Topic: Socialism - page 2. (Read 7997 times)

The owner of the property.


It is. One person may feel more threatened by an action than another.


You decide, with the understanding that others will judge you by how you respond. If you shoot someone for stepping on your lawn, without even a warning, that will obviously be considered as excessive use of force (you consider it as such, right?), and others may retaliate against you, either by seeking compensation, or ostracizing you.


If they are stabbing you, and you are defending yourself, sure. If they stabbed you and left you, and you are just seeking retribution later, that's a different issue.


That's between you, your shooter, and your community. If you initiated force by shooting that person, whether to rob him, or for no reason, then you basically gave up the right not to be shot, unless you figure out how to repair your standing in the community.



That's the difficult part that can at times be blatantly obvious, and at times might require judges or arbitration to settle.


Sure. Feel free to insult them back.


If it is a legitimate threat on your life, as in they make it known that it's not just a verbal threat without intent to follow through, then maybe? All depends on how you expect your actions to be viewed in the community you wish to remain a part of. The end result you are hoping for is to continue to have others respect your right to your own life and property. It's up to you in how you maintain that respect.



NAP is you living among a group of other people who agree to the NAP. If your neighbor started killing everyone who threatened him in some way, how would you react? Would you consider that your neighbor is justified in what he is doing? Or would you consider him to be using excessive force, and refuse to have any dealings with him? Hopefully the neighbor will take that into consideration, too. You could even split it to where the person he killed initiated minor force by tresspassing, while the neighbor essentially ignored the tresspass by not acknowledging it, and initiated force against that person's life. No one is claimingthat NAP is "as simple as..." That's where judges, arbitrators, and already established legal precedents come in. NAP proponents aren't advocating throwing the entire legal system out the window and starting from scratch, either.



As I understand it, it won't be a debt you have to pay, but a fine. Then if you refuse to pay the fine, you will be asked to serve a time in prison. If you refuse to serve in prison, you will be dragged there by force. If you refuse the force, you will be shot.


Hopefully there won't be prisons, or police, in an anarchist NAP society.  If you get summoned to show up in court because you aggressed on someone's property, and you refuse, then the issue is simply unresolved, and the person you aggressed against, as well as anyone on their side, can continue to ignore your right to your own property. Being ostracized and not be allowed to participate in community and business can be way worse than prison.


Technically, if they come for your stuff without reason, you refuse to give it to them, and they threaten to shoot you in order to force you to give it to them, then yes. Ethically you would be in the right. Just make sure you are aware of the consequences.
The issue with that gets more complicated, though, in that if they ask for taxes for things you have already used (drove on roads, got clean water, etc), then it's money that is actually owed them. They are in the right for asking for it. If it's for things you were forced to pay for, despite not wanting to, like wars, illegal spying, etc, then that's different.

You know, it's a principle, not a law. Unless you're a sociopath, you know what it means. Admittedly there is a lot of room for misinterpretation, but that is also true of nearly any other principle. "Honesty is the best policy" unless of course the Nazis are asking about whether you have Jews hidden in your attic, which really doesn't invalidate the principle, does it?


If you refuse to pay your taxes, they will send people with guns to take you to your trial and will escort you to the place where you get to live while you're not getting the benefits of paying your taxes. If you refuse to come along you will have those guns pointed at you and if you try to run you will be shot. Whatever consequences are doled out, it is backed by the threat of violence.

That's not necessarily wrong but one ought not be in denial about it.

Well, quite frankly I don't see the point of it then.


Who decides when your person or property is "threatened"? It seems as though it would be very subjective. And what decides the limit of your retaliation. If someone stabs me, can I follow the NAP and shoot them? Or is that initiating greater aggression? If I shoot at the person, do they now have the right to kill me? Is their earlier violence justified because I encouraged greater violence?


So if it's all about who initiated the aggression, what is "initiation" defined as?

If someone insults me, is that an "initiation"?
If someone threatens to kill me, but doesn't actually go through with it, can I kill them in "self defense"?


