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There are two sides to the whole "freedom" thing. The main problem is everyone seems to be considered with their 'freedoms of' rather than their 'freedoms from'. Freedom of/to things like speech, privacy, etc are all well and good, but personally I would love to have more freedom from corporate interference in our political process, from religious maniacs trying to legislate their morality, hell, from a lot of things that are currently happening in our society today.
There are two sides to the whole "freedom" thing. The main problem is everyone seems to be considered with their 'freedoms of' rather than their 'freedoms from'. Freedom of/to things like speech, privacy, etc are all well and good, but personally I would love to have more freedom from corporate interference in our political process, from religious maniacs trying to legislate their morality, hell, from a lot of things that are currently happening in our society today.
That's interesting.
Roosevelt's Four Freedoms were two "freedoms from" and two "freedom of". Freedom from fear, Freedom from want, Freedom of worship, and Freedom of speech. FDR set them all as goals for the whole world.
It simply is more complicated than that, because the world is a much more complicated place than that. As a society, we have agreed that a business cannot refuse to serve someone on the basis of race, for example. Most of us think that is a good thing. It constricts businesses' ability to exercise complete control over their property, without any direct consent (aside from the consent of the governed). That is how majority rule works.
No ... the point of individual liberty is very simple and straight forward. The arguments used to justify violating that liberty are complex over-rationalizations. And among those who support such violations, few seem to understand the implications of doing so, because of "simple minded thinking".
The example you used perfectly illustrates this rather shallow surface level logic. Prohibiting a business owner from exercising his rightful choice to decide who he does business with is a direct assault on the very essence of liberty, which establishes a foundational precedent for many more violations. It doesn't matter at all the "reason" ... because such reasons are really just excuses. The moment one agrees with such a direct violation of a fundamental liberty ... in this instance, the sovereignty of private property ownership which is foundational to the very reason our country was created, you open the door to incremental loss of liberties across the board. Measure the weight of such loss of liberty against the inconvenience which was used to justify the violation, and you will see the foolishness of such thinking.
To be more blunt, the "government" doessn't give a rats azz about gay people, or black people, or any of the subdivided classes of "special interest" groups per se, all government cares about is gaining more power over the individual and the collective masses. This is really a child's game, yet the self proclaimed brighter and more educated left wingers actually believe the game is "checkers", when the game is actually chess.
In a futile and foolish quest for universal "fairness", incrementalism has already destroyed much of the freedom the founders were attempting to safeguard, with any talk of freedom pure lip service nowadays. You can't fish without a license ... or do much of anything else without "permission". Couple that with the fact that there are more persons incarcerated in the United States than anywhere else in the world, it's rather ironic we call ourselves "the land of the free".
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And taxes, instituted by majority rule, are designed to take property. While you, individually, have not agreed to those taxes, the State is justified in instituting them through representation in the legislature.
We used to joke about how government would surely tax the air we breathe, if they could figure out a way to do it. And sure enough, they finally did find the way .... they conceived of this global threat to mother earth called CO2, and soon enough, by mere coincidence don't cha know, carbon tax was born, and the same usual suspects are once again government's useful idiots, as the lefties carry those banners calling for dramatic action to save the world by agreeing to another grand heist, all for the latest worthy cause.
Never will some people learn from past mistakes ... they just keep being played like a piano, never the wiser. Or as the old axioms suggests, "there is a sucker born every minute" and "the road to hell is paved with good intentions".
I noticed you omitted to answer the specific question I asked, can I assume from that non-answer you want all flowers to be red roses?
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Originally Posted by bUU
But not a guarantee that everyone will garner their own personal threshold of how much benefit is enough benefit for them personally all the time.
No, but fair share means whatever the outcome, any profits are shared fairly. If one group does 90% of the task, and received 50% of the profits, then they will (most likely) refuse to cooperate with that group another time. That is not the issue, the issue is if they are required to continue to "cooperate" with that group.
