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> The idea being that while liberalism does a decent job of ensuring that the government doesn't oppress you, it does nothing to ensure that other people don't

> The idea being that while liberalism does a decent job of ensuring that the government doesn't oppress you, it does nothing to ensure that other people don't oppress you. The government does this by... oppressing you, by limiting your choices and your freedom. Nature itself is oppressive. We are all born naked and hungry and at the mercy of others. This does not constitute oppression by other people, and no amount of governance can change this. All government can do is provide due process to resolve the inevitable conflicts. What is should not do it paternalistically dictate how people should interact peacefully.

joshuamorton 5y ago
Ensuring a minimum standard of living doesn't dictate how people interact peacefully, not does it require oppression, you're attacking a straw man.
- thegrimmest 5y ago
  > doesn't dictate how people interact peacefully It very much does if it involves limiting what terms employers and employees can agree to. And it certainly requires oppression if you're going to seize and redistribute wealth to finance the required bureaucracy.
  - joshuamorton 5y ago
    > It very much does if it involves limiting what terms employers and employees can agree to You don't really need to do this if you provide a strong welfare state. Provide government healthcare and benefits to all citizens equivalent to say $10 an hour, and you don't need to limit how employers and employees interact. They have the freedom to quit. > And it certainly requires oppression So we come back to the beginning: all taxation is oppression? Keep in mind that my scheme actually probably involves less government force than yours. People will be less violent, requiring less respondent force, if given a minimum standard of living. So do you want the government to use more force? Or is "oppression" the issue, I can't keep up.
    - thegrimmest 5y ago
      > You don't really need to do this if you provide a strong welfare state Why is providing a welfare state a prerequisite here? From where do you derive the need to protect people from the total consequences of their failure or misfortune by forcing the collective to bear the burden? > all taxation is oppression? Of course it is - it's robbery. Just like the draft is slavery. The important question is "What circumstances make it ethical to rob/enslave people?". They do exist, but they are quite limited. > do you want the government to use more force It's not about degrees of force, it's about what situations force is applied to. The only acceptable application of force (read violation of liberty) is to defend liberty itself from imminent danger. Applying any degree of force to compel cooperation is indistinguishable from that degree of slavery. What's the problem with strictly voluntary, at-will, consensual interaction between people?
      - joshuamorton 5y ago
        > From where do you derive the need to protect people from the total consequences of their failure or misfortune by forcing the collective to bear the burden? I'll answer this with a question: you said elsewhere that its unethical to compel doctors to treat a patient. Let's assume that's the case. What happens when you are robbed by someone, shot, and your wallet is stolen, you even pass out from the shock and blood loss. A bystander calls an ambulance. Then what? The ambulance service, the hospital (and the doctor) have no idea if you can pay for their services. Let's assume you can, you have fantastic insurance. What is the right way to resolve this situation? It seems to me your answer is that the hospital should have every right to refuse to serve people without identification (and in fact this is probably in the hospitals best interest, from a pure ROI perspective). So do we throw our hands in the air and let some people who, by any account, don't deserve to die (they're insured, if their wallet wasn't stolen, there'd be no issue at all!) through no fault of their own, or do we protect people from the total consequence of their misfortune by providing some kind of guardrail? A more general answer is that people, in aggregate, don't like the instability that comes from a lack of welfare state. If you provide absolutely no welfare state, and I lose my job and can't find a new one, it is very likely that the best thing for me to do is to steal from someone. And people generally speaking dislike that because unlike robbery from the government, which involves paperwork and court rooms, that kind of robbery really actually involves guns. And people seem to find suits and paperwork to be less force than guns. So you pick your poison: a democratically controlled nonviolent robbery that you can influence and plan for, or a stochastic violent robbery that you can't control at all. Personally, I find paperwork to be less violent than a gun, but you have weird ideas about what constitutes violence, so I'm curious what you'll say. > What's the problem with strictly voluntary, at-will, consensual interaction between people? It doesn't exist. Is coercion voluntary? If it's violent to threaten someone's life by holding a gun to their head, why isn't it violent to withholding food they need to live (or the money they need to buy the food they need to live, or the healthcare they need to live, or the money they need for that healthcare)?

