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This thread is a joke, right? You want me to list all of them? Let's see...
Industrial Society (And Its Future)
The War Powers Act
The US Military in General
Birthright Citizenship
Corporate Personhood
The Income Tax
Nationalization of State Militias
Democracy
Corn Subsidies
Victimless Crimes
Lack of Import Tariffs
Social Security
Insurance in General
Religion
Corporate Media
The War on (Some) Drugs
State Media
The Federal Reserve
Processed Foods
Wage Slavery
Campaign Finance
Conscription
Pharmaceuticals
The ATF/FBI/CIA/DEA/Homeland Security Gestapo
Fossil Fuels
The Social Welfare State
Factory Farms
The PATRIOT Act
Unrestricted Immigration
Crony Capitalism
There are probably a few others...
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The point I was making is that there is a cost imposed on a person whether he is kidnapped into slavery or born into it. None of this has to do with anything being "life threatening" so I'm not sure why you keep saying that.
I think we've established that you are a collectivist. Frankly, this point of view has no legitimacy whatsoever, especially not in any political system that respects human rights.
And I'm really not sure how you can fail to see the difference between actively soliciting a service (doctor's appt) and being forced to pay for something you don't even want (house-waving, gov't).
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Well, he at least doesn't give the stock Keynesian response about creating jobs blowing up stuff etc. He basically says that we recovered because we flattened Europe and we were the biggest industrial economy remaining.
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What we need is a strong leader to make the courier network run on time.
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Pics or it didn't happen.
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So, with gas at $4/gallon, how far would you drive for a $3 ream of paper?
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Tell me, is there such a thing as an implicit contract? Or do every contract have to be explicit? Every contract has implicit elements. And ultimately there is a fine line. But what you're arguing is simply ludicrous and comes nowhere close to being reasonable. I would have thought that the house-waving service would have made this clear. Do you want to offer some argument as to what might constitute an implicit contract? I think if you stop by your friend's house while he's out of town and borrow his lawnmower, then you implicitly agree to return it. But this isn't really a contract so I fail to see what might distinguish between an implicit contract and made-up nonsense. Is having children "literally" the same as kidnapping someone? For the purposes of the example I gave, the outcome is the same from the child's perspective, but obviously it's a somewhat contrived example. You can leave a gated community. You can leave a country. Neither is generally life threatening to do. You can leave your house if you don't want to pay for the house waving service. Slavery isn't life threatening either if that's the argument you want to make. This is an idiotic point. And kidnapping is agression and "not cool", isn't it? I'm really not going to answer retarded questions. If none of the other communities/countries live up to your standard of freedom or safety it's not really our problem is it? Everyone has to make compromises. Or you suck it down for now and try to change the rules where you are.
If you'd like to argue on the basis of "rules" that have some type of legitimacy other than through force, feel free. It's a difficult argument to make. And just saying "implied contract" doesn't cut it. If you'd like to argue that rules have legitimacy that derives from force, then feel free to watch your rules get ignored. |
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Most drug development costs are spent on advertising. Pharmaceuticals are the biggest flim-flam scheme on earth.
It is literally all profit and advertising. There is a tiny cost involved in adding a few new atoms to cocaine or whatever, running some trials and getting a patent. But it's peanuts.
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Oh, and jobs aren't created by human desires.
Wow. That's so contradictory to evidence I can't even imagine how you arrived here. So, in this theory, how does the character actor at Walt Disney World fit in? Character actors attract people who bring money to the park. Money is exchanged for energy and resources which are consumed. If those resources didn't exist, no one would be able to fly 2000 miles to visit Disney World. If the money couldn't be exchanged for energy and resources, Disney would go under. Disney World requires a constant inflow of potential energy in the form of electricity and physical materials in order to exist. If the resources and energy weren't consumed, people wouldn't have to dress up as cartoon characters and walk around in 100 degree humid swampland pandering to six year olds. Likewise if everyone had their own personal replicators and fusion generators. Saying "human needs create jobs" is only a tiny sliver of truth. Jobs don't exist unless the resources necessary to meet human needs exist. And if the resources necessary to meet human needs exist in abundance, then there is no need for jobs whatsoever.
I think you have completely failed to establish that your "gated community service charge" is even remotely comparable to a debt.
