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Re: Welfare [Re: ]
    #1318982 -

if i don't have children, is it wrong for me to have to pay school taxes, because other people with children exist?

Of course it is!

The poor generally have less sexual restraint, having more babies than they can afford, and as a childless taxpayer, legally yet immorally, I MUST pay for their offspring though it is of zero benefit to me. This is not logical, nor in my interest, nor even in the interest of society to encourage people to have children that they cannot fully support.


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The proof is in the pudding.

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Re: Welfare [Re: Swami]
    #1319022 -

Quote:
... as a childless taxpayer, legally yet immorally, I MUST pay for their offspring though it is of zero benefit to me. This is not logical, nor in my interest, nor even in the interest of society to encourage people to have children that they cannot fully support.


Amen to that Swami! Why should you be burdened with the tasks of supporting the consequences of other people's reproductive activities? YOU SHOULDN'T.


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To call humans 'rational beings' does injustice to the term, 'rational.'  Humans are capable of rational thought, but it is not their essence.  Humans are animals, beasts with complex brains.  Humans, more often than not, utilize their cerebrum to rationalize what their primal instincts, their preconceived notions, and their emotional desires have presented as goals - humans are rationalizing beings.

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Re: Welfare [Re: ]
    #1319091 -

Quote:
i think that the CEO who makes $500,000 a year probably hasn't had to work much more in the course of his lifetime than the migrant worker who makes $5,000. probably less, actually.


You THINK, but you do not know. Each case is unique. EVERY person I know who is a millionaire, became so by hard work, perseverence, delayed gratification and taking PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY for the improvement of their situation.

Quote:
i think that being rich or poor depends more on the circumstances that one was born into than how much work you've actually done.


My experience with people who are poor and people who have made themselves wealthy tells me that it is more a matter of how you conduct your life, how you plan, that you refrain from spending for immediate gratification but instead focus on building a sound economic future. The best way to lift people out of poverty is to teach them these values - they have worked for countless immigrants who came here with nothing and have become American success stories.

Simply giving people money because they are poor is really treating the symptoms instead of the underlying cause of their poverty. They will spend the money and still not learn how to make money, instead you foster dependence on the state. Lao Tzu said, "Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach him how to fish and you feed him for a lifetime."


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To call humans 'rational beings' does injustice to the term, 'rational.'  Humans are capable of rational thought, but it is not their essence.  Humans are animals, beasts with complex brains.  Humans, more often than not, utilize their cerebrum to rationalize what their primal instincts, their preconceived notions, and their emotional desires have presented as goals - humans are rationalizing beings.

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Re: Welfare [Re: Evolving]
    #1319159 -

It's a pretty safe bet there isn't a millionaire in America who could cope with the workload the average 12 year old girl deals with daily in a south east asian sweatshop. If Bill Gates attempted it he would no doubt drop dead of exhaustion within 3 months.

The poor clearly work far, far harder than the rich.


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Don't worry, B. Caapi

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Re: Welfare [Re: Xlea321]
    #1319210 -

Quote:
It's a pretty safe bet there isn't a millionaire in America who could cope with the workload the average 12 year old girl deals with daily in a south east asian sweatshop.


What does your mythical average 12 year old girl in a south east asian sweatshop have to do with the discussion of welfare?

Quote:
If Bill Gates attempted it he would no doubt drop dead of exhaustion within 3 months.


I think it's pretty safe to say that you haven't a clue about the physical health or stamina of Bill Gates. This has nothing to do with the discussion of welfare.

Quote:
The poor clearly work far, far harder than the rich.


Your broad generalizations are inane and born of a very limited and closed-minded view of the world. Some poor do not work at all, many wealthy people work very hard and very long hours. Some people are too foolish to admit this to themselves for it would shatter their simplistic grade school view of the world..


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To call humans 'rational beings' does injustice to the term, 'rational.'  Humans are capable of rational thought, but it is not their essence.  Humans are animals, beasts with complex brains.  Humans, more often than not, utilize their cerebrum to rationalize what their primal instincts, their preconceived notions, and their emotional desires have presented as goals - humans are rationalizing beings.