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Originally Posted by bUU
There's nothing wrong with leaving society. The problem is staying in but not abiding society. It's like inheriting a condominium unit and refusing to comply with the by-laws because you didn't personally agree to them. It's an (invalid) excuse for transgression, not a justification for transgression.
How do you leave society? Genuine question? Leave the country? You depend on society providing you the privilege of international travel (a passport), if society determines it has not abused you sufficiently it may easily refuse to issue one.
In your analogy, suppose that to perform the title transfer the condo complex has a by-law that requires the deposit of your left little finger (to be removed at your own expense). Is that an invalid excuse for refusing to comply?
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Originally Posted by bUU
If you choose to see it that way then you're choosing to live with the ramifications of seeing it that way - i.e., choosing to live feeling oppressed instead of living acknowledging the reality of reasonable obligations imposed on you. Either way, it doesn't justify being antisocial.
Non-sequitur, I'm not choosing to see it anyway in any practical application I'm discussing the abstract and disagreeing with your general concept, how that applies to the current state of your or my society is up for debate.
Whether or not I feel anything is not relevant, however you cannot determine whether or not I feel oppressed, because only I can do that, you may not feel oppressed, I may, or the situations may be reversed with you feeling oppressed but not I. It does not invalidate the position how I feel has little relation to how you feel, and should I feel oppressed, not oppressed, or I haven't even really considered it is all equally valid, regardless of your feelings on the subject, and the converse is also true regardless of my feelings on the subject your feelings are just as valid as they always were.
Nor am I even discussing reasonable obligations which by definition cannot be imposed, only unreasonable obligations can be imposed, reasonable obligations are agreed upon.
Nor am I'm justifying being anti-social, indeed anti-social is a range that encompasses both parties, it is equally possible for a collective to be anti-social to an individual as an individual is to a collective. For instance take the Dred Scott v. Sandford holding, isn't that a stark illustration of how a collective can be antisocial to the individual regardless of the specific grounds for the holding?
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Originally Posted by TheCityTheBridge
Surely you would agree that there is a continuum between perfect cooperation and perfect coercion, and that most human organization falls somewhere in between.
Indeed there is. However the poster I was responding too, has expressed a view that non-cooperation (selfishness, individualistic) is immoral, and cooperation (selflessness, collectivistic) is moral (the term keeps changing, the concept used for the term is the same). A view I do not and will not agree with as a rule, at times non-cooperation, selfish or individualistic responses are more moral than the cooperation, selfless or collectivist responses, and at times the reverse.
No ... the point of individual liberty is very simple and straight forward. The arguments used to justify violating that liberty are complex over-rationalizations. And among those who support such violations, few seem to understand the implications of doing so, because of "simple minded thinking".
If you are going to suggest that others engage in "simple minded thinking," then you had better provide more depth than you have displayed. In the American system of government, individual liberty is the backstop, but the playing field is majority rule.
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Originally Posted by GuyNTexas
The example you used perfectly illustrates this rather shallow surface level logic. Prohibiting a business owner from exercising his rightful choice to decide who he does business with is a direct assault on the very essence of liberty, which establishes a foundational precedent for many more violations. It doesn't matter at all the "reason" ... because such reasons are really just excuses. The moment one agrees with such a direct violation of a fundamental liberty ... in this instance, the sovereignty of private property ownership which is foundational to the very reason our country was created, you open the door to incremental loss of liberties across the board. Measure the weight of such loss of liberty against the inconvenience which was used to justify the violation, and you will see the foolishness of such thinking.
You fundamentally misunderstand "the very reason our country was created" if you think that any restriction on a business owner's choices is a direct assault on the very essence of liberty. Those restrictions existed from the very beginning (and earlier) of the union. Your position is one that is not grounded in the United States Constitution or the founding of the United States at all.
