Topic: What do you believe is moral? - page 20. (Read 17785 times)

Those no pay no spray fire departments are poorly run. When I lived in a town with a private fire department I received a letter from the local fire department when I moved into my new house. Basically the cost was $20 per month for service or they had a per use fee, if the whole house was on fire the highest fee was $2,000. They stated that my insurance would likely cover that cost. And because the fire department had such a high rating, the highest in the state, I received a discount on my home owner's insurance that was more than the $20/month I would have paid. I opted out of paying figuring that the likelyhood of my house burning down in the next 100 months was pretty low, and my insurance would cover it anyway.

I recall that same town had a private garbage service. While the county next to us had a public garbage service. There was always news of the horrors of their public garbage service while I had one problem with my garbage company (I think they charged me wrong or something) so I dropped them and went with a different garbage company.


Oh, and I throw in McDonalds because I imagine that if restaurants were government run there would be people on here refusing to consider the concept of a single company having tens of thousands of restaurants all over the world. I am surprised that people would allow something as essential as the food we need for survival to be provided by private companies.

Sorta like homesteading...which was a common way of making use of the mass tracts of unused land in the west.

They still have homesteading in Alaska.

To this day, roads are funded by taxation, though not by "income taxes" alone, as you seem to suggest.  In particular, we have "road tax" -- a tax paid by by motor vehicles before they can use public roads.  See Here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Road_tax

I asked google: "who pays private fire departments?"  These are the first results i got for an answer:
1. No pay, no spray: Firefighters let home burn - US news - Life | NBC ...
2. Experiment in Private Fire Protection Fails for a Westchester Village ...
3. Firefighters Let Home Burn After Owners Didn't Pay $75 Protection ...


Either Ronald McDonald or The Hamburglar pay for McDonalds, not sure.  Weird question.
No one suggested that you can't have a privately owned water company -- just drill a well & be your own boss!  You can even sell to your neighbors.  Go nuts.  

TL;DR:  No one is arguing that it is metaphysically impossible to build a road without the help of the government.  It is possible, though it is both historically & increasingly uncommon.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_rail_transport_in_the_United_States#Early_period_.281826-1860.29

In the US, before income taxes railroads were a private venture, roads were state tolls with fees to cross some bridges, the telephone companies quickly set up the telephone network based on the profit they were able to achieve, McDonalds restaurants were put up by private franchises, private fire departments are started by investors and charities, usually by local people that the fire department serves. My local water company was started as a water delivery service much like milk used to be delivered, it grew to the point that it could start piping water to homes until eventually everyone in the local community uses their service. My sewar company is private as well.

The monuments were started mainly from the donations from societies, fraternities, clubs and individuals. Though eventually usually taken over by the government.

The State, King, Kaiser, Highborn, Senate.
Monuments in DC? The WM began as a private project with help of the freemasonry and was finished with government given money.
Don't know for your country. In Germany it was the gvmnt.
McDonalds? Seriously?
And again, there are nearly no private fire depts.

Who paid for roads before income taxes? Who paid for the monuments you see in DC? Who paid for the telephone infrastructure? Who paid for the McDonalds franchise? Who pays for private fire departments? Who pays for private water companies?

It's as bad as this one:  
Every time flick the switch, a light bulb goes on.  I've flicked the switch 10000 times, and each time i did -- the light bulb went on.  Cheeks moistened by tears of joy & snot, i exclaim:  Eureka!  The switch *causes* the light to go on!
Wrong.  Happened to be nothing but correlation.  
How can i haz causation if correlation is never enough?

Edit:  blahblahblah already pointed this out here (scroll to "inductive reasoning"): https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/what-do-you-believe-is-moral-244258
didn't see that.

Okay, since you seem to like that sentence so much, let me rephrase it for you:
without governments to pay for it, there will be no paved roads.
And since that is practically the same, let me make that into an open question:
Without governments to pay for it, who else will?

this is why firstassent is blocked and you are not

anyway i dont have time to reply to this

Well you make reasonable arguments that are not logical fallacies. So here is an example of a bad argument that he made:

And here is an example of a good argument that he made:

Man you are annoying as hell. Learn to read before you accuse others of being illogical. I never said that paved roads existed only in places where a government existed. The romans build roads across most of the continent of europe. they were a nation at war with almost everyone at that time, and built those roads in order to better occupy other races and secure their borders. But hey, you won't even read that, because you only read the first sentence and then ramble on about others being illogical. Suit yourself.