Well that question about whether or not it's justified is what bugs me. It seems as though there's really no set definition for the NAP. It basically says don't attack people, but it's fine to kill as many people as you want as long as they threatened you in some way.

You can't start a fight, but you sure can finish it.


There's no debtors prisons anymore. If you don't pay taxes, then you don't get the benefits of paying them. You won't be shot...

But if the simple "threat" of imprisonment is enough to warrant retaliation, does that mean that I can steal from someone and then when the police come, I can kill them because they threatened to imprison me? And if paying taxes is a threat under the NAP, does that mean I can go around killing government workers?

For a "non-aggression" philosophy it seems rather harsh...

I'll agree that there are root causes for the high prices, but if the prices were not high, people wouldn't be going bankrupt. Bring prices down (whether it is by government decree or market mechanisms—it doesn't matter for this part of the discussion) and people get affordable health care and don't go bankrupt any more and everyone is happy.

So the dysfunction in the system would be no big deal if it didn't drive costs and prices up, pricing people out of the healthcare market and forcing them to rely on insurance.


That's a real part of the problem, but last I looked at the numbers it was not the bulk of the problem. Maybe you have newer numbers?


Making more rational choices about insurance and out-of-pocket costs are a step in the right direction. Me doing it? Not so much. But if more people did, well, pharma companies charge $500 per pill because they know that the insurance companies will pay it no matter what, and because they can manipulate doctors and insurance companies into prescribing and paying for the newest medicines that are still under patent. When people start choosing 50¢ or 5¢ per pill alternatives, the pharma companies will lower their costs to compete. It may still be $5 or $15 per pill if they have a pill that is still covered by patent but competition with existing products will bring prices down, if only there is a little transparency and if we stop totally insulating customers from costs.

And I'm not exaggerating. There are pills out there where your doctor will prescribe you the newest $15,000 per month medicine and it will cost you a $10 co-pay. You could actually choose a generic where you would have to take two pills per day instead of one, but it is exactly the same medicine, and it would be $15/month. Why would a doctor prescribe the $15/month pill? there is a real benefit to having to take only one pill per day instead of remembering to take it twice. It's better for the patient to get the 1x/day pill. Why would the patient choose the cheaper pill? It costs the same to the patient.

And that is the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the kinds of shenanigans the pharma companies pull because of the lack of consumer transparency.

And you know what else? Insurance companies LOVE to pay more. Why? Because they pass the costs on in higher premiums but the fact that healthcare costs skyrocket means that people are terrified not to have complete head-to-toe coverage. So the more crap the pharma companies (and other providers) pull, the more the insurance companies laugh their way to the bank.


This just is not true. I live in one of the most expensive areas in the United States and these days my income is significantly below median. I have zero savings. I probably will not have a real meal today because I don't have the money for it. I am as close to bankrupt as you can possibly be; I could probably file for bankruptcy today and have no questions asked. If I had a sudden accident that led to a $10,000 medical bill, I could set up a payment plan with the hospital and not even get a nasty letter or a ding on my credit record. I have done this, and paid my bills. It's not easy or fun but it is possible. A low-deductable plan, on the other hand, brings crippling monthly insurance costs. I would soon be homeless if I were paying for a plan with a $250 deductable and all my office visits and medicines were covered.

It doesn't take a lot of time and effort to "micromanage" your healthcare and it doesn't take a huge stash of cash. All it takes is putting the same attention into buying healthcare services and insurance that you put into buying groceries. Actually, a whole lot less attention.


I don't negotiate. I have never negotiated with my doctor. I pay my doctor my doctor's regular office visit fee. I ask what the cost is for a proposed treatment, I look up prices. I ask about alternatives. Again, this is not some special skill. It's called having a conversation with my doctor. My doctor says I'm one of his only patients that does that and he says he finds it refreshing. But it is not some magical medicine-negotiation-fu. It's just having a conversation, asking questions, and having my doctor make rational recommendations.