The founders, for example, would never have considered the freedom of speech to allow slander or defamation. They would never have thought that a State lacked the power to force businesses to close on Sundays. Virginia, for example, banned gambling operations back in the 18th century.
Your platitudes about fundamental liberty are meaningless unless you can explain the meaning of the term.
The Constitution explicitly grants government the power to take private property with due process and just compensation. Extensive regulatory rights are also granted to state and federal governments.
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Originally Posted by GuyNTexas
To be more blunt, the "government" doessn't give a rats azz about gay people, or black people, or any of the subdivided classes of "special interest" groups per se, all government cares about is gaining more power over the individual and the collective masses. This is really a child's game, yet the self proclaimed brighter and more educated left wingers actually believe the game is "checkers", when the game is actually chess.
In a democracy, the peoples' vote is a check on the power of political leaders and the bureaucracy. Elected officials care about getting the votes needed to get elected. So, if the people care enough about gay rights, civil rights, and women's rights, then people seeking to become elected officials are going to have to care about those rights as well. Government is not a monolith. It is a collection of hundreds of thousands of people. Even the thousands of political actors have different motivations and different constituencies. They do not act in concert to "gain[] power over the individual and the collective masses" because their motivations are not shared--and in many cases are opposed. The future Supreme Court Justice who once argued that separate but equal is inherently unequal certainly did care about civil rights. He also became a high-ranking member of the government.
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Originally Posted by GuyNTexas
In a futile and foolish quest for universal "fairness", incrementalism has already destroyed much of the freedom the founders were attempting to safeguard, with any talk of freedom pure lip service nowadays. You can't fish without a license ... or do much of anything else without "permission". Couple that with the fact that there are more persons incarcerated in the United States than anywhere else in the world, it's rather ironic we call ourselves "the land of the free".
The founders would not have batted an eye at a state government placing restrictions on fishing in public waters (if the waterway is large enough, they would have considered it under federal authority). The founders also certainly expected imprisonment to be a punishment for crimes. I certainly agree that too many people are incarcerated in the United States, but do not pretend that the founders sought to safeguard against imprisonment after conviction of a crime.
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Originally Posted by GuyNTexas
We used to joke about how government would surely tax the air we breathe, if they could figure out a way to do it. And sure enough, they finally did find the way .... they conceived of this global threat to mother earth called CO2, and soon enough, by mere coincidence don't cha know, carbon tax was born, and the same usual suspects are once again government's useful idiots, as the lefties carry those banners calling for dramatic action to save the world by agreeing to another grand heist, all for the latest worthy cause.
And all of those scientists whose peer-reviewed work supports human impact on the climate through greenhouse gas emissions? They are in on a government conspiracy to tax the air? And so are the layers of ice in Antarctica used to identify the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere over past millenia? Right . . .
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Originally Posted by GuyNTexas
Never will some people learn from past mistakes ... they just keep being played like a piano, never the wiser. Or as the old axioms suggests, "there is a sucker born every minute" and "the road to hell is paved with good intentions".
I'm glad that worn cliches strung together in a paragraph are evidence that someone is not engaged in "simple minded thinking."
... Your platitudes about fundamental liberty are meaningless unless you can explain the meaning of the term. ...
I suggest thinking of libertaryanism as a religious point of view. Not that it makes more sense that way. Although it sure does make me appreciate the concept of the separation of religion & state.
If you are going to suggest that others engage in "simple minded thinking," then you had better provide more depth than you have displayed. In the American system of government, individual liberty is the backstop, but the playing field is majority rule.
Oh my oh my, where should I begin to untangle this twisted and jumbled up mess here?
The "playing field is majority rule"? Where on earth do you liberals come up with such nonsense? The United States of America is NOT ruled by "majority rule". We are not a democracy! We are a "Constitutional Republic", where the people's representatives in government are elected democratically. Nevertheless, the constitution is the law of the land, with those laws sacrosanct and not subject to an override by majority vote. Even if 99% of those representatives and their constituency wanted to do a certain thing, if it ran afoul of constitutional law, it would be illegal.
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You fundamentally misunderstand "the very reason our country was created" if you think that any restriction on a business owner's choices is a direct assault on the very essence of liberty. Those restrictions existed from the very beginning (and earlier) of the union. Your position is one that is not grounded in the United States Constitution or the founding of the United States at all.
First, I did not say "any restriction" ... I addressed a specific restriction. And that specific matter was about the fundamental right of a business owner to deside who he chooses to engage in business with. By tat same measure, each individual must retain that same right to choose, else, if an individual can be forced to work for someone he des not want to work fo, that would define slavery.
Moreover, this country was established in rejection of an authoritarian monarchy who did not recognize the right of the people to be sovereigns, with private property ownership being the most important aspect. Remember .. in a monarchy, the king owns all land, not the subjects. Our system is the reverse of that, where the people are sovereigns, and own the land, but more importantly, as sovereigns, they own themselves, which includes their own labor. By that measure, they must have the right to provide that labor to whom they choose, as well as the right not to provide it, at their discretion.
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The founders, for example, would never have considered the freedom of speech to allow slander or defamation. They would never have thought that a State lacked the power to force businesses to close on Sundays. Virginia, for example, banned gambling operations back in the 18th century.
Let's not mix up the apples and oranges here. We are discussing federal, not state powers. The constitution is in fact a document that outlines the limited powers granted to the federal government, while retaining all other powers to the states and the people.
As for blue laws, they originated in the colonies prior to the revolution. Nevertheless, the federal government was granted no such power to enact blue laws forcing businesses to close on Sunday, as that would be a violation of the 1st Amendment ... specifically interfering in religious matters, for which the federal government is forbidden.
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Your platitudes about fundamental liberty are meaningless unless you can explain the meaning of the term.
I believe I've been very specific here in explaining fundamental liberty ... but since you apparently don't get it, let's take the dictionary's definition of liberty and see if it more closely matches my point of view or yours, okay?
Liberty -a) the condition of being free of restriction and control. b) the right and power to act, believe and express one's self in the manner of one's own choosing. c) the condition of being physically and legally free from confinement, servitude, or forced labor.
Now does any of that sound familiar, relative to my comments about fundamental liberty, including the right to act in the manner of one's own choosing, free of restriction, and particularly regarding the ownership of one s own labor, and the right to choose ?
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The Constitution explicitly grants government the power to take private property with due process and just compensation. Extensive regulatory rights are also granted to state and federal governments.
Baloney. Governments have no rights ... only people have rights. Extensive regulatory rights indeed
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In a democracy, the peoples' vote is a check on the power of political leaders and the bureaucracy. Elected officials care about getting the votes needed to get elected. So, if the people care enough about gay rights, civil rights, and women's rights, then people seeking to become elected officials are going to have to care about those rights as well.
Let me say this one last time ... WE ARE NOT A DEMOCRACY.
Secondly, you are free to care about whatever you wish to care about. You are not free to impose that on others, demanding that they must care about what you care about ... and when it comes right down to the rubber meeting the road, you have no right and no authority whatsoever to tread upon another's free will by imposing your will upon them.
You see, it doesn't matter what you think and believe, because we've already undressed the folly of all that, which is why we have constitutional law and sovereign individual rights to protect us, no matter how large the group of nuts with similar mindsets become.
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Government is not a monolith.
It most certainly is, and the one we have at the moment couldn't be mistaken for anything else.
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It is a collection of hundreds of thousands of people. Even the thousands of political actors have different motivations and different constituencies. They do not act in concert to "gain[] power over the individual and the collective masses" because their motivations are not shared--and in many cases are opposed. The future Supreme Court Justice who once argued that separate but equal is inherently unequal certainly did care about civil rights. He also became a high-ranking member of the government.
