Philosophical question : Whats the moral difference between sexuality laws and drug laws?

[Greoric]

My typo.

I meant that government and taxation are independent of each other.

I'm up for reading how you could consider government to be* a government without compelling payments....

 

[HomerThompson]

Areas of Detroit have more access to protection through private means than public. Some have neither. But that's not an indictment against private industry. The fact that private options exist in spaces where public protection doesn't is evidence that a private means of production is again more efficient and effective than the public's.

Both systems fail to protect everyone, and also fail to provide everyone with justice. The only question is which mitigates the amount of people without, and by extension which provides the most people with.... therefore making your god of the gaps question "What about Xe in Y and Z position" a silly question to begin with. You're giving the pass on the obvious problems with the alternative means of production.

Even more fundamentally, we acknowledge that we wouldn't want government producing out cars or TVs. Security and Law are at least as difficult to produce as cars and TVs so why would we demand the government produce and distribute them as well?

I think essential services are different from products. It's also why I think we need health care without a profit motive. I'm sure a person with means can afford the best private security in the world that protects them and their property much more effectively than a public police force, but the inequalities that would sprout from such a system are too much to ignore and too much for a society to bear and remain cohesiveness.

Some reasonable degree of equality under the law is absolutely necessary for a modern western society to function. I think that part of the visceral reaction to the Trump presidency and the "crying" is the realization for people/the example for people to see what inequality really looks like. No respect for anything but making money. People who disliked Hillary also had that same visceral reaction to her.

 

[Greoric]

I think essential services are different from products. It's also why I think we need health care without a profit motive. I'm sure a person with means can afford the best private security in the world that protects them and their property much more effectively than a public police force, but the inequalities that would sprout from such a system are too much to ignore and too much for a society to bear and remain cohesiveness.

Some reasonable degree of equality under the law is absolutely necessary for a modern western society to function. I think that part of the visceral reaction to the Trump presidency and the "crying" is the realization for people/the example for people to see what inequality really looks like. No respect for anything but making money. People who disliked Hillary also had that same visceral reaction to her.

What makes essential services separate from products, fundamentally? Is it their necessity? Should we have food collectivized? Housing? Or is it by virtue of them being services instead of goods? Should we then collectivize all services?

I'm glad you brought up the equality point though. I've noticed the same moral judgement among leftists on other issues like HC and education among others.

It doesn't actually have anything to do with getting as many people or guaranteeing access to a service or product, however essential or necessary... does it? I mean that's why there's so much push back here when I show you the instances of people that go without under supposedly an equal blanket of distribution by government.

Its just about envy to you, isn't it? It really just pisses you off that some people have more than others. Nevermind that a private means of production actually gets more stuff to the average person in the present and, by virtue of the rich being able to have access to certain goods and services that the poor don't have now that allows the poor to have access to in the future (i.e. cars, cell phones, etc).

Your only concern is making everyone miserable so long as there isn't any disparity... That's some dystopian shit dude.

Edit: By the way, you think we have equal protection under the law now? You think government judges side with private citizens contesting other government officials to the same degree as the reverse? My man you have another thing coming. What's more of an equal protection under the law than a private arbiter whose only selling point is their objectivity?

 

[HomerThompson]

What makes essential services separate from products, fundamentally? Is it their necessity? Should we have collectivize food? Housing? Or is it by virtue of them being services instead of goods? Should we then collectivize all services?

I'm glad you brought up the equality point though. I've noticed the same moral judgement among leftists on other issues like HC and education among others.

It doesn't actually have anything to do with getting as many people or guaranteeing access to a service or product, however essential or necessary... does it? I mean that's why there's so much push back here when I show you the instances of people that go without under supposedly an equal blanket of distribution by government.

Its just about envy to you, isn't it? Nevermind that a private means of production actually gets more stuff to the average person in the present and, by virtue of the rich being able to have access to certain goods and services that the poor don't have now that it allows the poor to have access to in the future.

