on mutual agreement which stems from mutual respect. I think he's one of the most mis-judged and misunderstood on this forum. I see the beauty of the fine lines he talks about and the value of them, even though I would tend to incorporate them differently in the big picture.
"The opposite of a fact is falsehood, but the opposite of one profound truth may very well be another profound truth." ~ Niels Bohr
yes, becos force is needed to keep greedy, selfish, cold, and inhuman people like you from abusing the rest of humanity for your own personal wealth and treating your fellow man like a means to an end by spitting on their dying carcass rather than lending a hand in helping them up.
The twisted logic above is frightening.
"It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen. Winston Smith, his chin nuzzled into his breast in an effort to escape the vile wind, slipped quickly through the glass doors of Victory Mansions, though not quickly enough to prevent a swirl of gritty dust from entering along with him.
The hallway smelt of boiled cabbage and old rag mats. At one end of it a coloured poster, too large for indoor display, had been tacked to the wall. It depicted simply an enormous face, more than a metre wide: the face of a man of about forty-five, with a heavy black moustache and ruggedly handsome features. Winston made for the stairs. It was no use trying the lift. Even at the best of times it was seldom working, and at present the electric current was cut off during daylight hours. It was part of the economy drive in preparation for Hate Week. The flat was seven flights up, and Winston, who was thirty-nine and had a varicose ulcer above his right ankle, went slowly, resting several times on the way. On each landing, opposite the lift-shaft, the poster with the enormous face gazed from the wall. It was one of those pictures which are so contrived that the eyes follow you about when you move. BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU, the caption beneath it ran.
Inside the flat a fruity voice was reading out a list of figures which had something to do with the production of pig-iron. The voice came from an oblong metal plaque like a dulled mirror which formed part of the surface of the right-hand wall. Winston turned a switch and the voice sank somewhat, though the words were still distinguishable. The instrument (the telescreen, it was called) could be dimmed, but there was no way of shutting it off completely. He moved over to the window: a smallish, frail figure, the meagreness of his body merely emphasized by the blue overalls which were the uniform of the party. His hair was very fair, his face naturally sanguine, his skin roughened by coarse soap and blunt razor blades and the cold of the winter that had just ended.
Outside, even through the shut window-pane, the world looked cold. Down in the street little eddies of wind were whirling dust and torn paper into spirals, and though the sun was shining and the sky a harsh blue, there seemed to be no colour in anything, except the posters that were plastered everywhere. The blackmoustachio'd face gazed down from every commanding corner. There was one on the house-front immediately opposite. BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU, the caption said, while the dark eyes looked deep into Winston's own. Down at streetlevel another poster, torn at one corner, flapped fitfully in the wind, alternately covering and uncovering the single word INGSOC. In the far distance a helicopter skimmed down between the roofs, hovered for an instant like a bluebottle, and darted away again with a curving flight. It was the police patrol, snooping into people's windows. The patrols did not matter, however. Only the Thought Police mattered.
Behind Winston's back the voice from the telescreen was still babbling away about pig-iron and the overfulfilment of the Ninth Three-Year Plan. The telescreen received and transmitted simultaneously. Any sound that Winston made, above the level of a very low whisper, would be picked up by it, moreover, so long as he remained within the field of vision which the metal plaque commanded, he could be seen as well as heard. There was of course no way of knowing whether you were being watched at any given moment. How often, or on what system, the Thought Police plugged in on any individual wire was guesswork. It was even conceivable that they watched everybody all the time. But at any rate they could plug in your wire whenever they wanted to. You had to live -- did live, from habit that became instinct -- in the assumption that every sound you made was overheard, and, except in darkness, every movement scrutinized.
Winston kept his back turned to the telescreen. It was safer, though, as he well knew, even a back can be revealing. A kilometre away the Ministry of Truth, his place of work, towered vast and white above the grimy landscape. This, he thought with a sort of vague distaste -- this was London, chief city of Airstrip One, itself the third most populous of the provinces of Oceania. He tried to squeeze out some childhood memory that should tell him whether London had always been quite like this. Were there always these vistas of rotting nineteenth-century houses, their sides shored up with baulks of timber, their windows patched with cardboard and their roofs with corrugated iron, their crazy garden walls sagging in all directions? And the bombed sites where the plaster dust swirled in the air and the willow-herb straggled over the heaps of rubble; and the places where the bombs had cleared a larger patch and there had sprung up sordid colonies of wooden dwellings like chicken-houses? But it was no use, he could not remember: nothing remained of his childhood except a series of bright-lit tableaux occurring against no background and mostly unintelligible.
