Urth Net
Urth Digest, Vol 57, Issue 36
↰ answers Brian Lovely
· by quotation
At the risk of sounding like a nutty conspiracy theorist, take the tightening of borders, the expansion of military expenditures, the militarization of the boy scouts, and what do you have? A nice revolution in the making.
If the Democrats don't stop resembling the Republicans, eventually those old Gutenberg presses are going to need to kick some serious ass to combat the non-network neutral Cox empire.
For every man who "pull himself up by his own bootstraps" there are hundreds who could NEVER do that, because they don't have the right advantages.
For someone with ALL the advantagees, who elects officials who protect those advantages, and then constructs ideologies and talk radio stations to create an endless echo chamber of lies, is it really wrong for the guy with NO advantages to pull you out of your SUV, stomp on your cel phone, relieve you of your wallet, and bruise a few of your ribs?
Certainly Congress is not going to be hitting you in the ribs any time soon. And it needs to be done. :)
247 quoted lines · 1–10 deep
On Tue, May 19, 2009 at 3:37 PM, <urth-request at lists.urth.net> wrote: Send Urth mailing list submissions to ? ? ? ?urth at lists.urth.net
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? 1. Re: ?Urth Digest, Vol 57, Issue 31 (John Watkins)
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Message: 1
Date: Tue, 19 May 2009 18:37:12 -0400
From: John Watkins <john.watkins04 at gmail.com>
Subject: Re: (urth) Urth Digest, Vol 57, Issue 31
To: The Urth Mailing List <urth at lists.urth.net>
Message-ID:
? ? ? ?<93d4039f0905191537n66f10eeftcae2f5763cb1eb2f at mail.gmail.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"
I take it, then, that although you believe that war can be justified, you don't believe that the American Civil War (from the Yankee side, anyway) was such an instance. “Is that fair”
I am probably not far from some of your views, but you don't do yourself much of a favor by taking such out-of-the-mainstream positions and defending them so aggressively.
On Tue, May 19, 2009 at 6:26 PM, <brunians at brunians.org> wrote:
I'm a Copperhead.
.
brunians, are you a bona fide Southerner, or is your term for the American Civil War an affectation?
On Tue, May 19, 2009 at 6:20 PM, <brunians at brunians.org> wrote:
Actually, the way you tell that it's getting close to shoot-the-bastards time is that everyone, including the cops, is talking about it getting close to shoot-the-bastards time, on one side of the argument or another, depending on the loyalties of the region that you are in. Anyone disagrees they keep quiet. That's how it was before the American Revolution and that is how it was before the War Between The States.
.
Into the streets with your Robin Hood hats!
Tear down the SUVs! ?tear down the McDonalds! ?Unite as Brothers! ;) Burn the neocons at the stake like Giordano Bruno! ? Instatiate the Group of Seventeen for all time!
On Tue, May 19, 2009 at 3:11 PM, ?<urth-request at lists.urth.net> wrote:
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Today's Topics:
? 1. Re: ?Gene Wolfe Fans Talk Politics (Again) (Adam Thornton) ? 2. Re: ?Gene Wolfe Fans Talk Politics (Again)
(brunians at brunians.org)
? 3. Re: ?Gene Wolfe Fans Talk Politics (Again)
(brunians at brunians.org)
? 4. Re: ?Gene Wolfe Fans Talk Politics (Again) (James Wynn)
? 5. Re: ?Gene Wolfe Fans Talk Politics (Again) (David Stockhoff) ? 6. Re: ?Gene Wolfe Fans Talk Politics (Again) (David Stockhoff) ? 7. Re: ?Urth Digest, Vol 57, Issue 30 (David Stockhoff) ? 8. Re: ?Gene Wolfe Fans Talk Politics (Again) (David Stockhoff)
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Message: 1
Date: Tue, 19 May 2009 17:00:17 -0500
From: Adam Thornton <adam at io.com>
Subject: Re: (urth) Gene Wolfe Fans Talk Politics (Again)
To: The Urth Mailing List <urth at lists.urth.net>
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On May 19, 2009, at 4:56 PM, brunians at brunians.org wrote:
I calls them like I sees them. I prefer to look straight at things and name them plainly, rather than search for more comforting, euphemistic ways to express plain reality.
Ah, but here is our fundamental disagreement: I don't think
"extortion" is any closer to "plain reality" than "dues."
I am, in fact, arguing that the reverse is true. “But then I believe we probably, at heart, disagree on "plain reality."
