Ticketed for Kissing

Yes, although these laws are a violation of private property.

I agree. Although freedom to discriminate doesn't interfere with anyone's freedom; you can't regulate responsibility.

Read more on "libertarianism". It's not anarchy; it's not without rules. Just with as few rules as possible, only the necessities.

Really? Thomas Jefferson was a libertarian, and most of them opposed big gov't and gov't interference.

 

Log in or Sign up to hide all adverts.

Merely your opinion based on your biased ideology.

Discrimination certainly does interfere with people's freedom.

What the heck are you babbling about now? You read more on it. I gave no indication I think libertarianism is anarchy.

They didn't act like it. Quite the opposite, in fact.

 

Log in or Sign up to hide all adverts.

This and that

No state can issue a business license to an enterprise that is openly discriminatory. Of course, I almost entirely expect that next you will tell me you oppose the idea of licensing a business.

Why don't we start with this:

The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived, without apportionment among the several states, and without regard to any census or enumeration.

(United States Constitution, Amendment XVI)​

So it would seem the federal income tax is constitutional.

And if we look farther back:

The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts and excises, to pay the debts and provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States; but all duties, imposts and excises shall be uniform throughout the United States

(United States Constitution, Article I, Section 8)​

Some might point to Article 1, Section 9—"No capitation, or other direct, tax shall be laid, unless in proportion to the census or enumeration herein before directed to be taken."—but that was amended by XVI, noted above.

So help us out, please. Just what are you talking about?

• • •​

And I say third time's a charm. If they try again, let them go.
____________________

Notes:

Constitution of the United States of America. 1787. Legal Information Institute at Cornell University Law School. July 10, 2009. http://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/constitution.overview.html

 

Log in or Sign up to hide all adverts.

That's because of your silly laws. Business shouldn't be the business of gov't; just like marriage, or who you can love. Leave it to people to choose! What's so hard about that? Just like a lemonade stand...that's a business, that's what a business is. A business isn't any more real because the gov't says so.

Taxation is theft, and theft is wrong. There is no argument for it. You say we ought to provide for the poor, provide this or that.....and that's perfectly fine. Yet why can't you and others who agree provide it with your money, and not force everyone to pay? Please tell me how it's any of your business how I spend my money. You wanna provide this or that? Go ahead, but leave me out of it.

That's all libertarians ask. And yet you insist on forcing people to pay taxes. Why not make them voluntary? If it's involuntary, it's theft, plain and simple.

• • •​

Texas has been one of the most productive states in the US; you want to let us go? Whatever. I don't really care.

 

The libertarian utopia

One thing your wanna-be libertarian bender overlooks is that regulatory laws have come about and evolved over the years because businesses, left to their own, have created the need for them.

Environment, hiring, payroll reporting, shift hours, safety, and more. For instance, an excerpt from Marx's Capital:

... three railway men are standing before a London coroner's jury — a guard, an engine-driver, a signalman. A tremendous railway accident has hurried hundreds of passengers into another world. The negligence of the employee is the cause of the misfortune. They declare with one voice before the jury that ten or twelve years before, their labour only lasted eight hours a-day. During the last five or six years it had been screwed up to 14, 18, and 20 hours, and under a specially severe pressure of holiday-makers, at times of excursion trains, it often lasted for 40 or 50 hours without a break. They were ordinary men, not Cyclops. At a certain point their labour-power failed. Torpor seized them. Their brain ceased to think, their eyes to see. The thoroughly "respectable" British jurymen answered by a verdict that sent them to the next assizes on a charge of manslaughter, and, in a gentle "rider" to their verdict, expressed the pious hope that the capitalistic magnates of the railways would, in future, be more extravagant in the purchase of a sufficient quantity of labour-power, and more "abstemious," more "self-denying," more "thrifty," in the draining of paid labour-power. [sup]55[/sup]​

And that note, number fifty-five?