The Ministry of Truth -- Minitrue, in Newspeak -- was startlingly different from any other object in sight. It was an enormous pyramidal structure of glittering white concrete, soaring up, terrace after terrace, 300 metres into the air. From where Winston stood it was just possible to read, picked out on its white face in elegant lettering, the three slogans of the Party:
WAR IS PEACE
FREEDOM IS SLAVERY
IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH" - George Orwell
This is your world, and I'm not sure you even know that.
You say force is necessary to fight the greedy. Why? To get what you didn't earn.
You say force is necessary to fight the selfish. Why? To fulfill your desires.
You say force is necessary to fight the cold and inhuman. Why? Because apparently their tactics are all you understand.
you get paid too, every time you use a road.
If all I was paying for were roads, then hell yes I'd be getting a pretty good deal. But your system doesn't even care about the deal I'm getting, so I'm not really going to respect that. Even the 2-cent hooker can name her price or choose her clients.
That much has been self-evident for quite some time.
FFG is nothing if not consistent - logically and morally.
I'm big on social programs, myself, having benefitted from them to a large degree, and yet I cannot deny the logical points he (or yourself) make on these subjects. What I have a hard time with is when people misconstrue what he's saying and then ascribe traits to him that he does not exhibit. Like that he'd spit on the dying carcass of someone. Or that he's greedy, selfish, cold and inhuman. Within the past month, farfromglorified volunteered to help me financially and emotionally to make it to a meet up with some people on the board. That is far from a crucial life situation and yet he readily demonstrated both generosity and compassion without so much as being asked for either.
It is not easy integrating the fine lines between a left and right view. Once we get into judgments and mudslinging, we're definitely not moving in the right direction.
"The opposite of a fact is falsehood, but the opposite of one profound truth may very well be another profound truth." ~ Niels Bohr
Comments
hey, i did my part with my taxes and didnt bitch all the way to the bank about it. when i graduate, i will make plenty of money. if you hear me bitching about the taxes i pay then, you're free to call me out on it. but i would pay those taxes happily AND advocate for some sort of national health care plan. it doesn't have to be forced on people, people have to be convinced, just as we had to convince people slavery was wrong. it's a social movement and it's gaining traction. if you'd like, you can move to africa. i hear they're pretty lax about governmental oversight of any part of your life. few taxes, little power to force you to pay them. it's working great for them isn't it?
How? Universal Health Care doesn't exist in this country. Not a cent you've given has gone to his cancer. Does this "obligation" you speak of only actually exist when we pass UHC?
medicaid will help pay for the remainder of his treatment once he sells the shirt of his back so he can retire with his wife. like i said, we do what we can. at the moment, there's little i can do becos i live on loans not income. in the future, when i have income, i will do as much as i can. in the meantime, i hope others will pick up the slack. in the future, i will pick up their slack. becos nobody can plan for all eventualities and we all need help sometimes.
What kind of loans do you live on?
federal stafford and perkins loans. ive also got a very sizable scholarship that halved my loan debt.
Do you seriously believe this? Do you think that the government will be able to make this voluntary, and have sufficient compliance?
Africa is a continent. Which country are you thinking about there? Most of the countries I'm familiar with are anything but liassez faire. Most seem to be very authoritarian and oppressive.
Are you in favor of a true flat tax, meaning that you take the total budget, divide it by the total population, and start sending out bills?
Either way, yes, it's still a tax. That is until you simply give people the option to not buy your products.
My business isn't running the country. But you didn't say anything about "running the country" here:
"the only way to secure funding for necessary social institutions is to force people to distribute that cost evenly"
"We"??? I didn't hire anyone to manage any "collective resources".
Yep. Notice how I didn't send you a bill.
HOW???? Seriously, answer me this question and quit avoiding it. How did I "agree" to something simply by existing?
I am free to "get the fuck out". So is your government, and so are you. I'd never ask either one of you to "get the fuck out". Why do you feel the need to ask me?
You have to force me to pay for police because the possible practical losses I face are less than the price you're charging me.
You don't have to force me to pay for roads. I'd happily pay for them.
Ok!! I'm not bluffing.
It's an all-black school in Atlanta. Figured it would go well with the Klan thing. But if you have the right to sign me up for the government's deals, why don't I have the right to sign you up for the Klan's?
Oh. In that case, any rule is a good rule, so long as it comes from the United States?
