from Justin
I am sure the rest of the Pink Ladies thank you for your leadership skills in saving them. Its hard to fault you for trying to hold onto your flock.... or at least pretending to have one.Meaningful dialogue with your personae is impossible, and I've always been a big believer in forewarning when possible.
I did make the assumption that like most liberals you consider it appropriate for an employee to object to abuse by means other than quitting. Is this incorrect?Originally Posted by haymarket martyr
Scenario: A worker dislikes an internal policy set by management. He objects. The policy is sustained over his objections. He continues to object to the policy, complies with it to the absolute minimum extent necessary and encourages other workers to object as well. Do you believe this is freeloading? Anti-social? Is the worker's only appropriate response to find other employment?
I assume, correct me if I'm wrong, that the answer to these questions is no. If so, then why are libertarians, in your opinion, required to shut up or leave the country? The situation is exactly analogous.
So, how do you feel about outright draft evasion? (I.e. no C.O. service, just flat out refusing to go.)
Yes, you are.and this was asked regarding the mention of 'freeloading'.... "is anyone advocating this?"
Or am I jumping to the wrong conclusion from those words?
Matt was conceding that a social order without coercion may involve some freeloaders. He was not stating that he would be one of them, nor that he advocates such.
What he was saying, as far as I can tell, is that the damage done from some amount of freeloading probably doesn't even come close to matching the harm done by coercion. So, thus, why choose a coercive system?
Simply contract theory, Do it or go to jail unless its recognized by the state that satisfies its requirements. Now you understand why Libertarians pay their taxes but disagree with the ways the state is dispensing our money.
Damn, I find myself agreeing with HM.
It's a baseline. There are a lot of people who are libertarian but don't vote Libertarian:
1) Agorists, Voluntaryists, and other groups who have strategic and/or moral objections to voting.
2) Social Anarchists
3) "Realists" whose sympathies are with the LP but recognize their dismal chance of success, and so vote Dem or Repub.
4) Libertarians unhappy with the LP's positions, message, or the candidates they have nominated.
5) People who don't vote due to inability, laziness, or the fact that they have better things to do.
6) People whose instincts are anti-authoritarian but are only partially sold on libertarian theory, and choose not to vote LP.
And so on. I think the people in these ranks combined dwarfs the number of actual Libertarian Party voters.
Well, that's just a small part of it for me. ATM, I fall into groups 1, 4, and 5.I can understand how anyone would not want to be identified to a political organization whose "success" is as dismal as that of the Libertarian Party, not just based on one election, but year after year after year.
Indeed. Which is, inter alia, why I'm an anarchist.As a member of society who willingly resides here, I accept that I am not the King. I accept the fact that there has been long established a system of political representation and the passing of laws and instituting government sponsored action. I accept that my opinion on any of this will not always emerge as the dominant one or the one that is victorious and enacted.
I also accept what you have several times termed as coercion. I accept that the same way I accept the loss of blood during surgery ot the way I accept getting those annoying little remnants in my teeth after i eat a great ear of summer corn. It just the way it is in this world. No more - no less.... its just reality. One can go down to the ocean shoreline and plant their feet as firmly as they can into the sand and attempt to hold back the tides from coming in. It does not work. It is simply the way things work. Coercion is part of all governments. Its that simple.
But we're not just talking about the tendencies of some government, we're talking about the reality of the U.S. government. And it pains me greatly to see good people forced to surrender their property so that it may be used toward the slaughter of innocents in faraway nations. That's something I can never accept.
-From Haymarket's POV, he took a hypocriticial response, even as he accuses others of hypocrisy.
I'm not arguing that fraudulent draft-dodging is wrong based on my standards, or your standards, or on Justin's standards, but on Haymarket'sstandards, since he claims that one should obey the popular will as decided by our legally elected politicians:
...and who claims to be a proponent of "selflessness":
...ignoring the fact that Uncle Sam didn't say, "We'll, golly, we're not gettin' Haymarket, so we'll just take one less this month"; no, someone else had to go in Haymarket's suddenly selfish place.
...so much for "obeying the will of the vast majority", and so much for "selflessness".
-Legally correct: My paternal grandfather (an Amishman) spent most of WWII in lumber camps in the NW...
-Uh, under false pretenses:
...this was after Mr. "Conscientious Objector" joined in on cheering the deaths of three pirates by SEAL snipers. Rani (yes, Rani) actually showed more sympathy for the deceased.
CO my ass.
1) FWIW, most men drafted in 1971 did not end up in SE Asia, although some did end up in Korea, which was also a shooting war;
2) If we used the Immediate Direct Threat standard, we probably wouldn't have had a draft even in WWII; the only wars which would have passed the test would have been AWI, the War of 1812, ACW (maybe), and every single Indian War.
