I see the coercion in those examples. Being that I don't believe in consciousness, I just see different stimuli and their response. I acknowledge the endorphin that is released when you perform an action that you have been conditioned to see as good, and I see the invisible web of threats and concessions that surround us all. We all take the path of least resistance, except for some notable exceptions.
Imagine this, with an open mind.
What would happen if you did not hold the door for someone? They would remember you, and not like you, whereas they would if you held the door. This is a good response, constructive and useful. Try to imagine these little ques your brain is running off of to determine morality and the proper response. The problem is when the benefit of having something someone else possesses outweighs the negative stimulus of theft, or any immoral action.
1)It happens even in situations which could not possibly have consequences down the line. 2)Social conditioning, built-in reflex and calculated response are *not* the same as coercion. If I fail to make fresh coffee, they will not send a sheriff to my house to take me to a big building with bars on the windows and razor wire at the perimeter. 3)If you do not believe in free will, the whole argument is moot anyway. |
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Not always, Severian, naturally, we would reach a point where nobody acts in such a way.
If you're arguing that the majority of people that have ever lived are potential criminals, I'd have to disagree. I think he's suggesting that if things were loosened up a bit, the criminal element would find themselves a rapidly diminishing proportion of the population. |
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"Complaining on the internet" has for too long been subject to the highs and lows of the fascistic capitalist system. It is high time it was nationalized and I, for one, applaud sec agent's initiative.
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Where? I don't see people stepping up to do anything that's necessary if they find it distasteful. I frequently see people perform acts of vandalism or simple negligence that destroys any faith I have that people would be able to cooperate successfully without coercion.
You walk around with your eyes closed then. I probably see at least half a dozen at least trivial examples every day. Every time I go to get coffee and there's a full fresh pot, every time someone waves me out into traffic when I leave work. Every time I hold the door or elevator for someone or they hold it for me. There is something deeply humanly fulfilling about assisting others and the government not only takes that away but also damages it when they make it coercive. I would note that "acts of vandalism" is something that government has taken on itself as its responsibility to resolve. How's that going? |
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I'll ignore the circular argument you're presenting, and ask you this. Those that argue for coercion are the ones that present circular reasoning. Why do you think people would cooperate as a whole if left to their own devices?
Because it makes survival more economically feasible. Coercion only makes life cheaper for those with the power to coerce. I take it you've read no Bastiat? I think the better answer might be "Because they do". |
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Land Value Tax is interesting but it definitely has issues of its own. The whole land ownership thing has a lot of depth and subtleties that many people don't even consider because they're used to the perspective they're in (consider nomadic people for example.) I think there may never actually be a good answer.
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I have always seen coercion to be quite necessary. The majority of people I know and see daily (being a college student) would drink themselves into a stupor on a regular basis and do nothing more if it weren't a pressure to go to class and get a job. I just don't see voluntary cooperation as compatible with human nature. Why spend your time helping someone else when you could be working towards your own ends. The main force of social cooperation is the true parasite on society; religion.
I disagree. Voluntary cooperation is part of human nature as a social species. There is a very strong aspect of self-interest in helping others. We are stronger together than apart and that's hard-wired. Even government evolves from a group of people working together (It's when they start bossing others around that it becomes an issue. Though I suspect that that may be part of human nature too). For whatever reason, it's become a social faux-pas to stove in the head of someone who's ordering you around or helping themselves to the product of your labor. Society has yet to work out a satisfactory solution to this. |
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First off, without taxes, who would pay for infrastructure? I don't think anyone would voluntarily fund it. Next off, how would the government even manage to exist? This is the same mistake that people have been making for centuries: confusing the blessings of society for the evils of government (to paraphrase Thomas Paine). Human beings have a tendency to form orderly societies, with or without the overbearing, parasitic class known as "government workers" and "politicians". Indeed, socialism is quite literally anti-social. It replaces voluntary social cooperation with coerced participation. |
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It's how it works.. When you've been doing this for 22 years like I have you just roll with it. You don't get upset when projects you put your life and soul into get tossed in the trash because of the color of a button (but we can change that!) just so some manager can get credit for having produced a revolutionary new software product. You become jaded, you've already written everything ever so you become a cut and paste programmer while reading news on the web and running your bitcoin side business from your relatively high paid senior developer job.
Someone's hacked into my autobiography... |
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To avoid others making the same mistake as me: CurrencyFair & Transferwise cannot be used to fund a Mt.Gox account as the senders bank name will be different from the name associated with the Mt.Gox account. Is that a technical thing? Cause my personal name would be the same on all sides of the transaction(s) |
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Yeah, one might as well ask why Ford bothers selling cars when they could just run them as Taxis.
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It doesn't mean that the government has to stay big, but simply that I see taxes as a contribution to the "team". Governments evolve through time, but I see why taxes are needed.
I can tell you one direction they never evolve: smaller. I'd also question who exactly has been telling you that big government has been a good thing for you. |
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Note that the govt. pays for prosecution costs as well.
If they didn't use public funds for threatening you then this wouldn't be under discussion.. so the primary argument here should be about who pays for prosecution and defense and public defender issues are secondary.
That's an interesting discussion but on a slightly different level. |
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fantastic
guess who's reading A.S.
*shrug*? Not me. It's on my "I really must get around to reading that someday when I don't have paint to watch dry" |
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I'll just make an open-ended question: Is society only defined by how much can be consumed in a day?
Keynes is on his way out. It'll take a while but the buds of Austrianism are starting to show through. in the mainstream media somewhere? where besides fox business The BBC? http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b012wxyg/Keynes_Vs._Hayek/http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01n2rpxLet's not forget the current resurgence of Atlas Shrugged (with a second movie about to come out). Keynesianism has been all that people have been allowed to hear for a long time but the internet is bringing other models to the arena for inspection. |
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[snip]
Thanks, a lot of food for thought there. |
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Ah, but give the poor a small stipend, and the majority of it will be spent, while a rich man would save it. In practice, it didn't work too well. We tried handing out money to everyone under Bush. That stimulus was lackluster.
For spent, read wasted. For save, read invest (It's possible to hoard gold or bitcoins but where do you think dollars go?). |
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I'll just make an open-ended question: Is society only defined by how much can be consumed in a day?
Keynes is on his way out. It'll take a while but the buds of Austrianism are starting to show through. |
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The best way to start doing this without putting the cart before the horse would be to write the C code that will run on all this magical dream hardware.
If it were me, I wouldn't use C (though cryptography in ASM might be a challenge) but a cheap PIC microcontroller with embedded USB hardware can be had for cheap. I don't know if it has the power to handle the application but proof-of-concept could be put together pretty quickly and reasonably cheaply (Microchip will even send you the chips for free). |
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If the poor have no security net they will save as much as possible of their income for a rainy day.
Yes, the poor should feel free to waste their money on alcohol, lottery tickets, drugs and other consumable crud because everyone else will pick up the tab later. No, they have to pay for that themselves. (Alcohol is a good candidate for extra taxation, and drugs which are bad for them should be illegal, but that is another story.) And that is the point. If they are able to pay for that stuff, the whole economy benefits. If only the rich are able to buy chocolate, you don't need many chocolate factories. The rich people aren't going to eat more chocolate when they become richer. The solution is to enable the poor to consume more. This makes the economy grow and everyone's wealth increases. Broken Window Fallacy. |
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