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Re: Welfare [Re: Swami]
    #1319404 -

the way i look at it is not that you have to pay for their childrens' education, but that we are paying for our school system.

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Re: Welfare [Re: ]
    #1319409 -

and if only those with children payed for schools... we'd be in pretty dire shape.

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Re: Welfare [Re: ]
    #1319785 -

Whether or not schools would be in dire shape or not is not my concern as I am not a parent.

On a seperate and unrelated note: Are you happy to pay for prisons to incarcerate your pot-smoking, mushroom-ingesting friends?


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The proof is in the pudding.

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Re: Welfare [Re: Evolving]
    #1320396 -

What does your mythical average 12 year old girl in a south east asian sweatshop have to do with the discussion of welfare?

Your philosophy that rich people work harder than poor people is so ignorant and childish as to be worthless. You show no knowledge of the real world.

I think it's pretty safe to say that you haven't a clue about the physical health or stamina of Bill Gates.

Lets just say it's a bet I'd take in a heartbeat. Gates working 15 hours a day breathin toxic fumes being savagely beaten for any mistakes and made to stand on his head in the corner. All on a handful of rice a day. Then going home to "sleep" in a metal shack. You think he'd make it, i don't. We can all make up our own minds.

Some poor do not work at all, many wealthy people work very hard and very long hours.

Could you make that statement the other way around? Or is that beyond you? Many poor people work harder than any rich man could ever dream of. This is simple fact. Try and live in the real word rather than your childish fantasies.


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Don't worry, B. Caapi

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Re: Welfare [Re: Evolving]
    #1320450 -

EVERY person I know who is a millionaire, became so by hard work, perseverence, delayed gratification and taking PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY for the improvement of their situation.

How many do you know? This certainly isn't my experience. Some work hard, some don't. Qualities I've noticed in many rich managers are the ability to talk endless nonsense, insincerity, the willingness to stab friends in the back, brown-nose to people above them and be all round worthless human beings. Hard work? The last boss I worked for got through a novel a day sitting in his office. If he'd worked as hard as many of the guys he employed he would've suffered total collapse inside a week.

Take the "millionaires" who owned railtrack. They were simply a bunch of accountants who happened to be in the right place at the right time. The government sold off the nationalised rail system at a knockdown price, these people bought it and were made millionaires overnight on taxpayers money. They then ran the buisness into the ground, ramping up prices, disregarding safety, slaughtering several dozen people in preventable accidents and awarding themselves 100-200% payrises year on year. Finally the government stepped and paid them off and took the rail service back into national ownership otherwise it would have completly collapsed. Did those guys "earn" their millions? Not in a million years.


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Don't worry, B. Caapi

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Re: Welfare [Re: Swami]
    #1320480 -

Whether or not schools would be in dire shape or not is not my concern as I am not a parent.

they should be. if america's schools were financed by only those who had children attending them, they'd be in real bad shape. we'd be in real big trouble if american students did much worse than they already do compared to their counterparts abroad.

On a seperate and unrelated note: Are you happy to pay for prisons to incarcerate your pot-smoking, mushroom-ingesting friends?

yes, interesting seperate and unrelated note. no, i am not.

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Re: Welfare [Re: Nomad]
    #1320853 -

Nomad writes:

That makes another Rolls Royce for the Somali president.

And the taxes you pay make for another fifteen foot mahogany desk (the tree having been torn from the rainforest) for the conference room of the head of the Social Services Department.

I'm sorry for you, but I have better things to do with my money in order to help the Somali people. Better things than sending it to you or the Somali government.

I'm sorry for you, but I have better things to do with my money in order to help the poor -- such as giving it to them directly or building my business to the point where I can employ them rather than letting the government mismanage it.

The planet earth is invaded by aliens. They collect everything and give it to the upper half of the planet, blah, blah, blah. Your take, please?

Ah! Now this is more like it. If we are dealing with humans, then we can apply human ethics to the question. Why did you not propose this from the beginning?

