Cunt wrote:It would seem that Seth has come around to realizing that we live in a society, not standing independant individuals, but interdependant. We ALL have to pay for public sewage treatment, and we all get to shit in it.
I haven't "come around" to anything and I've never argued that we are "standing independent individuals," whatever that means. Yes, we all have to pay for public sewage treatment
if we all shit in it. But if I don't shit in it, then why should I have to pay for it? Ever hear of an ISDS? Do you know what it means and how widespread it is? Should a person who uses an ISDS be required to pay for public sewage treatment he doesn't shit in?
He may have found a way to rationalize taking the health care from a government he despises, but he still does it.
I'm not rationalizing it, I've merely stopped resisting the offer because it's the only way I see for me to assist actively in bringing down the system.
I'm glad he does, because regardless of our differences, even where he has historically stood against socialized health care, I still believe in it. Even for him.
Glad to hear it, but that doesn't mean that your altruism morally justifies government redistributive taxation. If you like socialized health care you are of course free to contribute any amount of your money to it at your will. But when you support, even indirectly or tacitly, the practice of extorting money from those who don't care to be as altruistic using the jackbooted thugs of socialism to do so it's not altruism anymore, it's just armed robbery by proxy.
There is a lot to be said in favour of libertarianism, but mostly it isn't said when focussing on our disagreements.
Indeed. That's generally because socialists are pathologically afraid of actually examining either Libertarianism or Socialism any way but through superficial speciousness and blithe dismissals. As I've said before, I've not once in my entire life met a socialist willing to actually delve into the moral and ethical underpinnings of socialism, much less Libertarianism. Any time I begin to penetrate the surface armor of self-righteousness socialists surround themselves with, the first prick of the tender flesh below makes them bellow and bluster in obfuscatory fury about how evil it is to attack socialism or not accept the propaganda without question.
If rEv really wants to die from poisons, there is little a nanny state could do about it. When a third or more of our population is being affected, we as a group sure do get to do something about it.
Why? What if they want to die? And doing something about it does not necessarily require government intervention much less justify the sort of massive bureaucracy that socialism always causes that always does far more than merely do something about critical emergencies.
For example, when a libertarian, or a marxist dies, someone has to clean up the mess.
Yes, this is true. But why should the public be dunned for those costs when it is the estate of the Libertarian or Marxist that should pay the bills?
When a libertarian or a marxist is injured, once again, someone has to do something about it. If we walk by sneering, saying 'you should have had help arranged', that doesn't get the blood off the streets.
Indeed, but pulling out a fire hose to wash away the blood is entirely different from spending inordinate amounts of extorted taxpayer funds to treat the injured and then not billing them for the costs. If the members of a Libertarian community believe it is reasonable and necessary for the community to provide emergency medical care at no cost to those who get injured, nothing in Libertarianism suggests that this cannot be accomplished by the pooling of private funds to provide such services. This is easily demonstrated by the widespread existence of volunteer fire departments all across the US. Volunteer firefighters far outnumber paid professional firefighters on a national basis, and in most instances, at least in the past, they were entirely funded by voluntary contributions from the community. This is because contrary to the typical socialist inference about Libertarians, we are not "rugged individualists" who are unwilling to contribute to the common good. Indeed Libertarianism's strength is that it acknowledges the fact that Libertarians (and indeed most people...other than the socialist dependent class) operate out of the basic human attributes of charity, altruism and rational self-interest and that these characteristics are generally sufficient to the task of providing the basic services that everyone in a community acknowledges are needed, like streets, sewers, water systems, fire departments, police and other necessary infrastructure and services.
The primary thing that sets Libertarians apart from Socialists and the like is the concept of voluntariness in paying for the benefits of community membership. Libertarians depend on the charity, altruism and rational self-interest of community members to create and maintain a civilized and thriving society, whereas Socialists and their ilk assume that people are inherently bad, greedy and are without reason or rational self-interest and therefore must be compelled to pay for the benefits of society
even if they do not wish to make use of or participate in such benefits.
Moreover, nothing in Libertarianism prohibits "taxation" for public benefits, it merely requires that the individual agree beforehand as a matter of contract with the community, to be billed for some particular public benefit that person intends to make use of.
Thus, the residents of a community may agree, as individuals, to pay for a sewage system, and they may agree that anyone who makes use of the system may be compelled to pay for that use, under the "no initiation of fraud" concept, because to use the benefits of the system without paying to do so is perpetrating a fraud on those who "own" the system. That being said, if someone does not choose to connect to the system, and thus not use it, then they can neither be compelled to do so nor compelled to pay for the system.
To forestall the inevitable argument of "but what happens to their shit?" the answer is obvious, that individual must then dispose of his sewage at his own expense, for example by installing a sealed-vault septic system and paying to have it pumped out when full by a company that he contracts with to dispose of the waste.
To forestall the next inevitable argument of "but what if he refuses to do so and simply dumps his shit in the creek that runs through town?" the answer is that doing so is an initiation of both force an fraud through the concept of "exported harm," which means that in doing so he is placing the burden of dealing with his shit on other community members without their consent, which is impermissible and which the community has every right to police and put a stop to.
Thus, in a Libertarian society, on a functional basis, a person building a house on his lot within corporate city limits cannot be compelled to hook up to the sewage (or water or electrical) system, but is also prohibited from exporting ANY harm from the boundaries of his property that negatively affects his neighbors or his community, and that extends even to odors or airborne pathogens that might escape his property if he chooses to spread his shit on his garden to treat it, as well as things like underground contamination of a water table caused by injecting unprocessed waste water which moves beyond his property boundaries.
In short, he can shit in his own nest all he likes, but the moment any aspect of doing so escapes his property he is committing force and fraud on others and they have the right to stop him from doing so, using whatever degree of force is ultimately necessary to do so, and he may not make use of ANY public benefit he does not pay to use, from sewage systems to libraries, roadways and parks, unless the community acts altruistically and charitably as a group to provide certain public benefits to anyone without charging them for that use, as in the case of roads, parks and libraries, which those in the community who value such things contribute to for their own benefit and out of rational self interest and who choose to allow others to use them free of charge for the same reasons.
The key to Libertarianism is, as I said, voluntariness and avoidance of the initiation of force or fraud. These concepts are capable of handling every legitimate community need for "regulation" without requiring any compulsory taxation or indeed any compulsory participation.
"Seth is Grandmaster Zen Troll who trains his victims to troll themselves every time they think of him" Robert_S
"All that is required for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing." Edmund Burke
"Those who support denying anyone the right to keep and bear arms for personal defense are fully complicit in every crime that might have been prevented had the victim been effectively armed." Seth
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But trigger warnings still have stuff all to do with protecting people from buying pineapples.
I have the right to accidentally die from poisons if I goddamn want!
