Would you go and steal from rich people to help the poor? Including hurting or imprisoning those who don’t comply? No? Then why do you support state goons doing this? What’s ethical here?
In some quantifiable way? This is what I mean by arrogance by libertarians. Its like those abortion fanatics, who say their ethical position is superior to the other one.
I haven’t defined ethics because ethics is a complex issue! I don’t derive my ethical principles from anywhere. I think anti-abortion and pro-abortion stances have arguments on both sides, and I don’t fanatically commit to either one. Luckily we have a democracy, so we don’t have to have a war over it.
You are guided by doing only in defense way, but you still make exceptions for coercive intervention (example above). Some others make exceptions elsewhere.
Would you support 9 families imposing their ethics on the last one? Yes? Then what is wrong with a state, which is just a tool of the majority, doing the same?
How exactly could you “impose” ethics on someone? If you mean initation of violence (i.e. taking their property or beating them up until they agree), then no, I wouldn’t support it because that’s precisely what state does. However, they simply start shunning the family with different values or use some other non-violent methods - I don’t see what’s wrong with that.
Imposing ethics means making distinction between right and wrong, and acting accordingly. If they do something wrong, such as child abuse or have sex with minors you act accordingly. The act can be violent.
I will give you an example from David Friedman, suppose a man is going to shoot lots of people but there’s a rifle nearby of a man who has said he will kill anyone taking the rifle. Would you take the rifle and shoot the madman. I would. That’s how I would act in real life. Sometimes issues have to be explored by their merits and not some absolute rights. Its realism.
Correction. Taxation is extortion.
You make the fallacy of assuming that law is somehow magical. Without a government, people could still intervene…
Why would they intervene? Only because they think something is wrong with beating your kids, right? But isn’t that just an opinion too? You may see beating kids as always immoral, but to be honest, I don’t think it constitutes a justice.
There’re societies where selling young girls as concubines (or younger wives) to older men is a common practice. You might find this despicable but the girls and their parents probably think it’s a better alternative to starving. How would shooting everyone involved solve anything?
This is just an individual action among many individual actions, what does that have to do with state’s coercion of all of society?
What’s realistic is that values are subjective. Under state, you’ll have subjective values of one group imposed on everyone else instead of allowing different values to exist and issues to be resolved peacefully, if they arise.
What do you think of extortion? Do you think it should be legal?
What do you think about making laws to rule over people that do not have representation? Do you think slavery should be legal?
Is the law supposed to do anymore than resolve disputes between people? If not, then what is the purpose of law?
What does this even mean?
No, it’s denying the bullshit state apologists weave and take as granted.
And yet appealing to Mises in such a context doesn’t do you well here - since Mises defaulted to support for a minarchist state.
It works just fine, I was giving attribution, not making an appeal to authority.
What you say is beyond stupid. This has nothing to do with ‘families’ or majorities. If parents beat their children they are criminals - if you can’t understand that, fine, but realize that the problem is your mental limitation, not libertarian ethics.
I never said beating children was allowed. You have completely missed my point.
Free market has become kind of a religion for libertarians. Never merits, only principles. You never care about social implications of your action. Some people have really lost the reality touch with the world.
Take for example that its illegal to pass by a man and not call an amublance, and then you call it coercion and slavery. Not only that’s terrible ethics, but its a disgrace to millions of people that have been real slaves.
I guess you’ve never realized that in real-threatening situations demand is practicallly infinite, and doctors can fee excessive amounts of money. Or you believe that its no issue that health insurance companies work people to try to deny claims, because hey none of those people ever needed care, and if they did, they were just to stupid to take our health insurance, and stupid people deserve to die. Adverse selection or asymmetrical information - that’s no problem!
But meh, I never should have posted about this, its like posting about atheism to a christian forum. Its not that anarcho capitalism is not possible, I’m just saying people should think more about the consequences of libertarian principles and if they represent their real-world ethics.
Clearly logic which is an objective human trait. If I see a father beating a child and the child is screaming for help then I can defend such a child for in screaming for help, he/she is seeking an agent that will protect him/her from aggression. Animal abuse is a topic already covered in another topic here and obviously the age of consent for sex is when the individual develops an understanding of sex and decides to explore such actions for it is their body.
The example you gave has NOTHING to do with realism or reality. If there was a madman who’s going to shoot a lot of people- why do you paint an unrealistic scenario where a man who has a rifle(since he owns one he probably knows how to use it better than you), would just sit there while chaos goes down? The rifle-owner would more than likely shoot the madman himself. I’m sorry but examples like these are just complete nonsense and don’t prove anything.
I dunno why you think the simple act of passing a law where its illegal to pass by a man and not call an ambulance will suddenly change people’s ethics, it DOESN’T. If someone sees someone in pain, he will decide whether he wants to call an ambulance or not based on his own morals, not “Oh I better do it before I go to jail.”.
Have you ever thought about the consequences of statist principals and how they cannot coexist with anyone’s real-world ethics? The consequence of state coercion has lead to more death and pain than any silly example you’re thinking of people not being compassionate.
PEOPLE ARE NOT COMPASSIONATE BECAUSE ITS THE “LAW”. LIFE HAS NEVER WORKED THIS WAY.
It seems to me that people with your line of thinking either never heard of charity or just ignore it. Why don’t you go and pay for people’s healthcare who can’t afford it with your own money? Why don’t you get a group together of like-minded individuals to carry on these good deeds? Do you really believe the threat of imprisonment or death is the only way to help people?
For the madman scenario, in this case the owner of the rifle is not present, so you have to take this property and use it for greater good even though you have no permission. Its simple principles. Read the example from Friedman’s page.
http://www.daviddfriedman.com/Libertarian/Machinery_of_Freedom/MofF_Chapter_41.html
For the ambulance, sympathy is irrelevant, since only human actions matter in this context. Now are you saying people are not being fined for not calling an ambulance? There would be no need to prohibit it, if everyone would do it, just like there would be no need to prohibit child abuse if everyone had the sympathy not to hit their child.
Yeah I see there’s clearly no point of continue this discussion because you don’t understand the principles I’m arguing against. Just keep on spamming capital letters. Caps lock is cruise control for cool.
Hmm it seems like there is no shortage of madmen and unclaimed rifles in your hypothetical situations.