Political Crossfire Forums

[RueTheDay]

LeopardPM wrote: RueTheDay wrote: LeopardPM wrote: Rue,
are you saying that, without government, you yourself would be stealing from your neighbor, haphazardly murdering folks as you meet them in your travels?

Me personally? No. A significant fraction of the population? Absolutely without any doubt.
funny how just about everyone says this, "Me?! no, but alot of 'other' people!" - fact is, just about NO ONE wants to commit violence but FEEL that everyone else in the world is violent... Do you feel you are abnormal, Rue, what makes you one of the special few that don't want to commit violence? You, Rue, me, and 99% of everyone else just want not to have violence committed against us - if we meet up with an unknown human in a dark alley, we are much more likely to ignore them as we attempt to pass by (probably with heightened senses of danger going off) than we are to say "Hey! What an opportunity! I could take this guy and probably get $40 - $100 richer for a mere 1-2 minutes of work!"... what is the rate for violent crime in the US? And what percent of the population committs this paltry rate? Here is one graph I found: http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/glance/viort.htm and it appears that the violent crime rate hovers around 5% - AND of that, 50% is simple assualt (bar brawls, etc). Now we also know that most crime is committed by repeat offenders: 1 person committing multiple crimes. So we know that as far as the quantity of criminals out there is MUCH less than 5% of the population! So, according to you, these are 'the big ones', 'the mean mightiest ones' - less than 1 in 20? Come on Rue, I know 20 fifth graders that could take down any single man, even if its Arnold!

The problem is what happens when the "1 in 20" start banding together. As happens with the mafia, drug lords, street gangs, and other forms of organized crime.

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Is everyone this seething froth of violence which is only stemmed by the possibility of being caught and punished?

A substantial number of people are. It doesn't have to be everyone. It doesn't have to even be the majority of people.
is less than 1 in 20 too much to deal with?

Yes. See above. You never responded to my earlier post about the vast numbers of shopkeepers being terrorized by small numbers of mafioso extorting them. If what you say were right, they'd rise up and resist - but they don't, out of fear for their safety and that of their families even though they vastly outnumber the bad guys.

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If that is what you truly believe then you must be frightened out of your skull even going to the grocery store - who knows if someone is having a bad day and 'forgets' these chains in place and slits your throat because you 'stole' their parking place!

I'd be a hell of a lot more frightened if we didn't have a police force, a judiciary, and a prison system.
Who ever suggested going without police protection, judicial systems, or prison systems (or other punishment methods)?

You're operating on nothing more than the FAITH that the private sector could provide such services. Even if it could, which I doubt, would you want billionaire industrial titans running private prisons and locking their upstart competitors away for life?

[Gus]

RueTheDay wrote: Gus wrote: RueTheDay wrote: Gus wrote: You're objectively entitled to land if you can keep it--if someone takes your land, you're no longer rationally entitled to it. Easy enough...

In other words, "might makes right", or even more generally, "whatever is, is right". If a slavemaster is more powerful than a man he has enslaved, he is entitled to his slave.
Yes. Laws of reality.

What are these laws of reality?
Like I said, if you can keep it, then you are objectively entitled to it.

RueTheDay wrote: Quote: Rational ethics are objective ethics, and objective ethics are merely observances of reality. It could be said that scientists are objective ethicists.


Randroid claptrap.

Ethics concern what an individual SHOULD do. Science concerns what IS. As Hume pointed out a few hundred years ago, you can't derive an ought from an is.
That is my point. There are no "rational" ethics or "objective" ethics, because they would just be descriptive instead of prescriptive. Objective ethics is a contradiction--ethics are intrinsically non-objective, hence the impossibility of a rational, logical ethical code. That is all I am saying, and it is by no means "Randroid" :roll:.

[RueTheDay]

Gus wrote: RueTheDay wrote: Gus wrote: RueTheDay wrote: Gus wrote: You're objectively entitled to land if you can keep it--if someone takes your land, you're no longer rationally entitled to it. Easy enough...

In other words, "might makes right", or even more generally, "whatever is, is right". If a slavemaster is more powerful than a man he has enslaved, he is entitled to his slave.
Yes. Laws of reality.

What are these laws of reality?
Like I said, if you can keep it, then you are objectively entitled to it.

RueTheDay wrote: Quote: Rational ethics are objective ethics, and objective ethics are merely observances of reality. It could be said that scientists are objective ethicists.


Randroid claptrap.

Ethics concern what an individual SHOULD do. Science concerns what IS. As Hume pointed out a few hundred years ago, you can't derive an ought from an is.
That is my point. There are no "rational" ethics or "objective" ethics, because they would just be descriptive instead of prescriptive. Objective ethics is a contradiction--ethics are intrinsically non-objective, hence the impossibility of a rational, logical ethical code. That is all I am saying, and it is by no means "Randroid" :roll:.

Ok, then my first response was correct. You believe "might makes right" and "whatever is, is right". IOW, your ethic is the law of the jungle.

[sapphire7]

Forgive my absence, LeopardPM. I have run into busy times.

Quote: For instance, say everyone likes jewelry and you know if you trade your bushels of food for jewelry that sometime later you will very easily be able to trade that jewelry for almost anything you might want: food, horse, bricks, etc. In this case, then jewelry becomes 'money' as it is being used as a method of indirect exchange. Two things to note: (1) The jewelry has a recognized tangible value to alot of people, (2) Money, no matter what form, is a commodity, just like bricks, or whatever - it is only used in a specific way is all... to effect indirect exchange.
So currency evolves from my idea, therefore my idea is eliminated semi-harmlessly in this experiment by keyboard, ha! Thank you for your imput.

