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I would just like to point out without diverging or causing too much of a "flame war", that this same line of thinking is the one us Libertarians point to regar

by zo1 5y ago

I would just like to point out without diverging or causing too much of a "flame war", that this same line of thinking is the one us Libertarians point to regarding "voluntary" things like taxes. I.e. If you asked people to voluntarily sign up for taxes, "who in their right mind would" do so? My overall point being: To the government, this is the same. It's a power imbalance and they don't see anything different because they think they have the right. We've opened up that can of worms a long time ago and it's important for us to realize it instead of continuously living in pretend-land where we think we have a "choice" over what government does.

simion314 5y ago
You gain something from taxes, like police to protect your big pile of money and villa. But from this scanning you gain nothing , Apple could have scan iCloud and caught the evil guys already if they exist so you can't claim that the society benefits from this when it could have implemented exactly like Google does it a few years ago.
dudeman13 5y ago
>.e. If you asked people to voluntarily sign up for taxes, "who in their right mind would" do so? Those who would naturally cooperate in the prisoner dilema, those who believe society is better by having a government instead of going full anarchy, those who think humanity is better off if the strong protects the weak. So only the tiny subset of people who care about people instead of those who adhere to the "fuck you, I got mine" point of view.
- zo1 5y ago
  I really didn't want to get into this, I just wanted to point out how we've already "breached" that whole "if you make this optional will people choose it" line. You're now attaching a moral argument about how only the "fuck you, I got mine" people will say no to taxes. And as a side note: I, as a libertarian/an-cap, would be perfectly fine with paying for all manner of things (with taxes) if I could choose how it was spent to some nominal degree. Here we are in a discussion about government surveillance, which would probably be a non-issue if we all just had the ability to slide that slider next to the "NSA Contribution" heading in our tax-contribution forms.

by zo1 5y ago

simion314 5y ago

You gain something from taxes, like police to protect your big pile of money and villa. But from this scanning you gain nothing , Apple could have scan iCloud and caught the evil guys already if they exist so you can't claim that the society benefits from this when it could have implemented exactly like Google does it a few years ago.

dudeman13 5y ago

>.e. If you asked people to voluntarily sign up for taxes, "who in their right mind would" do so? Those who would naturally cooperate in the prisoner dilema, those who believe society is better by having a government instead of going full anarchy, those who think humanity is better off if the strong protects the weak. So only the tiny subset of people who care about people instead of those who adhere to the "fuck you, I got mine" point of view.

zo1 5y ago
I really didn't want to get into this, I just wanted to point out how we've already "breached" that whole "if you make this optional will people choose it" line. You're now attaching a moral argument about how only the "fuck you, I got mine" people will say no to taxes. And as a side note: I, as a libertarian/an-cap, would be perfectly fine with paying for all manner of things (with taxes) if I could choose how it was spent to some nominal degree. Here we are in a discussion about government surveillance, which would probably be a non-issue if we all just had the ability to slide that slider next to the "NSA Contribution" heading in our tax-contribution forms.