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Everything you just said fits in perfectly with eugenics and fascism and all the bastardizations of Nietzsche that have soiled the last century. Also, no one person invented the iPhone... it was the product of the labor of thousands and thousands of people based on the knowledge accumulated by all of society over thousands of years. The idea that any invention can be distilled down to one person is simply false.
"You didn't build that. Somebody else made that happen."
Everything you just said fits in perfectly with eugenics and fascism and all the bastardizations of Nietzsche that have soiled the last century. Also, no one person invented the iPhone... it was the product of the labor of thousands and thousands of people based on the knowledge accumulated by all of society over thousands of years. The idea that any invention can be distilled down to one person is simply false.
Do you ever tire of smear tactics? It's so 10th grade.
Knowledge accumulated by individuals acting in their own rational self-interest over the millennia creates an ever-improving environment for new citizens to innovate further. However, accumulated accomplishment does not imbue new citizens with value. Neither does it create an obligation or duty. It is simply there as a metaphysical primary for anyone born into it.
We have accumulated knowledge, inventions, and ideas. They provide a fertile environment for all new humans. However those new humans OWE the dead people NOTHING. They still have to innovate. They still have to discover. They still have to improve. And: they still are not entitled to demand the property of others. They still have to provide for their own needs and their own existence.
The fact that we have thousands of years of accumulated knowledge is irrelevant to your need to live rationally, morally, and freely in the most advanced country ever invented: the United States.
So stop with these silly deterministic arguments that you are relieved of responsibility for yourself because others exist and have existed. I really think you are a mystic in many ways, and have substituted Society for God. Odd.
There is nothing simple and cooperative in a socialist or social democratic society. People fight. People seek to exploit power and relationships. In the soviet block, the ordinary people did everything to break out of that system. In a way, they showed that they accord with capitalism much more. It is just human nature.
The social democratic ideology is a wishful thinkers masturbation.
Well, every society type we know of has some amount of fighting somewhere.
I don't think anyone was trying to argue that they knew how to end fighting completely; but this doesn't mean we shouldn't be trying to minimize it.
I don't want a society of simplicity, conformity, and cooperation. I want a dynamic, expensive, and free society where there is innovation, achievement, displacement, and confusion.
This touches upon one of the core issues in discussions like this. Democracy is an utopian idea, just like communism and socialism are. It simply means that the majority will gain the tyranny, while assuming that the majority necessarily inform them to make good decisions. But too often democracy is just mob rule. It rubber stamps what would be gang behavior.
Democracy certainly doesn't bring societies economic freedom or vibrancy. It may hinder it.
Agreed. That's why the founding fathers didn't want the U.S. to be a democracy, but a republic. They knew democracies could be very unstable. People don't like instability, so when the instability arises, a dictator or oligarchy rushes in to take power. It's not an accident that the distinction between democracy and a republic is blurred and treated as definitional hair splitting by the populace at large.
"You didn't build that. Somebody else made that happen."
ROTFLMFAO!
The fact that such a substantial minority of Americans find that quote to be offensive or controversial astounds me. No, you didn't build that. You couldn't have outside of Ayn Rand fantasies (where a handful of people can build a super advanced society and maintain it without the labor and advances of thousands...)
You didn't build anything on your own. You are not entitled to any share of society's resources without paying back that value on demand. Those before you built it, and you took advantage. Without society you are a nomad or a gatherer dying at 45 and living a short, nasty, brutish life. I'm genuinely flabbergasted that any quasi rational human could deny Obama's quote (even though it was taken out of a yet more moderate context) is 100% applicable to nearly all human development, inventions, etc...
Do you ever tire of smear tactics? It's so 10th grade.
Knowledge accumulated by individuals acting in their own rational self-interest over the millennia creates an ever-improving environment for new citizens to innovate further. However, accumulated accomplishment does not imbue new citizens with value. Neither does it create an obligation or duty. It is simply there as a metaphysical primary for anyone born into it.
We have accumulated knowledge, inventions, and ideas. They provide a fertile environment for all new humans. However those new humans OWE the dead people NOTHING. They still have to innovate. They still have to discover. They still have to improve. And: they still are not entitled to demand the property of others. They still have to provide for their own needs and their own existence.
The fact that we have thousands of years of accumulated knowledge is irrelevant to your need to live rationally, morally, and freely in the most advanced country ever invented: the United States.
So stop with these silly deterministic arguments that you are relieved of responsibility for yourself because others exist and have existed. I really think you are a mystic in many ways, and have substituted Society for God. Odd.
There are no metaphysics involved, and calling your ubermenschen-based philosophy fascistic is not a smear tactic. It's a neutral and accurate description.
Again, you've never once explained how you oppose determinism. Where is the uncaused cause? Where is the uncaused cause? How do uncaused causes arise? Earlier in this thread you say that observing reality disproves determinism; could any answer be more banal or meaningless? How does reality justify the notion of personal responsibility or free will in the manner it is understood by libertarians?
There is no such thing as the property of others, only the property of society. And by that I don't mean it in a positive sense, but in the sense it is unassigned and no person created; it can't rationally default to any one person or unequally to some and not others without some driving force. If assigning property rights to individuals allows society to thrive and for more people to experience greater happiness, then I'm not going to oppose it. I don't see strong evidence that it does, at least not in the unfettered form that this thread's anarcho-capitalists are supporting. But the arguments for the existence of pre-existing or natural property rights, accruing to individuals according to arbitrary Lockean principles, are primitive or ridiculous. Indeed, the whole idea of natural rights is ridiculous. Nonsense upon stilts, as Bentham properly recognized even then. It's just a sacralized set of first assumptions that allows people to make circular arguments.
Rights have always been based (for better or worse) on force; no matter how noble or useful an idea about natural rights may be, the fact is that they have never existed without the force of sticks and clubs and guns, and individuals defending their own rights will always lose to a gang of amoral (or moral, perhaps) marauders working together.
There are no metaphysics involved, and calling your ubermenschen-based philosophy fascistic is not a smear tactic. It's a neutral and accurate description.
Again, you've never once explained how you oppose determinism. Where is the uncaused cause? Where is the uncaused cause? How do uncaused causes arise? Earlier in this thread you say that observing reality disproves determinism; could any answer be more banal or meaningless? How does reality justify the notion of personal responsibility or free will in the manner it is understood by libertarians?
There is no such thing as the property of others, only the property of society. And by that I don't mean it in a positive sense, but in the sense it is unassigned and no person created; it can't rationally default to any one person or unequally to some and not others without some driving force. If assigning property rights to individuals allows society to thrive and for more people to experience greater happiness, then I'm not going to oppose it. I don't see strong evidence that it does, at least not in the unfettered form that this thread's anarcho-capitalists are supporting. But the arguments for the existence of pre-existing or natural property rights, accruing to individuals according to arbitrary Lockean principles, are primitive or ridiculous. Indeed, the whole idea of natural rights is ridiculous. Nonsense upon stilts, as Bentham properly recognized even then. It's just a sacralized set of first assumptions that allows people to make circular arguments.
Rights have always been based (for better or worse) on force; no matter how noble or useful an idea about natural rights may be, the fact is that they have never existed without the force of sticks and clubs and guns, and individuals defending their own rights will always lose to a gang of amoral (or moral, perhaps) marauders working together.
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