55. Reynolds' Newspaper, January, 1866. — Every week this same paper has, under the sensational headings, "Fearful and fatal accidents," "Appalling tragedies," &c., a whole list of fresh railway catastrophes. On these an employee on the North Staffordshire line comments: "Everyone knows the consequences that may occur if the driver and fireman of a locomotive engine are not continually on the look-out. How can that be expected from a man who has been at such work for 29 or 30 hours, exposed to the weather, and without rest. The following is an example which is of very frequent occurrence: — One fireman commenced work on the Monday morning at a very early hour. When he had finished what is called a day's work, he had been on duty 14 hours 50 minutes. Before he had time to get his tea, he was again called on for duty.... The next time he finished he had been on duty 14 hours 25 minutes, making a total of 29 hours 15 minutes without intermission. The rest of the week's work was made up as follows: — Wednesday. 15 hours: Thursday, 15 hours 35 minutes; Friday, 14½ hours; Saturday, 14 hours 10 minutes, making a total for the week of 88 hours 40 minutes. Now, sir, fancy his astonishment on being paid 6 ¼ days for the whole. Thinking it was a mistake, he applied to the time-keeper,... and inquired what they considered a day's work, and was told 13 hours for a goods man (i.e., 78 hours).... He then asked for what he had made over and above the 78 hours per week, but was refused. However, he was at last told they would give him another quarter, i.e., 10d.," l.c., 4th February. 1866.​

Setting the compensation issue aside for the moment, did it not occur to the railway managers that it was simply untenable to have the people operating locomotives on duty for twenty-nine freaking hours?

So I would urge you to consider that the laws you find so unjust derive, for the most part, from the insidious demands of people who would put their personal profit before the safety of the society around them.

Yet you would celebrate it because, well, the individual is just that important. Fuck society, right?

You're making a religion out of it. Tell us, sir, would you call off the whole idea of civilized society, then? Because ....

Tell you what: If someone rapes and you or a family member, you pay the wage of the police who come to investigate and collect evidence; you pay the laboratories for analyzing the evidence; you pay the wage of a prosecutors—which will be inflated to match their fellow private-sector attorneys—to try the crime; you pay the judge a proper wage for hearing the case; you pay the jurors for their labor—and remember that right now they only get a token that amounts to far less than minimum wage and a pittance travel compensation—and you pay the prison for his incarceration because no amount of bullshit labor in the shop or yard is going to make up for the cost of housing that prisoner. What's that? Can't afford it? Too bad.

But don't go on a blood vendetta. That might be risky. Some of us social-minded folks might just happen to decide that the cycle has gone too far, and put up the money to investigate, prosecute, and incarcerate you. And even though we probably should be concerned with the bastard who hurt you, well, that's just too bad because we probably won't hear about it until the trail has run cold and the evidence lost.

Welcome to society, sir. If you want to call it off so we can go to that sort of libertarian utopia, that's fine with us. We'll just sit back and chuckle grimly at the futility of your appeal.

All they ask, indeed. Should justice be voluntary? Oh, right, there's no such thing.

Welcome to society. You're part of it. Get used to it.

They're also one of the most annoying. And unappreciative of our union. A lot of good their oil and other resources will do them when the rest of the world sanctions and blockades them over the inevitable human rights abuses that are part and parcel of your responsibility-free liberty.

Of course, you'll always have Iran, Venezuela, and Cuba to trade with. At least until their people get their way and they become ... what's the phrase? Ah, yes, "more perfect unions".

Welcome, sir, to society.
____________________

Notes:

Marx, Karl. "Chapter Ten: The Working-Day". Capital, Vol. 1. 1867. Marx.org. July 10, 2009. http://www.marx.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch10.htm

 

The market adjusts accordingly. My point is, gov't legislation does not create productivity, or safety.

Why should they put anything before that? And these people represent a minority, I'm sure; most people are decent and compassionate. You, for instance. In a laissez faire world, you would be among those attempting to help the poor, and so would I, and so would others and together we can. Individual choice, Tiassa. Individual choice; including the choice to help, and the choice to avoid bad business.