The answer is that the original owners have the right to recover their property. The fifty per cent of humans who "benefited" from the aliens' redistribution scheme are receivers of stolen property (willing or unwilling) and as such have no right to that property -- ethically they are obligated to return the property to its rightful owners, presuming such owners are still alive to press the claim. The courts would be obligated to decide in cases in which original ownership is unclear. However, the ethical principle is clear -- one may not keep stolen property from its original owner whether one stole it directly from its owner or whether one bought it (knowingly or unknowingly) from the thief or whether one received it as a gift (knowingly or unknowingly) from the thief.

This is a philosophical argument, not a political argument.

Agreed. From my very first post in this thread, I immediately addressed the question of welfare in philosophical terms. I stated that government-mandated welfare programs are immoral because they violate human rights. This is not a question of politics, but of ethics. As you are well aware, ethics is a branch of philosophy.

If you want to debate politics, go to the politics forum.

I realize that this forum is called the "Spirituality, Philosophy & Science" Forum. Hence, from my second post in this thread -- "Please justify to us, from a spiritual, philosophical, or scientific point of view why the existence of unfortunate individuals requires the initiation of force against peaceful individuals."

From my fourth post in this thread -- "The question of "welfare" in my opinion should properly be handled in the "Political Discussion" forum, but since the moderators have chosen not to move the thread, I believe we should try to tie the discussion SOMEHOW into one of those three categories, hence my emphasis."

Tell them that you want to discuss property.

You are the one who wishes to discuss property -- by talking about aliens shifting property from one group to another and claiming that anything more than the minimum required to satisfy my "need" (who decides that, by the way?) is not my property. I am the one who keeps bringing this back to the realm of ethics (philosophy) by pointing out that government-mandated welfare programs necessarily involve the violation of the rights of peaceful individuals through the initiation of force against them.

After all, social anarchism seems to be what the mushroom experience would suggest, namely, anti-authoritarianism with a care for your fellow beings.

You just described my point of view (but not that of social anarchists) precisely.

But I'm somehow disturbed that we cannot even come to a basic agreement of what I consider the very minimum of ethics...

And I am somehow disturbed that your ethics advocates the initiation of force against peaceful individuals who have harmed no one.

... namely, that we do not let any child starve when we have twice the amount of food to sustain the entire world population.

I have always advocated that the fortunate help the less fortunate. Why do you find my advocacy to be ethically repugnant? Is this not what you yourself advocate? I have no doubt that your bank account is quite small because whenever it exceeds your minimum needs you donate it to the homeless or to AIDS research.

If we cannot agree on a minimum of human ethics, there is no basis for communication. I could as well discuss thermodynamics with a dolphin.

In this thread, you have not discussed your ethics, except to say:

"Letting someone starve when there is an abundance of food means killing him, there is no moral difference." -- arbitrary assertion, false because it conflates inaction with action (and an ethically prohibited action at that).

"Violence against possessions (i.e. taking something away form someone and giving it to someone else) ranks lower than violence against people (i.e. initiating force to keep a starving man away from the food) in my ethical hierarchy." -- ignores the process by which possessions come into existence, conflates stealing food from another with keeping one's own food.

"But if not, I say, yup... feed the poor, eat the rich." -- Catchy soundbite with no supporting reasoning behind the expressed premise.

"Since voluntary donations do not seem to help here, I'm all for holding the gun to the head of the rich." -- False subordinate clause (voluntary donations DO in fact help) used to "justify" a main clause which advocates the violation of human rights.

I have been trying all along to draw you into an ethical discussion. So far you have provided no discussion, merely a string of arbitrary opinions stating that you feel natural law (human rights) is an invalid concept and that you feel property rights are also an invalid concept. Should you care to share with us how you arrived at these somewhat startling conclusions (as they say in Algebra class, "Show your work!"), I assure you I will give you more feedback than would a dolphin.

pinky


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Re: Welfare [Re: Grav]
    #1320858 -

Grav writes:

i've had people call me a communist for suggesting that everyone should have a certain standard of living (food, medicine, a home, an education)

Suggesting that such things are desireable does not in and of itself make one a Communist. The determining factor is how one answers the question, "At who's expense?"