The closest I have come to a negotiation is when the NP wrote a new refill for 30mg tablets. I looked up the price and saw that the 30mg tablets were 90/month. If I chose to take three 10mg tablets per day instead it was $9. So I emailed asking whether she would write a new prescription for the 10mg tablets 3x/day. That was ten whole minutes out of my life.


You're absolutely right to be suspicious of your HR department telling you that, but I think that with a tiny amount of research you'll find that even if what your HR person suggested was a boondoggle that the general principle will save you money.


This suggests what I have been saying: people need to pay more attention and make better choices.


OK. I don't refute your prediction. But I'm troubled by the fact that the "solution" to the healthcare crisis is to intentionally make things so much worse that people become desperate enough to have single payer when there are solutions in front of us that could knock the pharma and insurance companies on their asses and bring health care costs back into reason.

Look at the portion of our economy that goes to the healthcare industry, compare that to what it was twenty or fifty years ago, and then tell me that my "company town" prediction isn't close to the target, if admittedly overly dramatic. And if you think that we're going to go single payer without setting it up in such a way that that proportion doesn't increase and go directly into the pockets of the people who currently run big pharma and insurance, you have more faith in the charitable nature of Congress than I do.

Thank you for that work of fiction. See here: https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.2893060

No, I disagree.  You're confusing problem with symptom.  The high prices (and poor overall outcomes) of US healthcare relative to other countries is a *symptom* of the dysfunction in the current system.  It is not, by itself the cause.

One of the big issues resulting in high individual pricing is that the healthcare revenue pool is currently not well-aligned with the cost pool.  This causes a huge amount of unpaid costs and preventable emergency care costs to be tacked on to those who responsibly have insurance and pay their bills, including business-financed health plans.  Again issue->misalignment, symptom->high prices to those that actually pay for healthcare.  Alignment of revenue & costs is a key part of the solution.  Freeriders be gone.

The other big issue is citizen unwillingness/inability to afford healthcare planning en-masse.  Why do people find themselves with crushing medical debt, unprepared, and even uninsured?  There's a whole number of reasons this happens, and only a few are individually controllable.


It may be a terrible idea to you, and I bet to many alert people with time to micromanage their healthcare, plan ahead, and have a stash of free cash for emergencies and "wellness" care.  This is not the profile of the average US citizen, this is not even your 30th percentile citizen.  I'm happy for you and you seem to have succeeded so far.  However I disagree your stategy is widely applicable, or that it's a good idea to export it to those who are known to be ill-prepared to execute it.

Partial self-insurance is not a workable/sound idea for a population who, for various reasons, is unable to save even for their own retirement.  75% of US people nearing retirement have <$30K saved.  Are you recommending these seniors, unable to save for a patently certain event like retirement, to go with the emergencies-only plan?  If not, then you're just advocating for a variation of the freerider program we had prior to ACA...a "freerider-light"?


Again, you may be good at negotiating, and it may provide you with instant savings.  The skill and inclination to execute this isn't common, and it's not a strategy that will succeed for your average (especially below-average) population.  There is an enormous, built-in imbalance of power in healthcare, and the patient is ALWAYS in the weakest (pun intended) position to negotiate.  Why hang your hat in the weakest of all pegs?

"...get to make reasoned choices about the health care options in front of me"....really now?  This must be close to verbatim what I read on a notice years ago...Human Resources smooth talk for higher premiums, higher co-pays, and higher out-of-pocket limits.  But hey, they're doing us all a favor, we should all feel good 'cause now we're all empowered and motivated, and have skin-in-the-game, and I guess the HR people can sleep at night.  I'll tell you, a decreasing amount of people actually find these statements convincing.  Not because they're not achievable by some (i.e. there's a bit of truth in every good lie), but because by now everyone is aware they're impractical for most.

I do agree there are costs to be saved, but I have little faith in these savings being realized by grassroots haggling (or pulling bootstraps for that matter).

You talk about regular checkups.  The costs to deliver these are tiny compared to non-preventive care.  Yet, a surprisingly large proportion of patients don't take advantage of annual wellness checkups even when included in their "subscription plan".  I assert that the rate of preventive care will always be hopelessly worse with self-payers.  Given the documented cost-benefit of catching conditions early, again another area your suggestions, as successful as they may prove to you, just don't scale and don't improve the overall system.