Society is made of the voluntary interactions of individuals. What you are suggesting is that society can only exist if enforced, which makes your society illegitimate at its core.

Civilization stems from certain ideas; the idea of the division and specialization of labor in order to better provide food; the idea of living together for protection....these things have little to nothing to do with taxes, or freedom, or tolerance for that matter. Brave New World, here we come! That is civilization.

I will have no choice! What you still do not address is how my problem is your problem. Who else is going to pay? It is rather like saying "Hey, my house burned down? It's ok, I'll just take yours!"

Tragedy sucks. It sucks more when people that don't have to suffer are made to, though.

Who gets to decide the parameters of this society? You? Me? Should we have a Sharia society? Or perhaps laissez faire? Or perhaps communism?

Is it simply the majority? What if the majority wanted to exterminate the Jews? Should we stop exterminating Jews, and call off civilized society, just because they matter more than fucking society?

The main problem is that we don't agree on justice. Justice is simply revenge, and you don't need gov't for that at all.

No, we're individuals voluntarily interacting. And again, who gets to decide how this society operates?

If you say so. Although you do rather annoy me with your talk of "human rights" and "justice" as if the bottom line is unimportant to you. There's no such thing as human rights. There's no such thing as justice, past the idea of simple revenge.

Who gives us our rights? God?

My society or yours?
____________________

 

Well except for being completely wrong you might have had a point. The GI bill for example was directly responsible for the productivity gains of the 50's, 60's and 70's. Business left on its own had an abysmal record for safety. People were treated as use up, discard and replace.

Actually justice is in part the prevention of revenge.

 

No, justice is revenge. I'm not saying there's anything wrong with revenge, I'm only saying that justice is revenge.

 

Well what a terrible offence! All the passants must have died from a heart attack because of the shock of this very very obscene scenario that did unfold in front of them! /sarcasm

 

"passants"?
You're into heraldry, Sam Browne belts or passers-by?

 

Whoops..mon français.

 

Do you enjoy using sewage-containing Chinese toothpaste? Or maybe the poisoned chinese lead toys that parents are buying for their kids? Or perhaps you'd like to revisit the days when the American meat packing industry was unregulated, so you could contract mad cow disease and watch as your pathetic little body deteriorates? Perhaps you would prefer to breathe in more illegal lead and carbon car emissions so you could get yourself a lovely case of lung cancer?

Yup... unsafe products sure do go away on their own. *rolls eyes*

Historically speaking, capitalism has never "adjusted" to produce safety measures and collapse safeguards. Example: the Great Depression -- economically one of the worst, most desperate time for America in the 20th century. Do you have any idea what this country would be like if we had NO food, drug, and consumer product regulations, and people were allowed to fill stores with ANYTHING they wanted, even if they knew it could make you very sick and probably die? We'd be taking a huge step backwards by adopting an idiotic policy like that and you would probably be deathly ill in a hospital right now. People would stop buying food in stores because of how dangerous it is, they would stop buying cars because tires no longer had nationally standardized specifications and instead they exploded into flames on the road firestone style, and the American economy would consequently crash into nothingness. That's not capitalism "sorting itself out"... that's capitalism destroying itself.

SOURCE: History

 

(chortle!)

It always does, doesn't it? After all, industrial corporations only dumped their waste into the water system because people liked drinking poisonous water. Then the horrible government came along and told everyone what to think, and suddenly the market had to adjust to government-manipulated artificial demand.

Do I have that about right?

True. It is supposed to enforce safety.

Let me just check in here: Am I supposed to take that question seriously?

With most people, I would just figure they were taking the piss. But it's not so clear in your case.

Indeed. Not everyone can be a CEO, board member, or company executive.

In a laissez faire world I would have been dead along time ago because of my choice to not do more to fit in with the crowd. Of course, the fact that I was, oh, a child and didn't have the money to pay for surgery to round my eyes, reshape my cheekbones, and bleach my skin a couple of shades in order to look more white is purely my fault, so I see your point.

