Thread: Direct Democracy. Would you vote for it?

Originally Posted by Sharke

Why should I be forced, at the point of a gun, to contribute toward the upkeep of loafers and losers who have no intention of working? You tell me.

I've already said I don't think you should be. I think you should be allowed to opt-out.

Why don't you see the point in passing judgment over them? Since charity is a finite sum, it stands to reason that you should pass judgment to make sure your money is going to people who are using it to get their lives back together

This is precisely why I am not interested in passing judgement, because I believe in personal freedom and that people have the right to live their lives they way they want, and not according to some ideal I have no desire to dream up anyway. If someone wants to ask me for a dollar and then go spend it on beer or crack that's freedom. I don't care. "Freedom" does not mean the right to do what I want you to do or what I think is best. Freedom is the right to do what you want to do as long as it does not involve hurting other people (impinging on their freedom). As have repeated a few times now, I do not consider your use of the word anything more than hollow sloganeering -- you want to apply it to the rights of property owners and nothing else.

Any finite resource requires a system of judgment in order to distribute that resource to its best potential.

Potential to do what? Force people to dress, act, and behave in a way that is pleasing to Sharke's eye? Why on earth would I want to do that? I wouldn't do that myself, much less expect it from others. I'm presuming at this point that as a rule you do not give anything to panhandlers, so why they would care what you want from them I dunno.

Unless you believe that charity is something that is worth frittering away on random people who may or may not be genuinely needy cases. There used to be a woman who stood outside of St Vincents hospital every day

Every right winger has one of these stories. Single anecdotes are meaningless. I lived on the street for years and have survived panhandling in three or four different countries. I know what the potential there is, and it is minimal. As I said before, no one would bother with it unless 1) they actually need the $10-20 they might collect in an entire day. 2) they are psychological unstable/sociopathic. There are a very few people like this around, I have an opinion about their motivation but I will not bother to voice it here (basically I would just call them wing-nuts -- again they are very rare amongst panhandlers IMO).

But WRT to your anecdote, there is corruption everywhere. Does one story about a corrupt and violent killer cop mean that all police are corrupt violent killers and so we should withdraw funding for the police?

classical old style liberalism(how liberals were before Marxists hijacked the term in the 60s).

Another revealing fantasy. It would be much closer to the truth to say that contemporary libertarianism was a creation of the mid 20th century -- while you may find bits and pieces from various authors you may like to quote prior to that, this does not mean libertarianism was what "liberalism" meant in (eg) 19th century Western thought. Which the distinct term "libertarian" did exist then too, but it was not as exclusively defined then as it has come to be today.

Adam Smith, who most certainly wasn't an "anarcho capitalist."

No, the term was coined by Murray Rothbard, a friend of Ayn Rand and promiment U.S. Libertarian Party activist during the 1970's, to refer to his own theories.

opposed to the not-so-free "anarchist" style freedom in which everyone is at the mercy of whichever marauding gang wishes to set upon them, steal everything they own and enslave them

That has nothing to do with anarchism, but since I am not interested in selling the philosophy to the public or debating it with someone who is about as close to being an anarchist as Mussolini, I will not bother to correct you beyond saying that if you are interested, then you can do some reading. And when you find the anarchists that are proponents of what you are talking about there, please let me know so I can straighten their heads out too (altho, in fact, you will not find any such people). But I presume you are more interested in misrepresenting everyone else half the time, and the other half screaming that it is you who are misrepresented. Blah blah blah.

A "crackhead" being someone who is addicted to crack and who exhibits the appropriate behavior associated with crack addiction, yes....

Okay, so what is wrong with me labelling someone who talks like fascist, acts like a fascist, and walks like a fascist a fascist?

Please stop lying MK27, I don't know how many times I'm going to have to ask you. It's at least once in every post. At least once.

Yes, it's a real "tactic" you have for denial and obfuscation. Surely you do not expect to be taken seriously? I am not the liar here.

There are something like 10 times more regulations than there were 50 years ago, yet building standards have dropped considerably.

Yes for example now there is all the asbestos and lead paint that we use, which was not a problem in the "good old days". And as I am sure people in California will tell you, today's buildings are no where near as earthquake safe as they were before minimum standards were regulated there.

This isn't true at all, in fact the countries that have the highest economic freedom, including Hong Kong, Singapore and Australia

Australia has a corporate tax rate of 30%, comparable to or higher than the corporate tax rate here. The same is true of their personal income tax rates (it's higher). Australia also has a 10% GST. Furthermore Australia has a minimum wage over $14 dollars (AU, which is 85% of the US)! So once again, the one who is so insistent on accusing everyone else of lying seems to be the one doing the most lying.

Um, I guess this is another one of your kak-handed attempts to equate me with an evil fascist and to frame the debate in terms of meanies like me and benevolent altruists like you.

Duck, duck, duck. I was merely illustrating the point that much of your economic and social philosophy was also explicitly used by the Nazi party. I will give you credit since perhaps you have never studied Nazi philosophy and so are ignorant of the close parallels there.

Beyond that, yes I do believe the tea party is largely populated (and funded) by closet fascists. By "closet" I mean they would prefer not to identify themselves that way publicly, and would deny the whole duck, duck, duck thing as coincidental (?) or more likely dodge the issue.

Oh, so offer people an "opt out" but pile the tax onto consumer sales anyway so that nobody really gets to opt out.

No, you can have a special card, Sharke, that says you opted-out and don't have to pay it because you are not receiving any services. I imagine there would have to be some minimal "non-optional" tax to cover national defence.