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SMBC
[T]he superstition that the budget must be balanced at all times, once it is debunked, takes away one of the bulwarks that every society must have against expenditure out of control. . . . [O]ne of the functions of old-fashioned religion was to scare people by sometimes what might be regarded as myths into behaving in a way that long-run civilized life requires.
Americans have a knee jerk reaction to the word "Communism" because they know history. Over 150 MILLION people murdered at the hands of communist regimes in the 20th Century. Enslavement of 1/3 the population worldwide. Communism cannot work because it views humankind as parts in a machine and makes life decisions for its people based on budgetary costs. Ironic that a system that claims to care so much about people care less than than the people themselves. If its so brilliant, then explain why the last 100 years have shown people trying to escape it? It is stunning to me that any of you would even attempt to legitimize the brutality of such a system. What do you think that says about your character when you defend government sanctioned mass murder? You all are either masochists, sadists, or the epitome of ignorance! Just goes to show that most of the institutionalized so-called professors in America and Europe should be on trial for treason.
There are a number of issues here. First, yes, leaving your car locked on the side of the road is one form of absentee ownership. And, we do in fact have to make social constructions, such as laws, courts, and police, to define and protect individuals' interest in retaining possession of objects, such as cars, they are not presently using, or even that they loan to others. A misconception here seems to be that I am absolutely against absentee ownership. I'm not. I just argue that all absentee ownership is socially constructed; there are no objective physical facts that define absentee ownership. The argument is against the justification, which MaunaLoona will talk about below.I define absentee ownership here as the situation where the objectively determinable direct use of physical coercion against the person of the owner is not required to deprive him or her of its objectively determinable use.By his definition leaving a car parked on the road is absentee ownership.
But this is precisely my point: what does "coercion" actually mean? Does it mean what it does when Libertarians are arguing against coercion: taxation is obviously coercive because if you don't pay your taxes, men and women with guns will come to kill you. Or does it mean what it does when Libertarians are arguing for rent: if you don't pay your rent, although men and women with guns will come to kill you, that's not coercion because it's justified by an agreement. Again, MaunaLoona will develop this point below.For example, the occupant of a rented house is already in physical possession of the house; if the renter arbitrarily decides not to pay the rent, no objectively determinable coercion against the person of the owner is necessary. Indeed, it is the owner who must, in a objectively determinable sense, initiate coercion against the possessor to exert meaningful ownership.The owner of the house is using force to remove an invader. You can call it "initiating coercion" all you want, just as long as we're clear what you mean by that phrase. Words have meaning. They don't mean what you want them to mean.
Here, MaunaLoona just changes the justification from the use of coercion to socially constructed idea of "voluntary." OK, a socially constructed "voluntary agreement" can potentially justify objective, physical coercion, but this is a different argument than that objective, physical coercion is itself unjustified. The argument then becomes how to construct "voluntary agreement" to exclude taxation but include rent. It is perhaps possible to construct "voluntary agreement" to exclude taxation but include rent, but the construction becomes so convoluted that it loses its obvious linguistic meaning. And even if we could create a coherent, consistent construction, why should we accept that particular construction as authoritative?One response is that coercion to enforce absentee ownership is socially constructed to be legitimate, even though the absentee owner does not possess the property. However, if social construction can legitimatize coercion to maintain absentee ownership, then social construction can legitimatize coercion to collect taxes. Remember, the argument against taxation above must be in some sense that because it is coercive, taxation is unjust regardless of any social constructions that legitimatize it.Taxation is not voluntary. Entering into a rental agreement is. If there is any doubt about who the owner of the rented property is, the contract will say "the owner retains ownership of the property and will kick you out if you fail to pay rent".
Seems like equivocation and strawman are typical leftist tactics. The above argument is similar to:Well, we don't come up with something new precisely because Libertarians keep using the same contradictory, equivocal justification, which I discuss in this post. Again, I am not claiming that Libertarian ideology is inconsistent or incoherent; if Christian theologians can consistently reconcile the character of Yahweh with an omnibenevolent deity, we can reconcile anything, including Libertarian ideology. Instead, I am arguing that their justification for their ideology is incoherent, inconsistent, and equivocal.
a. Libertarians claims taxation is immoral because of coercion
I don't think I'm exaggerating when I say I've heard this argument a hundred times before. I wish they would come up with something new.
b. Defending your property is coercion
c. Property ownership is immoral. Checkmate, libertarians!
