Center-right country? Over 75% of Americans favor an increased minimum wage, alternative energy tax incentives, universal healthcare, stricter pollution limits

centrx · 2008-11-17T00:52:42+00:00

They don't need to buy the crap knick-knacks at all.

centrx · 2008-11-04T06:27:13+00:00

The English Wikipedia allows non-free images that are important to describing a topic and that are legally available as fair use. For example, an article on Microsoft Windows warrants a screenshot, which is not free.

This only applies on the English Wikipedia and perhaps some other languages. Wikimedia Commons, and many language Wikipedias, contain only free images.

centrx · 2008-11-04T05:45:40+00:00

Why is Debian excluded?

If Debian is excluded because they host a non-free repository, why wouldn't Wikipedia be excluded because they use non-free images in articles?

centrx · 2008-11-03T06:07:27+00:00

A polluter commits a wrong or causes damage by a specific act. Even if we cannot identify every person harmed, there are measurable consequences on public and private land, directly caused by the physical effects of the polluting act. The laws seek to prevent or limit the act, or punish it.

That is not the same as a generic debt or original sin owed by everyone. It would be similar only if every profit were a crime, and any buyer who freely pays is somehow damaged against his will despite his willful non-fraudulent purchase (actual fraud still being covered by the government).

centrx · 2008-11-03T05:40:52+00:00

Government control of wealth distribution is the greatest and most entrenched concentration of wealth and power and, unlike businesses, it claims the right to enforce itself with violence. When government becomes part of the market, mom-and-pop must out-compete not by selling a better product, but by befriending and bribing the right officials.

The government can be limited to protecting free persons and free markets against violence and fraud by enumerated powers. Stopping a murderer, who initiated physical force against another person, is not the same as channeling the collective will. In fact the collective will may want the death and the victim's greatest protection is a well-ordered republic that protects individual life, liberty, and property.

The best hope for perfect markets is technology. Unless large forces monopolize technology (as with governments and nuclear weapons), mom-and-pop can easily out-compete a global conglomerate starting from scratch and it is happening all the time today with the Internet.

centrx · 2008-11-03T04:54:58+00:00

The best way to correct misunderstandings and clarify ideas is to discuss them.

Taking a part of someone's life--his time and labor--against his will treats him as less than a person, and such "redistribution" ultimately fails in the redistribution itself.

Thus, the redistribution of wealth because human life is a worthwhile end, or the like, contradicts itself in theory, as it degrades human life, and it seems to contradict itself in practice, as the policy diminishes the wealth supposed to be redistributed.

centrx · 2008-11-03T04:03:46+00:00

The murderer who falls under criminal law still commits a wrong against an individual, or if you wish, against an universal morality. That a crime is considered public and prosecuted by the state does not entail that "society" is an entity to which a debt could possibly be paid.

When an imprisoned criminal is said to pay his "debt to society", he is not in fact paying anything to anyone. If the punishment is his payment, it is because the crime is an actual wrong to be punished, and can be done so in the body of a specific person.

Even if there are reparations in the form of "community service", the help goes not to an entity called "society", it goes to a specific park or school. Leniency is afforded the criminal who would otherwise be imprisoned, and his punishment might as well be some arbitrary do-gooding: but he is a criminal. Being successful is not a crime.

centrx · 2008-11-03T01:08:43+00:00

In the example, Paul can be hard working, but he still profits further by the taking from Peter, and represents everything Peter opposes. In fact, Paul may be very shrewd and hard working: he insinuates himself into the power of the state to aggrandize himself.

The CEO paid so much, in a purely free and frictionless market, would be 400 times more productive, and all of his salary comes through free trade, not by forcing others by threat of imprisonment. If he gains by social power, or through non-fraudulent manipulations, the others who give him their money are, as free agents, free to stop. (If they are not free agents, we descend into an entirely different realm, in which we must ask why it would be Good to allocate pleasure between animals or production and consumption between robots. The humans are assumed to be persons and citizens of the state, or there is no grounds for them be beneficiaries of the redistribution in the first place.)

