Topic: What do you believe is moral? - page 5. (Read 17785 times)

Huh? What alternatives? I'm just starting out with a hypothesis - "If it hurts me, it's bad." Can't we just explore from that starting point, and then expand into what things hurt me less?

Clearly I do not believe tazering me an locking me into a basement against my will is permissible under any circumstances, you reduce my point to absurdity.

I too believe that the current system of taxation is wildly flawed, but the alternative proposed here of 'no tax screw the state' is also flawed. The most efficient way to advance and care for society is through selfless mutual co-operation rather than sole actors how ever good their intentions.

To manage this, some contribution to the welfare of others and the environment we occupy is necessary. Thus 'a form' of taxation, in a fully transparent manner, which ensures the load is fairly and proportionally shared, would seem to be a better way than a free for all society, where the greedy prosper the helpless wither and the selfless are over burdened.

I have no real desire to get into a lengthy debate, on the subject, I just needed to make a point. 

whether taxation is moral or is immoral is the question debated here......Like the whole concept of defining morality; it is flawed becasue it is subjective. I propose their could be a middle ground, indeed the middle ground is potentially the most efficient and mutually beneficial form for society. The burden to each would be vastly lowered if it was shared fairly and proportionally. Taxation itself is not fundamentally wrong, its the methods and levels of acquiring the tax that are wrong.

To find this idealistic middle ground however, we must first have 100% truly democratic  and accountable governance with 0% corruption.

I shall dream on 

i dont want to talk about "the system" yet, that would introduce WAY to many variables. lets keep it simple for now, then we can introduce variables 1 at a time until we work our way to the level of the state. that way we can figure out the precise moment of disagreement and be clear on exactly what each other advocates, and why we advocate those things.

i come to your house and i tell you to give me X% of your income. i tell you that if you do not comply than i will be forced to arrest you and escort you to my locked basement. if you resist my attempts to escort you to my basement than i will be forced to tazer you. if you defend yourself against my tazer than i will be forced to shoot you. i tell you that i will use 100% of the money that i collect from you to fund the charities that i find most worthy. assume that i can prove that i gave all of the money to the most worthy charities, and suppose that i can prove that i did good hard research to figure out how to use that money to its greatest effect in helping those in need.

do you believe that it is permissible for me to do this to you? please provide a very clear yes or no before you proceed to explain anything else.

If you decided to give more than was required of you then I see no reason why you shouldn't, but to do this fairly and evenly would take more effort than is actually needed and to my mind is partially selfish. We work better together, or do you believe the sum of our parts is less than the whole. 

remove inefficiency and corruption from the system then 'a form of' taxation becomes the most effective method of redistributing surplus to areas that need it most.

so what if i didn't. what if i actually sent it to charities that i thought were most worthy and proved that fact to you. would it be ok then?

so you would keep all your gold and bury it or buy a 100" plasma telly, rather than give a small percentage to others, less fortunate than yourself?

you as an individual can't repatriate my wealth, but I would happily let an apolitical and uncorrupted society decide where a little of it is most needed.

im so glad to hear you say this! pray tell where do you live, so i can stop buy and repatriate some of your wealth for the good of humanity.  

So many self centred idealists here.  Whatever happened to the greater good.... 'Taxation is immoral'

Balls !  

Tax is a nasty word it has connotations, but the process of repatriating some % of an individuals wealth for the good of the society/humanity/environment of our fellow men or to the benefit of future generations is not immoral. Damn I can't even use the word immoral its a useless subjective term. Its about survival i'll help you or donate to you because it improves the world around us.

In a purely ideal and selfless world we would all donate that which we don't need to help others; be it for schools, medicine, food aid or environmental preservation. Unfortunately this is not reality. Greed, nationalism and power corrupt us, the best solution we currently have to this problem is tax. Call it stealing or immoral if you will, but the end result is the same.

To those that oppose taxation. I ask what is the alternative? Will you just let a people die becasue they can't feed themselves or afford the medication they require. Does a person have a right to quality education despite not being able to afford it? Should the environment be neglected becasue nobody is paid to protect it?

I propose you are confusing taxation 'In it's current form' as wrong rather than taxation in general. (something I firmly believe)

To my mind its not tax that is wrong, its the algorithms we use to define the levels of individual and corporate taxation that are wrong. I dream of a future where corruption and inefficiency are removed from the tax system. Individuals and corporations alike are assessed on a global and local scale simultaneously. Those that are in need are helped those that have excess provide. Those that protect and enhance are rewarded those that impose and pollute burdened.

In this new system without corruption and inefficiency the benefits would be profound. If only we could have a P2P method of decentralised democracy where decisions were made for the greater good of mankind and the planet. Taxation would be a simple transaction fee directed to those people or areas most in need.

The difficulty we face as humanity is knowing who or what is deserving of help as opposed to who and which companies should be providing  



  

 

I think you have a good point. Voting is in a sense a way of signing "the social contract". But not everyone votes and so it is still theft against the people who do not vote and do not agree to the terms of "the social contract".

You're dead wrong here. And I mean absolutely dead wrong on every level. You're so out to lunch it's disgusting.

The cost of private schools is almost certain far more than government funded schools relatively speaking for the poorer people. The bottom line is, since taxes are not even, the richer help the poorer pay for schooling. That in turn affords great opportunities for the overall prosperity of the community and nation.