Adam
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Message: 2
Date: Tue, 19 May 2009 18:03:48 -0400 (EDT)
From: brunians at brunians.org
Subject: Re: (urth) Gene Wolfe Fans Talk Politics (Again)
To: "The Urth Mailing List" <urth at lists.urth.net>
Message-ID: <14123.67.142.130.18.1242770628.squirrel at brunians.org> Content-Type: text/plain;charset=iso-8859-1
You're familiar with Thomas Jefferson, right Lane” They taught you about him in law school or college or something, I am sure, and you are just pretending to be ignorant for rhetorical effect.
Go on with you: I am feeling favorably disposed towards you now and have no real desire to explain Jeffersonianism to you, almost certainly falling into one or more of your lawyerly traps along the way. I argue for fun, not blood and would prefer not to engage with a professional unless you tie one lobe of your brain behind your back or something.
...[W]hat country can preserve its liberties, if it's rulers are not warned from time to time, that this people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to the facts, pardon and pacify them. What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time, with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure.
-- Thomas Jefferson
.
So your democratically-elected government gets to serve at the pleasure of a small but violent minority? I understand frustration with graft and waste, but calling for rebellion against a lawfully- seated state for carrying out the will of society?
At some point, you realize the value in cooperation, community and shared society. All civilization is based on this premise, that together a people can accomplish what one alone cannot.
The substitution of civil government/society with a profit driven market removes this universally-agreed as beneficial goal of cooperation and replaced it with a unilateral goal of profit. As wealth cannot be created ex nihilo, profit must arise from a producer taking more than a product is worth. This is only possible on a market where supply and demand are manipulated against the interest of the consumer.
Thus, the market is merely the latest iteration of the master-slave relation. It is the battlefield of class conflict. How does calling taxes imposed by a lawful sovereign equal theft, but the creation of profit not equal extortion by a self-selected, undemocratic oligarchy?
Individuals and individual liberty are only meaningful insofar as a civil legal system ensures they are protected. Authoritarian abuses by right and left ignore this. Free markets actively surpress it by economic manipulation.
Tell me again why I should kill lawfully-seated ministers of the civil government to preserve the rights of the people exploiting me?
Sent from my iPhone
On May 19, 2009, at 4:36 PM, brunians at brunians.org wrote:
I said this in a recent post. I will expand upon it.
Taxation, the extortion of money from the citizens, is permissible for things that are necessary. My list of necessary things includes the military and things related to the military, infrastructure and certain kinds of research. I insist that the involuntary nature of taxation be explicit and resist the inevitable attempts at expansion of the things-to-be-paid-for-by-taxation.
Of course, as a good Jeffersonian, I believe that from time to time it is necessary to shoot the bastards and start over. We're not quite there yet.
.
On May 19, 2009, at 4:19 PM, brunians at brunians.org wrote:
But we (the people on the other side of the argument) are none of us arguing for a complete lack of functional civil society and a Hobbesian all-against-all. Were you under the impression that we were?
I don't see how you can get from the position that all taxation is theft to the position that some governments are legitimate without giving up on the first one.
Adam
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Message: 3
Date: Tue, 19 May 2009 18:05:56 -0400 (EDT)
From: brunians at brunians.org
Subject: Re: (urth) Gene Wolfe Fans Talk Politics (Again)
To: "The Urth Mailing List" <urth at lists.urth.net>
Message-ID: <2352.67.142.130.18.1242770756.squirrel at brunians.org> Content-Type: text/plain;charset=iso-8859-1
Reality is what doesn't go away when you stop believing in it.
-- PKD (I think).
.
On May 19, 2009, at 4:56 PM, brunians at brunians.org wrote:
I calls them like I sees them. I prefer to look straight at things and name them plainly, rather than search for more comforting, euphemistic ways to express plain reality.
Ah, but here is our fundamental disagreement: I don't think
"extortion" is any closer to "plain reality" than "dues."
I am, in fact, arguing that the reverse is true. ?But then I believe we probably, at heart, disagree on "plain reality."