And again, using Haymarket's standards (not yours or mine), the individual isn't the one who gets to pick and choose:
Anyway:
-FALSE:
[Taken from Post #1045 of the now-defunct "4T & Anything Military" thread]
-Consider:
A single guy with no dependents earning [an average of] $50,000/year currently loses 16% of his working life* to the US government, due to the Income Tax.
If we accepted Pink Splice's insane** recommendation for a six-year Draft By Powerball, our hero would lose 100% of his working life for a period of six years, which comes out to only 13% of his working life*.
Let's imagine that we scrapped the peacetime Income Tax, and substituted six-years of peacetime Universal Military Service as PS or M&L might propose... Over the course of his working lifetime*, our hero (Hero or Artist?) would actually be freer of Uncle Sam with conscription than he currently is with the income tax.
*22-67 years of age.
**As far as I can figure, no American has EVER been forced to serve for a total of six years (if you know of an exception, let me know). Few Americans have had to serve five. [End Quote]
Back to Haymarket':
I'd still love to know: Who paid Haymarket's Military Service Tax? Come on, I know you're retired, Haymarket. I'd think it'd be easy to go check out the old county draft records from 1971. You can look the guy up, and thank him for his inconvenience...
---
-So cry many Boomers (self-professed Lefties, mostly) whenever they fail to explain their hypocritical self-justifications, their double-standards, and their double-think forays into evil. Perhaps their consciences bother them, perhaps not. Who knows.
It's not clear that HM actually holds that sort of rigid obedience to the state. I'll let him clarify though.
Oh, come on, I'm sure you can come up with other problems with the draft beyond lost wages! Like perhaps lost limbs? Or, having to kill other human beings? You can't really quantify the evils of being enslaved.
Given a choice between losing a percentage of my wages or losing my freedom utterly for an extended period, I'll take the taxes any day. This is especially true when, due to combat, that extended period might be the remainder of my life. The draft is without question more oppressive than taxation.
I'm with Kurt. Money is replaceable; your own body parts aren't.
This is nonsense. Your asterisk comment invalidates the whole argument.
People are *not* the sole rightful owners of their property. How do you establish ownership? With a deed? And does this deed give you sovereignty? No. If you kill someone on your own property you can be arrested, charged and convicted of murder. The same is true of other local, state or national law. They all apply to you even when on your property. And that includes taxes. When you buy the property with this deed attached you agree to these limitations. Nobody forces you to buy property or live in a particular governmental jurisdiction.
And if you object to the deed, then how do you establish your claim to your land? Obviously, it must have belonged to native Americans in the past. How did it come to you from them? We know historically that most of the Indian lands were taken from them by force.
Generally, things involving the kinds of things we call "utilities" are natural monopolies for the simple reason that having separate parallel sets of infrastructure is stupid and wasteful. I don't think healthcare is a natural monopoly. I don't want a nationalized health system (as in the UK), I want a national "single payer: insurance system as in Canada so people on limited incomes are not bankrupted by medical bills either because they cannot afford private insurance, or because their insurance is uselessly minimal because it's all they can afford, and this is bad for everyone in the long run because then people on low incomes are not getting preventive treatment they need simply because they cannot afford it, causing health problems get worse and worse until they end up in the emergency room with a bill that bankrupts them.
To recommend thrift to the poor is both grotesque and insulting. It is like advising a man who is starving to eat less.
-Oscar Wilde, The Soul of Man under Socialism
The Nazis made nice highways to, OMG, that means the Insterstate Highway system is FASCIST!!!
To recommend thrift to the poor is both grotesque and insulting. It is like advising a man who is starving to eat less.
-Oscar Wilde, The Soul of Man under Socialism
There is no "death tax", there is a estate tax that is supposed to prevent the development of a monied aristocracy that is incompatible with Democracy and Meritocracy.
To recommend thrift to the poor is both grotesque and insulting. It is like advising a man who is starving to eat less.
-Oscar Wilde, The Soul of Man under Socialism
This seems to be why we differ. I am not against government and the state in and of itself, I am against unrestrained and unaccountable state power.
To recommend thrift to the poor is both grotesque and insulting. It is like advising a man who is starving to eat less.
-Oscar Wilde, The Soul of Man under Socialism
A similar sentiment to this is found among many Left-Libertarian types. Private Property (as opposed to personal possessions, which are misleadingly confused with property by Right-Libertarians and Neo-Liberals) only exists because society enforces it's existance.