And those damn blacks. They didn't need civil rights legislation. They just needed to stop being so stupid as to choose to be born black.

If I ask how old you are, it's not a stab after maturity or anything like that. I'm just wondering how much of the world you remember before the internet. See, it used to be considerably harder to find out about product safety insofar as people couldn't just go and Google their question. Analgesics that caused birth defects, cigarettes—cigarettes, for fuck sake—with filters made of asbestos, cars that would explode if rear-ended or just randomly drop their engines when you stepped on the accelerator for the green light.

Hell, there was a rise of specialty pet food in the late '80s and early '90s that saw Iams become a major player. Before that people figured pet food was pet food. And then, slowly, they started learning differently because, well, that was when the information became available to them. Like I said, they couldn't just Google their concerns and find out what's what.

Even so, in the internet age, people didn't expect dog food to be made with coal waste.

So what happened? Did the market misjudge the consumer? Or did consumers suddenly decide they didn't have a taste for melamine anymore?

I know ... people are just too lazy to become professional chemists themselves in order to test their own food. Between that and getting an advanced degree in economics in order to make sure the AAA securities they're invested in are rated properly, going to med school in order to make sure their kid's doctor isn't fucking up the diagnosis, and going to night school for a mechanical engineering degree so that they can know the car (and house) they're buying is properly built ... I mean, really, man. I'm right there with you. What the fuck is wrong with these lazy bastards? What, do they need someone to do everything for them? If they can't be bothered to undertake the simplest efforts to protect themselves, fuck 'em.

Nobody says you can't opt out. Oh, wait, I'm wrong about that. Suicide is still a crime in many jurisdictions. I'll agree with you on that one; it shouldn't be a crime to try to kill yourself.

More to the point, though, society is not a one-way thoroughfare. Society becomes civilized through convention, and this is theoretically a self-reinforcing process. Not that it always works that way; indeed, humanity is still struggling toward making it work at all. But we are not born knowing everything, so if, for example, a child is born into a brutal existence in which all manner of abuse is common, what is that child affirming or opting out of? And what does that adult, should the child survive long enough, carry through life?

If a group comes together for protection and preservation, it seems antithetical that it should condone murder within its boundaries. After all, why come together for protection from the outside just to tear themselves apart from the inside. So a basic idea of civility is born. Over time, instinct and emotion at first, and later logic will compel more diverse conventions: Do not steal, do not kill, do not rape. Oh, the tyranny of it all! The next generation is born into conventions they never had a choice to join.

And so it goes.

"The history of all hitherto existing society," wrote Marx and Engels in 1848, "is the history of class struggles." Early human civilization established certain patterns of authority and subservience, and these for millennia preserved themselves to the effect that some were born to rule, and others to serve. What our modern nations are engaged in is the continual struggle against that basic inequality. Paine wrote that hereditary political authority is "as absurd as an hereditary mathematician, or an hereditary wise man; and as ridiculous as an hereditary poet laureate".

And yet this is what your pseudo-libertarian hatred of societal convention appeals to. Consider the idea of a road. People despise taxes because they are paid to a government. But would you rather pay a private entity for the right of passage? You might not appreciate an increase in your taxes to pay for road maintenance, but what if the private road toll doubles so the CEO can build a mansion in the tropics? Would you smile and hand over a ridiculous fee that is higher than taxes because, hey, at least it's not government?

In this way, the owners of the roads can control trade and thus the economy, thereby preserving a de facto, if not officially sanctioned ruling class.

And certainly you can opt out of it. Perhaps you will find a route to carry goods that does not infringe on anyone's claim of property. If not, pony up what would most likely, given human nature, be exorbitant fees, and do so happily because, hey, it's not government. So the profits from your hard work will be greatly reduced while those who built a simple road will see their wealth increase proportionately, and their children will inherit their fortune.

This is, indeed, the sort of process that history is not unfamiliar with, and the resulting entrenchment of socioeconomic power is exactly what civilized societies strive to overcome.