If the Klan had enough guns, we would.
Hehe....those things go hand in hand. Anyway, I'm not curled up in the fetal position here, if that's what you're implying.
Thank you. I've held many kindergarteners in high esteem.
If that were the case, I'd be bitching about not being married to Alessandra Ambrosio.
It should be peoples last resort though as there is a means test to it. Which basically means that if you have the means or resources to pay for the treatment any other way then that is the first option.
So the least people can do on this board is ask for a revamoing of the current universal medical coverage where it loses it's means test. Of course premiums will go up significantly but that's a choice for people to make.
when it hits you, you feel to pain.
So brutalize me with music.”
~ Bob Marley
I thought I understood your points, but I really don't.
What do you think a government is? What should be it's duty? What do you owe it and what does it owe you? And finally do you believe you vote to have someone represent your ideas?
edit : I think what he meant is many countries in Africa will let you have it your way with your money as long as you have enough money. And some actually do.
are you or are you not a citizen of the united states? if you are, you have agreed to be part of their citizenship and thus to live by the rules the majority promulgates. if you do not sanction this government, like i said, you are free to leave and join a country that better reflects your anarchist ideals.
now i suggest you join the local militia. that there big scary government is a-fixin to deny you your rights. better be ready to defend them to the death.
is also advise you to be careful about saying you don't recognize the legitimacy of the us government. you could end up in gitmo the way things are these days.
A government is a monopoly on force, used to dictate rules and regulation upon a population. I say that completely without any negative connotations. Government, at its fundamental level, is not necessarily evil and can be, in fact, a good thing.
To protect the rights of all its citizens. The fundamental human rights are quite simple:
Creation of mind and body
Freedom of mind and body
Ownership of mind and body
Those rights can be reasonably extended to "Life" itself and a more nuanced subset of Freedom called "Liberty". Furthermore, in some cases, those rights may also be reasonably extended to property rights, the individual ownership of things not directly part of the mind or the body but rather products of them.
Government "owes" me a protection of my rights. However, it only "owes" me that so long as I recognize that those rights exist in my fellow men. That is my base payment, a requirement for the same recognition of my rights. If I forfeit that payment, the government has absolutely no duty to me.
Theoretically, yes and, typically in American practice, to a much greater extent than pretty much anyplace else in the world.
However, I don't need anyone to represent my ideas. These "representatives" have little to offer me except freedom from their schemes. Since their very existence and position is based on those schemes, I doubt very much they'll actually represent my interests there.
No. What he meant is that his government owns this nation and has the right to decide who may occupy the arbitrary borders it has laid down based on nothing more than whims. Since I don't like the terms of the relatively one-sided offer I've been given, I should leave. "Africa" is irrelevant to the point.
If you have any other questions, feel free to ask.
Yes, I am a citizen, by the classification of those United States. But I've never "agreed" to anything.
How? "Agree" implies consent, given by me. When have I consented? Where did I consent? Where is the contract?
Hehe...your government is free to leave too. Why do either of us have to leave?
Are you listening? I reject violent aggression. Why would I sign up with the "local militia"? What do they have to offer me?
Gitmo, and the machine behind it, is the legitimacy of the government.
You shouldn't have to give up your government. I'd never suggest that, nor would I suggest soulsinging should give up his.
I have no right to tell you which government you wish to submit yourselves to.
the day you got your social security number and applied for a driver's license. you availed yourself of the protections and rights of the united states government and thus entered into a contract with them. they gave you benefits including social security, medicaid, public schooling, police protection, national defense, streamlined commerce procedures, use of their roads and national parks, and international support from the us government via their embassies in foreign lands. in exchange, you pay them taxes. regardless of whether or not you use all of those services, that is the contract and it's tough shit if you don't like it. you can leave.
becos the collective governing body of the united states was here first and owns the piece of land you sit upon. you are only allowed to exercise dominion over it by that government's leave. you don't own it, you're borrowing it.
they can help protect you from the big bad government that's stealing your toys and kicking sand in your eyes :(
he doesn't have any. he has no reality based ideas of governance. only abstract intellectual masturbation about how he yearns to be free of the tyranny of taxes and running water.
Hehe....ironically, you stole the term "intellectual masturbation" from me many moons ago.