In your world, only the rich get educated.

Whom I voted for is irrelevant (if you must satiate your curiosity, it was Obama the first time, Gary Johnson the second). As for abstaining from the vote, that used to be the case, true. However, things have changed, and are continuing to change, in a way that allow me to abstain from the vote, AND from having to participate in the financial, regulatory, and tax environment. Basically, it's becoming easier and easier to abstain from government entirely.



There is no but. Its immoral, and you're trying to justify it with "at least you get something for it." It's no more moral than if I was to steal your debit card, drain $10,000 out of your bank account, and send you a "Thank You!" fruit basket. You're free to rationalize it any way you want, though. I used to as well for a long time.



I see. Where I live, I think in most of my country, electricity company is privately owned, so obviously infrastructure can be provided by private companies as well. Are you really able to use and burn all the electricity you want, and never get an electric bill for it? You really should be mining bitcoin then!  As for the toxic water, what exactly is it that the government is able to contribute to the treatment that a private entity would not be?



How do you know this? Have you compared the rates private schools charge to the portion of everyone's taxes that go to public schools? I'm not saying you're wrong, I'm just wondering how you are sure.



Maybe, but there would be way fewer of them, so the total sum would be way cheaper, and you would actually choose what you want your money to go to. Don't like Big Oil? Don't pay their subsidies. Don't like big banks? Don't pay their bailouts.


Why can't roads be owned and administered by a single entity, like power lines, water pipes, gas pipes, or cell towers? You pay one entity that owns and maintains roads around a town or a large area, and pay extra to enter other towns. Plus, having to pay to use roads directly would allow people to see the true cost of roads (it's hidden as a tax now), meaning people would avoid driving, meaning there would be would have less sprawl around the country, people would be more tightly packed in cities, and other, likely faster and more convenient forms of transportation would become more popular (like rail for example).


What would you do if the water company started charging you through the roof? I have some ideas, but I'm curious as to how you would solve that problem.


Things cost money. It doesn't matter if that money comes from people paying for things personally, or from people being forced to pay taxes. In other words, what you are paying for with your tax dollars should, theoretically, cost exactly the same if you were all paying for it directly. So the only question is, what does the government do to make what you pay for cheaper? The underlying product costs the same to mine or produce. It costs the same to treat or to add features to. It costs the same to deliver to your house. So what does government add? Is it more efficient (stereotypically its not)? Does it pay employees less than a private company would? (well, yes, but that would also mean lower quality product).


Getting my moneys worth is exactly the problem though. I pay a lot in taxes, but A LOT of that money goes to the military to fight wars I don't want, CIA and NSA to spy on people I don't want spied on, farm subsidies to grow corn we don't need, financial regulations we don't need, environmental and other regulations that are so ineffective as to be wasteful and actually harmful, crime enforcement and encarceration for crimes that shouldn't be crimes in the first place, etc. etc. etc. I'm basically paying a ton of money, in exchange for a little "Thank You!"  fruit basket of roads, security, fire departments, and garbage collections (all of which can and is privately owned in other parts of the country) just to make me feel better  

That's how the average (normal like me) German thought under Hitler - to avoid pain they were willing to kill millions of Jews.
Morality is situational - if we find ourselves in a situation where self preservation leads to genocide we will allow it to occur.
Genocide occurs because few people are capable of heroic behaviour.
Everything we do is driven by a fundamental instinct to survive. We will dispose of our morality in an instant if it means we survive.

No. You can't. Because you're trying to demonstrate that the alternative hurts you less, which you don't actually know, because you've never lived under such circumstances.

What you perceive as a bad thing might be the best thing going.

Can we start with the axiom of "If it hurts me, and I don't want it to hurt me, it's a bad thing?"

Exactly.

How can democratically elected leaders "steal" from you? No matter who you vote for, they will have taxes. So why then, do people think it's unfair to pay taxes when they voted for the members of government that collect the taxes?

I've always found dogs more appealing than roaches as well.

Any formal system can be shown false (borked) with a well-formed statement resulting in a contradiction.  In other words, a system could be shown to be intrinsically false -- it's done all the time to expose borked systems.


With you.  A bigger dog than roach fan, but that's details.

in economics market falure is a term used to describe a situation where individual rationality does not equate to group rationality. morality is a mechanism that evolved inorder to allow humans to cope with the problem of market failure.

so imagine that we have three farmers. each one could fairly easily sneak into the others houses at night and kill the other two. if he did this at harvest time than he could harvest three times as many vegitables with the same amount of effort. the problem is that if each person has a reasonable expectation that he will be killed by one of the other two farmers than it no longer makes any sense for anyone to plant any crops and everyone is worse off for it. so whats rational for the individual translates to irrationality for the group. if on the other hand we could have some reasonable expectation that each farmer would only harvest his own crop than they can each plant a crop and everyone is better for it.

this is what morality is. its nothing mystical. its just evolution and its EXTREMELY useful.

Yeah - logic may be bullshit (not sure how you prove that without using logic) - alternatively we can just accept we are a kind of animal and just get on with our animal lives and not worry too much about it.
Dogs seem to do alright and cockroaches - I'm with them.

this is a paradox. you cant chose for someone to have the right to steal from you, as soon as you do that it isn't theft any more, its charity or trade.