To recommend thrift to the poor is both grotesque and insulting. It is like advising a man who is starving to eat less.
-Oscar Wilde, The Soul of Man under Socialism
To be perfectly honest, their highways may have been top-notch back in the day, but they suck now. The best highways in Europe these days are the Scandanavian ones...
"Qu'est-ce que c'est que cela, la loi ? On peut donc être dehors. Je ne comprends pas. Quant à moi, suis-je dans la loi ? suis-je hors la loi ? Je n'en sais rien. Mourir de faim, est-ce être dans la loi ?" -- Tellmarch
"Человек не может снять с себя ответственности за свои поступки." - L. Tolstoy
"[it] is no doubt obvious, the cult of the experts is both self-serving, for those who propound it, and fraudulent." - Noam Chomsky
Let me weigh this for a moment. On one side we have the United States Government, its laws, the Selective Service System, and its duly constituted Draft Boards who accept my classification as a CO and my service as assigned by my draft board as meeting my legal obligation to my nation and its people. On the other side we have some embittered military nut who believes that his radically different opinion matters more. I am tempted to say that the opinion of Glick on my fulfilling my service obligation is a pile of manure. However, in hindsight and after taking a moment, that would be a gross and unfair insult to the manure.
Well, as a former and current left-lib type, I used to have that sentiment. (Actually, my sentiment could have been more accurately stated that the proper standards regarding private property cannot be established a priori. But then I recognized the error.) Err, okay, I wouldn't have confused absolute property rights with the right to murder someone on your property. Inalienability, you know?
from Kurt Horner
Several things here...... first, I am not urging all persons with libertarian leanings to "love it or leave it" regarding living in the USA. This would be a final measure that would be urged on persons who seem borderline obsessed with the idea that they possess an ideology which dominates their thinking and their lives and has no real way of coming to fruition in the nation they live in. America is not an anarcho-libertarian nation and there is no large movement to make it so. On the net and in real life I have seen folks like this and it is akin to watching an Eskimo attempt to live comfortably in an equatorial jungle by adopting a completely foreign way of life. It is not very fulfilling for the Eskimo and is certainly is not fun for everybody else who has to listen to the constant complaining about the heat.Can you clarify your position on employment then? Are you saying that the only appropriate response to poor working conditions is to find a new job? That would be a surprising position for someone with the moniker "haymarket martyr"!
Or, are you saying that I'm mischaracterizing your argument as "love it or leave it?"
As to my feelings about employment, I would urge the same action to anyone who hated their job, was almost always angry about it, was constantly coming up empty in their attempt to change the job conditions and was generally unhappy and making those around them unhappy.
I hope that answers your questions.
Last edited by haymarket martyr; 08-20-2009 at 08:35 AM.
-Let Haymarket' clarify this:
...and this:
...doesn't sound too free-wheeling to me.
...back to Mr. Horner:
-You mean, that you don't consider military service to be a "sinecure"?
Golly, do you realize that farmers can lose their limbs, too?
Aren't you aware that becoming a roofer is more likely to get you killed than the average person who serves in the military (not adjusted for age)?
-Leaving off the sarcasm, Conscientious Objectors can serve in the military (usually the medical field) without bearing arms. Here's two unusual examples:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desmond_Doss
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_W._Bennett_(conscientious_objector)
-Really? The government gives you back your withheld wages at the end of the year? And my comment about farmers also holds true.
-It sounds like you'd rather be partly enslaved for your entire life, rather than fully enslaved for a brief period of your life iot get it over with. To each his own.
One other thing: Keep in mind that the 16% figure for income taxes is compared to the 13% figure for six years of military service; to the best of my knowledge, no one has ever been drafted for that long in all of American history; adjust accordingly.
-Only because you lied:
...doesn't sound like the attitude of a sincere CO to me...
-"Military Nut"
Oh, no, you haven't betrayed anything there...
...as for "embittered", the word which Haymarket is struggling for is "disgusted"...
-My "radically different opinion" is based on the fact that your unguarded postings give me better insight to your genuine attitudes than your draft board had access to back in 1971, you fraudulent jerk.
Back to Haymarket':
I'd still love to know: Who paid Haymarket's Military Service Tax? Come on, I know you're retired, Haymarket. I'd think it'd be easy to go check out the old county draft records from 1971. You can look the guy up, and thank him for his inconvenience...
---
-So cry many Boomers (self-professed Lefties, mostly) whenever they fail to explain their hypocritical self-justifications, their double-standards, and their double-think forays into evil. Perhaps their consciences bother them, perhaps not. Who knows.
The deluded mind is secure in its insanity believing it to be normal.