Really?  The cycle will *never* end?  Well, signs already point to this not being the case, but no one can rule out we'll go a few more years of escalating HC costs.
That being said, you paint an impossible unraveling.  We will NEVER become a "company town" where we all work to pay for HC.  The people will install some form of "single-payer" long before we're anywhere near your prediction.  Not a chance.

My prediction is that we'll be taking another run at a public option again in ~10 years time.  No "company town".

FA is still here because we're conversing in an anarchistic environment.  If this website was operated as a democracy, we would have the ability to force everyone to gag his speech (and as a totalitarian regime, this thread would've been self-moderated, and only I would've had that power to literally wipe his messages as if they never happened.)  Instead, we allow ourselves (with the help of technology, of course) to decide whether or not we'd like to listen to him.  I prefer it this way, not because I want to, or don't want to, listen to FA, but because I don't want to give the majority the ability to gag me from everyone.  Here, we clearly see how rights work: I give FA the right to speak, for he gives me the right to speak.  Certainly, we could write down something on paper that said, "I hereby decree that the right to speak freely should be upheld" blah blah, but the writing is just intent; the only way we uphold this right is by allowing others the rights we would like to have; this is an example of actual change in the world, and not simply writing; if you've ever met an Unchristianly Christian, you'll know what this means.  Ultimately, this boils down to freedom: I give you the right to be free, and I am free because I give this right to others; those who disagree, who feel they have a right to be free while others do not, is what really kills me.  However, rights don't always have to be granted: the moment we admit that it is okay to kill, we allow ourselves to be killed; this is a very important case of when a right should not be upheld.  I don't believe I should have the right to kill you, because I don't want to be killed.  This is how law comes to existence; law does not highlight our rights, but highlights what rights we do not grant one another. 

This is precisely why it is dangerous to give our collective right to create and take away law from one another to a single entity, which is not required to subject itself upon that law simply because it is the only law-creation entity within its borders; it is essentially the same as saying, "I have no say in what rights you or I have; only the government has that right."  In this sense, government is always corrupt, as it assumes it has more rights than others, as if it were a god; once this entity amasses enough power, it can change the course of our lives in any way it wishes, for any purpose (lately, and probably always if I wanted to look into it, for wealth, and by extension, power; same goes for government and religion.)  It always begins with anarchy; all other organisms of the world, and the world itself, and all of space for that matter, exist in anarchy, just as there are only atheistic babies before they must (literally) be trained to be what specific religion they will take part.  The state lives upon that anarchy, and seeks to change it in the way it sees fit, by housing the world and renting it out to us.  We can certainly talk about the ways best to rule ourselves and our peers, but I believe this notion, that we can successfully govern everyone else but can't even govern ourselves, is becoming outdated; we know a lot more now than we did when we invented government, and I don't think we need divine forces to guide our way any longer.

So, as I mentioned prior, the problem that environmental conservationists face is the same problem that I face; the problem is to change minds.  Government makes no difference; if man has power to give government, which would then be given to whatever problem there was, man has power to give where he so chooses; the difference is, does he have a choice?  For example: if getting involved with wars was something we collectively agreed on, we would be throwing ourselves at the military, yes?

1. You're an idiot because you think your post has a point, but it's just a huge waste of time in relation to these discussions
2. My complaint was that killing wolves disrupts the cascade, not eliminates it, and your post says nothing about the means of protecting environment ecosystems, just about how they work.
3. All this crap was covered in highschool oceanography and lowest level university geology class, so yes, I knew it.

I was pissed off, because I wasted such a long time reading your whole post, waiting to read something new or relevant, but it didn't answer anything about who should be responsible for protecting things, why it should be them, or how. It's basically a nature lesson, and the whole post can be summarized as:

Nature is complicated, therefore government is needed, because...

Apologies for disrupting the discussion.

