Maybe my analogy was a distraction.
I was addressing your claim that nobody suffers from implementing a universal basic income. If everybody volunteers to pay into the system, that is fine, but every UBI plan that I know of is based on a tax.
- Taxes are involuntary.
- To see if somebody is harmed by a tax, you could ask them.
- If they volunteer to put money into the system to pay the UBI of 20 people, then GREAT!
- If the person does not volunteer, then you would be harming the person by forcibly taking the money in the form of a tax.
I know that you don't see taking money from "rich people" as harm... my point was to see if you believe in a couple ideas:
- Ethical people avoid initiating harm against peaceful people.
- The person who gets to define the harm is the intended victim (in this case, the 1% who are going to be forced to pay for the income of the other 99%... or some variation of that math).
Do you agree with my two, numbered statements above? Y/N?
thx
The analogy was inappropriate considering the context of the article.
There are many ways to do harm in this world yet most only think something is harmful when it affects their group. Many corporations do harm all over the world as they crush supply chains and ptimise their workforces in order to squeeze a little more profit out. As long as it is in another country it is okay? Voluntarism only works when those who benefit from the community put into the community and the 1% have definitely benefited from the community, tax systems and the legal systems define by the state, no matter how one looks at it.
It is good that you edited your first comment considering on your profile you have claimed 'non-aggressive communication with statists'. Perhaps I am not a statist though.
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Who puts a gun to the poor man's head and forces him to remain lazy and ignorant? Who forces him to take on debts? I'm not saying you are that man, but many are. My father earned, through hard work, every penny he earned. That accumulated to wealth. Did he steal it? No. Did he defraud people? No.
I loan people money through peer to peer lending sites like lendingclub.com. Am I a horrible person for doing it? That wealth, the money they pay to borrow money, is somehow bad? I'm evil for collecting it? When someone puts their capital at risk, they don't deserve a profit for putting it at risk? Perhaps I should not offer my wealth to the poor in the form of loans. Maybe they would be better off that way, ehh?
I fairly earned every penny I have as well. Who's going to try and steal it? Let them try. My life, the time I spent studying hard, working, and bettering myself, was all done on purpose to better the lives of my children. Anyone trying to take that away from them should tread carefully. I will kill them. Are you starting to figure it out?
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So what you are saying is the rich should stay rich and the poor should get poorer until they are so poor thru are homeless, and all because you believe it harms the rich to pay more taxes
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Those are related questions... questions that I had also... but I wanted to know if you oppose or endorse the idea of using force against peaceful people and I'd like to know if you let the victim define what harm means.
I'll try to address your question: I can look at times and places and see where I would probably have acted out. Example: Ho Chi Minh tried to address great inequality that originally stemmed from colonialism and foreign invasions in which perhaps a million people starved while paying tax in the form of rice to either foreigners or suck-ups catering to foreigners. That sounds mighty bad to me. I am not unsympathetic to you concerns.
I live in USA, and the situation for me (and for you) does not compare to the situation of the Vietnamese people from 1940s-1960s. Right now, in my context, I would prefer for people to engage in voluntary interactions. If you don't like your wages, find a new job, work more hours, spend less, get a roommate to split bills, learn some skills, start your own small business. I have done all the above rather than using force against others to take their money.
Do you agree:
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They will be happiest when all earnings are taken as tax, then distributed in a "fair & just" manner. Who will decide what is fair though?
This will only affect the so called 1% though, not the middle class, lol. Probably take away the right to own property too. So that we can return to true feudalism.
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Is that a bad thing?
Depends on what you mean by "harm". Forcing someone to do something doesn't necessarily harm them. When my daughter was a baby, I had to force her to take her medicine when she was sick.
Sure, I can believe this idea. But again, it depends on what you mean by "ethical people" and "peaceful people". By my definition, there aren't that many ethical people in the world. Or at least not enough of them to pay enough taxes voluntarily.
I disagree. I'd say only ethical people should be allowed to define harm. Otherwise, "harm" is too subjective and it can be whatever.
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Hi adigitallife,
Your example was of a baby. I usually confine my discussions to sane adults, then if we have agreement there, we can try to talk about kids. The two quotes here pertain to a philosophical concept that is important to discuss if there is to be any chance of having constructive dialog among political parties... so I would say that our discussion here has implications far beyond this post.
Behind the two quotes seems to be a belief that some people are morally superior to others in this regard: (a) the superior people actually know and understand the "correct" ethics, morality, or utilitarian calculus, and (b) it is appropriate/morally acceptable/justified for morally superior people to force other people to do (certain kinds of...) things against their will. Please modify my wording if you have something more accurate to describe your position.
I oppose the idea that one person (or group of people) can be morally superior to another in a way that allows one group to control another group against their will (I am talking exclusively about sane adults). My argument is a scientific one in which we start with a null hypothesis (meaning that there is no difference between two groups of people) and then we see if there is objective evidence that allows us to reject the null hypothesis and determine that we have high confidence that there is a moral distinction between two people (or groups of people) that allows one to dominate the other legitimately.
There is a lack of evidence to suggest that there is such a difference between groups. I say this because there is a lack of evidence to suggest that moral perceptions can be quantified objectively on a scale that mixes unlike things (such as measuring some kind of moral good against loss of liberty). Without an objective measurement scale, there can not be an objective way to measure the moral superiority of one group over another... we would be left with the null hypothesis that all sane adults are on the same moral plane.
Keep in mind, I spent years developing a measure of moral perception, but it is objective only in the sense that it measures one construct along a very specific scale that I defined. I can not objectively "weigh" the moral value of that type of things versus a dissimilar moral construct.
That's a lot of words, but can you tell me in your own words how you might determine who the "ethical people" are or what kind of things they can or can not (justifiably) do to the unwilling masses?
thx
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