Anyway, I apologize for not having more "reality based ideas", such as the ones you seem to hold that say without taxes I wouldn't have running water, or that without taxes we'd all perish in some kind of unholy Armageddon.
i did? ive been saying intellectual masturbation since high school, before i knew what the internet was. must be my telekinetic powers. shall i pat you on the back to stroke your ego then? anarchy is an ineffective form of social organization. just like communism. we've got a pretty happy medium here... your ideas are as ridiculous as stalin's were. humans have NEVER been "free" in the sense you use it. this is abstract philosophical, pseudo-religious psychobabble about the nature of humanity and has no basis in reality. the state you believe in does not exist and never has.
I did not "get" a social security number. One was simply assigned to me, by law. And when I applied for a drivers license, I saw nothing in those documents about "availing" myself of the protections and rights of the state.
I suppose my draft card also signs me up for those protections too? How about my corporate registrations and licenses? All those things you require me to do constitute my "consent" to let you do as you wish to my life and my freedoms? That's a nice racket you're running there.
Hehehehe...it wasn't here "first". It was here fifth or sixth, roughly. And it simply took that land by force, for the most part. Now it has the audacity to say it "owns" it??? How can it "own" something after demonstrating that it doesn't respect the concept of ownership in the first place?
By your rules, you are entirely right.
By resorting to that very same government's tactics and morality? No thanks.
yup, pretty much. that's availment. shoulda read the fine print. only im not running the racket. we are running the racket, every time we vote. dont like your choices? get off your ass and run yourself. we'll see how your ideas fare in the public market of ideas.
yeah, they took the land by force. such is human history. they own it now. when canada invades, they will own your land. until then, the us owns your land and you're on it by their leave.
im guessing you pay taxes? do you put your money where your mouth is and refuse to pay them on moral grounds? or do you take it like a 2-cent hooker and then just cry about it on here?
Fair enough. I just used it in the very first discussion I had with you. Perhaps just a coincidence then.
That's what you've been doing this entire time. You're free to stop whenever you'd like.
Hehe...yes, anarchy is an ineffective form of social organization in the sense that it doesn't prescribe a singular social organization. Makes if very difficult to inflict a singular will on people. Unlike communism.
Then don't subscribe to them. Stalin needed you for his ideas. I don't, and even if I did I wouldn't have a right to force you to live by them. You, however, are proposing something very Stalinistic. You'll force me to live by your rules.
Makes you wonder how anyone ever built an airplane, since no one had ever built one before.
Of course it has and does. The state I believe in exists in me, and it exists in you. It's known as self-sovereignty and it's existed since the dawn of the thinking man. Abdicate it, and you'll get exactly what everyone before you has gotten: the state you propose.
I don't really understand how that's relevant. Why would I want to "see how my ideas fare in the public market", at least in the context of voting?
Thank you. Here it is, in plain English, stripped of all the bullshit. The strongman's philosophy. You've described the underlying morality of proposals such as universal health care. Gone is the bullshit about "common good", the idiocy of "altruism", the insanity of "putting life over property".
This is the world your proposing, the world you want, the world you largely have, and, ironically, the world you're accusing me of wanting. The world wherein force rules. The world wherein ownership is determined by a morality of force.
People like you, for as long as I can remember, have referred to me as "greedy", as "selfish", as "cold", as "inhuman". But this is what you're justifying:
"yeah, they took the land by force. such is human history. they own it now."
Of course.
No. Why should I? I'm not violating my morality by paying taxes.
Hehe....hookers get paid. I'm losing in this deal, remember?
yes, becos force is needed to keep greedy, selfish, cold, and inhuman people like you from abusing the rest of humanity for your own personal wealth and treating your fellow man like a means to an end by spitting on their dying carcass rather than lending a hand in helping them up.
you get paid too, every time you use a road.
http://www.myspace.com/illuminatta
Rhinocerous Surprise '08!!!
That much has been self-evident for quite some time.
FFG is nothing if not consistent - logically and morally.
The twisted logic above is frightening.
"It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen. Winston Smith, his chin nuzzled into his breast in an effort to escape the vile wind, slipped quickly through the glass doors of Victory Mansions, though not quickly enough to prevent a swirl of gritty dust from entering along with him.
The hallway smelt of boiled cabbage and old rag mats. At one end of it a coloured poster, too large for indoor display, had been tacked to the wall. It depicted simply an enormous face, more than a metre wide: the face of a man of about forty-five, with a heavy black moustache and ruggedly handsome features. Winston made for the stairs. It was no use trying the lift. Even at the best of times it was seldom working, and at present the electric current was cut off during daylight hours. It was part of the economy drive in preparation for Hate Week. The flat was seven flights up, and Winston, who was thirty-nine and had a varicose ulcer above his right ankle, went slowly, resting several times on the way. On each landing, opposite the lift-shaft, the poster with the enormous face gazed from the wall. It was one of those pictures which are so contrived that the eyes follow you about when you move. BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU, the caption beneath it ran.