You were confusing non-aggression principle (basically, "I will not be the first to initiate force") with nonviolence (basically, "I will not be violent, no matter what, period). NAP doesn't mean that no violence will ever happen.


Whenever someone threatens your person or property.



It's not so much self defense v.s. aggression, it's who initiated the aggression. As long as someone continues to threaten your life, they are continuing to initiate aggression. You can shoot them in defense, but you can also defend yourself by shooting their gun hand, by sabotaging their weapons, by hiring security to keep them away from you, or even asking why they believe you owe them your life and attempting to resolve the conflict without violence.


Same as above, it's not nonviolence, it's who initiated force. If the defender killed the attacker, he is still only responding to the initiation of force, and is still following the NAP. The only question is whether such extreme defense was justified, or if the situation could have been resolved more amicably (e.g. if the attacker was just drunk and waving a gun around, but was not serious about wanting to kill someone)


Rabid dogs, and anyone who believe they have a right to your property and life, and are willing to use force to obtain it. Forcing you to pay taxes or fees for things you don't need or wasn't, at the threat of being arrested, imprisoned, or shot, is considered initiation of force in NAP.


A question to the general group: What laws do you want to exist or to be implemented by a majority, which are not derived from "don't initiate force/screw with people's life and property?" Modern examples are typically bans on things.

I don't need a set of laws to run a Bitcoin node, follow Bitcoin code rules, assign value to bitcoins, and send that values to others. Bitcoin let's be do that regardless of laws. Likewise, I don't need laws to establish ownership of my own property, to respect others property, to tell others if they are infringing on my property, and if needed, to defend my property. There could be laws respecting a NAP system, or there could just be me, telling people to get off my lawn, and threatening to shoot them if they do not (though that mapight get me in trouble in many places). Even in a community with majority who don't respect NAP and think everything should belong to everyone, that majority will be forced to respect the minority of NAP followers simply because the NAP guys will be defending their property. And yes, sure, the anti-NAP majority could come in guns blazing to kick the NAP types out, but all they will have succeeded in is kicking out a few of the NAP followers, no more than shutting down a few BITCOIN nodes. It's an idea, and those can't be killed (not easily).

There was civilized discussion until you guys posted this (although it was Rassah's fault, he came out of nowhere). Go argue somewhere else, or contribute. Calling each other names does nothing.

But there is no middle. If a vote is made for whether marijuana is legalized, for instance, you can either have it (support one side) or make it illegal (support the other). Same goes for guns, civil rights, abortions, etc.


Agreed. I don't want votes to happen in a day. There would have to be televised debates showing both sides.


This assumes that the 51% is more prone to bad decisions than the 49%. Why is this so?


Same thing I said before: why is the 51% more rash and prone to violence than the 49%. The Westboro church is a very small percentage of people yet they're one of the loudest. If anything, the majority of people are more rational.


Same thing I said before. Why is the majority prone to bad decisions but the minority isn't? For example, what about gay rights right now? I think that we can agree that no harm can come from letting them marry. But even if the majority of people want rights, it doesn't matter because it takes more than a simple majority... And in that case the minority would be wrong.


I think that the amount of time spent on an issue will determine the accuracy of the decision. But why go with the minority's decision, if we can't reach a consensus?


I really don't know at rate we should proceed. I guess we should put it to a vote  .

You're an idiot because:

1. You think you have a point, but don't.
2. You're actually wrong about the specific complaint you have.
3. You're the one who didn't know about any of this stuff until I pointed it out, but you try and act like you did.

Read my long post again, and try to comprehend it - I know it must be hard for you. And read the recent link I provided so won't keep acting like an idiot.

Hey, I'm not the one who said that removing one of the components of the trophic cascade removes the whole cascade itself.

We are missing the excluded middle (where the state does nothing).  It is less a matter of whether the majority or minority "get their way" and more a matter of whether some percentage of the population gets to use the power of law (guns and jails) to do something.  If so, what that percentage should be.

We get bad law when we act too fast.