Quote: It is true that people in general ALL people try to get as much as possible while trading as little as possible.
Agreed...
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its not pointless and you brought up some good points that people generally accept as truth. This is a good example of things you will learn in economics which will change your world view forever: you will be able to think through some of the urban myths that float around and people just accept - your world is already getting both clearer AND more complicated at the same time, huh? LOL! don't worry, keep asking questions.
Trying to fabricate realistically utopian systems in principle is tough enough without arguments that clearly make it seem impossible to function the way you want it. I say it is pointless to continue that particular issue because I can't argue past truth without introducing something very radical with many possible flaws that would take forever to explain against as I've noticed you're are doing right now with fellow capitalists(maybe?) RueTheDay, Freethinkr and AtlasBergeron. To try to present such arguments against truth would require more than just critical thinking in some cases, such as your "Faith" (as claimed by RueTheDay[Sunday, Oct. 29, 2006 @ 8:11 AM]) in your system. I see you present arguments in the face of truth that get countered by more thruth and various "exceptional scenarios" that could happen in the system. This argument has come to the point where I am willing to see the truth of your argument and determine that it is useless to argue it further because I believe it, having had the time to think on it.

Quote: yup, everyone needs those things - but wait... does everyone need the same amounts? Don't some people have high metabolisms and eat twice as much as the average yet gain no weight? And what about the different types of food... sure, we could all survive on bread and water for many years, but golly gee, I much rather would like some steak, maybe some seafood, and my cocoa-puffs each morning, right? No matter how much you try, people are never 'simple' - this is a common error as well when playing the 'if I were God' game (the game where a person tries to imagine his perfect version of society, the game you are playing here).
You think I don't account for this, don't you? I am perfectly aware that I am different from other people. Each person would be evaluated on what they require (in terms of necessities in this case) from something like a census or an interview or even a medical examination. Is this not possible?
Quote: sounds like alot of different types of labor involved, each with different pros and cons to it: I would want the job that I get to sit in an air-conditioned room, not get dirty, and file papers in cabinets all day long. It would suck if I got the job where I was outside, picking in the mud and hot sun, getting all sweaty, and at the end of the day I walked by a guy that got paid the exact same as me but he is walking home without a speck of dirt under his nails and looked quite refreshed.
The scenario was simply involving survival. I was not attempting to put it in modern standards(as you are trying to do); that would complicate things and I would have to think more about it. This is also where individual need must be taken into account. You and the clean person would have been provided with a wage covering each of your respective needs according to your respective needs. To add to this, whatever wages are offered on top of your needs from each of your respective employers are given to you. As for the refreshed look on the other person, he would probably be doing less demanding work than you are (or at least in a ratio of work to fatigue (mental or physical)) and is therefore probaly earning less than you are anyway. (I know what you might say on this and I await to answer it... I don't want to use up too much space for this post.)

Quote: it is VERY hard to work in the interest of others - think of that most charitable of holidays: Christmas. We all go out and buy gifts to give to others, and alot of the times the people will take the gifts back and get something else. We simply do not know exactly what resides in the minds of other people, we can only guess based on what we know about them and what they say, but, our minds can change in an instant - I could say I wanted a comic book all year, then the day before christmas I decide that comic books are for little kids, or I see something else like a neat toy that aI would rather have.....
Now think about trading with people to get EXACTLY what you want. To trade with someone, you have to give them EXACTLY what they want in return, right? So, in indulging your own self-interest, you end up also providing in the interest of others.
...are you trying to replace work with trade? This sounds like you simply dismissed working for others and replaced it with trading...
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as your system gets more complex, and you start adding in all sorts of 'exceptions' to account for the vast variety of talents, abilities, hardships, etc... your system will start to mimic exactly what the free market does all by itself. except that there will have to be some group of folks dictating how everything should be instead of having people choose and do for themselves. We all would like to make the world work like a clock, a machine, but the fatal flaw is that the world is populated by people... individuals, who are different and unique and each of whom have different desires and goals for their lives - we can't get around this. You are recreating communism in essence, trying to fix something you see as a deficiency in humans or the world in general (starvation, sickness, poverty, etc)... it can't work, its been tried, and will be tried again, but it simply CAN'T work for various reasons, one of which, you will learn in your studies, is called economic calculation.
I don't want some group of folks dictating how things should be either, our systems are similar in this; we question authority. And yes, I know everyone is different in morals (probably the most important variable in figuring out utopias), physical attributes, mental attributes, and spiritual belief; I try to put keep that in mind when thinking about this kind of stuff. As long as these things are kept at a realistic perspective, a "realistic" utopia should be conceivable and possible to employ. This is my mission for politics, as I have stated before: to discover the balance of politcs which, additionally, would account for the realities of people's needs, behaviors, rights, etc.
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well, technically, it is - the government made a law that says they are the only ones allowed to 'make money' as in, print it or create it.
Okay, got it...
Quote: actually, people live in anarchy pretty much everyday. How much of your day and actions are dictated by the government or someone forcing you to do something? Anarchy would be much like our lives already are, except that everything would be more efficient, without the overhead of government not too mention the waste of government misallocation of resources. There would be a general rise in standard of living. The family unit would become more important, same with friends. Being polite and social would become more desireable. Anarchy would resemble today, yet better overall in alot of aspects.
(school, cough!) :wink: But anyway, there have been the other arguments against your system, as I have highlighted before, and I am still trying to determine which of you are ultimately "on the hill" right now... the same can be said about this "evil" democracy of yours. I do see your point though, if it were up to the entire forum, we would probably get kicked out. :lol: