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When you start talking about rights as a society beyond those things, you have to be able to answer the question "How many beneficiaries must there be from one slave's labor to make slavery moral?"
If there are all these people benefitting from one slave's labor, why don't they do the honorable thing and PAY the guy?
The rest of the argument is hopeless. As soon as a society has as many as two people (think of a marriage, for example), there are obligations back and forth, not just between the individual members, but between the individual members and the society itself. How often have you heard someone say that they would like to have a strong, healthy marriage? I'm sure such people might say the same about their spouses as well, but what they are doing here is recognizing that the institution itself needs to be supported if in turn it is to well serve its members.
If you want to be a hermit, fine. Go off by yourself. No one will ask anything of you, and you won't need to ask anything of anyone else. If you want to live in a society and enjoy the benefits that society provides, you will owe an obligation to every other member of that society and to society itself. Those are pretty much your two choices.
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Originally Posted by One Thousand
The reason we need to answer that is because we know, just like Social Security has gone all wrong, that government does not do maintenance well.
Bad exmaple. SS is solid into the second half of the century, and the adjustments needed to push the date further out are minor, even under pessimistic sets of assumptions.
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Originally Posted by One Thousand
Democracy puts out fires but nothing else. So, people will be unnecessarily oppressed at some point. The question has to be answered "How much benefit must we get for that unlucky people's oppression?"
You may be trying to make the point that comparisons of interpersonal utility functions cannot be made, and that would be true in any quantitative state, but you seem more to be endorsing a Pareto type optimality, wherein everyone is made better off up until the point where any one person has to be made worse off in order to accomplish it. Such societies can tend to be rather unpleasant in terms of equity, and few people would actually choose to live in one that worked that way...
so you are angry because i dont want to live near anyone else? my desire for privacy pisses you off?
well boo hoo, too bad
I was getting this same impression from some. Last sign I saw it still said AMERICA !!!!!
I should have the right to enjoy, occupy, build on or enjoy the bounty that my land can produce. And I have the right to buy that property any damn place I desire so long as a willing seller offers it for sale.
It might only be a small piece of property but it is 4000 miles deep. Besides, most of us dont own property, the property owns us. Uhhh the bank said so. But we still control it. Isn't that awesome? The bank owns it but we control it.
What you have described is Houston, Texas. Individuals may be able to do exactly what you suggested.
Yet, 3 times, the issue on enacting a zoning law was put before the voters and 3 times, the zoning proposition was rejected by a very wide margin!
In my city it seems that anywhere is zoned something or the other ranging probably from agriculture on up to heavy commercial and industrial. Most of the squabbles over it have to do when a land owner wants to get his undeveloped land rezoned for a heavier use that may not fit in well with adjoining developed land, especially from the point of view of neighbors. Recently, my neighborhood was in a big uproar over the example I cited. Close to 40 of 50 of them went to a hearing before the city planning commission and got the proposed zoning change unanimously rejected, and suggested the developer get with the neighbors to work out a more suitable development. For those interested, the story is here: Stillwater NewsPress - Apartment complex loses vote
If there are all these people benefitting from one slave's labor, why don't they do the honorable thing and PAY the guy?
Slaves were paid too. In fact, that was one of the arguments the Democrats used in favor of slavery: They're taken care of.
The thing about being American is that most of us prize freedom over money.
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The rest of the argument is hopeless.
To be quite honest with you, all I did was lay out the argument the founding fathers advanced... they had marriages back then too.
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If you want to be a hermit, fine. Go off by yourself. No one will ask anything of you, and you won't need to ask anything of anyone else. If you want to live in a society and enjoy the benefits that society provides, you will owe an obligation to every other member of that society and to society itself.
The funny thing is, that what I described has the effect of fulfilling any social obligation greater than what could be accomplished by trying to have the perceived obligation fulfilled directly. A man greater than myself called it "the invisible hand"... the invisible hand was so beneficial that our families desired to come to this country... and now you're arguing a perspective of the old Soviet Union... where people didn't so much like it there.
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Bad exmaple. SS is solid into the second half of the century, and the adjustments needed to push the date further out are minor, even under pessimistic sets of assumptions.
By the looks of that, we have to raise that 15.65% tax somewhat higher to keep it going.
That's not even the good part. It doesn't mention Medicaid's coming demise-- that's the expensive part. Nor, have I mentioned that a kid entering the work force today, saving what he's donating and getting a very, very modest return would be able to draw around $5,000 a month when he retires instead of $1000 a month and have a million or so dollars to leave to his family.
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You may be trying to make the point that comparisons of interpersonal utility functions cannot be made, and that would be true in any quantitative state, but you seem more to be endorsing a Pareto type optimality, wherein everyone is made better off up until the point where any one person has to be made worse off in order to accomplish it. Such societies can tend to be rather unpleasant in terms of equity, and few people would actually choose to live in one that worked that way...
I don't know about it. I like to stick to Locke, de Tocqueville, Smith, etc... You know, philosophers who are in line with the founding of this country.
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