It is a simple fact, which as nothing to do with logic, that most people/companies do not have the ressources to build and maintain roads (for the public). SAP is one exception, they paid for their own Autobahnausfahrt (Highway exit I guess) in Walldorf, Germany. Thats about 3 km worth 20 million €. So PLEASE tell me again how illogical I am when stating that roads are, in fact, expensive as hell and you can't afford to build one. IF you can actually build a road yourself, you find a wallet link in my signature, please be so kind as to donate 0,0001% of the money it would cost to build your own road to the next supermarket near you.

Logical fallacies?  orly?

You're saying that governments and paved road exist in correlation, not causation, right?  Brilliant.  Enlighten us sniveling plebes with your smartiferous learningz:  How exactly is causation established?

so your next argument is that since paved roads have only existed in places where governments have existed this means that with out governments paved roads can not exist? this is obviously a logical fallacy, how on earth can you not understand this. Jesus man, buy a book on logic and read it please.

lets say that i am an artist and i have painted many paintings and all of them have been painted in grassy fields. does this then mean that anon136 paintings can only be painted in grassy fields? no of course not.

lets say that at every instance in history every person named shaniqua has lived in the ghetto, does this then mean that people named shaniqua are incapable of living in places other than the ghetto? of course not.

do i need to go on? if you arnt going to buy that book please please please atleast read the wikipedia article on logical fallacies. this one in particular is called the correlation causation fallacy.

Beyond stabilization technology used in modern cellphones, autopilot technology use in civil aircraft, satellite communications used in sat phones and satellite web access, video transmission used in TV broadcasts, and fancy joysticks and buttons, there's not much to drones other than radio controlled RC planes. The only aspect that is pure government is GPS location. Sorry if I gave the wrong impression. I've had flight experience, and know quite a bit about drones and their tech.

If you think you'd like to provide roads, why not ask the gob'ment to sell one to you?  
What?  The government is not interested in selling?  Well, in a free market economy, if you can't motivate the seller to sell, i'm afraid there's nothing you can do  
You're free to try your luck with another government, just like you're free to find another bakery if your baker charges too much.  It's called price discovery.  
On the East Coast, i'd recommend RT. 95 -- a very popular road around here -- great location!

I thought drone technology was government taking toy remote control model planes that existed for, practically, ever, and strapping missiles on them? Did government create toy RC planes? Or radio to control those planes? Or just the missiles to strap onto those planes? I really don't know, but maybe you do?

^^
Because of this.

My argument is only an example of the right usage of the posters survey. But hey, if you think my argument is illogical, look at history and see for yourself. Again, not the american history, which is way too short. Without governments, there are no paved roads. Easy as that. If you want to know why, just do a little math; Road building and upholding of a certain standard of quality is very expensive. A 1km piece of a German Autobahn costs between 6-12 million €, depending on the terrain. And that is just the pure building cost. But that is only Germany. Let's take a look at another country: India.
For the same kind of road (maybe a little worse in aspect of road quality) it's about 1,3 million €.
That said, this is only the price for a Highway. Unpaved roads cost less, but it is still a lot.  I did NOT say there would be no roads, please read my statement again. BUT the roads you would have would not be paved, maybe not even maintained, and certainly not good enough to get anywhere fast.
The main purpose of roads, in historical context, is to get armies, supplies, goods and message faster from one point to another. In that context there were 2 kinds of roads: Paved roads and trading routes; the first was mostly built from strategic points to other strategic points, the latter was mostly a direct route from port to port or from market to market (salt trading through the dessert, silk roads, spice trading). So you are right that there can be roads without government support, but those are not for heavy use and certainly not for longer travels.

So basically your argument is that since governments provide roads if governments did not provide roads than roads would not be provided. I hope you can see why this is not logical. I mean it might be true but there is no reason to believe it is true prima facie, which is what you appear to be implying.