Your only concern is making everyone miserable so long as there isn't any disparity... That's some dystopian shit dude.

You've missed my point entirely. I don't want anyone to be miserable. That's why I think essential services should be collectivized. The same excellent standard of healthcare for everyone allows for much more freedom than what we currently have, or than a purely profit driven market would allow. The freedom for someone to have $60 billion dollars isn't as important to me as making sure we feed everyone and provide healthcare, etc.

It is absolutely about guaranteeing access and rights to services. We produce enough wealth to make it so. Just because people get screwed by our current system doesn't mean we need to disband society and have a free for all. What it means is that we need to make changes to our current system to improve it for everyone. There will never be complete equality, it's about access and creating as much freedom and as many possibilities as possible.

Your third paragraph completely falls of the rails. I don't envy anyone. I'm comfortable with who I am as a person and with what I believe. I applaud hard work and success. But, I don't what society to fall apart or for people to starve and die so that capital is the be all end all. Fuck that. Someone who makes $1,000,000 a year can easily pay half their income to society for mutually beneficial programs. Someone who makes $25,000 a year cannot. That's why progressive taxation is important and absolutely necessary. Capital had labor on the ropes right now, and I think it's a terrible thing that is detrimental to the health of society.

Your misunderstanding of what I believe and why I believe it is the biggest problem with your post. LOL at wanting a more reasonable distribution of wealth in society and equal justice being a dystopian vision. Get your mind together, man.

 

[Greoric]

You've missed my point entirely. I don't want anyone to be miserable. That's why I think essential services should be collectivized. The same excellent standard of healthcare for everyone allows for much more freedom than what we currently have, or than a purely profit driven market would allow. The freedom for someone to have $60 billion dollars isn't as important to me as making sure we feed everyone and provide healthcare, etc.

It is absolutely about guaranteeing access and rights to services. We produce enough wealth to make it so. Just because people get screwed by our current system doesn't mean we need to disband society and have a free for all. What it means is that we need to make changes to our current system to improve it for everyone. There will never be complete equality, it's about access and creating as much freedom and as many possibilities as possible.

Your third paragraph completely falls of the rails. I don't envy anyone. I'm comfortable with who I am as a person and with what I believe. I applaud hard work and success. But, I don't what society to fall apart or for people to starve and die so that capital is the be all end all. Fuck that. Someone who makes $1,000,000 a year can easily pay half their income to society for mutually beneficial programs. Someone who makes $25,000 a year cannot. That's why progressive taxation is important and absolutely necessary. Capital had labor on the ropes right now, and I think it's a terrible thing that is detrimental to the health of society.

Your misunderstanding of what I believe and why I believe it is the biggest problem with your post. LOL at wanting a more reasonable distribution of wealth in society and equal justice being a dystopian vision. Get your mind together, man.

OK, have you heard the saying, "the only way to effectively redistribute wealth is to destroy the incentive to have wealth"? Well that saying applies as much to LE, HC, or anything else as much as it does to wealth.

But here's the real nut kicker... It doesn't even rely on the proper incentives. We could have our entire government stocked full of well-meaning incorruptible Homer Thompsons'. You would still royally fuck up people's lives if you tried to collectivize services (which is already done now). Very simply, you don't have the information coming from competitors or consumers to even allow you to efficiently distribute scarce resources... Its just by way of the government's nature as a monopoly and inability to make economic calculations that make it completely inept. Corruptable intentions not required.

Your good intentions and declarations that people should have something mean fuck all to reality. And the reality, whether you appreciate it or not is that scarcity exists. Living standards don't improve by declaration. They improve by people producing more shit than they consume.

 

[HomerThompson]

OK, have you heard the saying, "the only way to effectively redistribute wealth is to destroy the incentive to have wealth"? Well that saying applies as much to LE, HC, or anything else as much as it does to wealth.