The obvious stupidity of this comment probably deserves a The Stupid! It Burns! tag. A contract (including all the social institutions necessary to interpret and enforce it) is a social construct, in just the same sense that a statute mandating payment of taxes is a social construct.Taxation is not voluntary. Entering into a rental agreement is.
Exactly! It is not a social construct that allows a property-owner to "initiate force" to remove a renter who refuses to pay. It is the terms of the contract that that specific individual renter signed.
How can you not see the difference between a lease, which was signed by the tenant, and a decree that was forced upon a citizen by the majority? One is a voluntary agreement, the other is force.The commenter makes a number of rather obvious errors, most notably that that Libertarian argument does not usually consist of how to justify the initiation of coercion, but rather that the initiation of coercion is intrinsically unjustifiable. Of course, as I discuss in the post, the Libertarian argument is fundamentally in bad faith: agreements they don't like are unjustifiable because they entail the initiation of coercion; agreements they like aren't the initiation of coercion because they are justified. I find this "argument" as tedious and stupid as Divine Command Theory.
So the community that insists science and religion are incompatible is now going to embrace the notion that emotion and reason are complementary? Well, intellectual consistency has never been a strong point of atheism.
god as Kim Jung Il. . . A god of power and supervision and invigilation and suspicion. . . . And [a Christian] almost always has to say: I don't believe in that god either.Uh... I know a lot of Christians who actually do believe in such a god, but all right, let's run with that. What kind of a god do you believe in, Dave?
When a Christian says GOD they mean who you know when you know Jesus. Jesus whose purpose is to introduce his Father. (Luke 10) God who is firstly Father, who sent his Son into the world in the power of the Holy Spirit. Not power, but a person - a person who is universally acknowledged to have been good and kind and innocent, and who was nonetheless executed and then it was claimed resurrected. There is a story to consider, to read.Wait, what?
It's common to read attacks by Atheists on practicing Christians on Daily Kos -- and, indeed, on the Internet at large. These attacks often infantalize Christians, assault their sense of reason, slander them or level broad accusations that have little support in fact. The context of these attacks is usually the All-Seeing Eye of the Atheist, which is capable to seeing into the minds of Christians and instantly understanding their motiviations, even when such motivations are cloudy or obscure to the Christian himself. . . .
Human nature is such that, on closer examination, the Atheist movement is full of the same weak, irrational, conflicted, myopic human beings that fill the ranks of the religious. We're all small -- tiny, really -- when compared to the grandeur of the Divine or the Universe. (Your choice.)
So, please. A little humility?
The actual liabilities of the federal government—including Social Security, Medicare, and federal employees' future retirement benefits—already exceed $86.8 trillion, or 550% of GDP. For the year ending Dec. 31, 2011, the annual accrued expense of Medicare and Social Security was $7 trillion.According to Cox and Archer, we will soon have to collect $8 trillion per year to fund these entitlement programs, a task that would be difficult even in an economy with an annual gross domestic product of $13-14 trillion. Sooner or later, something has to give. But Cox and Archer's numbers are suspect; more importantly, Long's ice cream shop analogy is misleading and fails to accurately describe the macroeconomic role of a government with a sovereign currency.
I want to point out some of the contradictions that I see in [an atheist's] worldview. My point in the following is to be loving by clearly presenting the truth as I see it. I recognize this style is a bit abrupt and can come across as harsh, but I assure you, that’s not my intention.
Here are the clashing statements, right next to each other:
1: There are no objective moral truths.
2: I’ve decided to accept some moral axioms as true, because I think it is important to have a moral system to live by.
1: There is no ultimate moral accountability for my actions.
2: Even when I know no one can catch me doing things that we would both consider to be “bad”, but are still incredibly fun things to do, I try to do what I think is right.
1: In the long run, all life will be extinguished.
2: I’m pretty hopeful about the future.
1: Anyone you help will die shortly afterwards.
2: I’m willing to make sacrifices so that others can have a better life.
1: Looking at it scientifically, we are specks of cosmic dust.
2: I think my life has a lot of meaning.
1: Everything happens in accordance with the laws of physics and biochemistry.
2: I have free will.
1: Everything happens in accordance with the laws of physics and biochemistry.
2: My mind rationally assess propositions in order to make logical conclusions.
1: We are biochemical reproducing machines.
2: I truly love my family and friends.
1: Our particular existence is the result of a colossal series of random events and the process of natural selection.
2: I’m trying to figure out the purpose of my life.
1: Everything about us can be explained by evolutionary pressures.
2: My own beliefs about reality are explainable in terms of what is most reasonable.
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