Inside the flat a fruity voice was reading out a list of figures which had something to do with the production of pig-iron. The voice came from an oblong metal plaque like a dulled mirror which formed part of the surface of the right-hand wall. Winston turned a switch and the voice sank somewhat, though the words were still distinguishable. The instrument (the telescreen, it was called) could be dimmed, but there was no way of shutting it off completely. He moved over to the window: a smallish, frail figure, the meagreness of his body merely emphasized by the blue overalls which were the uniform of the party. His hair was very fair, his face naturally sanguine, his skin roughened by coarse soap and blunt razor blades and the cold of the winter that had just ended.
Outside, even through the shut window-pane, the world looked cold. Down in the street little eddies of wind were whirling dust and torn paper into spirals, and though the sun was shining and the sky a harsh blue, there seemed to be no colour in anything, except the posters that were plastered everywhere. The blackmoustachio'd face gazed down from every commanding corner. There was one on the house-front immediately opposite. BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU, the caption said, while the dark eyes looked deep into Winston's own. Down at streetlevel another poster, torn at one corner, flapped fitfully in the wind, alternately covering and uncovering the single word INGSOC. In the far distance a helicopter skimmed down between the roofs, hovered for an instant like a bluebottle, and darted away again with a curving flight. It was the police patrol, snooping into people's windows. The patrols did not matter, however. Only the Thought Police mattered.
Behind Winston's back the voice from the telescreen was still babbling away about pig-iron and the overfulfilment of the Ninth Three-Year Plan. The telescreen received and transmitted simultaneously. Any sound that Winston made, above the level of a very low whisper, would be picked up by it, moreover, so long as he remained within the field of vision which the metal plaque commanded, he could be seen as well as heard. There was of course no way of knowing whether you were being watched at any given moment. How often, or on what system, the Thought Police plugged in on any individual wire was guesswork. It was even conceivable that they watched everybody all the time. But at any rate they could plug in your wire whenever they wanted to. You had to live -- did live, from habit that became instinct -- in the assumption that every sound you made was overheard, and, except in darkness, every movement scrutinized.
Winston kept his back turned to the telescreen. It was safer, though, as he well knew, even a back can be revealing. A kilometre away the Ministry of Truth, his place of work, towered vast and white above the grimy landscape. This, he thought with a sort of vague distaste -- this was London, chief city of Airstrip One, itself the third most populous of the provinces of Oceania. He tried to squeeze out some childhood memory that should tell him whether London had always been quite like this. Were there always these vistas of rotting nineteenth-century houses, their sides shored up with baulks of timber, their windows patched with cardboard and their roofs with corrugated iron, their crazy garden walls sagging in all directions? And the bombed sites where the plaster dust swirled in the air and the willow-herb straggled over the heaps of rubble; and the places where the bombs had cleared a larger patch and there had sprung up sordid colonies of wooden dwellings like chicken-houses? But it was no use, he could not remember: nothing remained of his childhood except a series of bright-lit tableaux occurring against no background and mostly unintelligible.
The Ministry of Truth -- Minitrue, in Newspeak -- was startlingly different from any other object in sight. It was an enormous pyramidal structure of glittering white concrete, soaring up, terrace after terrace, 300 metres into the air. From where Winston stood it was just possible to read, picked out on its white face in elegant lettering, the three slogans of the Party:
WAR IS PEACE
FREEDOM IS SLAVERY
IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH" - George Orwell
This is your world, and I'm not sure you even know that.
You say force is necessary to fight the greedy. Why? To get what you didn't earn.
You say force is necessary to fight the selfish. Why? To fulfill your desires.
You say force is necessary to fight the cold and inhuman. Why? Because apparently their tactics are all you understand.
If all I was paying for were roads, then hell yes I'd be getting a pretty good deal. But your system doesn't even care about the deal I'm getting, so I'm not really going to respect that. Even the 2-cent hooker can name her price or choose her clients.
It is not easy integrating the fine lines between a left and right view. Once we get into judgments and mudslinging, we're definitely not moving in the right direction.
http://www.myspace.com/illuminatta
Rhinocerous Surprise '08!!!