And your appeal also tends toward a reduced quality of life and increased dangers. Clean water? Why have a municipal system? Get clean water yourself. Of course, there might be a factory nearby that is polluting the groundwater, so the wells are poison; and it might well—if not for regulatory legislation under the rubric of the coercive right of government—be so polluting the air that the collection of rainwater is likewise perilous. So pick up your rifle and do something about it, I suppose. Have fun storming the castle.

What you will find in any reasonably careful study of history is the detail of human experimentation in the field of society. Diverse systems with many variations have, indeed, been tried. While they have found certain successes, nearly all of them have ultimately failed. Indeed, the only ones to not have failed entirely are those still extant among nations.

It is highly unlikely that you could devise a system that cannot be rationally considered against history. It is well and fine if you wish to propose that we simply ignore history, but you will find that more people will reject that idea than agree with it.

One of the problems with such an individual devotion to theoretic liberty is that people are diverse, and thus any one assertion of proper liberty will conflict at some point with another. And, of course, for each individual, we might recognize that the only truly correct semblance of liberty is their own.

So people compromise. Where there is general agreement, there is little conflict. Certainly, we can find those who would say laws against murder are wrong, and we ought to be just fine with sociopaths because we can always form us up a posse and go shoot down the son of a bitch, but such a proposition will find that the majority of people don't want to spend their lives that way.

They have more to do with one another than you understand. Tolerance relates to protection and productivity, which in turn relates to freedom. Taxes are a compromise. Historically, the factory decimated the specialized craftsmen and gave rise to the modern corporation against which the small business—the backbone of economy, as some would assert—struggles. And yet it is from the abuses of corporate masters that safety, environmental, and employment and hiring regulations spring. We have been through this before.

Sarcastic or not, I would ask you to spare me the Brave New World bullshit. I'm a liberal, and Brave New World is a conservative dystopia:

There was something called liberalism. Parliament, if you know what that was, passed a law against it. The records survive. Speeches about liberty of the subject. Liberty to be inefficient and miserable. Freedom to be a round peg in a square hole.

(Huxley)​

The deification of productivity is what liberals like myself despise. The subordination of humanity to statistical definitions of propriety is the forfeiture of liberty. A liberal notion of freedom does not appeal to a zero-sum competition, but rather the wealth attained through cooperation. If we could build a world in which everyone was wealthy, we would. And someday we might actually reach the point that the only thing holding us back from such an outcome is sentiment. Your appeal to liberty includes the freedom to abuse other people. Your demand includes the right to enforce superiority over another. And don't tell me it doesn't; your disdain for history and effective myopia in considering the outcomes of the future does not excuse you.

On the one hand, that's such completely laughable bullshit hyperbole that one wonders if you intend to be taken seriously at all. To the other, how do you feel about insurance? No, not the requirement to carry it, but the scheme in general? Why should your premiums go to repair someone else's misfortune?

Oh, for fuck sake. Your solution would be to simply increase the number of people who have to suffer.

There is a simple answer to the first question, and it's the people who make up the society. The more complex way to look at it is to simply call off society every twenty or so years, and let each new generation have its crack at fashioning the human endeavor.

Most people recognize that if the sociopaths are left to run amok, any one of us could be the next victim.

You, however ... you're determined to cast yourself as a victim under any circumstances that suggest you have an obligation to your fellow human being. Pardon us if we don't weep for your unjust burden.

Indeed. But the reasons for this are often complex. Some disagree on the particulars, while others dispute the whole concept. For instance—

—if that's all you're capable of understanding about justice, there's not a whole lot anyone can do to reconcile you to it.

Revenge should be the last thing justice is about.

You might as well ask who gets to decide how the laws of physics interact. You are part of a larger process, and are certainly welcome to opt out of it.

Your bottom line is worthless.

Your handicap. Your problem. Don't make it anyone else's.

Actually, logic.