joshuamorton 5y ago

Ensuring a minimum standard of living doesn't dictate how people interact peacefully, not does it require oppression, you're attacking a straw man.

thegrimmest 5y ago
> doesn't dictate how people interact peacefully It very much does if it involves limiting what terms employers and employees can agree to. And it certainly requires oppression if you're going to seize and redistribute wealth to finance the required bureaucracy.
- joshuamorton 5y ago
  > It very much does if it involves limiting what terms employers and employees can agree to You don't really need to do this if you provide a strong welfare state. Provide government healthcare and benefits to all citizens equivalent to say $10 an hour, and you don't need to limit how employers and employees interact. They have the freedom to quit. > And it certainly requires oppression So we come back to the beginning: all taxation is oppression? Keep in mind that my scheme actually probably involves less government force than yours. People will be less violent, requiring less respondent force, if given a minimum standard of living. So do you want the government to use more force? Or is "oppression" the issue, I can't keep up.
  - thegrimmest 5y ago
    > You don't really need to do this if you provide a strong welfare state Why is providing a welfare state a prerequisite here? From where do you derive the need to protect people from the total consequences of their failure or misfortune by forcing the collective to bear the burden? > all taxation is oppression? Of course it is - it's robbery. Just like the draft is slavery. The important question is "What circumstances make it ethical to rob/enslave people?". They do exist, but they are quite limited. > do you want the government to use more force It's not about degrees of force, it's about what situations force is applied to. The only acceptable application of force (read violation of liberty) is to defend liberty itself from imminent danger. Applying any degree of force to compel cooperation is indistinguishable from that degree of slavery. What's the problem with strictly voluntary, at-will, consensual interaction between people?
    - joshuamorton 5y ago
      > From where do you derive the need to protect people from the total consequences of their failure or misfortune by forcing the collective to bear the burden? I'll answer this with a question: you said elsewhere that its unethical to compel doctors to treat a patient. Let's assume that's the case. What happens when you are robbed by someone, shot, and your wallet is stolen, you even pass out from the shock and blood loss. A bystander calls an ambulance. Then what? The ambulance service, the hospital (and the doctor) have no idea if you can pay for their services. Let's assume you can, you have fantastic insurance. What is the right way to resolve this situation? It seems to me your answer is that the hospital should have every right to refuse to serve people without identification (and in fact this is probably in the hospitals best interest, from a pure ROI perspective). So do we throw our hands in the air and let some people who, by any account, don't deserve to die (they're insured, if their wallet wasn't stolen, there'd be no issue at all!) through no fault of their own, or do we protect people from the total consequence of their misfortune by providing some kind of guardrail? A more general answer is that people, in aggregate, don't like the instability that comes from a lack of welfare state. If you provide absolutely no welfare state, and I lose my job and can't find a new one, it is very likely that the best thing for me to do is to steal from someone. And people generally speaking dislike that because unlike robbery from the government, which involves paperwork and court rooms, that kind of robbery really actually involves guns. And people seem to find suits and paperwork to be less force than guns. So you pick your poison: a democratically controlled nonviolent robbery that you can influence and plan for, or a stochastic violent robbery that you can't control at all. Personally, I find paperwork to be less violent than a gun, but you have weird ideas about what constitutes violence, so I'm curious what you'll say. > What's the problem with strictly voluntary, at-will, consensual interaction between people? It doesn't exist. Is coercion voluntary? If it's violent to threaten someone's life by holding a gun to their head, why isn't it violent to withholding food they need to live (or the money they need to buy the food they need to live, or the healthcare they need to live, or the money they need for that healthcare)?