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Again: who is "we" and -more importantly - how do we decide which/how-much resources to grant? Write a nice letter to the Gates Foundation? Steal from the prod

Again: who is "we" and -more importantly - how do we decide which/how-much resources to grant? Write a nice letter to the Gates Foundation? Steal from the productive and call it "taxation"?

AnimalMuppet 8y ago
"We" is society as a whole. (Moderately careful reading of my first post should have made that clear, but you seem more interested in arguing than in understanding.) How do we decide? The process wasn't specified. (How does society as a whole make decisions? These kind of decisions it makes through the political process.) The point wasn't the mechanics of the decision-making process. The point was that we should view these people as an under-utilized asset rather than a liability, and figure out how to use them for the progress of our society. > Steal from the productive and call it "taxation"? You want to let people starve (judging by your posts in this thread) rather than pay taxes, which you regard as theft? You need to replace your moral compass; it's a bit defective... Do you feel the same way about taxes to pay for, say, highways and airports? Or do you give those a pass because it's infrastructure, from which you benefit? If we can get these people able to contribute to society, we'll benefit, in at least two ways. One is that they'll pay more taxes, which could lower yours. Second, they'll do things that are useful, and some of it we'll personally use.
- mmirate 8y ago
  > Do you feel the same way about taxes to pay for, say, highways and airports? Or do you give those a pass because it's infrastructure, from which you benefit? I don't give them a pass. Not by a long shot. Right now I'm only benefiting from one particular nearby highway, and even then only a few miles of its vast length. Of the two nearest airports (both of which are at least an hour's drive away), I have never used one, have not used the other in at least a year, and have no intention of using either for at least a couple decades; yet I am still forced to pay for them, beyond the length of any "professional's retainer" term that I might have voluntarily chosen. (I correctly predicted which airport usage would be my last, several years prior to it.) But of course there are others who feel differently - they'd like to have a different stretch of that highway, a different highway, an airport with nonstop roundtrips to Podunk, Alabama, you name it. And I do not wish to quarrel with them. In a properly-functioning free market, when there is a selection of alternative goods available and different people have different preferences, the result is that the people who prefer one good purchase it, and the people who prefer another good purchase it instead of the previous. Both goods end up being sold to the people who prefer them. The anomalous situation in any of certain markets (e.g. infrastructure of a given kind; security; morals; laws) wherein people must coercively prohibit the sale of all goods except one, the one to be chosen by all manner of unpleasant quarrels - be they the heated vitriol before an election, or the cold hard bullying might of dynasties and coups d'etat ... it only results when there is a localized monopoly on the use of unprovoked force - also known as a government.
  - AnimalMuppet 8y ago
    So this is getting somewhat afield from the original topic, but... have you ever lived somewhere where there is not a monopoly on the use of unprovoked force? (I have never done so, but some who have state rather eloquently why having the government having a monopoly on this is really beneficial compared to the alternative.)
    - mmirate 8y ago
      Me neither; and such a place does not (yet) exist, and to my knowledge humans have never truly created such a place since the dawn of agriculture, if not earlier. It's entirely in the realm of theory, for now. I'll even admit: we barely have the information-technology today with which to conduct business as quickly, frequently and frictionlessly as it could theoretically need to be conducted in such a place. In places where there is not only a monopoly on the use of unprovoked force, but where the same entity also monopolizes everything else, there is another collection of people who eloquently state why that was a bad idea. If you're wondering what is the difference between an area with all markets free; and an area whose governments merely don't call themselves as such, and tend to compete via (expensive) violence instead of advertising - then this tome should provide a much more eloquent description (albeit as theoretical as ever) than I could ever hope to achieve: http://www.daviddfriedman.com/The_Machinery_of_Freedom_.pdf http://www.daviddfriedman.com/The_Machinery_of_Freedom_.pdf
      - AnimalMuppet 8y ago
        I was thinking of, e.g., Somalia. There wasn't a monopoly on violence, but there was still violence, and lots of it. There were competing warlords, not a nice smoothly-running anarchist market. It's... not a pleasant environment. It's closer to hell than to paradise. The government monopoly on violence has problems (much worse when the government goes off the rails), but in the absence of that monopoly, anyone who wants to do violence can. As that strategy turns out to work against those who would prefer not to do violence, more people turn to violence either for gain or for defense against the violence of others.

