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this post was submitted on 20 Oct 2024
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Libertarians: "GOD THIS IS AN UNJUST TYRANNY TO ME AND ONLY ME"
Libertarians: "This is normal and just, everyone is stupid except for me, I read Ayn Rand."
I'm down to talk out what is a just tax, what is unfair, what the taxes should go to once collected, but I think Libertarians are too hooked on think tank propaganda to decide something for themselves.
It's even better: a lot of essential or close to it things are pretty much monopolies or cartels (for example, Internet access in most of the US) so people have no actual choice but to pay a specific entity whatever they chose to charge.
It's like tax but without the upside of taxes (which is that they're money that's supposed to entirely end up benefiting you, even if most of it indirectly) because when you buy a product or service from a monopoly or cartel only part of it goes to cover the cost of the actual product or service you're getting and a large fraction or even most of it goes to shareholder dividends, which has zero benefit for you.
I've taken to call these things Taxes Paid Directly To Private Companies.
Weird. How did those ISPs end up the only option?
Horizontal Territory Allocation is a common practice with Oligopolies with physical products (which the telephone wires and routing equipment they build to run the internet very much is).
Basically two or three massive companies simply don’t enter eachothers turf by unspoken agreement and they all get to benefit by not actually competing with eachother. They they can take turns raising prices in their own turf and know their customers have to physically move to get their “competitors” prices. As long as they never actually talk to eachother about doing it it is technically not illegal.
As for how they got the turf in the first place this mostly was small governments at the town and county level signing short term exclusivity agreements with a telco to run the initial infrastructure back in the 80s-90s when this was common. And many of these municipalities actively work against new telcos moving into the area long after those original agreements ended. You can always rile up some nimbys to bitch about construction noise at a small town hall and halt projects like this for decades. This is exactly how my hometown spent 8 years blocking fios in an area that only had dsl.
You tell a 40-50 something homeowner a three inch patch of their grass will be ripped up for just a week and they’ll drag their balls bare over fields of broken glass to show up to town hall week after week for 8 years to avoid it even if their isp quadruples prices in the same time frame.
Government and corporate interests can't help but suck each other off. Petty tyrants are gonna tyrant.
The land the utilities were built on were through government seized easements generally. The monopoly wouldn't exist unless propped up by a state.
Sounds like we should have made ISPs government owned then!
That could be a better system than the current government enforced monopoly.
Corporations are fucked up. They will never allow the state to be abolished because they need to collect taxes in order to bail themselves out of trouble and in order to fight wars for them at the taxpayer expense so they can reap the profits... a corporation will never go to war alone. War is fucking expensive and is rarely directly profitable. They want to socialize expenses and privatize gain, which is impossible to do without a government of some kind.
That's why you need to abolish both capitalism and state..
Anarchy works
...so, what, we're supposed to build an entire society on people's inherent willingness to help each other and just trust that crime will stop happening?
Like mate, I hate to break it to you, but psychopaths exist. The entire problem with capitalism is that some people are never satisfied no matter how much they have and will do anything they possibly can to hoard anything that could give them an advantage at the expense of the group.
Its true, the things that stop crime can only ever be made by a state.
In fact, people never managed to stop or punish theft or a murder until we invesnted states.
Yup, before states, if someone came a murdered your friend you had to trust that what you just witnessed didn't happen because there was literally nothing you could do about it, as states hadn't been invented yet.
Its good thing were too smart to fall for that.....
...and your proposed alternative is...?
I really, really hope I don't have to explain why vigilante justice is a bad idea.
I heard him say he murdered his friend.
Pity there is no third party to investigate my claim. We'll just have to string him up ourselves.
I call dibs on his shoes.
Well, in a society without judges, as the article linked proposes, I'm having a hard time seeing it any other way.
Lol nice try but I don't have to provide you with an alternative for you to attack. You're wasting youre time there.
The point is, even all those hundreds of years ago, we had an alternative to just trusting that crime wouldn't exist, as you suggested was the only alternative.
Other than its state-ness exaplin the difference between state vigilante justice and the exact equivalent done by any other kind of group.
I really, really hope I don't have to explain why it being done by a state doesn't magically make it better, in of itself.
"See, the thing is, I already know I'm right, so I'm not going to waste time by giving you arguments to find flaws in."
...you mean why a system of justice that is held liable to a court system is not superior to a system of justice where people can just go after whomever they want? yeah, you do have to explain that actually
Again, nice try but I'm used to people as slippery as you. What you mean is "you're right, we don't just have to sit around and trust that crime doesn't exist. However, I'm the kind of person who really struggles to back down or walk back even the most wild and silly of things that I imply."
Why would I explain something completely different to what I said to you?
Okay, so if we're not just going to trust that crime isn't going to happen, how are we going to prevent it? I asked you that, straight up, and you said "I'm not going to give you something just for you to poke holes in it. I've dealt with your kind before."
So, are you saying we do or we don't all have to just sit around and trust crime wouldn't exist? Sorry, I couldn't tell which one it was you were saying from that answer.
You say we don't. A cursory reading of the source you cited seems to imply that we do. Obviously, then, a cursory reading of the source is insufficient, and you must have some solution that will prevent crime in the absence of judges and police officers, right?
You linked to this source, so surely you've read it and you understand the author's position better than I do, right?
I still couldn't make out which one is was sorry?
You say we don't have to just hope people don't commit crimes. Let's suppose that's true. How do you plan to prevent them?