Adam
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Message: 4
Date: Tue, 19 May 2009 17:06:05 -0500
From: "James Wynn" <crushtv at gmail.com>
Subject: Re: (urth) Gene Wolfe Fans Talk Politics (Again)
To: "The Urth Mailing List" <urth at lists.urth.net> Message-ID: <BD4FACD5AAA943568DAC238C1E3F3911 at eMachinePC> Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed; charset="iso-8859-1"; ? ? ? ?reply-type=response
Adam, in "The Devil in a Forest", Wolfe presents the issue moral terms. If I'm benefiting from a service more than my neighbor, and also paying less for that service than my neighbor, why is that less shameful than just going to his door and demanding the money? Okay. Here are your three options:
Adam sez:
Of course, "fund it to the same degree," and "robbing from the rich to give to the poor," each themselves admit multiple interpretations. One way of "funding it to the same degree" would be to demand a flat amount from each citizen.
This is actually is the most fair way. But, that's asking way too much fairness from a society of Fallen human beings. On the other hand, if the poor don't like it, I suppose they could move to Mogadishu.
One way would be to impose the same percentage fee on each citizen, regardless of income. “This is usually what Libertarians claim to like. However, such a plan ignores the (I think fairly important)
observation
that the marginal value of money decreases the more of it ?you have.
Marginal value decreases for whom” Not to the people who work to earn it. You're argument divorces the amount of money made from the people who created it. It assumes that a guy making $25K a year is exactly like the guy making $250K a year except that one happens to make less. It ignores the risks the second guy took in capital, time, and effort in order to create that wealth. It also ignores the fact that the first guy gets far more BENEFIT from non-essential government services that the second guy.
Some
would say the differences therefore balance out so that both should pay the same rate.
The real reason has nothing to do with marginal values of money. It has to do with practicality. These services are proposed to get a majority of the voting public to like them. So you give out benefits to a larger number and have a smaller number pay the freight. No majority will not vote for 95% of government services if they are seen as fee-for-service. “You probably wouldn't. David Stackhoff implied that he found the idea increased taxes appealing because he didn't think he'd pay the bulk of them (or any of them”).
Hence a third way would be to impose a tax that causes the same amount “of inconvenience at all levels of income. ?This is approximately what progressive income taxes attempt to do.
How does a progressive tax provide "the same amount ?of inconvenience at all levels of income"? Or do you mean "we'll tax you more if you have more and we'll do the same to other guy who has more too"? What if we taxed every one making $35K-$50K at 95% and everyone else at 15%. Is that equally logical” But we don't just tax based on income either, do we? Because this is democracy in action. The law-makers cut breaks for certain voting blocks (home-owners, parents, college students, and retirees) while busting others (cigarette smokers and people who drive for a living).
"Robbing from the rich to give to the poor," is simply the same “argument stood on its head, of course. ?Does taxation go from ?"legitimate"
to
"robbery" at a value derived from the absolute dollar ?value of the tax, from a percentage of income across all income ?ranges, or to a degree of inconvenience across all income ranges”
How can I describe a progressive tax? Say five citizens get together to fund a new well. Hmmm...they could all pay the same amount to dig it, or they could all pay the same percentage of their wealth, OR....they could vote that Moe here--who also has a lake on his property so he doesn't need the well---will pay for half of it because, after all, he can "afford it". How is that different from a two foxes and a hen voting on what to have for supper?
J.
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Message: 5
Date: Tue, 19 May 2009 18:06:46 -0400
From: David Stockhoff <dstockhoff at verizon.net>
Subject: Re: (urth) Gene Wolfe Fans Talk Politics (Again)
To: urth at lists.urth.net
Message-ID: <4A132D76.3090700 at verizon.net>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed
Yeah, Mao and Washington would have found much in common.
--- On Tue, 5/19/09, brunians at brunians.org <brunians at brunians.org> wrote:
From: brunians at brunians.org <brunians at brunians.org>
Mao was a perceptive guy about some
things. Power and how to use it, for
instance. Decent poet also, I'm told.
Not a very nice man, but pretty smart.
If three people as different as Mao, Washington and Geller
agree about
something, I'd say it's time to sit up and take notice.
.
If Mao said it, it must be true.
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Message: 6
Date: Tue, 19 May 2009 18:08:42 -0400
From: David Stockhoff <dstockhoff at verizon.net>
Subject: Re: (urth) Gene Wolfe Fans Talk Politics (Again)
To: urth at lists.urth.net
Message-ID: <4A132DEA.20907 at verizon.net>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed
Of course you have.
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Message: 5
Date: Tue, 19 May 2009 17:44:27 -0400 (EDT)
From: brunians at brunians.org
Subject: Re: (urth) Gene Wolfe Fans Talk Politics (Again)