Cholister -
“You don't seem to understand this...or, more likely, you just don't give a shit. Say that, suddenly, you had no friends, no home, no family - horrible idea, right? So, you're out on the street, very depressed, with no idea what to do next... and what happens to you? You die, because some cruel fuck has decided that you JUST AREN'T WORTH IT.”
Yup I am an utterly heartless bastard because I understand that you do not save anyone by making a servant of others. Taxation as a means of ‘charity’ is just theft by another name. The ultimate in “aggressive begging”.
In that situation I would trust to charity based on my previous character – anything else is making a beast-of-burden out of people who should be free and dignified. Would you cage the worlds for the amusement of the depressed?
Of course in our society we do not encourage charity based on previous character. We demand theft based on foolish nonsense that believes it is fine for the feckless to trample on the responsible.
To demand responsibility is not cruel. It is simply realistic. Harsh yes, but not cruel (cruel is harnessing those who work to provide for those who WILL not – or should we all just become doley scroungers in which case who will support us)?
“some cruel fuck has decided that you JUST AREN'T WORTH IT”
Like I have said before; your alternative please?
Haus –
“Leap - while you continue to spend my tax on your children, you are by your own admission a thief. If you can live with that, then fine. I can live with you stealing from me as long as you don't come round and nick my telly.”
I do not demand anything of you. By all means please withhold your taxes and we will see if your (individual) impact is greater than mine would be if I simple pulled my kids out of state funded education. I disagree with a system but can do nothing positive by becoming a martyr (the system will continue).
”Hmmm...elective taxation, I think, is run in some parts of the US. The problem is that people tend to go for fluffy causes - you know, health, education, that sort of thing. A transferable tax system would be interesting, though - a great way to exercise democracy between elections, for starters, if it was assigned, say, yearly.”
Transferable taxation?
”Leap is, essentially, arguing to return Britain to about the situation before the Poor Law of 1535, as far as I can tell - alms are given to the poor by individuals, with the more "worthy" individuals on the providing side being the parish priest and maybe the burgomaster, and the "worthy" individuals on the other being the ones who get the munificence. It's a touchingly village-green idea, which represents the community as perhaps the size of a village at most, and nothing outside the village being the concern of the villagers.”
Actually it would work on a Parish level quite well. It is called charity, based on the following principles (see below) and the previous character of the person receiving. Please explain how taxation differs from theft (or does it simply remove the inconvenience of being stolen from on a personal basis – it is taken by an ‘over thief’?).
“ The "education" note in his last post supports this - to make it work you would have to "educate" the rich to bankroll the poor, the only difference being that they would be doing it more locally and more according to their own whims of who was "deserving". Basically he seems to be looking for a world in which he personally is not taxed, and yet everyone and everything is *lovely*, thanks to "educated" human philanthropy, except for the people he does not approve of who can all starve and die.”
I am sorry, what planet where you actually on whilst reading all this into my post?
The education needed is the embracing of the centrality of privacy and modesty for all. Where you get your crackpot interpretation from is beyond me!
The following is lifted from the “forced democracy” topic – apologies for the double posting………….
There are a few ‘commons’ that apply to all adult humanity:
We are personal beings – our nature is to be self-managing rather than puppets / drones and to be personally directly involved in the things that make us human (rather than delegating such to others - share rather than delegate).
We are social beings – it is our nature to be social and sociable (although sometimes we need time alone, that is a situation that forms the minority in our make up rather than the majority).
We are multifaceted beings – to obsess/specialise in a tight focus area is dehumanising and leads to a lack of sense of perspective and indeed to the great evils humanity have committed.
We are all equally capable of our human nature – egalitarianism is the standard….there is no need/call/room for an elite (except in the relationship between teacher and pupil; and then only so far as is necessary to raise the student to the level of ‘graduation’ (a condition we are all capable of (with the exception of the severely handicapped))).
We are creatures with an awareness of history – we can perceive the fundamental stability and long-term nature of the world (and us as part of that world) and as such favour principles that are in sync with that understanding and that of our own nature as seen above (social and personal), namely: reliability, honesty and a desire to ‘get along’.
When we deny the centrality of these things, in the name of whatever cause, we deny the reality of who we are…replacing the personal with the ‘interfered with’, the social with the ‘de-intimate-ed’, the multifaceted/generalised with the specialised, egalitarianism with elitism and the stable with the fragile. They should only be ‘ignored’ in the rare case that the person we are interfering with (!!!) does not recognise them, and then they should only be ‘ignored’ in as much as is necessary to make them central again (in a similar way that children, in their ignorance, should not be granted them fully until they are capable of holding to them).
Waxy dan –
“Okay, scanned through it (just a scan, I admit, so correct me if I'm getting it wrong).
You're saying that enforcing these principles is okay?
Isn't that what tax is?”
No.
I am saying we educate on these principles and use force only as a VERY last resort in rare cases (this is no ‘mandate for the trigger happy’). |
I'll try to remember the word I'm thinking of.