National Collective Responsibility

[Thanas]

But why?

Interferes with individual freedom by creating responsibilities that the individual did not choose and which they cannot opt out of.

But these always exist in a society. See: social contract.

What I trying to demonstrate is basically what I summed up above- unless your position is as I claimed it presumably was, your idea interferes with individual freedom by creating responsibilities that the individual did not choose and which they cannot opt out of. The term slavery might be somewhat strong, but it is close to it.

Really, you should read some more works by Hobbes, Jefferson and Rousseau. Especially as you seem to be unfamiliar with the basic concept of what it means to be a citizen, including the social contract.

What if somebody doesn't want to be represented by a democratic government in order to avoid moral blame? Because of the way the modern world works, they are forced to be a citizen of a country after all. If they intend to leave, renounce citizenship and ignore "their" country's actions, how can they be blamed for immoral actions their country has done whilst they are in the process of doing so?

Then I would agree that they cannot, because if you renounce citizenship then you sever all ties with said nation. However, when you move to reclaim your citizenship, you will still be held responsible.

As for individuals who profit, it depends how they profit. If somebody directly recieves plunder (land, goods etc), I agree that they should give it back and recieve blame if they recieved it knowing where they came from. But what if a company profits by charging high prices to repair the damage of an immoral war? If they didn't cause the war, how are they guilty for the war itself?



This appears to be the crux of the disagreement. I'd argue that this stance is incompatible with the commonly held idea (if you dispute it we can get into that) that human beings should be naturally free.

Also, I assume your stance is that whether somebody is a national of a country or not does not affect guilt unless it affects how able they are to prevent the immoral act? At least in dictatorships?[/quote]

[Serafina]

By the way, the government (or anyone else) has NO RIGHT to take children away from their families just because they might have a better enviornment somewhere else. The treshold for such an action is explicity that the family is endagering the child, not that the enviornment provided by them might be slightly disadvantageous.

The reasoning for this is quite obvious:
If we take your approach and accept your claim that children taken at young age suffer no damage, then we can easily justify taking children away from their poor parents, or parents with lower education or mental handicaps etc., even if they are caring, loving partents- and put them into a richer family with higher education.
After all, children tend to fare better in such an enviornment.

However, such an approach does ultimately lead to an infinite regress - there is always SOMETHING you could improve about the enviorment a child is growing up in, and this logic could easily be used to justify taking away practically every child.

So unless you can prove that the Aborigines in general were violating the rights of their children (tough i doubt that you know those in the first place), your argument is null and void.


Edit: There was quite an important landmark case about this by the European Court of Human rights - i don't recall it's name, but i'll try to find it.
Edit 2: It's Kutzner v. Germany if i am not mistaken. Do your own homework and read it yourself.

[Broomstick]

I can favor compensation to direct victims... but not to their descendants. This applies not just to victims of Imperial Japan in WWII but also those who survived Nazi camps and so forth. However, the child or grandchild of a survivor of some historical wrong is not entitled to compensation as they were not directly harmed.

Mmm...I don't know, I'd really like to see the descendants of those who were murdered or survived Unit 731 get something. The emotional trauma visited upon the families has to be worth something.

The survivors of Unit 731, yes, THEY should receive some sort of compensation, but not their descendants. Seriously, how many generations to you intend to bleed for a crime? Are the descendants of the perpetrators guilty? Are the grandchildren and great grandchildren and great great grandchildren of General Shiro Ishii supposed to pay all their lives for something that probably happened before they were even born? Why should they be made to pay directly for something they had no part in?

The descendants of those who were in Unit 731, no, they should not receive direct compensation. That would be profiting off the suffering of someone else, and that would be wrong (by my ethics - someone else's might be different). Yes, there is trauma to the family. There is trauma to all who are touched by war. Payment of reparations has to end at some point, otherwise you're just endlessly re-opening wounds and inheriting guilt from generation to generation like some sort of original sin, and people who weren't even born at the time profit from the wrong done to and suffered by someone else. People should not receive money or special treatment for being a descendant of someone who has been wronged.

Yes, that means certain types of injustices will never be righted. That's one of the reasons they're unjust and they're crimes. You can't fix everything, but for goodness sake don't perpetrate crap across generations.

[Broomstick]

That is a pretty poor rebuttal, actually. People who do not want to be held responsible for the actions of their nation should fight it in every way, including getting involved in politics (no, just voting does not count), using their resources (like money) to combat the policies etc. If you tolerate or ignore actions by your representatives, how are you not responsible? And if you profit, why should you not be held responsible as well?

If you don't have money, though, you have very little power over anything. So if someone has no money what, pray tell, do you expect them to do to combat bad policy? You say voting isn't enough, would you find writing one's representatives important enough to count? If someone has a job where involvement in politics is forbidden are they supposed to give up their income and leave their family destitute, and until they render their family homeless and penniless and cut their children off from a chance at higher education, they aren't doing enough? What if your involvement in protesting results in not only yourself but your family coming under suspicion and being punished?

Get real - as an example from the past plenty of people joined the Nazi Party not to profit from it but to save their own skins, and their families. Some of them, at the same time, risked their lives to save Jews and others that would have been otherwise killed. After the war there was some notion, at least on my side of the fence, that people sometimes did morally questionable things not because they supported evil but because they were trying to avoid another evil, like having their own families shipped off to camps, or just dragged out onto the street and summarily shot. A lot of those folks were forgiven afterward, because for a lot of people there isn't that much they can realistically do to oppose the evils of their own government. Sure, anyone who participated in mass slaughter, the ones who joined because they fucking enjoyed it or thought it right, yeah, they're responsible, but I can't condemn some poor schlub trying to keep himself and his family alive when the world is going to hell.

Even in a democracy - just how fucking much influence do you think the average person has? Give examples of what you think someone with little money and influence should do? And in a democracy it only takes slightly more than 50% of the people supporting the bad for it to actually happen, so you'll just flush the slightly less than 50% who voted against the bad down the toilet with all of them? No recognition that governments, even in a democracy, can act against the will of the people through sheer momentum (and having the money and guns) or against the interests of the people?

That's the problem with collective guilt, with slapping a label on someone and saying they're guilty without considering anything else about the situation - you condemn the innocent and not-so-bad along with the truly bad and the real evil. Maybe you're comfortable with that, but I'm not.

[Broomstick]

Does the direct victims include children of the murdered / tortured person, since relatives in American civil cases are entitled to that money in wrongful death suits due to suffering. One can imagine if you were a child when your parent (a civillian) was murdered by Japanese soldiers then that child should be entitled to some money.

Yes, relatives in American civil cases can receive compensation, but do not always. Usually, parents and spouses are the most likely to get direct compensation. Children might get a trust fund or fund for educational purposes. Frequently, the amount is based on expected lifetime earnings of the victim, which means some people get much more than others. Then there is the problem of collecting such a judgment.

As an example: the father of the man OJ Simpson murdered received a judgment against him in a civil suit in the amount of millions, but he can only collect from Simpson, he can not touch a dime belonging to Simpson's kids or other relatives. Simpson spent a LOT of his own money on legal fees, and probably had trusts set up for the kids (so the money was legally no longer his, it belonged to his offspring). That meant Simpson didn't have much money actually available to him when all the legal crap was done. So just because Goldman was decreed entitled to a lot of money doesn't mean he'll ever get any of it.

If the perpetrators of murder/torture/other horror are dead then providing compensation becomes more complicated. If the relatives of said person had nothing to do with the wrong it wouldn't be just to go after them, as they are innocent (if they were complicit that's a different story). In some cases, a government might provide compensation - for example, the survivors of Unit 731 might receive compensation from the Japanese government rather than from the particular perpetrators of a crime.

But at a certain point compensating everyone wronged runs up against practicality. You said "One can imagine if you were a child when your parent (a civillian) was murdered by Japanese soldiers then that child should be entitled to some money." Turn it around - "One can imagine if you were a child when your parent (a civillian) was murdered by American soldiers then that child should be entitled to some money." Should everyone in Japan touched by WWII be compensated by the US at the same time everyone in the US touched by the war with Japan be compensated by the Japanese? And do we repeat this exercise with the US and Europe?

What to do about a family where the sons fought in both fronts? Should a family where a brother fought in Europe and probably killed civilians along with German soldiers by made to pay, at the same time receiving compensation from Germans because the brother eventually wound up in a POW camp and almost starved to death before the end of the war, being carried out on a stretcher because he was too weak to stand? What if he was killed due to mistreatment while a POW?

What about a family where a young American man married a girl he met in Germany in 1945? I actually know such a family where the man almost certainly killed some of his wife's relatives during the war - what the hell do you do with a family like that?

THEN we get into the problem of various European countries having to pay reparations back and forth, and those who were part of the USSR at the time will (justifiably) want their pound of flesh...

That is, of course, one of the problems of war - it's bad. Horrible bad things happen that can't be fixed either because there's just no way, or for practical reasons like rendering a country destitute after losing a war as punishment doesn't really help in the long term. That's one reason the US poured money and effort into rebuilding after WWII, because leaving nations in ruins doesn't make things better. If there is so much compensating that everyone is left in financial ruin that doesn't help long term, either.

[Broomstick]

1- You haven't adressed my objection that people are free to live their own lives. This also presumably applies if the Holocaust is going around them.

Okay, so if you are run over by a car and i am capable of CPR and other first aid measures, i have no responsibility to help you?

Perhaps I should point out that under US law that is the case - you do not have an obligation to help others in such a situation. Let me clarify - if you caused the accident you have responsibility, but if you are just a witness to it, no, you are under no obligation to render aid (certain "first responders" such as police, fire, and paramedics may be exceptions, particularly while on duty). The duty to provide care is MUCH less in the US than in Europe.

Just wanted to get that out there, as I have seen misunderstandings over that in the past derail discussions.

That said - most Americans would have some moral impulse to render aid. In fact, we can be downright obnoxious about trying to be helpful. Someone failing to render simple and easy aid might wind up socially despised in most communities. However, in the US you are not legally obligated to render aid.

That's the exact argument you are making - that you are free to live your own life, even if you have the chance of helping someone. You apparently reject the concept of responsibility altogether.

I think (though I could be wrong in this particular instance) it's the concept of being legally obligated to help, rather than being morally or ethically obligated to help someone else.

2- Even if criminal negligence weren't something which can only be caused by a person's actions, it would still be worth pointing out that legal and moral rules are not the same thing.

Wrong. Criminal negligience can, by definition, be caused by a persons inaction as well. See my example above.

However, not all nations define "criminal negligence" in the same way. It is much more difficult to make a legal argument on those grounds in the US than in other places.

Morality is ultimately a set of guidelines that's supposed to benefit society. Assigning such guidelines to governments and to inactions carries a benefit - an incentive to fix things even if you are not direcly involved.

Agreed. The indirect "penalties" imposed on citizens (usually through taxation sooner or later) when governments provide compensation can be seen as an incentive for citizens to try to keep their governments from screwing up. In theory, though, such a thing spreads the responsibility out so that while all suffer somewhat no one (it is hoped) has their lives ruined that weren't directly responsible for the wrong.

[Bottlestein]

[quote="Broomstick"

THEN we get into the problem of various European countries having to pay reparations back and forth, and those who were part of the USSR at the time will (justifiably) want their pound of flesh...
[/quote]

A poor example :

Most of the European SSR's were ruled by active Nazi collaborators who fell over themselves to commit genocide. There's a reason why the Wiesenthal center protested Estonia taking down the tribute to the Red Army. And while SS veterans parades being attended by Baltic presidents seems tasteless - Croatia takes the cake as far as glorifying fascism and genocide goes.

[Broomstick]

Forcibly indoctrinating someone in a religion is good.

Well, better then the alternative. British Protestantism at the time was more progressive then Aboriginal superstitions.

Truly, this disgusts me. It was Aboriginal religion and British superstition as much as the reverse.

Taking someone away from their parents, not because they are "bad parents", but because they are poor and the wrong ethnic group is good?

Half-castes were badly discriminated against in Aboriginal society (if I remember right, some were even killed)- they were probably better off in white Australia.

Good lord - by that argument the US should have snatched away any child less than 100% African or Native or Chinese and raised him or her to be "white". Do you not see what is wrong with that attitude?

(The US actually tried something like that with Natives - it didn't work well, and the suicide rate alone among the kids was terrible, not to mention all the other bad things that happened.)

But its quite funny how you say not having the ability to choose and opt out is akin to slavery, yet support a measure where parents were not able to choose to have their child taken away.

Parents don't have property rights over children. I am not claiming the government's actions were right, just claiming that it isn't as open-and-shut as you seem to claim it is.

Go study Australia's "lost generation" - it pretty much IS an open and shut case of racial bigotry and an attempt to wipe out a culture entirely, and a good stab at genocide or at least an attempt at assimilation that would amount to much the same thing. The only good thing is that it didn't succeed and it was stopped.

[Broomstick]

The only obligations would be to return the property actually stolen or compensatory money from the individuals who actually profited to the individuals actually stolen from. Involving whole nations may be simpler, but it's less fair.

Carinthium, I'd like to pick up on this if you have a moment. What about cases such as the US? There the land taken from the various tribes generally was held in common by the tribe as a whole. No individual was stolen from, but the tribes themselves often still exist today. Shouldn't they receive recompense for the property taken from them. Similarly, most of the land was taken by the US government, so shouldn't they pay, then, under this system?

Oddly enough - the US government thought the Natives should be compensated, and were doing so as early as the 19th Century. Granted, the exchange was FAR from equitable, promises often not kept, treaties often reneged on, and what compensation was received was not only pitiable but frequently siphoned away through corruption, but there was, nonetheless, a sense that compensation should be given.

There are complications, though - for example, the Louisiana Purchase was bought from France, so should displaced Natives seek compensation from France or from the US? In the area taken from Mexico, should natives seek compensation from the US, from Mexico, from Spain, or in some limited areas from Texas (which for awhile was an independent nation)?

[Broomstick]

THEN we get into the problem of various European countries having to pay reparations back and forth, and those who were part of the USSR at the time will (justifiably) want their pound of flesh...

A poor example :

Most of the European SSR's were ruled by active Nazi collaborators who fell over themselves to commit genocide. There's a reason why the Wiesenthal center protested Estonia taking down the tribute to the Red Army. And while SS veterans parades being attended by Baltic presidents seems tasteless - Croatia takes the cake as far as glorifying fascism and genocide goes.

But not all - ask the Russian about how they regarded the Nazis and WWII. Granted, Russians weren't thrilled to have Jews around and had the occasional pogrom, but Russian antisemitism was not nearly the same as Nazi antisemitism.

The USSR's components were, as you pointed out, divided as to how they regarded the Nazis and differed in how they acted during the war. Part of that (very simplified) had to do with some people hoping the Germans would liberate them from Stalin's realm. Of course, the Nazis regarded the Slavic collaborators as trash to be eliminated after even worse human vermin were eliminated, or enslaved for the betterment of the Third Reich, but were happy to use them in the meanwhile. Meanwhile, the USSR as a whole, under Stalin, was supposed to be working with Britain and the US. War divides, what can I say?

For that matter, France was ruled by a Nazi-collaborating government during WWII - should French citizens be compensating each other back and forth based on who was harmed by the Vichy government versus who was harmed by the actions of the French Underground versus who was harmed by the French overseas working with the Allies? My high school French teacher remembered the Allies bombing her town during the war and lost relatives to such attacks - should she sue the US and United Kingdom for that trauma?

[Carinthium]

One brief point before I begin my refutations- like Stas Bush, I reject pragmatic considerations.

When did I say you couldn't live in international waters? In any case, if you were willing to hole up somewhere in Alaska or the Appalachians or wherever, where influence from government was close to nonexistent, I would consider that close enough to removing yourself from society. There are also plenty of places in the desert in Australia where you could go. Or the Amazon. Or Antarctica.

I would be benefiting from technology by living in international waters or using it to get to Antartica (which I couldn't survive in without technology anyway). The Amazon, Alaska and the Appalachians are under the rule of governments, and if the land is claimed I could be kicked off.

You think in terms far too small. How much monetary value would you place on the existence of guns (or Playstations or X-boxes, or whatever it is you want to buy) in the first place?Are you aware of the amount of cooperation that goes into making a gun? Guns are the product of thousands of years of teaching and learning and planning and incremental improvements in design, none of which would be possible without the various people working in concert with society. If you choose to take advantage of their cooperative skills without putting back into society yourself, then you are freeloading. Maybe you're not freeloading in a mere monetary sense, but society is more than just money.

1- Nobody told me- or a large percentage of society for that matter (given that social contract theory is not widely known amongst the lower classes) that I would have to "pay" (metaphorically) for benefits recieved from society.
2- None of the people who invented guns (which I am using as an example, as the same principles apply to other inventions) did so hoping it's users would owe a debt to society- they generally worked on it because it was their job (in a feudal system, or as their chosen profession) in order to earn their wages/food.

I said nothing about citizens having a problem with this. I am saying that it is impossible for someone to live in society without taking advantage of that. Do you think it is moral for people like you to be freeloading?

It is morally acceptable to freeload on somebody with their consent.

People are obliged to pay money for things given to them that they hadn't asked for. It's called "taxes". If you don't pay them, then these nice men come and put you in prison. Last year the government gave me $950 that I didn't ask for, but was obliged to pay back as much as possible through taxes. It was really awesome.

I am claiming that the principles are self-contradictory- nobody has invented a philsophical justification for why the one rule is acceptable and the other isn't. I would go so far as to claim that the social contract theory was originally a rationalisation for the existence of government.

I ask, because the only way to maintain freedom is if the majority of people in society look out for each others freedom. You can't guarantee your own freedom without guaranteeing the freedom of your neighbour, because if your neighbour loses their freedom, then that's one less person to protect your freedom once your freedom becomes threatened. With I see people preaching about rights without any accompanying responsibilities, I always worry that the person I'm talking to is not only selfish, but short-sighted and stupid too.

As I said, I reject pragmatic considerations. If I actually had the political power to make a system for the real world (which I don't, admittedly), I would have seperate nations (plus an area where anarchy was enforced by a mix of propaganda for my ideology and force) with a military and police paid for out of citizen's taxes- the privledges of citizenship would be high enough to encourage significant numbers (plus discrimination against non-citizens within the borders), thus avoiding consent problems. This wouldn't get rid of the problems, but it would minimise them.

Keep in mind that one could view the fact that shitty evil dictators now only exist in craphouse third world countries as a result of the success of punishing the Nazi war criminals. Back before World War II, it was quite popular in some parts of the world (like the US) to be a fascist who supported eugenics and so on. These days, however, Nazi sympathisers are ostracised and sidelined - thus preventing them from having a greater say in government and restricting the freedoms of others. The only places where one can get away with being a shithead dictator these days are the craphole countries that nobody cares about anyway. That's a far better situation than before, when the shitty evil dictators were in charge of more powerful countries like Germany.

Historical What If- If for some strange reason (I'll check with those who know more, but as I understand it it was incredibly unlikely) both the Allies and the Soviet Union had spared Germany, they would still have plenty of images of the Holocaust as propaganda. The need for Marshal Aid would encourage West European states to remain democratic (plus the fact that the facists had been militarily defeated), whilst the efforts of the U.S to define itself against the Soviet Union would encourage it to remain democratic and about as free as it was in reality.

I have no idea what this sentence means, and I rather doubt anyone else does either.

Resorting to mockery not because it is a rational argument but because it seems to be the most effective way to clarify my position.

"Hey judge! I gave that guy a gift worth 300 dollars! He accepted it, then didn't give me anything! I'm suing for $300!"
"That's ridicolous!"
"But you're also a social contract philosopher- didn't you say in university that people have to pay taxes to pay back the benefits of society. You still agree with that, right?"
"Yeah."
"So..."
"Uh..."

Look, it seems that everyone's going to be talking past each other for this argument unless we all know what moral system the other person is using. You apparently don't subscribe to utilitarianism, so tell me: what do you think the primary goal of a moral system should be?

All moral systems are sadly arbitary (since one can't get ought from is), but I think it should be a way to ensure people do not harm each other while maintaining individual freedom. Yours?

Except that the entire society/population from country A benefited and profited, while they entire society/population from country B became poorer. Even if a person from country A didn't loot the other country, that person still benefited from the increased wealth of country A. At the same time, even if a person from country B didn't have anything directly stolen from themselves, they still lose because of the decreased wealth of country B.

1- That presumes redistribution and an income tax- true of most modern societies, not of most ancient.
2- In many cases this may be true, and if they had a choice in the matter I agree (changing my mind slightly). But that isn't true everywhere.

Clear example- When Norse ships looted parts of Anglo-Saxon England, the wealth would have come from individual monasteries and gone to Norse raiders. The money would not be distributed throughout the whole economy, but at best the Norse upper classes. Therefore, even in 1065 Norway and Denmark had no moral responsibility whatsoever to compensate England.

Even before you were born you received benefits from society. There simply isn't a realistic assessment of the facts that could enable you to support the argument that you haven't benefited from society and should therefore be exempt from the responsibility (scant as it often is) for actions taken by your society.

Hypothetical situation(not actually true)- What if my parents were both immigrants to the country who bought land with money we actually earned? They might be obliged to return the land, but they would have the right to be compensated by whoever originally stole it.

There is a difference between returning stolen goods and reparations- I am opposed to the latter (although money as substitutes for unreturnable goods is a different matter).

Or hey, an easier example: If somebody gave you a million Dollars, and you use this to educate yourself, buy a house, and live a very comfortable life. A few years later, you learn that the million Dollars were stolen from some other people, forcing them into homelessness and begging in the streets.

Would you feel morally obliged to help those people who the million Dollars were stolen from?

Only to the value of a million dollars. If I'd given somethnig to the person in exchange for the million, I'd want (although in the modern world would not realistically get) compensation and would have the moral right to it.

Carinthium, I'd like to pick up on this if you have a moment. What about cases such as the US? There the land taken from the various tribes generally was held in common by the tribe as a whole. No individual was stolen from, but the tribes themselves often still exist today. Shouldn't they receive recompense for the property taken from them. Similarly, most of the land was taken by the US government, so shouldn't they pay, then, under this system?

Given the moral harm caused by collectivism, I would not hestitate to try and encourage mass-propaganda to persuade the tribes to divide the land amongst individuals and sell it off. However, I would also not hestitate to agree that it should be given back. The people who lose it have the right to compensation from whoever they bought it from, and so on down the line.

No you did not you lying dipshit. You just stated it was wrong because just because something is the norm it doesn't make it right. It didn't explain why it was wrong.

Refuting the argument by demonstrating it was not a valid argument- thus it can be safely ignored.

So explain how a government taxing its people to pay off its debt is wrong, since you youself stated people do not have a right to pay low tax. Bet you will avoid this point like you did Serafina's argument about not saving you when they have the power to.

Assuming those people did not consent to live in the society, the government is stealing from it- the government choose to incur the debt, NOT the individuals. If I steal money from you to pay off my debts, that is morally wrong- the same principle applies.

So now explain why its wrong for the government to do similar even though the principle is the same.

Because I did not choose to be under the government's juridisction, nor to have citizenship.

So your superior ethical system leads to people not willing to lend to countries, because when the government changes all debts are called off. Explain how this makes things better. At least with the lending, it helped Britain fight WWII, and borrowing from Asia helped America improved their already high standard of living (until they took on too much debt, but until then it improved standard of living).

Again, like Stas Bush I reject pragmatic considerations.

Then I will rephrase to "close to" a slave. Happy now. Still makes no difference showing how retarded your argument is.

You are assuming it is ridicolous without demonstrating why. Saying something is ridicolous is not a rational argument.

By that logic even in the "free world" no one is free, since they have the responsibility to pay taxes. You are taking the word "free", stretching the boundaries of what it means till its not the same as commonly used. Its akin to religious people saying atheists are also religious, but taking the definition of religious to be so wide encompassing that it becomes meaningless.

Definition of free: able to act at will; not hampered; not under compulsion or restraint; "free enterprise"; "a free port"; "a free country"; "I have an hour free"; "free will"; "free of racism"; "feel free to stay as long as you wish"; "a free choice"

Assuming a person has restrictions upon them, they are obviously NOT totally free. If they have restrictions placed upon them of their own free will, then there isn't a moral problem but they still aren't.

So you admit it wasn't good to indoctrinate.

It's not good to indoctrinate somebody with false beliefs.

What the fuck have you been smoking? Seriously. How many Aboriginies are "full blooded".

It's more a matter of how many were full blooded.

Or they could have been provided an education without removing them from them parents like how white kids were. Like how sane societies do it.

1- Have you considered the possibility that the British were too close-minded to think of that?
2- Then they probably would have remained believing Aboriginal superstitions.
3- What about cases such as the 12-13 year old Aboriginals having sex with white men?

1. Neither does the government. So why then was it right to take away those kids? You fail at consistentcy.

Since it isn't violating property rights, the government's legal rights apply (given it is for the child's own good).

2. My argument is not dependent on this axiom because the right for a parent to look after their kids doesn't come under the "property rights."

Could you clarify your position and the reasoning behind it please?

In fact explain why its ok to kidnap children, since parent's don't have property rights over children. And before you try to dodge the point, you used that line to justify kidnapping Aboriginal children, so now justify your assertion. But I bet you will avoid this point or reply to a slight strawman.

Already done.

Oh realllllly.

I said it was probably true. Not that I was persuaded.

And you still haven't explain why your moral system finds it bad when freedom is curtailed by the government (in the form of higher taxes to pay off debts) but ok for the government to do so when its something you like (kidnapping). And no this line doesn't explain it.

It's a moral axiom that freedom is good. While I am arguably slightly hypocritical to deny the sort of freedoms I advocate to adults but deny them to those under the age of 18, the argument that they don't have the judgement to decide for themselves works well enough. (Excluding exceptional cases)

Guys its clear moron boy is a fucking Randroid.

Ayn Rand is not libertarian enough for my tastes.

Seriously. I guess all those members of the Stolen Generation crying after Kevin Rudd's apology was all an act right?

Most would have been indoctrinated by whites similiar to you.

You whine about governments taxing more to pay off debt, but have no sympathy for people being kidnapped? Wow you are a piece of work.

Already explained.

But these always exist in a society. See: social contract.

HISTORICAL FACT- (you seem to know quite a bit of history) Most people throughout the course of history, and even in modern times, HAVE NOT STUDIED SOCIAL CONTRACT THEORY.

Really, you should read some more works by Hobbes, Jefferson and Rousseau. Especially as you seem to be unfamiliar with the basic concept of what it means to be a citizen, including the social contract.

I know what the social contract theory is- I'm disputing the entire basis of it.

Then I would agree that they cannot, because if you renounce citizenship then you sever all ties with said nation. However, when you move to reclaim your citizenship, you will still be held responsible.

Why aren't new citizens considered responsible, if they accepted citizenship willingly? Assuming they knew fully well what they were getting into, even I don't have a problem with that.

By the way, the government (or anyone else) has NO RIGHT to take children away from their families just because they might have a better enviornment somewhere else. The treshold for such an action is explicity that the family is endagering the child, not that the enviornment provided by them might be slightly disadvantageous.

The reasoning for this is quite obvious:
If we take your approach and accept your claim that children taken at young age suffer no damage, then we can easily justify taking children away from their poor parents, or parents with lower education or mental handicaps etc., even if they are caring, loving partents- and put them into a richer family with higher education.
After all, children tend to fare better in such an enviornment.

I agree with the claim you provide as a quasi-reducto ad absurdum- assuming it is unambigious a child would be better off, it should be given to better parents.

Truly, this disgusts me. It was Aboriginal religion and British superstition as much as the reverse.

Aboriginals believed in black magic. In practice, the British did not.

Good lord - by that argument the US should have snatched away any child less than 100% African or Native or Chinese and raised him or her to be "white". Do you not see what is wrong with that attitude?

Only if they were badly discriminated against.

(The US actually tried something like that with Natives - it didn't work well, and the suicide rate alone among the kids was terrible, not to mention all the other bad things that happened.)

Didn't know that- the suicide rate is actually a strong argument, and one I don't have an answer for.

Go study Australia's "lost generation" - it pretty much IS an open and shut case of racial bigotry and an attempt to wipe out a culture entirely, and a good stab at genocide or at least an attempt at assimilation that would amount to much the same thing. The only good thing is that it didn't succeed and it was stopped.

Have you read Keith Windschuttle?

[Thanas]

I am certainly not going to wade through this piece of work, because it is near incomprehensible.

So I am going to post the question which seem to be central to this topic - you seem to rejet social contract theory. On what basis and what are you going to replace it with? If you reject social contract theory, how do you justify taxes?

[hongi]

Aboriginals believed in black magic. In practice, the British did not.

Get the fuck out. Black magic? What century did your wade out from? Do you even know what songlines are?

[Broomstick]

One brief point before I begin my refutations- like Stas Bush, I reject pragmatic considerations.

Why? What is wrong with pragmatism?

I would be benefiting from technology by living in international waters or using it to get to Antartica (which I couldn't survive in without technology anyway).

You'd benefit from technology if you knapped flint tools and used fire – humans are inseparable from technology.

The Amazon, Alaska and the Appalachians are under the rule of governments, and if the land is claimed I could be kicked off.

As a practical matter, though, such regions are so sparsely observed by officials that you most likely could live a lifetime out there without interference provided you exercised a little discretion and restraint.

Oh, sorry - perhaps that still infringing on this total freedom you're seeking?

I said nothing about citizens having a problem with this. I am saying that it is impossible for someone to live in society without taking advantage of that. Do you think it is moral for people like you to be freeloading?

It is morally acceptable to freeload on somebody with their consent.

Not in all ethical systems. Now, if you want to modify that with the caveat that you're talking about YOUR moral system I'd let that stand but I've yet to see a truly universal moral system.

Keep in mind that one could view the fact that shitty evil dictators now only exist in craphouse third world countries as a result of the success of punishing the Nazi war criminals. Back before World War II, it was quite popular in some parts of the world (like the US) to be a fascist who supported eugenics and so on.

It is an over simplification to conflate the eugenics movement with fascism or Nazism – while there was certainly an overlap, there were also people who were neither fascist nor Nazis who also supported eugenics. Likewise, how “popular” such viewpoints were in the US is debatable. While there were certainly supporters of the Nazis, especially prior to WWII, there were those who were equally opposed to them from the start.

Carinthium, I'd like to pick up on this if you have a moment. What about cases such as the US? There the land taken from the various tribes generally was held in common by the tribe as a whole. No individual was stolen from, but the tribes themselves often still exist today. Shouldn't they receive recompense for the property taken from them. Similarly, most of the land was taken by the US government, so shouldn't they pay, then, under this system?

Given the moral harm caused by collectivism, I would not hestitate to try and encourage mass-propaganda to persuade the tribes to divide the land amongst individuals and sell it off.

Who are you to arbitrarily decide that their means of managing their holdings is wrong? What about THEIR freedom?

There is considerable difference between the forced collectivism of 20th Century socialist/communist movements and customary tribal “collectivism” which is typically laced with obligations and counter-obligations between members. Native tribes in the US may have owned land in common but frequently the right to use those lands was regulated by custom, and they certainly allowed ownership of personal possessions and chattel.

Likewise, among some tribes that currently run casinos the business is run as a corporation and each tribe member owns shares in that corporation – the tribe still collectively owns the casino but each member's share of the business is delineated rather than being vaguely part of a collective. Of course, as each such tribe is a different entity it is all too easy to make sweeping, generalized statements and exceptions abound, but really, your viewpoint is far too simplistic for anyone who has attempted to actually learn anything from history – as opposed to trying to hammer history into pigeonholes to support your pet theories.

However, I would also not hestitate to agree that it should be given back. The people who lose it have the right to compensation from whoever they bought it from, and so on down the line.

Except the people who originally stole it (where theft did occur – there were times when it was sold, albeit under some pressure) are all long, long dead. Not to mention there is the problem of where to put a third of billion people just in the US (much less others elsewhere) who would then have to move elsewhere.

Assuming a person has restrictions upon them, they are obviously NOT totally free. If they have restrictions placed upon them of their own free will, then there isn't a moral problem but they still aren't.

The brutal fact that fucks with your theory is that NO ONE is “totally free” by your definition, and no one ever will be.

1. Neither does the government. So why then was it right to take away those kids? You fail at consistentcy.

Since it isn't violating property rights, the government's legal rights apply (given it is for the child's own good).

Who gets to define what's good for the kids? Governments don't (or at least aren't supposed to) own people, either.

And parental rights aren't property rights – they are as much an obligation to act in the child's best interests as a bunch of “rights”. That's why they end when the child is old enough to be considered an adult and make his/her own decisions. That's why parents can be legally forced to provide financial support to children they aren't raising themselves (such as in cases of divorce or abandonment), in which case arguably the kids own the parents to a certain extent.

On top of that – you would also have to show that children of Australia's Lost Generations actually WERE better off than they would have been otherwise, and that would have to include mentally better off as well as materially.

I agree with the claim you provide as a quasi-reducto ad absurdum- assuming it is unambigious a child would be better off, it should be given to better parents.

First of all, children are not “it”, they are he or she – maybe the problem is that you see children as pawns rather than human being such as yourself.

Second, how would one prove unambiguously that a child is better off with foster parents rather than biological parents? Yes, there are cases where such things are decided, but the burden of proof required is considerable, and goes beyond just who has the most money.

Truly, this disgusts me. It was Aboriginal religion and British superstition as much as the reverse.

Aboriginals believed in black magic. In practice, the British did not.

British Christians believed that by making gestures and muttering in a dead language one turned bread and wine into flesh and blood and then they ate it as part of ritual cannibalism ... that's not superstition and “black magic”? Or maybe you're just not used to seeing Christianity as another colleciton of myths, fables, and superstition rather than specially protected belief system.

Good lord - by that argument the US should have snatched away any child less than 100% African or Native or Chinese and raised him or her to be "white". Do you not see what is wrong with that attitude?

Only if they were badly discriminated against.

Raised by blacks or raised by whites, any black child in the US would have been “badly discriminated against”. God, you are fucking retarded to say something like that.

(The US actually tried something like that with Natives - it didn't work well, and the suicide rate alone among the kids was terrible, not to mention all the other bad things that happened.)

Didn't know that- the suicide rate is actually a strong argument, and one I don't have an answer for.

Here's an answer for you – ripping kids away from their parents by force is traumatic, particularly when said parents are loving and the opposite of abusive, and denying children their culture by forcing them to change their clothes, their language, their eating habits, and everything else about their lives overnight is a bad thing that seldom if ever ends well. It's traumatic enough that a certain percentage of them find death preferable than to continued existence under such circumstances.

The death rate for Native students in the forced assimilation boarding schools in North America (Canada also joined in the “fun”) was six times the death rate of children of other ethnic groups residing in other boarding schools. They weren't all suicides, of course, but clearly it was a bad thing for those kids. Would you accept such a differential as proof that, regardless of intention, the results were bad?

Have you read Keith Windschuttle?

Never heard of the name before. My brief research on who he is tells me that he dissents from the opinions of many other historians. Why should I give his stance any greater weight than anyone else's?

[K. A. Pital]

I would be benefiting from technology by living in international waters or using it to get to Antartica (which I couldn't survive in without technology anyway). The Amazon, Alaska and the Appalachians are under the rule of governments, and if the land is claimed I could be kicked off.

Still, it is possible to avoid governments. Travel to a lawless territory.

1- Nobody told me- or a large percentage of society for that matter (given that social contract theory is not widely known amongst the lower classes) that I would have to "pay" (metaphorically) for benefits recieved from society.

If your parents did not teach you to behave responsibly in a society, that is all too bad. They do for most people.

It is morally acceptable to freeload on somebody with their consent.

Nobody is consenting to freeloading on him or her if he knows that someone who is perfectly capable to act as a member of society and to work and earn money (i.e. not a student, pensioneer or cripple) is freeloading. It only morally acceptablt to freeload with informed consent.

I would go so far as to claim that the social contract theory was originally a rationalisation for the existence of government.

The government is not the only social construct there is. The responsibilities arising in a society are manifold, as are the benefits. The existence of the government is tangential to the issue.

Historical What If- If for some strange reason (I'll check with those who know more, but as I understand it it was incredibly unlikely) both the Allies and the Soviet Union had spared Germany, they would still have plenty of images of the Holocaust as propaganda.

Propaganda wouldn't mean shit. On the other hand, the destruction of Germany and the trial of its military and industrial leadership made the idea really unpopular, because others thought "Hey, this could happen to me if I do this".

The need for Marshal Aid would encourage West European states to remain democratic (plus the fact that the facists had been militarily defeated), whilst the efforts of the U.S to define itself against the Soviet Union would encourage it to remain democratic and about as free as it was in reality.

I don't understand. You said Germany would be spared from the invasion and subsequent trial of its leaders. This means fascism was not militarily defeated and, in fact, all major powers commited a diplomatic capitulation before fascist Germany for no apparent reason. Not only is the scenario unlikely, it does not lead to any of the consequences you describe.

"Hey judge! I gave that guy a gift worth 300 dollars! He accepted it, then didn't give me anything! I'm suing for $300!"
"That's ridicolous!"
"But you're also a social contract philosopher- didn't you say in university that people have to pay taxes to pay back the benefits of society. You still agree with that, right?"
"Yeah."
"So..."
"Uh..."

Society is not giving these things as gifts, it expects people to act responsibly and maintain society. Therefore, the analogy is false.

All moral systems are sadly arbitary (since one can't get ought from is), but I think it should be a way to ensure people do not harm each other while maintaining individual freedom. Yours?

I think utilitarianism is pretty simple as far as moral systems go. There should be a way to minimize the suffering (or maximize the happiness/well-being) of a maximal number of people. If individual freedoms are conducive to this goal, they should be supported. If they start harming this goal (e.g. turn a society into a violent anarchy), they should not be supported. Pretty easy.

1- That presumes redistribution and an income tax- true of most modern societies, not of most ancient.
2- In many cases this may be true, and if they had a choice in the matter I agree (changing my mind slightly). But that isn't true everywhere.

That is a falsehood. Redistributive mechanisms do not need to be present for the looting to have a major effect. Say, nation A looted nation B. Nation A got loads of capital from nation B and was the first to develop industrial machinery. Which it then used to conquer half of the world. The benefits of the looting for A are immense and cannot be adequately explained as just going "to the upper classes" - true, a majority of the benefits goes to the upper class if there is a wide class stratification, but it does not adequately reflect the whole consequences for A.

Hypothetical situation(not actually true)- What if my parents were both immigrants to the country who bought land with money we actually earned? They might be obliged to return the land, but they would have the right to be compensated by whoever originally stole it. There is a difference between returning stolen goods and reparations- I am opposed to the latter (although money as substitutes for unreturnable goods is a different matter).

Being opposed to reparations is stupid. Reparations can reflect either opportunities lost (i.e. nation A holding nation B in slavery and thus nation B having little chance to develop) or goods or humans destroyed (i.e. Nazi Germany's destruction of industry and humans in E. Europe) which cannot be "returned" since they were not stolen, but annihilated.

Assuming those people did not consent to live in the society, the government is stealing from it- the government choose to incur the debt, NOT the individuals. If I steal money from you to pay off my debts, that is morally wrong- the same principle applies.

People who do not consent to living in a society either leave society or actively fight to destroy it.

Because I did not choose to be under the government's juridisction, nor to have citizenship.

You should renounce it and leave society once you become self-aware and consider this wrong for you. If you do not, this means you consent. End of story.

It's not good to indoctrinate somebody with false beliefs.

Monotheism is a false belief, just like all other superstitions. Also, this means indoctrinating and forcibly converting people to atheism is morally viable, nes pa? I asked this before and I'll have to repeat the question.

It's a moral axiom that freedom is good.

Wrong. There is no such moral axiom. If freedom is increasing the amount of suffering (which is possible), then reducing the amount of freedom is good. Vice-versa also applies.

I agree with the claim you provide as a quasi-reducto ad absurdum- assuming it is unambigious a child would be better off, it should be given to better parents.

This means we should initiate a massive program of removing children from poor parents to the rich ones. Except one minor problem here - the future suffering of the child might be decreased, but the current suffering of families (and also some children who have empathy for their parents) is massively increased. This huge increase in suffering cannot be easily offset by a child's improved position in the future, and it would be hard to find a balance here.

[Zaune]

That is a pretty poor rebuttal, actually. People who do not want to be held responsible for the actions of their nation should fight it in every way, including getting involved in politics (no, just voting does not count), using their resources (like money) to combat the policies etc. If you tolerate or ignore actions by your representatives, how are you not responsible? And if you profit, why should you not be held responsible as well?

Further to Broomstick's point, what if those methods fail? Should we then be held accountable for not having the courage and/or ruthlessness to try other, progressively less ethical methods until we get results? And if so, where is the cut-off point?

And this is not a strictly hypothetical question for me, living where I do.

[Carinthium]

So I am going to post the question which seem to be central to this topic - you seem to rejet social contract theory. On what basis and what are you going to replace it with? If you reject social contract theory, how do you justify taxes?

I disagree with it because of one plain fact- most people in any given society are unfamiliar with social contract theory, and so cannot have implicitly consented because they don't know that there are issues they can consent about.

If real consent exists for a society, taxes are justified because people knew what they were getting into. (presumably)

Why? What is wrong with pragmatism?

If a moral principle has pragmatic exceptions, it can hardly be called a principle- a moral system can have one actual principle (e.g utilitarianism) or many (e.g.- medieval honor), but if a principle can be compromised within a system without breaking the rules it doesn't count as one.

You'd benefit from technology if you knapped flint tools and used fire – humans are inseparable from technology.

Yes, but you didn't want me to benefit from anything "given" by society. That includes technologies I "learned from society".

As a practical matter, though, such regions are so sparsely observed by officials that you most likely could live a lifetime out there without interference provided you exercised a little discretion and restraint.

Oh, sorry - perhaps that still infringing on this total freedom you're seeking?

The risk of such officials interfering on my freedom would be too great, and as you said I wouldn't be free enough.

Not in all ethical systems. Now, if you want to modify that with the caveat that you're talking about YOUR moral system I'd let that stand but I've yet to see a truly universal moral system.

I'm arguing the point about whether it is "objectively" good or bad- although I assumed nobody would actually see anything wrong with it in a situation where the consequences aren't exactly severe.

Who are you to arbitrarily decide that their means of managing their holdings is wrong? What about THEIR freedom?

It's inefficient, and leads to people being punished for the actions of others. I'm not calling it MORALLY wrong, just not in their best interests. I would also not be using coercion in this scenario.

There is considerable difference between the forced collectivism of 20th Century socialist/communist movements and customary tribal “collectivism” which is typically laced with obligations and counter-obligations between members.

Unchosen obligations- if they did continue with collectivism, I would advocate a formal constitution people cuold choose to amend so they could at least decide on a conscious level what rules were best for them.

Native tribes in the US may have owned land in common but frequently the right to use those lands was regulated by custom, and they certainly allowed ownership of personal possessions and chattel.

Oops- I don't tend to know much non-white history, I admit. If they did, it makes it considerably more acceptable.

Except the people who originally stole it (where theft did occur – there were times when it was sold, albeit under some pressure) are all long, long dead. Not to mention there is the problem of where to put a third of billion people just in the US (much less others elsewhere) who would then have to move elsewhere.

So the money should be taken from their heirs up to the real value of the amount originally taken. As for the third of a billion, they can be reduced to the condition of the significant number of people in quasi-poverty even in the United States. (In addition, if they move to countries with welfare they will at least live decently)

The brutal fact that fucks with your theory is that NO ONE is “totally free” by your definition, and no one ever will be.

So I seek to maximise freedom.

Who gets to define what's good for the kids? Governments don't (or at least aren't supposed to) own people, either.

The best interests of the children are paramount here, not who has rights- governments can often do better.

On top of that – you would also have to show that children of Australia's Lost Generations actually WERE better off than they would have been otherwise, and that would have to include mentally better off as well as materially.

I'll assume you're conceding the point about their material living standards, as you don't seem to be contesting it.

1- I'm simply arguing the case here, I'm not certain enough to be persuaded even if it's probably true.
2- Don't orphaned children instinctively end up with substitute parents if avaliable?
3- After being indoctrinated, the children will have the (admittedly false) comfort of living in a civilised, Christian nation.

First of all, children are not “it”, they are he or she – maybe the problem is that you see children as pawns rather than human being such as yourself.

Psycolanalysis of a person does not refute their argument.

Second, how would one prove unambiguously that a child is better off with foster parents rather than biological parents? Yes, there are cases where such things are decided, but the burden of proof required is considerable, and goes beyond just who has the most money.

Admittedly it's a rare thing- when the alternative is a Third World lifestyle however it's less ambigious.

British Christians believed that by making gestures and muttering in a dead language one turned bread and wine into flesh and blood and then they ate it as part of ritual cannibalism ... that's not superstition and “black magic”? Or maybe you're just not used to seeing Christianity as another colleciton of myths, fables, and superstition rather than specially protected belief system.

1- This is the Anglican Church (mostly) we're talking about. They tended to "believe" in the modern sense, rather then actually believe.
2

Raised by blacks or raised by whites, any black child in the US would have been “badly discriminated against”. God, you are fucking retarded to say something like that.

If it goes both ways, then material living standards are the prevailing argument. I was talking about badly discriminated against by their parents anyway.

Here's an answer for you – ripping kids away from their parents by force is traumatic, particularly when said parents are loving and the opposite of abusive, and denying children their culture by forcing them to change their clothes, their language, their eating habits, and everything else about their lives overnight is a bad thing that seldom if ever ends well. It's traumatic enough that a certain percentage of them find death preferable than to continued existence under such circumstances.

The death rate for Native students in the forced assimilation boarding schools in North America (Canada also joined in the “fun”) was six times the death rate of children of other ethnic groups residing in other boarding schools. They weren't all suicides, of course, but clearly it was a bad thing for those kids. Would you accept such a differential as proof that, regardless of intention, the results were bad?

As I said, this argument is unanswerable (as far as I can tell). I'll concede the point with MOST people. (Some children are naturally better able to cope, and babies are too young to be traumatised)

Never heard of the name before. My brief research on who he is tells me that he dissents from the opinions of many other historians. Why should I give his stance any greater weight than anyone else's?

I'm referring you to a more detailed arguer for the position I'm advocating- you can decide for yourself.

Still, it is possible to avoid governments. Travel to a lawless territory.

Somalia is not lawless, and my knowledge of geography is too poor to think of any others. Anyway, the risk of order being restored exists- as does informal gangs attempting to enforce laws.

If your parents did not teach you to behave responsibly in a society, that is all too bad. They do for most people.

I was taught the idea of obligations, but NOT obligations to society- just rules that had to be blindly obeyed (I was about five). Even later in life (being taught conservative Catholic morals), nobody told me that I had to repay society for being raised or gave me any sort of contract.

Nobody is consenting to freeloading on him or her if he knows that someone who is perfectly capable to act as a member of society and to work and earn money (i.e. not a student, pensioneer or cripple) is freeloading. It only morally acceptablt to freeload with informed consent.

1- They aren't total freeloaders anyway- they would presumably work and earn a living.
2- Given that there are large numbers of personality types that deviate from the norm (e.g. psycopaths)- "nobody" is an exaggeration if arguably valid for most people.
3- In this admittedly highly unlikely scenario, there would probably be a debate in which citizens who wanted to be could be informed.

The government is not the only social construct there is. The responsibilities arising in a society are manifold, as are the benefits. The existence of the government is tangential to the issue.