Again: who is "we" and -more importantly - how do we decide which/how-much resources to grant? Write a nice letter to the Gates Foundation? Steal from the productive and call it "taxation"?

AnimalMuppet 8y ago

"We" is society as a whole. (Moderately careful reading of my first post should have made that clear, but you seem more interested in arguing than in understanding.) How do we decide? The process wasn't specified. (How does society as a whole make decisions? These kind of decisions it makes through the political process.) The point wasn't the mechanics of the decision-making process. The point was that we should view these people as an under-utilized asset rather than a liability, and figure out how to use them for the progress of our society. > Steal from the productive and call it "taxation"? You want to let people starve (judging by your posts in this thread) rather than pay taxes, which you regard as theft? You need to replace your moral compass; it's a bit defective... Do you feel the same way about taxes to pay for, say, highways and airports? Or do you give those a pass because it's infrastructure, from which you benefit? If we can get these people able to contribute to society, we'll benefit, in at least two ways. One is that they'll pay more taxes, which could lower yours. Second, they'll do things that are useful, and some of it we'll personally use.

mmirate 8y ago
> Do you feel the same way about taxes to pay for, say, highways and airports? Or do you give those a pass because it's infrastructure, from which you benefit? I don't give them a pass. Not by a long shot. Right now I'm only benefiting from one particular nearby highway, and even then only a few miles of its vast length. Of the two nearest airports (both of which are at least an hour's drive away), I have never used one, have not used the other in at least a year, and have no intention of using either for at least a couple decades; yet I am still forced to pay for them, beyond the length of any "professional's retainer" term that I might have voluntarily chosen. (I correctly predicted which airport usage would be my last, several years prior to it.) But of course there are others who feel differently - they'd like to have a different stretch of that highway, a different highway, an airport with nonstop roundtrips to Podunk, Alabama, you name it. And I do not wish to quarrel with them. In a properly-functioning free market, when there is a selection of alternative goods available and different people have different preferences, the result is that the people who prefer one good purchase it, and the people who prefer another good purchase it instead of the previous. Both goods end up being sold to the people who prefer them. The anomalous situation in any of certain markets (e.g. infrastructure of a given kind; security; morals; laws) wherein people must coercively prohibit the sale of all goods except one, the one to be chosen by all manner of unpleasant quarrels - be they the heated vitriol before an election, or the cold hard bullying might of dynasties and coups d'etat ... it only results when there is a localized monopoly on the use of unprovoked force - also known as a government.
- AnimalMuppet 8y ago
  So this is getting somewhat afield from the original topic, but... have you ever lived somewhere where there is not a monopoly on the use of unprovoked force? (I have never done so, but some who have state rather eloquently why having the government having a monopoly on this is really beneficial compared to the alternative.)
  - mmirate 8y ago
    Me neither; and such a place does not (yet) exist, and to my knowledge humans have never truly created such a place since the dawn of agriculture, if not earlier. It's entirely in the realm of theory, for now. I'll even admit: we barely have the information-technology today with which to conduct business as quickly, frequently and frictionlessly as it could theoretically need to be conducted in such a place. In places where there is not only a monopoly on the use of unprovoked force, but where the same entity also monopolizes everything else, there is another collection of people who eloquently state why that was a bad idea. If you're wondering what is the difference between an area with all markets free; and an area whose governments merely don't call themselves as such, and tend to compete via (expensive) violence instead of advertising - then this tome should provide a much more eloquent description (albeit as theoretical as ever) than I could ever hope to achieve: http://www.daviddfriedman.com/The_Machinery_of_Freedom_.pdf http://www.daviddfriedman.com/The_Machinery_of_Freedom_.pdf
    - AnimalMuppet 8y ago
      I was thinking of, e.g., Somalia. There wasn't a monopoly on violence, but there was still violence, and lots of it. There were competing warlords, not a nice smoothly-running anarchist market. It's... not a pleasant environment. It's closer to hell than to paradise. The government monopoly on violence has problems (much worse when the government goes off the rails), but in the absence of that monopoly, anyone who wants to do violence can. As that strategy turns out to work against those who would prefer not to do violence, more people turn to violence either for gain or for defense against the violence of others.