However, in my opinion that kind of discussion is best held in the Political Discussion Forum, not here.

pinky


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Re: Welfare [Re: ]
    #1320871 -

mushmaster writes:

you're a libertarian, no? and an individualist?]

Politically, I am a Laissez-faire Capitalist. Spiritually, I am an atheist. Philosophically, I am an individualist and an Aristotelian.

what do you think about income tax?

Clearly immoral. However, I believe we are now straying into the field of Political Discussion.

what do you think about taxes in general? do you believe in a totally free, uncontrolled economy?... i'm just wondering.

It depends what kind of taxes and what those taxes are used for. Again, I believe this crosses the line into Political Discussion.

i believe that very little of what i consider mine i earned or worked for. everything i have was essentially given to me. i consider myself very fortunate for what i have, and don't mind sharing.

Everything I currently have I worked for, nothing I own (except the occasional birthday present) was given to me. I don't mind sharing. What I DO mind is having my stuff taken from me.

i think that the CEO who makes $500,000 a year probably hasn't had to work much more in the course of his lifetime than the migrant worker who makes $5,000. probably less, actually.

Even if this is true, how does that justify taking away the CEO's stuff at the point of a gun?

i think that being rich or poor depends more on the circumstances that one was born into than how much work you've actually done.

In many cases that is undeniably true. How does being lucky entitle one to less rights than those held by the unlucky?

there is so much of this inequality that i do believe that something must be done to even things out a little.

I agree. The fundamental ethical difference between you and I is that I draw the line at the initiation of force.

pinky


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Edited by pinksharkmark (02/20/03 01:39 AM)

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Re: Welfare [Re: Phred]
    #1320991 -

However, the ethical principle is clear -- one may not keep stolen property from its original owner whether one stole it directly from its owner or whether one bought it (knowingly or unknowingly) from the thief or whether one received it as a gift (knowingly or unknowingly) from the thief.

Good. In other words, you agree with me that initiation of force in the past can make initiation of force in the present ethically correct. You agree with me that your previous point, "The INITIATION of force (or threat thereof) can NEVER be justified, only the RETALIATORY use of force, and even then only against those who initiated (or threatened) it in the first place", is, philosophically, bullshit.

That's all. Everything else is not open to interpretation. The geopolitical distribution of wealth in the present is the result of terrible violence in the past. That is not my opinion, it is a scientific fact, and it is not a scientific fact which is somehow debated among historians. It is as much a scientific fact as the law of gravity is. In other words, I'm not going to defend this or even support it with arguments. If you were interested in those facts, you would look them up for yourself. You are not. You are interested in justifying things, and so you came up with this nifty theory about the initiation of force. Escapism is your problem, not mine. I think reality is cool enough.


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Re: Welfare [Re: Nomad]
    #1321020 -

EAT THE RICH!!!!!!!!

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Re: Welfare [Re: Phred]
    #1321056 -

What I DO mind is having my stuff taken from me.

How far would you take this? Do you believe the handicapped should be left to their fate? Animals? Would you be happy to see most of the handicapped die if you could take home an extra few bucks on your salary each month?


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Don't worry, B. Caapi

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Re: Welfare [Re: Nomad]
    #1321097 -

Nomad writes:

In other words, you agree with me that initiation of force in the past can make initiation of force in the present ethically correct.

Not even close. I presume you are trying to say that because I point out that someone who willfully prevents the rightful owner of a possession from regaining it is initiating force, that the rightful owner is also initiating force? Clearly the rightful owner is doing no such thing.

To clarify the fundamental principle at stake, let's concretize it with a real world example:

My brother mugs a guy on the street, taking his Rolex. My brother then gives me the Rolex as a birthday gift. I have no way of knowing that the watch has been stolen.

