The Politics Thread (PLAY NICELY!)

Colin, in what sense is me deciding between an iPhone and a Droid a form of violence?

You people make me sick. The government literally has a force of people who will violently force you to comply with their demands. Corporations just advertise their product.

Red herring. @cola_colin obviously isn't talking about buying products he's talking about the fight for survival. Because one could argue the idea of making people born poor work in terrible conditions with low pay and long hours is violence. Obviously today in many countries this isn't what is happening to its full extent- but this is due to government protection of workers right, as well as unions.

Edit: And that last bit is interesting to me. I don't know how you can continue to defend the innocence of big business whilst calling out our government who is under control of these businesses. You yourself claim Hillary is corrupt due to her connections with Wall Street (Which I agree with) You seem to have very conflicting views.

Yes, some people are born poor but it is a leap of logic to assume that this is the fault of someone else totally unrelated that they don't even know exist as is the case with taxation. The question is, what is the best system in which to empower these people to build a better life for themselves and their children? Look to hong kong and you'll find the answer.

I also think person to person charity is far more helpful and enriching than a cheque in the mail from an impersonal entity. People are sometimes poor not just because they are poor, but because of psychological, emotional, or interpersonal issues. For example AA groups work great because they are social in nature.

I see you bring it down to the important problems that people have in live. What smartphone should I buy this year?!

Something you are definitely an expert at. I tell you people need to be provided with food and you somehow twist that into me advocating stealing food from people. Way to go. I am out of here again. You're not actually even trying to argue, you twist your worldview into everything and present it as fact.

I'm not saying being born as poor is anyone's fault. I'm only saying that these people don't deserve to be born so low. And there should be public support to at least meet basic needs and something to kickstart growth such as good openly available education.

I'd totally agree with the idea of person to person charity but sadly it's just not in many CEO's (nor people in general's) ideals. We can look towards Kingdoms, Empires, and etc to see that in full force.

I am just going to pop this in here. It's an advert from Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs - the UK tax collection agency.

The interesting things is, in my experience I've always found HMRC very helpful to deal with. Then again I've ensured to keep everything legit. When I set my business up they even sent out a tax expert to help me set up my book keeping to be fully compliant.

Edit: my point being those who have 'horror storied' about HMRC have invariably been being 'creative' with their accounting.

100% disagree with this. One thing I can agree with you guys on is no government control over the Internet. What an eery way to present the idea too. The Internet should be free and open source. Under control from no company or government.

Disagree on what precisely?

I haven't exactly looked into it, only inferring from the graphic, but I disagree with allowing a government to shut down your Internet access over something like this. Id prefer they simply fine you or otherwise. I'm a huge supporter of the right to the Internet, and net neutrality.

I hate to bring up a slippery slope argument. But giving government that power can give them the power to shut down your TV, radio, news. I don't like the idea of some entity keeping someone from information.

I'm not sure 'closing the net' means shutting down the internet unless I've missed something big? The Tax office wouldn't know who your ISP was for example. The term means they're 'closing in' on tax dodgers, and has nothing to do with internet access

Ah well then I misunderstood. When it said "closing the net" I assumed it meant net as slang for Internet. Like they would prevent you having intetnet access. Sorry for a bit of an overreaction. x.x

I will say though the formatting of the advert is still very eery.

Yeah it is a bit aggressive... probably more of a 'shock' idea. To be honest it almost makes me think that in reality they *can't* tell so need to scare people into volunteering the info they want I remember they did this with the TV licence things- lots of people didn't bother paying and they went to great lengths to convince the public they have 'detector vans' that could tell if you were *receiving* a TV signal (in reality it later transpired- they drove around looking for addresses which had TV aerials but no licence on record The reality is so dull in comparison haha).

It reminds me of this "spot"

If I am twisting your words, could you explain how you plan to provide people with food then? Those questions i posed to you in my previous post were not rhetorical. If i've wrongly assumed what your argument is, then i always take that pretty seriously as an error on my part.

I've laid out my 'plan', which is really to let people make their own plans about how they want to produce and trade free. Pointed to real world evidence showing how best to kill poverty, and outlined theoretically why it works. It would be nice if you did the same so I know exactly what you're saying, but fair enough i'm not going to force you to respond.

Interesting experiences with HMRC from Australia. We hired some UK accounting firm to do our books for a UK branch and they ended up being incompetent fools who were 'creative' more out of laziness. Got into a slight bit of trouble with HMRC as a result .

*Anyway, I realise I may have derailed this thread away from American politics. My bad.

Thought this was funny. Clinton email guy posting to reddit for help

http://www.redstate.com/brandon_mor...h-guy-discovered-asking-wipe-evidence-reddit/

I would love to read RNC leaks where they are slagging off donald trump. That would be hilarious comedy material

That's precisely why I posted it. Elodea has been making the point in this thread about tax being an involuntary transaction backed by force. That advert is deliberately threatening to those who try not to pay tax. Eventually the police get involved and you get arrested.

Thankfully in the UK that's not usually 'at the point of a gun' - but incarceration is the end game. Perhaps he's been a bit colourful with his language and the way in which he's described it, but taxation is a forceful transaction.

Because if people don't pay their taxes, the resultant money to invest back into society is lowered, leading to cuts to public services (which we're currently seeing) and a decreased quality of life across the board.