All of ours.
____________________

Notes:

Marx, Karl and Friedrich Engels. The Communist Manifesto. 1848. Australian National University. July 11, 2009. http://www.anu.edu.au/polsci/marx/classics/manifesto.html

Paine, Thomas. "Being an Answer to Mr. Burke's Attack on the French Revolution - part 7 of 16". The Rights of Man. 1791. USHistory.org. July 11, 2009. http://www.ushistory.org/Paine/rights/c1-016.htm

Huxley, Aldous. "Chapter Three". Brave New World. 1932. Huxley.net. July 11, 2009. http://www.huxley.net/bnw/three.html

 

Actually corporations are able to dump wastes into the environment because the gov't gives them usage rights over the land. This is the problem with common property; there's no accountability. With private property, I highly doubt one would want to pollute their own land. Further, the corporation would not receive business.

Although all of this is irrelevant; I'm not disagreeing with you here. Although anarcho-capitalism is the ideal system, it's still ideal, it's unrealistic and the gov't does have a place in promoting safety standards. I was debating welfare; also I'm not talking about corporations, corporations that are elevanted by the state and aren't really free market at all.

See above. I haven't disagreed with you here, only on welfare, and subsidies and the sort. Not safety.

Yes that is a serious question; you might be a paragon of light, but many people don't give a damn for your ideals, only for their pockets and their orgasm. And I ask you, why should they give a damn? Human beings are selfish and carnal beings.

And not every CEO, board member, or company executive, or manager or supervisor, is selfish, greedy, and evil.

Huh? Laissez faire is all about individualism, not "fitting in with the crowd"

As I said I don't disagree on safety promotion and regulation.

This is a completely off point. Within a free market, we all have something to provide, and we take our niche accordingly and thus prosper from it, assuming we're good at what we do and we can compete. It's all about the division of labor.

Opt out of what? I'm not a prisoner. If 66% of society chose to ignore me, they can't stop the other 34% from interacting with me. Thus, you must see that we are individuals; "opting out" is irrelevant, there's no such thing as society is not a singular organism. It's made of individuals interacting.

This is a common misconception; I'm arguing against the state, not against "government" insofar as people agree on a set of standards for behaviour. It is only when these are enforced that it becomes a state, although you could certainly argue that this enforcement is justified.

It's a matter of legitimacy; the private entity is more legitimate, as it is not sustained by force.

However we need not compromise; repeal the monopoly on roads, and allow private companies to build roads. At the same time, make taxation voluntary and the gov't can continue to build roads for use by those that choose to pay for them.

No, because "civilized society" has nothing to do with equality. At any rate, it's not equality that I am arguing against, only forced equality.

The failure in every human system is a problem with the inherent imperfection of human beings; even communism, the extreme left, failed. And anarcho-capitalism, which could be said to be an extreme right, would likely fail.

I do not propose any system that cannot be considered against history; I propose the free market, and this has been demonstrated to be functional throughout history. 19th century America; medieval Iceland, etc, etc

Communism, which is what you propose, has failed however.

Thus the majority prevent a minority; although, as I said it could be argued that under these circumstances it is justified.

If your ultimate goal is equality, though, then why bother with freedom or tolerance? The most consistent, and most easily controllable society would be a monotonous, rigidly enforced one. "Happiness" can be achieved in other ways, rendering freedom and tolerance obsolete.

Brave New World has nothing to do with "conservative" or "liberal". I'm merely suggesting that it might be a desirable path to follow if our goal is strictly the

a)wellbeing of humanity
b)equality among people
c)happiness
d)more control over society

I'm not saying the world in Brave New World is bad at all; indeed with the various technologies within, most of which are already in existence, we might be able to create a "perfect" society which we can maintain.

(Huxley)​

I'm not going to tell you it doesn't, because it doesn't. Equality is not important to me, Tiassa; there are the weak and the strong. Society functions in this way: the weak are for use by the strong. Simple human nature.

Although, with technology, we could create a perfect, equal society wherein everyone is easily controlled but also happy.

I choose to pay for insurance. I don't choose to pay taxes.