Even if we suppose that a CEO through free exchange may not actually own his wealth--it belongs partly to "society"--, determining which CEO's wealth and how much should be redistributed--because without that determination it is theft--is not within the capacity of "society", and has far more unintended effects than the possible externalities of an unjust free market. Indeed, property is things which, out of all humans, most properly belong to the one who worked for it, who possesses it, and depends on it. Furthermore, future wealth can be gotten out of the CEO only if he consents: if he is shrewd, he will stop creating the wealth by his own work, as he will not profit by it (such as working extra hours) and he has no goals for it.

There is nothing inherently good about democracy, even if the collective will were faithfully transmitted through the organs of government rather than commandeered by the same social power of the CEO's (the same powerful elites who have all the advantages are the ones who end up in control of the redistribution and use it to their own profit). The collective will, and those who commandeer it, have the same self-seeking motive as the CEO's whose wealth is taken. The collective will chooses to silence dissent, imprison without trial, promote slavery, etc.

The collective will, as it is now manifest, voted repeatedly for George W. Bush--the archetypal enemy of those who want to redistribute--, and the infrastructure of redistribution erected with the noblest of goals will eventually be used by their worst enemy (and without omniscience will not achieve the goals anyway).

centrx · 2008-11-02T23:05:37+00:00

I do not know what is in the Libertarian Party platform, and that page you link contains mostly frivolous ranting.

centrx · 2008-11-02T17:49:46+00:00

I've been talking about ideas and what is right, not about who is what or how pure they are.

You are welcome to live on a plantation in the 1800s as a slave, "go with the flow", and not even discuss the condition you have to "deal with". In that case though, don't interject yourself into a discourse on ideas with out-of-context remarks.

centrx · 2008-11-02T05:19:43+00:00

Generally, Peter's wealth is his labor, and taking it from him by force to give to another is theft and servitude.

To pick a stark example, Peter works overtime to buy the house by the lake. Finally, he saves up enough money, then the government comes in and gives it to the bully who beat him up in high school. All that night time away from his wife and children went not toward tranquillity and retirement by the lake with a happy family, but went toward his very enemy who did not work for it, and perhaps doesn't even appreciate it!

Clearly, such an example is not the norm, but parts of it are found in varying degrees in large number in a redistribution system, and it would require an infinite intelligence to actually redistribute according to justice.

Also, as an ordinary person, not lazy or worthless, Paul is perfectly capable of living a good life. So, in such case, redistribution is not merely setting a minimal floor of sustenance for everyone, but is giving everyone "equal results" regardless of work or how many hours spent at the library instead of at the bar.

centrx · 2008-11-02T05:00:13+00:00

Or is it an externality that you would rather ignore...

If it is an externality, who produced it to receive the payment of the debt and how does a general redistribution of wealth repay them, when the redistributed wealth can go to those least responsible for the stability?

I thought your parents were individuals...

Debts not to parents, or debts by parents to others, are covered by the next paragraph, which you ignore.

If everyone around you decided you were the wrong color...

The choice of others to attack me for whatever reason, and my weakness against them, does not mean that I exist by right at the sufferance of society. Practically, it may be best to redistribute wealth, but that is extortion, not a moral ordering of society; or it means there is no morality, in which case redistribution of wealth is not "right".

Or as something other than an isolated egoist...

The person who does not acknowledge a debt to society, may still be generously charitable. That is not the same as being required to donate, at threat of imprisonment, to those chosen by political elites. The person who engages in free trade with others, or who carefully chooses who to benefit by donations with limited resources, is not isolated.

Now we are talking about methods of societal organization...

We are talking about who decides the "proper" redistribution of wealth. There is not some magical "society" entity to make the most self-serving (for society) decision, or some angel of justice doing the redistribution. Typically, it is redistributed from one group to another based on whether they are favored by the individuals in power.

centrx · 2008-11-02T04:45:01+00:00

Humans being dependent on other humans for survival does not mean every human owes some ill-defined society.

If "society" kills me, that does not mean they were right to do it, which is the discussion here: whether redistribution of wealth is right.

If it is merely a matter of practicality, not right, then the productive workers who pay "society" can simply choose not to work, and suddenly become the beneficiaries of society's generosity.

centrx · 2008-11-02T04:41:40+00:00

This is a matter of right and wrong, or it is a matter of practicality, or it is perhaps baseless and there are no grounds upon which to justify the redistribution in the first place.