There no such thing as a "military service tax". The US government does not recognize any such concept and those are the laws we function under.....unless you are offering yourself as some sort of law unto yourself.
Glick -- either substantiate that there is or please quite harassing me. I fulfilled my obligation to the US government and met the law in that regard. Advocating the destruction of a building does not have anything to do with getting a CO deferment in a specific war. You dare to substitute your ignorance for the educated and trained knowledge and expertise of my local draft board??!?! Amazing. At my CO hearing I was never asked any questions about building destruction..... as if it mattered. They asked me what they wanted to ask me and I gave them honest answers.... including "I don't know the answer to that" if I did not. My local draft board gave me the CO deferrment but for you that is not good enough. You who have never met me, never participated in the process and who know next to nothing other than what is spoonfed to you and then distorted and twisted by you for your own purposes. The conceit ofthe ignorant knows no bounds..... nor shame it would seem.
Quit harassing me Glick.
Last edited by haymarket martyr; 08-20-2009 at 03:35 PM.
-Look up the definition of "militia"; it's every able-bodied male 18-45; it's still on the books.
-Who do you think lives in those buildings:
...uh huh...
-Did they ask you about killing people?
...your sincere sorrow at the loss of life really chokes me up.
-Apparently, not.
1) How can I harass you? You have me on "Ignore" ();
2) How can I be harassing you? I even use the tag line which you wanted to use for me, hypocrite:
---
-So cry many Boomers (self-professed Lefties, mostly) whenever they fail to explain their hypocritical self-justifications, their double-standards, and their double-think forays into evil. Perhaps their consciences bother them, perhaps not. Who knows.
We were speaking of draftees who a) have no choice in the matter and b) are considerably more likely to be put into combat than the average.
Get it over with? Veterans still pay taxes. They get some benefits but, odds are, they still experience a net loss even after serving. Your whole comparison is disingenuous. You should be comparing the drafted years to those same years in the private sector. In which case the taxes win hands down, even in monetary terms.-It sounds like you'd rather be partly enslaved for your entire life, rather than fully enslaved for a brief period of your life iot get it over with. To each his own.
Taxes are enslavement?
To recommend thrift to the poor is both grotesque and insulting. It is like advising a man who is starving to eat less.
-Oscar Wilde, The Soul of Man under Socialism
1) A "sinecure" is a "sinecure", whether you ask for it, or whether you luck into it (
2) No, historically, volunteers do a disproportinate amount of the killing and dying in combat in every US war of which I'm aware.
...and Income Tax Payers get drafted. So what?
I was comparing the onerousness of the two seperately, on their own terms, as if it were one or the other- go back and check my post.
-Nope. Do the math.
-The government takes the fruits of someone's labor, whether they wish it or not, and uses it for some project, whether they approve of it or not.
Last edited by jamesdglick; 08-20-2009 at 04:44 PM.
There is a logical fallacy, whose name escapes me at the moment, that consists of taking two diverse things A and B, identifying some characteristic which the two have in common, falsely elevating that characteristic to be a defining quality of A, and arguing on this basis that B=A.
"Taking the fruits of someone's labor, whether they wish it or not," is not a defining characteristic of slavery. It is something that slavery has in common with paid work, the labor of raising children, required public service work done by doctors, and paying taxes. This shared characteristic does not make taxpayers into slaves any more than it makes employees, parents, or doctors into slaves.
When you can show that taxpayers lose all human rights and become the wholly-owned property of the state, without any hope of redress and subject to absolute rule in all particulars, including the power of life and death, torture and other punishment with no due process required, rape, and sale to another state, then get back to us.
As for Kurt Horner's comparison between taxpaying and conscription, how one would evaluate those two forms of involuntary public service probably depends in some measure on how strongly averse you are to killing people and/or putting your life at risk, which taxes never require you to do, at least not first-hand. As you say, to each his own, but I can completely understand his preference.
Now, I have a question for the anarchists on this thread (not the libertarians, since libertarians unlike anarchists would not abolish taxes). Reference has been made to other means of financing common-good activities. What other means did you have in mind? Also, what would you do if someone refused to cooperate with those means?
"And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, slouches toward Bethlehem to be born?"
My blog: https://brianrushwriter.wordpress.com/
The Order Master (volume one of Refuge), a science fantasy. Amazon link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00GZZWEAS
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-No, conventional paid work is a voluntary agreement between to entities, in our current set-up, raising children is voluntary, and required service work is a form of slavery, like the draft, the (rarely used) posse, or jury duty.
-Uh, it's pretty much the defining charachteristic, unless the master is just keeping you around as an ornament.