Please tell me what you think the difference is. I think that would be more efficient than me trying to guess.  Contract. Consent. Saying "you consent to this by living" is not sufficient. It is literally equivalent to kidnapping someone, taking them to an oasis in the middle of a desert, and then saying "you consent to be a servant by staying here". You can leave at any time. Start walking. It's not really a choice; it's contrived nonsense. It's also equivalent to hooking a child on drugs, and then charging him once he turns 18. Same thing. Not a contract. No consent. Not a choice. Not a debt. |
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From this aspect, therefore, the whole of economics can be reduced to a single lesson, and that lesson can be reduced to a single sentence. The art of economics consists in looking not merely at the immediate but at the longer effects of any act or policy; it consists in tracing the consequences of that policy not merely for one group but for all groups.
I can't help but find the premise of this thread to be hilariously ironic. I can be evicted by the owner of any owned property. If you're on my property and refuse to leave after being asked, you're trespassing. You're the aggressor, not me.
What if you are a child and the owner is your family? Still apply? Of course it applies. Nobody is forced to care for their children, even with our current system. |
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Oh, and jobs aren't created by human desires. They are created by thermodynamic potential. You can wish for jobs all day long.
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India is conspicuously absent.
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You're saying that I'm somehow responsible for the debts of my grown children? The example was an +18 child with income, but still you want to make the parents responsible? For an adult? Somehow I still think that it's more fair to make everyone accountable for their own actions after they are mature enough to understand consequenses, which happens to be set at 18 in most places.
I think you have completely failed to establish that your "gated community service charge" is even remotely comparable to a debt. But, yes, there should be a cost to having children -- a large cost. And it is morally abhorrent, fraudulent un-physical nonsense to believe that this cost can be placed on the children themselves. Literally every social ill would be substantially reduced and probably eliminated by forcibly preventing penniless, irresponsible jackasses from siring countless resourceless children and then sending them out into the world to terrorize the rest of us. |
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It's private property. Everyone who lives there own an equal share and we set the rules by 2/3 majority vote. We decided that everyone +18 with income should pay. Could you refuse, after all you're just born there.
Who put you in this hypothetical gated community? Who is responsible? We own the community together so I guess "we"'re responsible. So, you're not responsible for kids born on your property, unless they're your kids. But collective owners of a gated community are collectively responsible for kids born on their property? I also don't think I put the responsibility of the children anywhere special, but parents are generally responsible for their children. It's a good thing none of you are actually in charge of a government/gated community, because it would be the most incompetently-run bureaucratic mess on earth. It took six replies to establish that parents are responsible for their children. Tax the fucking parents. |
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Whether you personally would adopt a single child for a few years changes none of the large scale dynamics of the issue. So, you're just going ignore the part where I said that millions of childless couples would likely do the same? Yes, because it's nonsense. There are a billion starving, uncared-for people on the planet. No one is adopting all of them. This is just pointless rhetoric that you would like to use to justify your contrived moral philosophy. I've asked you questions that have to do with extreme cases, because they are the easiest questions to answer. Since you can't answer them with a straightforward "yes" or "no", discussing more common cases would be pointless. |
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This would be easy if you could simply answer a straightforward, yes-or-no question without erecting endless strawmen. Child exposure is not a hypothetical extreme case. It has existed in large, successful societies in the past. Abortion, an almost morally identical practice, is common today. Whether you personally would adopt a single child for a few years changes none of the large scale dynamics of the issue.
But clearly you are more interested in maintaining your little inconsistent, incomplete political philosophy rather than learning how the world works or improving it.
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The only way anyone is ever forced to work is by threat of violence. So, you would consider exposing a child on a mountaintop to be an act of violence? Or you think the child would not be forced to work to survive? "There is as much work to be done as there are unfulfilled desires. Since human desires are, for all practical purposes, limitless, the amount of work to be done is also limitless. Therefore, no matter how much work the eager young man completes, he cannot possibly exhaust or even make an appreciable dent in the amount of work to be done.
To assume that human desires can be fully and finally satisfied is to assume that we can reach a point at which human perfection — material, intellectual, and aesthetic — has been fully realized. Paradise? Perhaps. If it were somehow achieved, then certainly there would be no "unemployment" problem — for who would need a job?" --Block
Yeah, this is a completely nonsense definition of work. Digging holes only to fill them back up again is not work. And productive work is thermodynamically limited. Resources are finite. Infinite amounts of human labor won't change that fact. I've studied economics. On the whole, I found it to be a rather unimpressive collection of unrealistic false assumptions and deliberate mangling of common terms put to fraudulent ends. |
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Remember, in an Ant colony, the libertarian fails. Amongst Piranha, the communist is lunch!
Ants eat food sources that are several times larger than they are. It makes sense to cooperate when resources are effectively unlimited. Piranha eat food sources that are smaller than they are. It makes sense to compete when resources are scarce. Earth's resources are becoming fewer every day. At the same time, human knowledge is growing exponentially. You do the math. |
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