You are affecting negatively impacting the lives of other people by getting out of paying taxes. Thus, your own life will obviously be made harder as a result. Why is there this opposition to cause and effect, here? Because people don't think that taxes go anywhere?

People keep on framing taxation as some kind of bullying tactic, when it ensures the functioning of society as a whole given the inherent income distribution inequalities present throughout all levels of society. That is what a ruling class (in this day and age, government) is meant to do - manage. If folks object to this very basic principle of giving back to the land that shelters and houses them, then it opens said people up to labels such as "selfish" - because really, no other label fits.

Imprisoning people for committing crimes is based on force. Tax evasion is, the last I checked, classified as a crime. I think it would benefit the thread at large if people stopped trying to "sling mud" at the principle of taxation because it is enforced through "bullying" and actually discuss the reality of a society whereby no laws could be enforced safely. Because that is the logical end goal of removing any specific area of legislation in this regard. I'm not saying "murderers go free", but you seriously need to consider the ramifications of doing away with the concept of tax, and the ramifications for people that aren't yourselves.

Anarchy

1. a state of disorder due to absence or non-recognition of authority or other controlling systems.
   "he must ensure public order in a country threatened with anarchy"
   synonyms:lawlessness, absence of government, nihilism, mobocracy, revolution,insurrection, riot, rebellion, mutiny, disorder, disorganization, misrule,chaos, tumult, turmoil, mayhem, pandemonium
   "the country is threatened with anarchy"
2. 2.
   absence of government and absolute freedom of the individual, regarded as a political ideal.

Sound good to some until someone steals the product of all your hard work.
The fact is the system where you pay taxes help form the environment to enable you to make money, to be part of the system to make your money and then not pay the taxes due that make the system work is two faced at best.

No man is a island bla bla bla.

@stuart98 already voiced the same argument in similar terms. This is always a really good point of discussion about how libertarianism, especially an-cap libertarianism, is fundamentally driven by a philosophy of morality. It isn't about people throwing molotov cocktails through windows.

Morality is not necessarily convenient. For example I might steal a TV from you because it was more convenient than to earn money and buy a TV myself. This does not make it moral, and neither does it extinguish the quest towards bridging the gap between reality and libertarian morality (if you accept it) as a goal.

On one hand you have an hierarchy of morality which we can debate about. As a thought experiment, what is the most moral way to live? I argue it is the non-aggression principle, self ownership, property rights, voluntarism etc. all of which underpin libertarianism. If you disagree with this, I invite you to explain what you think is more moral.

On the other hand is the real world where people will use force against you as you have stated. Like electrons that like to sit in particular energy levels around the nucleus of an atom, the immoral use of violence to steal tends to conveniently be like an equilibrium state.

Which is essentially what a state is - an entity that steals through compulsory taxation based on whoever holds power in government and what laws have been passed. What they use the money for isn't relevant (could be good or bad) to the question of the morality of how that property is obtained in the first place. If a service provided by government is good, you would have voluntarily paid for it anyway and there wouldn't be a need for the use of force to ensure you do. Thus the argument for taxation to fund a service that helps you is really quite moot. As for protection of life and property, it's contradictory to say you need an entity to forcefully take your property in order to protect your property from forceful acquisition.

So whenever anarcho capitalism fails, it tends to merely regress back to nation states with central governments as we see currently. Amusingly, Anarchist voluntarism is not a regression of nation states with central governments but rather it's the other way around with government as a regression of anarchy for pragmatic reasons. Freedom for security.

The million dollar question is how can we solve the problem of the initiation of force within anarchy in order to reach our moral goal? Is it even solvable, and if not how close can we get? Here's a list of possibilities to evaluate,

1. We could use a protection mafia. A group of strongmen that go around taking whatever they want from you in exchange for protection of your property. The incentive for them not to leave you destitute is that it would harm their future 'earnings'. Not a good idea because there's no voluntarism in this. People aren't agreeing to their protection nor the price they are charging.
2. We could use a democratic state tasked solely with protecting property rights and enforcing contracts. An improved protection mafia in which the protectee now has a say via democratic vote. Problematic because the will of the majority are still being imposed on the minority. An improvement though because you can influence how government is run.
3. We could use privately managed armies. Protection is voluntary, but perhaps the army would go rogue or might only serve the highest bidders and we would regress into a monarchy. Maybe there would be competition within the protection market that would prevent this, but honestly I really don't know.
4. Or maybe we could have a democratic state with a monoopoly on force but with voluntarism. So you only get the benefit of protection and a vote if you pay taxes, but otherwise they wouldn't put you in jail. Problems here are the majority who pay taxes might try to take advantage of you not having any protection. Or the state might end up exploiting it's monopoly power in the protection market, get taken over by a king and we regress again back to tyranny.

Conclusion:
The small, limited democratic government tasked with protection of property rights seems to be our best choice for now and the closest we can get to libertarian morality. Or maybe it's in the classic american idea of an armed citizenry? Is there a solution that can bridge us towards a totally peaceful society with absence of violence? I don't know. If you did, that would be like the libertarian holy grail.

The solution is most likely going to lie in solving the issue of resource scarcity. Basically a magic box that can fabricate anything out of nothing like in star trek.