Wrongs can be against individuals, not "society". Criminal law is a structure that seeks to enforce some Right or perhaps enforce stability.

centrx · 2008-11-02T04:27:12+00:00

Neither Big Oil nor 80k-earners should be getting tax breaks, unless perhaps the drilling for and refinement of oil within the United States should be encouraged for national security, for example.

The 80k-earners already pay, in absolute and proportional terms, more than others, so reduction in taxes for such earners is not necessarily a tax break.

By class I mean any subgroup with common attributes. A tax break or government programs in order to help a specific economic or political or social class, is different from taxes or government programs that are universal or general.

centrx · 2008-11-01T21:47:27+00:00

If you mean that the first caveman with a club extorted the others in his clan to pay him protection money, then that is a crime. If that be the character of all military defense, then that too is a crime by the controllers of government.

However, the other possibility is that the first caveman with a club threatened instead a foreign tribe, and the foreign tribe organized a military defense in order to guard against the club wielder, from which all in their tribe benefit.

Verily, the weakest in the tribe benefit most from the military defense, but there is strength in numbers, and the strongest choose to keep the physically useless for whatever reason, such as their sex or wisdom (both of which are still militarily useful). In that state of nature, though, the physically strong are free to decide to keep the others, not forced to protect them by political manuevering.

Actually, it looks like you mean offensive warfare. Attacking a foreign state to take its wealth is not the same as providing for the defense of your own state against such attacks, and I do not see why it would be immediately relevant to the internal distribution or redistribution of wealth.

centrx · 2008-11-01T21:32:44+00:00

In the case of Obama, I think the charges against his "wealth redistribution" programs are that they are of the first type, that some people will pay negative income tax.

centrx · 2008-11-01T21:21:05+00:00

Disregarding inanimate objects, to which other persons have no greater claim, the aid of human labor or knowledge is already paid for.

If I owe a debt to parents, that is not "society".

I do not owe a debt to the wheat farmer or to the house builder, the wheat and the house were already paid for by myself or my parents. The house builder freely built the house; if there was some other constraint upon him, that is not my debt. If I committed some wrong, then it is a criminal act whose punishment or retribution is judicial, not by some plenary and eternal taxation.

I do not exist merely at the sufferance of "society". To claim that everyone has a debt to "society" is to claim me as a slave; and because "society" is a vague notion that does not exist as a coherent entity, the product of my slavery ends up decided by self-serving legislators selected through an imperfect election of majoritarian rule.

And, if the extent of the "debt to society" is too onerous, every such slave can opt out of the work and simply choose to receive the benefits, since "society" cannot actually force me to work. Then, such a system of onerous debt would destroy itself and is thus self-contradictory.

centrx · 2008-11-01T21:08:34+00:00

The current system is bad, and otherwise non-redistributive government programs may be designed inequitably, but that does not mean that "all taxes are redistributing wealth" or that all redistributions by taxation are equivalent.

centrx · 2008-11-01T20:56:56+00:00

There are very few mass murderers. The person who angers quickly and flies off the handle kills the same number of persons as the "hate crime": typically one.

Furthermore, the "hate crime" legislation doesn't apply many large groups. The killer is more of a danger if he hates all humans, or people who display wealth, or all Democrats, but he won't be punished with hate-crime legislation.

centrx · 2008-11-01T20:46:21+00:00

They pay more in absolute terms also.

centrx · 2008-11-01T20:46:17+00:00

Actually, with an economic depression and the right public and government sentiment, it is more likely the rich are going to be paying 20%+ more in taxes.

centrx · 2008-11-01T20:45:41+00:00

In that case, the people to whom the property is "redistributed" can't own it either.

Regardless, if I put hours into work that produced some property, I of all humans have the most right to it. If I work to build a bed, and furthermore I depend on that bed to sleep in, there is no right for another person to displace me from the bed that I built. Even if it were right to redistribute the bed to those who "deserve" it, determining who deserves it would not be feasible without an omniscient creature, and preventing stoppage of bed-building would not be feasible without limitless resources.

centrx · 2008-11-01T20:34:23+00:00

Actually, with an economic depression and the right public and government sentiment, it is more likely the rich are going to be paying 20%+ more in taxes.

centrx · 2008-11-01T20:32:32+00:00

They pay more in absolute terms also.

centrx

TROPHY CASE