Thus society is what it makes itself. Obviously. However, we then arrive at a grand conclusion: we can all have what we want! Muslims can have their rigidly enforced, intolerant Sharia society; you can have your communist society. And I can choose to live in a free society.

Who's talking about sociopaths?

I do NOT have an obligation to anybody. I can choose to help people, and indeed I do donate occasionally, but I do not have any sort of obligation to do so. I want you to prove that human beings have an obligation, an objective obligation, an objective aspect of the universe, the design of the universe, to help each other.

Oh, what's that? You can't. If you think you have an obligation to your fellow man, then help your fellow man, but don't tell me what my obligations are.

And this disagreement causes problems. Diversity is not all it is cracked up to be. Liberal and conservative.......Christian and Muslim.........why not use gov't to mold society to a single, ideal model and maintain it? I'm not even saying this would be a bad thing. Perhaps you and I are both wrong; what we need is to agree on a certain standard and then, through the use of gov't. enforce it; diversity is dangerous and must be rooted out. Thus we create a perfect society that is maintained.

Explain justice to me. Justice is revenge; I say so because otherwise there is little point in punishing people, if not for revenge. Why do we punish people? To get back at them; to make them "pay" for their crimes. Revenge.

This larger process exists only insofar as I recognize it, I and every other. I have no obligation toward it, and it does not exist beyond my own perception. We are all individuals.

Take your own advice with your liberalism.

At any rate, my "problem"? How do humans have rights? Rights are granted to us by pieces of paper. Our human rights are as artificial as the gov't we create; do you think God gives us our rights? No! We have no rights, and yet we have every right...........it is merely a matter of perception.

I have to disagree. Using logic, both liberalism and libertarianism are undesirable as they create a potential for inconsistency and unpredictability (i.e, human choice). The most logical system of human rights would be the one in which human beings are as controllable as possible, while being happy. Thus Brave New World is what we ought to strive for, and as I said I'm not saying this is a bad thing.

There's a problem: whoever is in power, everyone else will be unhappy.

I tire of this debate, really; not because of you in general. Just debates like these; I have to wonder, "what's the point?" Human choice is such a.....problem.

 

Libertarianism is just looney. Let's pretend we can get all the benefits of government without having to pay for any of it and only on demand when we want it, but not when people we don't like want it and we get to own whatever we want.

Sure he was. That's why he authored big government and served as its president.

Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!

 

Oh like that's was true when the rivers in Ohio were so polluted they literally caught fire and burned though the city.

Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!

Cuyahoga River Fire Nov. 3, 1952
This was not the first time that the river had caught on fire. Fires occurred on the Cuyahoga River in 1868, 1883, 1887, 1912, 1922, 1936, 1941, 1948, [1952, and 1969]. The 1952 fire caused over 1.5 million dollars in damage.
http://www.ohiohistorycentral.org/entry.php?rec=1642


The pollution is divorced from the product so that you don't see the damage wrote.

 

Wow, these posts have nothing to do with kissing...:shrug:

As far as taxes go, I agree with a quote I learned back in high school, but I obviously didn't learn it that well because remember who said it. But "Taxes are the price we pay for civilization". And since civilization seems to be easier livin' than the pack mentality we instincually gravitate toward, I'll pay my taxes. I like buying the food I want from a store instead of stealing it out of my neighbor's garden.

 

So much for learning from one's mistakes. That's just as bad as California's wildfire budget. Bad wildfires happen every year at about the same time every year, but the government always seems surprised when they happen and explain how they hadn't expected it, so they didn't allocate that much money to putting them out.

Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!

 

Well except dry brush burning is no big surprise, however, one generally doesn't expect the actual river itself to catch fire.

 

It shouldn't be a surprise by now. It happens all of the time.
I meant that people didn't learn from their mistakes. You think after the first few times the river caught fire they would have done something about it, but they didn't. Just like you'd think California would put more money into putting out wildfires since they happen every single year at the same time. But apparently people don't learn very quickly.