But here's the real nut kicker... It doesn't even rely on the proper incentives. We could have our entire government stocked full of well-meaning incorruptible Homer Thompsons'. You would still royally fuck up people's lives if you tried to collectivize services (which is already done now). Very simply, you don't have the information coming from competitors or consumers to even allow you to efficiently distribute scarce resources... Its just by way of the government's nature as a monopoly and inability to make economic calculations that make it completely inept. Corruptable intentions not required.

Your good intentions and declarations that people should have something mean fuck all to reality. And the reality, whether you appreciate it or not is that scarcity exists. Living standards don't improve by declaration. They improve by people producing more shit than they consume.

You're simply wrong, and the high tax rates of the 50's, 60's, etc. prove it. There were still plenty of wealthy people, and plenty of wealth even with a 90% top marginal income tax rate. Plenty of wealthy people and wealth created after child labor laws were enacted, after slavery was made illegal. Making $50 million dollars is still better than making $50,000 even if you made $100 million and were taxed for half of it to give the elderly and children food, and medical care. Also, social status and relative position will always matter to people. That's the entire point of my argument. We produce much more than we consume as a society, we just allocate it relatively poorly.

 

[Greoric]

You're simply wrong, and the high tax rates of the 50's, 60's, etc. prove it. There were still plenty of wealthy people, and plenty of wealth even with a 90% top marginal income tax rate. Plenty of wealthy people and wealth created after child labor laws were enacted, after slavery was made illegal. Making $50 million dollars is still better than making $50,000 even if you made $100 million and were taxed for half of it to give the elderly and children food, and medical care. Also, social status and relative position will always matter to people. That's the entire point of my argument. We produce much more than we consume as a society, we just allocate it relatively poorly.

The 90% top tax rate, even though no one even paid those rates with all the deductions available, has nothing to do with it mate.

Let me try this, have you ever wondered why, grade school education, police, and roads are the top services everyone comments on about their quality?

 

[HomerThompson]

The 90% top tax rate, even though no one even paid those rates with all the deductions available, has nothing to do with it mate.

Let me try this, have you ever wondered why, grade school education, police, and roads are the top services everyone comments on about their quality?

Why don't you tell me.

 

[Greoric]

Why don't you tell me.

For the reasons I wrote above. They're all distributed by an institution that has no way to make any economic calculations on who and what should go where and for what reasons, and no profit to gauge the performance (outside of a vote once in a term of years divided indiscernibly among any number of issues). No market signals from any competitors or consumers....thus the waste.

 

[HomerThompson]

For the reasons I wrote above. They're all distributed by an institution that has no way to make any economic calculations on who and what should go where and for what reasons, and no profit to gauge the performance (outside of a vote once in a term of years divided indiscernibly among any number of issues). No market signals from any competitors or consumers....thus the waste.

There are a lot of feedback mechanisms besides voting. It's not as simple as you make it. City council meetings. City planning boards, etc. etc., ad infinitum.

 

[Greoric]

There are a lot of feedback mechanisms besides voting. It's not as simple as you make it. City council meetings. City planning boards, etc. etc., ad infinitum.

Yeah you can have all the meetings and planning boards you want. One, actions speak louder than words (hence the term putting your money where your mouth is), and two, they still aren't getting a tenth of a percent in information that market signals via real time pricing provide. I mean, its not even fucking close.

That's what makes market actors in competitive marketplaces so effective and efficient, the ability (and willingness) to adjust their factors of production to the information from all the industry competitors, consumers, and producers along the stages of production distilled down to a price to decide who and what go where.

Dude, that's why all of the USSR's production had to look to the US to get a gauge on scarcity... but of course even in mimicry they're just getting the past prices.

 

[panamaican]

Well if you wrongly accuse someone its on you.

Wait the arbiter works on commission? Or does he get paid up front?

 

[panamaican]

I'm up for reading how you could consider government to be* a government without compelling payments....

Because government is a system of people by which people set policy. Those policies do not require that they centralize a payment system or provide universal services. Or the central authority could have it's own revenue generating systems that doesn't require taxation from the population.

For example: The government could offer police services at fee, no pay, no police. Fire services at a fee. It could own and rent real estate. It could charge for college admission without offering loans. Basically it could enter the markets as a regular player.

 

[Greoric]

Because government is a system of people by which people set policy. Those policies do not require that they centralize a payment system or provide universal services. Or the central authority could have it's own revenue generating systems that doesn't require taxation from the population.

For example: The government could offer police services at fee, no pay, no police. Fire services at a fee. It could own and rent real estate. It could charge for college admission without offering loans. Basically it could enter the markets as a regular player.

That's not government though. If fire and police services are being compensated voluntarily for their services... then they're running a business, not a government.

 

[Greoric]

Wait the arbiter works on commission? Or does he get paid up front?

Both potentially, that's up for market pressures to push service providers into the optimum arrangement, right?

Or look at how attorney services work now, you pay on the terms that you win.

 

[panamaican]

That's not government though. If fire and police services are being compensated voluntarily for their services... then they're running a business, not a government.

No, you don't understand what government is. "Government" is the system by which people set policy. Nothing requires that taxation be part of the policies that they set. Nothing requires that they provide public services.

"Government" is just a group of people getting together and saying "This is how we'll set the rules of our community." Even our Constitution doesn't require taxation - it simply gives the government the power to implement them if it wishes. But if Congress never passed any tax laws, we'd still have the same Constitution and same legal rights and same government we have now. It just would have a lot less money.

You've often conflated the 2 - government and taxation when they really are independent of each other.

 

[panamaican]

Both potentially, that's up for market pressures to push service providers into the optimum arrangement, right?

Or look at how attorney services work now, you pay on the terms that you win.

Speak for someone else doing a different type of law. I get paid up front for the work I do. But that's irrelevant.

An arbiter that works for fee will be beyond the reach of the poor. An arbiter that works on commission has little interest in taking on poor clients since the reward is small. You already see this in the law. Lawyers tend to avoid commission based work where the rewards are too small.

This is particularly of concern when you lack the power to compel payment from the losing party.

 

[Greoric]

No, you don't understand what government is. "Government" is the system by which people set policy. Nothing requires that taxation be part of the policies that they set. Nothing requires that they provide public services.

"Government" is just a group of people getting together and saying "This is how we'll set the rules of our community." Even our Constitution doesn't require taxation - it simply gives the government the power to implement them if it wishes. But if Congress never passed any tax laws, we'd still have the same Constitution and same legal rights and same government we have now. It just would have a lot less money.

You've often conflated the 2 - government and taxation when they really are independent of each other.

OK that's fine. The argument isn't that government and taxes are synonymous. The argument was that the existence of government requires the existence of taxation, which it does.

 

[Greoric]

Speak for someone else doing a different type of law. I get paid up front for the work I do. But that's irrelevant.

An arbiter that works for fee will be beyond the reach of the poor. An arbiter that works on commission has little interest in taking on poor clients since the reward is small. You already see this in the law. Lawyers tend to avoid commission based work where the rewards are too small.

Poor people don't receive pro-bono work now? Counselors don't offer their services for a later portion of the winnings?

This is particularly of concern when you lack the power to compel payment from the losing party.

Ostracism is a powerful motivator here even when that compulsion to pay compensation isn't the rule of law.

 

[panamaican]

OK that's fine. The argument isn't that government and taxes are synonymous. The argument was that the existence of government requires the existence of taxation, which it does.

No, it does not.

"Government" is the system by which people set policy. Nothing requires that taxation be part of the policies that they set. Nothing requires that they provide public services either.

"Government" is just a group of people getting together and saying "This is how we'll set the rules of our community." Even our Constitution doesn't require taxation - it simply gives the government the power to implement them if it wishes. But if Congress never passed any tax laws, we'd still have the same Constitution and same legal rights and same government we have now. It just would have a lot less money.