I haven't made up my mind on this issue yet. Tell me why you're right.
You know, I'm starting to think that you're not even trying to confirm which one it was and, instead, are just being deliberately evasive while expecting me to confirm things for you, without and hint or irony or self awareness on your part.
Funny. You're the only one who asked me to confirm things. All I asked you was why you thought what you did.
I gave you the easiest task in the world and you still failed.
Goodbye, troll.
You can't fail something you didn't try and you weren't prepared to answer any questions from me. Its just you sheer arrogance that makes you think you can demand answers from someone while giving none.
All you had to do was walk an obviously, undeniably invalid argument and you wouldn't do it.
I just mirrored your behaviour and you called me a troll, without a hint of irony. Thats all that happened here.
Before states if someone murdered your friend it would either split the tribe and/or you’d go to war with the tribe that killed your friend. Is that really better?
Maybe so, maybe not so but, whatever it is, its a hell of lot more than just trusting that crime didn't exist, don't you think?
I’m not sure where anyone suggested that people had to trust that crime doesn’t exist.
Its one of the major themes of the thread you're replying to.
It's one of the major themes of the source that you linked.
Every society is going to have some criminals. Lack of access to things people need to survive is a major reason for commission of crimes, but it is not the only reason. Plenty of people do illegal things just because they feel like it. Some people are pathological liars. If a society cannot deal with those, it will eventually fail. Obviously crime will go down by (throwing a number out) a factor of at least five once the magical socialist utopia is in place, but to argue that it will entirely disappear is hopelessly naive.
Again, I'm not sure why you think anyone is saying that crime won't exist or that people won't have to deal with criminals.
You know, its almost, almost as if you're making up a position no one is taking and then arguing against that instead.
Well, I say almost.....
maybe if i make this short enough you'll actually read the whole thing
how
Oh, I read the whole thing. I'm just dodging and evading in the same way you do. Turns out, you find your behaviour quite annoying too.
I'm not sure why you think I have to answer for an ideology to your satisfaction or I have to abandon any agreement I might have with it.
What is it about you that makes you think thr only options are the police, exactly as we have them now, or we just have to trust crime won't exist?
Why do you have to pretend these are the only two options?
"Just because I don't fully understand my own ideology doesn't mean you shouldn't agree with me"?
That's the argument you're going with?
Also please show me where I said "the police exactly as we have them now". The police exactly as we have them now fucking suck, but you seem to think they should be abolished rather than reformed, and I'm still waiting for you to tell me how, why, and what they should be replaced with.
Haha, sure, if thats what you need it to be. You figured it out. Its actually that I don't understand what I'm talking about and not that your debatebro crap doesn't work on me.
So, just to confirm, you're saying that there are only two options for dealing with crime.
A) We have the police exactly as they are now
B) We pretend crime doesn't exist
And me asking questions about this false dichotomy you're trying to force here is because I, not you, don't understand a problem here?
I just need to check thats what's going on here and that you're OK with that being your position. If its not, please feel free to let me know.
I hope you can understand that I'm hardly going to have an open conversation with someone who won't even admit that a third option can exist here.
You are literally replying to a comment explaining that I do not believe that! Here is what I said again, since you clearly didn't read it the first time:
What is it with leftists and never reading past the first sentence?
I have repeatedly explained that I am open to the possibility of a third option, and repeatedly asked you what it is. You have yet to do anything other than stall the conversation and deliberately misrepresent my position. I am forced to conclude that you have no argument to present and are simply trolling.
If this is not the case, let me know. If it is the case, just make one more comment not answering the goddamn question so I can finally block you with a clean conscience.
The problem is that I did read it and, as such, I know that (the police) "fucking suck" doesn't mean that you've accepted that something other than what we have now could exist, in the same capacity. Its actually, specifically that I did read it and saw that you once again evaded backing down from a silly false dichotomy you attempted to defend.
More so, you've decided that my argument is proving something, rather than what it actually was "calling out someone else's false dichotomy and the false need for a state" ,one that you seemed fine with. Thats why you've had to attempt to change the conversation and then claim me to be a troll for point out invalid arguments. If you cared, you'd Google it and it wouldn't take two seconds to find communial restorative justice where the focus in on restitution for the victim and not punishment of the offender.
As it is, you're just mad that I won't play your game. I've come accorss people like you before and I won't be going along with those cheap tricks.
Please, block away. The less bad faith debatebros I come into contact with, the better. Honestly, you'll be doing me a favour and you don't need to announce it. All you had to do was actually climb down from an invalid argument and you refused, claiming me to be the problem. But no, you had to claim saying the correct situation is bad is the same thing as that.
Yeah, you won't be missed and you shouldn't threaten people with a good time.
Literally all I asked you to do was say what changes you would make to our current law enforcement strategy and you couldn't even do that.
Goodbye, troll.
You're just having a strop because I won't have a grown up conversation with someone who won't even walk back an utterly invalid argument. Dont pretend its you taking the high road.
When you won't be missed, you don't have do announce it. You can just leave.
One is something you choose to pay, the other you get shot if you don't pay. There is a pretty big difference.
Contract claims and property claims are ultimately enforceable by government force, as well. A "no trespassing" or "no loitering" sign, or a "Copyrighted work, all rights reserved" notice is enforceable by men with guns, too.
If taxation is theft, the same reasoning would extend to property being theft, too.
Depends how the property was claimed. Most property in the US was illegitimately claimed.