A few days later, the owner of the watch knocks on my door, and asks if my brother has recently given me a Rolex warch. Surprised, I say, "Yes! How did you know that?". The guy replies, "I have reason to believe that is the watch he stole from me. Let's see if this is my watch. Open the clasp of the watch and use a paper clip to flip up that hinged cover. See if there is an inscription under that cover which reads 'To Ezekiel Pharnethanian from the gang at Zedco'. If there is such an inscription, then it must be the watch your brother stole from me." He then pulls out his driver's license and birth certificate and mastercard and sure enough, they all read Ezekiel Pharnethanian, and the picture on the driver's license looks just like the guy in front of me. He then pulls out a stack of pay stubs from his jacket pocket, and sure enough they are Zedco pay stubs made out to Ezekiel Pharnethanian.

I unclasp the watch from my wrist, and notice for the first time that there IS a little hinged cover inside the clasp. I flip open the cover and read out loud the inscription -- 'To Ezekiel Pharnethanian from the gang at Zedco'.

The guy reaches for his watch, saying, "I am so sorry to have troubled you." I knock his hand away and say, "Tough beans, bub -- I'm keeping it." He reaches for the watch again, and I push him down the steps. He comes back up the steps, grabs one end of the watch, and pulls the watch out of my hand. I twist his arm up behind his back, he drops the watch, I grab it and run into the house, locking the door behind me. He pounds on the door for a while, then leaves.

Which two of the three players in this scenario initiated force? My brother, obviously, in the act of stealing the watch in the first place, and me, by forcibly preventing Ezekiel from regaining his watch. Ezekiel has initiated no force whatsoever.

The geopolitical distribution of wealth in the present is the result of terrible violence in the past.

Nonsense. How are the deposits of oil under Iraqi sands the result of past violence? How is the wealth of the man who invented "liquid paper" the result of past violence? How is the musical skill which enabled Placido Domingo to become wealthy as a singer the result of past violence? How is the fact that a 10 acre farm in the Ukraine is capable of producing massive amounts of grain while a 1000 acre farm in Alaska is capable of producing none the result of past violence?

That is not my opinion, it is a scientific fact, and it is not a scientific fact which is somehow debated among historians. It is as much a scientific fact as the law of gravity is.

Clearly, it is neither scientific nor factual. See above.

In other words, I'm not going to defend this or even support it with arguments.

It has been my invariable experience that when an opponent in a philosophical debate utters such a statement, it is because he cannot defend or support his position with arguments.

If you were interested in those facts, you would look them up for yourself. You are not.

It is a fact that some fortunes were amassed through the use of violence. It is not a fact that all fortunes were. In the country with the largest number of millionaires in history (the United States of America) the majority of fortunes were obtained through ethical means. Look it up for yourself if you are interested in facts. You appear not to be.

]You are interested in justifying things, and so you came up with this nifty theory about the initiation of force.

I didn't come up with it, I merely recognize its truth. For some as yet unspecified reason, you choose not to recognize this truth; instead your personal ethics lead you to believe that the initiation of force against peaceful individuals is acceptable. If you choose not to examine how you came to this conclusion, I certainly have no wish to force you to do so.

Escapism is your problem, not mine. I think reality is cool enough.

An odd comment, considering that the "non-initiation of force" principle of ethical behavior is fully grounded in the observable and testable nature of human beings (i.e. REALITY), which is why it has been independently discovered by virtually every human society in recorded history.

pinky


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Re: Welfare [Re: Phred]
    #1321100 -

Bravo, well done.

Cheers,

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Re: Welfare [Re: Phred]
    #1321147 -

I somewhat agree with your views Pink
my problem is with the condition with the world, how America has become the nation it is, and how it fuels itself.
I mean, by your ethics, shouldn't we be returning the east coast to whatever american Indians are left.
No, I don't think that is a realisitc idea, but it does completely wipe any leverage with claiming that this is "our property".

If a brutal axe murderer breaks into your house, and kills you in your sleep, is it okay if his innocent children move in to your place after, since they are just 'peaceful individuals' and since your house is empty now...

There are lazy and hard-working people in all classes of society. Your amount of money does not dictate your character.
I think it's a fact that this country can not be run without everyone's help so we might want to start showing each other a little more respect and alter the system to make it a little more fair.
things definately need to change. the world is in an intolerable state of mind control and poverty...

i guess one can hide from this fact as long as they want to.

sorry if i got off topic

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General Interest > Philosophy, Sociology & Psychology
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