The "mob rule" of satisfying a simple majority who elect to kill or steal from others for their benefit or satisfaction does not sit well with me at all.  
It does not make it any better that >50% will be angry for failing to kill or steal, it still ought not be done just to satisfy a majority (of those who voted).
Even if 60% are upset at not using the law to steal or kill, that might still be right and just, given the ethical breach for using the law against their fellow country people for that purpose.

There are even likely some things that are simply wrong to do even in cases where 99% vote that it should be done (Stupid Talk Show Host example).  The greater harm of murder over the harm of frustration with what STSH said on air doesn't provide sufficient justification.  The lynch mob should not have their way just because they show up with pitchforks and torches.

Voting may also be done under non-factual information, prevalent media spending, emotionalism, or all sorts of situations that may skew an outcome.  Upholding a simple majority as the arbitrator of justice and source of law has dangers and unforeseen consequences enough that we have "a republic, if we can keep it".

For civil matters it may be ok to have one level of majority, but for criminal (where life and livelihood are at issue) there is a higher bar in court cases.  But we do not extend this to our legislative effort.  We create new crime definitions and criminality through a simple majority of 51%, and often bundle much new legislation within a single measure.

The result being that we have ever-greater legal restraints and ever-greater judicial authority in a one direction path toward statism and socialism through democratic incremental addition.  The question is: at what rate do we proceed?

Exactly. The argument for delay is get at what the people truly believe, not just what they would vote for if you caught them at the right (or wrong) moment. The downside is that if something gets into law it becomes difficult to remove.

I wouldn't want laws to come into play instantly. I still want a process for them to come into place. I just want a system where the majority rules. I don't think it's fair that the minority should have their way. Why do they get their way and the majority doesn't?

In the example you gave, I don't believe that 51% of the people would truly believe that the host should be put to death. Many people would be angry. Maybe some would want his show put off the air, or even to imprison him. But the majority of people do not want to put someone to death for something trivial like that.

Building debate and delay in and create laws based on principle rather than specific instance help this. Most of the time 99.999% are opposed to murder. But then there is a gameshow host that makes some truly disgusting comments and 51% of the people want him dead. Fortunately, the laws aren't about that person. That person is protected by what the majority believes despite the momentary madness of the crowds: that killing someone who hasn't hurt anyone is wrong. Even so, it will take months if not years of debate and the authoring of legislation for the murder laws to be changed to accommodate the hatred of this one person. In that time, cooler heads ought to prevail and people are likely to realize that it goes against their values to make an exception to the murder laws because of something that was said on a game show.

I'm not saying it is impossible for the majority to exert tyranny over the minority but with checks and balances, the passage of time, and the enshrinement of people's rights into the law (which will come because the majority supports it) the risk of such a '51% attack' on a system of laws becomes much lower than with direct democracy.

51% is arbitrary. I was just using it to represent the majority. However keep in mind, that there's no way to disregard a law.

Say we vote on a new amendment. 65% of the house agrees. 65% of the senate agrees. 36 states agree. The law doesn't pass. Thus, the government has gone with the will of the minority over the majority. More people are angry now than if the government had passed the law, all in the name of fairness.

That's why I believe in the majority. It makes no sense whatsoever to give the minority what they want. 51% seems ridiculous. But it's more ridiculous to go with the 49%.

It happens all the time in other ways too, Organ donors who could save several if only they would die...

But also interesting, if we accept majority rule as the arbitrator of ethics.  This raises the question of the 51%.

Why not 55%, 66%, or 75%?  Is avoidance of aggression only worth 1%?  51% seems an arbitrary threshold, and also a low value on non-aggression vs social cohesion (which may or may not be good in some cases).
Some law seems to agree. Cloture=60% (US Senate), Delegation of Danish Soverignity 84%, US Constitution amendment 2/3 house + 2/3 senate + 3/4 States

Now that we are aggression whores, and will initiate aggression if enough folks think we ought to do so, it is just a matter of setting the prices and menu.

Should exacting a new type of tax require a super majority?  Does it depend on the claimed reason for the tax?