I’m saying this has nothing to do with right and wrong.
I recently had a civil dispute with my mother over my trust fund whereby it was decided that I was being stolen from and as a consequence, my mother’s power as trustee was taken away and now she can’t steal from me anymore. Couldn’t have been done without the courts and by extension, the police.
and what are you referring to when you say that /this/ has nothing to do with right and wrong?
is it that demonstrations of the ethical justification or lack thereof for the right to tax has nothing to do with right and wrong?
I suppose I need a better word than irrelevant. But that seems to be the best word. Ultimately, rhetoric matters but power matters more. And rhetoric can bring power. I suppose Obama is a great example of that.
lack of imagination maybe? also maybe you are biased towards noting what you see as positives that police provide, whilst you are discounting how much they extort from you, and remain completely in denial of the benefits of a competitive solution to your security/justice issue…
This thread. He wants to justify taxation. As if it had anything to do with right or wrong. It’s got everything to do with power. They couldn’t tax us if they didn’t have the police and the military. No one would pay. At least I wouldn’t.
No.
No.
I don’t know, maybe. Or maybe you’ve had a very bad experience with the police or the courts and so your experiences influence your viewpoints differently. I don’t mind the government taking my money for defense. You do. They take yours too. That’s because they have the power to. It’s not right. But it happens.
people who believe in morality, actually believe in morality. its not ‘empty’ rhetoric to them.
true. you finally ‘get it’
and you are teaching me something new…
if it didn’t happen it would not be discussed by libertarians.
What exactly is an ethical matter by your terms Bloom? Or do you consider ethics and morals as being benign concepts having no real tangible meaning?
That seems to me to be more of a statement of your personal position than anything. Because morality matters to you. Or you feel it’s served you well. That’s fine.
you are rejecting the question he posed rather than engaging with it. you answer him that his question is irrelevant… to you… or to everyone?. can you prove that its irrelevant to him?. i suppose you have a pet theory why he thinks its relevant to him, but that he is wrong about it… i’d like to hear that
I don’t know, I don’t think about ethics or morals. I’m not a religious person.
You’re right, it’s irrelevant to me. I suppose I’m proselytizing though I don’t mean to be. I don’t know why he wants to justify taxation. Maybe so he’ll feel better about himself when he takes other people’s stuff? Who knows.
if you believe that moral talk is rhetorical for everyone. and is ‘empty’. how does it work in the motivational way which you acknowledge; is it magic? the people that hear the words do not hear anything that they care about or believe in or are interested in… they are just compelled by magic…
I honestly don’t know, I haven’t been motivated by morality in a long time.
I mean I know people care about morality, I just don’t know why. I don’t believe in God. If I believed in God, morals would matter to me.
I know that if I do things that other people think are immoral and they have a way to punish me, that I’m much less inclined to do immoral things. That’s why the law exists. It doesn’t say what you should or shouldn’t do. Just what you’re allowed to do and not allowed to do. But ultimately, the law draws its power from an enforcer. God, the enforcer of morality, doesn’t seem very involved in this world. But that’s just my personal feeling. I don’t know that God doesn’t exist.
Yea I’m not entirely sure what religion has to do with this either.
But you are. Might makes right is a standard of justified morals.
I’ll take your concession that you subscribe to the might makes right class of ethics. In other words your morals are justified by the superior ability of force. You say it much more eloquently then I.
What’s interesting is that you agree that there is no ethical or moral justification for taxation but that that’s actually because taxation is ethically and morally wrong. But… if there’s no God. Where do you get the authority to tell something like the government that it’s morally wrong? Who gives you that power?
By the way, Fil, I’m saying that you don’t have to be right to do something. That’s why taxation, to me, is a consequence of power, not some moral right the government claims to have. They use their moral claim to get people to play along. Which is fine. I just know they’ve got the power, and so I obey. That, to me, is why taxation is about power.