Pure nonsense. And don't think you're going to sell much of this to anyone other than maybe some farmers who might care to spread it in their fields.
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The founders would not have batted an eye at a state government placing restrictions on fishing in public waters (if the waterway is large enough, they would have considered it under federal authority).
Public education .... what a disaster.
I just can't even finish this diatribe of leftest lunacy.
I noticed you omitted to answer the specific question I asked, can I assume from that non-answer you want all flowers to be red roses?
No. Without even going back to try to figure out what you're referring to, I can tell you that what you can assume is that I didn't acknowledge the validity of your question because it assumed premises that conflict with the point I made. If you want to ask me a question, then the premises of the question all have to be compatible with my point of view, leaving the only variability being the question and my answer to it. When you assume your perspective is correct and impose that assumption on a "question" you're asking, you aren't asking a question, you're just posturing.
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Originally Posted by Gungnir
No, but fair share means whatever the outcome, any profits are shared fairly.
As defined by society - not each person for themselves specifically. That is what society means.
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Originally Posted by Gungnir
How do you leave society?
Why ask me? I don't want to leave. I outlined the choices. If you don't want to abide society then it is up to you to find a way to get out of the obligations imposed on you by birth or naturalization. As an "individualist" it wouldn't make sense to expect others to furnish an answer for you for how you can legitimately be relieved of the obligations you currently have. The prototypical avenues for it, though, are to find a nation where the kind of "freedom" you want is available and go there. No one here will stop you. If you cannot find such a place (which, of course, is the problem you're implicitly alluding to), then that should inform you of the lack of validity of your expectations. Most "individualists" won't take that answer directly from someone else (in accordance with their nature). They'll have to come to realize it for themselves by researching and finding that no such place exists.
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Originally Posted by Gungnir
In your analogy, suppose that to perform the title transfer the condo complex has a by-law that requires the deposit of your left little finger (to be removed at your own expense).
When violating the expectations of citizenship becomes punishable by severing of fingers, you can come back and ask that question. Incidentally, this is another case where you're injecting your erroneous or otherwise invalid assumptions as premises of the questions you're asking. So please go back to my analogy and follow-up on what I actually wrote, directly. Thanks.
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Originally Posted by Gungnir
Non-sequitur, I'm not choosing to see it anyway in any practical application
Then you don't need a practical answer. It makes no sense to pander to unilateral pronouncements without context and without mutually-agreed to boundaries of the parameters of the scenario. You could just say, "Uh uh I don't like!!" and be done with it, because that's no different.
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Originally Posted by Gungnir
I'm discussing the abstract and disagreeing with your general concept, how that applies to the current state of your or my society is up for debate.
We live in one society together. If you think you have "your society" and think I have "my society" then we have no common basis on which to have a conversation.
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Originally Posted by Gungnir
Whether or not I feel anything is not relevant
If that is true then your entire comment about cooperation is not relevant. Again, you don't get to determine the premises and parameters of the issue in the context of asking someone else something.
When I find myself arguing the conceptual side of an argument I rely on universal concepts - things that practically everyone already agrees on - and then build up my argument by combining these universal concepts together. In this case, the most relevant universal concept is the ethic that states that social constructs are judged by how they affect the weak rather than the strong. Your preference works directly against the universal ethic - it's a form of domination theology - that the "strong" are "entitled" to do whatever they want regardless of the impact on the weak. That type of "ethic" died out a few hundred years ago, although we still see some folks holding its banner. We can have the discussion on that basis, and perhaps that is the only basis to have such a discussion. People can either resonate with your contention that it is fair for the strong to do whatever they please, or people can resonate with the sense of fairness I evoke with my references to how society as I have outlined it protects the weak.
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Originally Posted by Gungnir
reasonable obligations are agreed upon
They were on your behalf by your progenitors. I think that's what upsets you - that you were born into society instead of born into whatever anarchistic paradise it is you now prefer you were born into.
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