I’ve found that arguing morality with socialists is pointless. They are consequentialists and [wrongly] believe that socialism would benefit more people than capitalism, and thus the coercion is morally right. It’s much easier to explain that socialism can’t calculate, because regardless of how moral they think socialism is, it can’t work.
The objection I run into most is that people will try and argue that socialism/taxation isn’t coercive because people are free to leave. At which point I explain to them that giving someone a choice between paying taxes, going to jail, and abandoning their home is not a free choice. A choice is only free if a person who hasn’t aggressed against others or entered into voluntary contract has the option to decline payment without being aggressed against by the agent demanding the payment.
You can’t prove it’s wrong any more than you can prove raping five-year old girls is wrong. It’s simply a value-judgement.
If the leftist admits he/she believes it’s wrong to initiate violence against an innocent person, then you can go from there.
In responsd to CaptainMurphy, just ask if mass-genocide against blacks is ok as long as they are free to leave.
Here is a different toned-down analogy I’ve come up with:
What if your two neighbors, to your right and left, vote to decide that all three of you should be forced to contribute towards a fund to buy modern art? When you tell them that it’s not OK for them to force you to pay for anything, is it valid for them to tell you, “well, you can move if you want”?
Or if your 4rax m&m walk unknowingly over my hold-lurks camped right outside your xpo and I threaten to unleash hell on them if they don’t move, are they really free?[H]
Well, a fe->4rax m&m timing-push arrives at your expo just as lair tech is completed. Your lurks will still be morphing (assuming you went for a 3-hatch build). The downside is that range isn’t finished yet, but that doesn’t matter when you are only up against lings and sunks!
You won’t have enough manpower to push before my lair tech finishes, 4 sunks + one group of lings would handle it easy. By the time you could build up an effective force I would have 9 muta out and force you to retreat to defend your base, at which point I would start my lurker tech to camp outside and start my 2nd xpo ><
You should watch some replays of that build, the timing of the push really is frightening. You’re able to attack so quickly because you don’t wait for range to finish. I’ll try to find a replay…
Exactly this is why you shouldn’t really debate them.
See, maybe in 1930 these debate was meaningful. But after 1968 the Left has adopted the Frankfurter School theory, that defines pretty much every human relationship: parent and child, wife and husband, teacher and student, priest and believer, employer and employee as a POWER relationship.
So from their point of view almost every human relationship is a coercive one. And of course when everything is perceived as coercion, the to battle it, actual, real coercion is permissible - it follows logically from it.
In other words they are immoral barbarians. There is no point in debating.
In that contract, we both agree that I will do repair-work on your broken lamp-post when you go out of town. When you return, and I’ve fixed the lamp-post, you pay $50.
Well, you go out of town, and I fix the lamp-post. When you return, you tell me that you actually didn’t want the lamp-post repaired, you wanted a new one. You refuse to pay me.
It’s not the use of force that’s immoral, it’s the initiation of the use of force. The “use of force to enforce (valid) contracts” is a response to attempted theft.