The government is the only body which attempts to enforce a social contract- the others exist, but being non-coercive are tolerable as I can break them when it suits my interest. (picking my nose in public etc)

Propaganda wouldn't mean shit. On the other hand, the destruction of Germany and the trial of its military and industrial leadership made the idea really unpopular, because others thought "Hey, this could happen to me if I do this".

How can you be so sure propaganda wouldn't work? Britain and the United States were used to democracy, France could have a forced association between dictatorship and the Holocaust shoved down their throats, and so on.

Finally, do you really think in the real world that most Third World leaders are afraid of war crimes tribunals? Restricting that sort of thing to the Third World is not much of an achievement when the American and Soviet blocs wouldn't have changed anyway. (Policies of the respective countries are unlikely to be affected)

I don't understand. You said Germany would be spared from the invasion and subsequent trial of its leaders. This means fascism was not militarily defeated and, in fact, all major powers commited a diplomatic capitulation before fascist Germany for no apparent reason. Not only is the scenario unlikely, it does not lead to any of the consequences you describe.

What I meant was that Germany was militarily defeated, probably lost a few regions (losses to Poland etc), but no expulsion of Germans from Polish territory or reparations. Military occupation and trial of war leaders would still happen.

Society is not giving these things as gifts, it expects people to act responsibly and maintain society. Therefore, the analogy is false.

What right does society have to get people to act responsibly and metaphorically mooch off them? And, as I pointed out earlier, most people are never given a contract.

I think utilitarianism is pretty simple as far as moral systems go. There should be a way to minimize the suffering (or maximize the happiness/well-being) of a maximal number of people. If individual freedoms are conducive to this goal, they should be supported. If they start harming this goal (e.g. turn a society into a violent anarchy), they should not be supported. Pretty easy.

Unless simplicity is one of your principles, that position is not justified. If it is, that contradicts utilitarianism.

That is a falsehood. Redistributive mechanisms do not need to be present for the looting to have a major effect. Say, nation A looted nation B. Nation A got loads of capital from nation B and was the first to develop industrial machinery. Which it then used to conquer half of the world. The benefits of the looting for A are immense and cannot be adequately explained as just going "to the upper classes" - true, a majority of the benefits goes to the upper class if there is a wide class stratification, but it does not adequately reflect the whole consequences for A.

There might be other possibilities but your hypothetical doesn't work- the benefits of a "warm fuzzy feeling" for being a world power can be discounted as easy to produce through self-delusion anyway (e.g.- amount of rampant nationalism in the world). In historical cases such as the British Empire, the loot goes to the upper classes.

The stimulation to the economy is not much different from where it would be as stimulation to country B's economy thanks to world trade- the only difference comes from the tarriff rate.

Being opposed to reparations is stupid. Reparations can reflect either opportunities lost (i.e. nation A holding nation B in slavery and thus nation B having little chance to develop) or goods or humans destroyed (i.e. Nazi Germany's destruction of industry and humans in E. Europe) which cannot be "returned" since they were not stolen, but annihilated.

Let me make this perfectly clear to you- I see no reason to believe in national rights. There are only human rights.

In addition, compensation from individuals to individuals can cover most of the claims currently dealt with by reparations.

People who do not consent to living in a society either leave society or actively fight to destroy it.

Just because somebody doesn't want to live in society doesn't mean they have the courage to fight against it. They may have no place to go in effect- e.g. anarchists (clearly a group that actually exists if small).

You should renounce it and leave society once you become self-aware and consider this wrong for you. If you do not, this means you consent. End of story.

Why?

Monotheism is a false belief, just like all other superstitions. Also, this means indoctrinating and forcibly converting people to atheism is morally viable, nes pa? I asked this before and I'll have to repeat the question.

1- Yes with children.
2- If forcibly indoctrinated and converted from a false belief to a false belief, the differences between the beliefs determines if harm or good is done.

Wrong. There is no such moral axiom. If freedom is increasing the amount of suffering (which is possible), then reducing the amount of freedom is good. Vice-versa also applies.

I meant in the moral system I'm advocating.

This means we should initiate a massive program of removing children from poor parents to the rich ones. Except one minor problem here - the future suffering of the child might be decreased, but the current suffering of families (and also some children who have empathy for their parents) is massively increased. This huge increase in suffering cannot be easily offset by a child's improved position in the future, and it would be hard to find a balance here.

That is taken into account when deciding how many children to remove. As a utilitarian, how can you object to that?

[madd0ct0r]

Most poeple in a society have never stuidied social cotnract theory, but most have a pretty good idea of what is expected of them and what benefits they recieve.

This learning process is called 'growing up' generally.
It includes such enlightening stages as

'Huh, other people can think and feel emotions too.'

'Hmm, if I'm nasty to him, he is nasty to me. But I was nice to her, and she was nice to me.'
DING! "ahh, so if i want to be treated this way, I have to act this way."

And funnily enough, it all follows quite simply from there.

The society may be a large and complex one, with representational government.
It may be a small village where people have to work together to survive.
The social contract is implicit. It is pervasive. It is recurrent. I wonder why?

[Carinthium]

Most people see these things as moral obligations without actualy figuring out the philosophical reasons for them- because of this, social contract theory never emerges. In addition, as I mentioned, nobody is explicitly offered a contract and in addition for large amounts of history people were not free to leave (e.g.- feudalism, women for most of history).

In addition, the fact that there are people opposed to the social contract theory (I've met a few, and there were notable philosophers against it) shows it is not as pervasive as you seem to think it is.

[Serafina]

So I seek to maximise freedom.

No, you don't. You don't understand what freedom actually is. It's the ability to choose ones actions responsibly and have as many options as possible. It's NOT "do whatever you want" or "do something without being told to do so", which is what most children typically use that word for.

In order to have anything even remotely called freedom, it is inevitable that you are part of a society that follows rules.
If you are NOT part of such a society, everyone is free to opress you if he is stronger than you in some way. Everyone is free to cheat on you. Without some sort of social contract (which is really just a fancy name for evolved, instinctive morals), you can not possibly be as free as you are right now - your choice of options and your ability to chose will be severely reduced.
Even if you had a large area of land (or a whole planet) completely for yourself, you would enjoy considerably less freedom of action than you currently do, since nearly all your actions would revolve around survival - you are forced into them by necessity. Again, your options and ability to chose would be severely reduced.

So if we actually implement what you want, even partially, we will inevitably destroy some freedom we currently enjoy - not to mention large parts of the structure of our society, along with all the benefits that entails.

[Serafina]

The best interests of the children are paramount here, not who has rights- governments can often do better.

You evidently ignored my post above, shithead. Go read it. You are also ignoring that children have rights.

I'll assume you're conceding the point about their material living standards, as you don't seem to be contesting it.

Again, by your logic, i would be 100% justified to take away your kids (if you ever have some) and put them under the care of some family richer (or whiter) than you.

Admittedly it's a rare thing- when the alternative is a Third World lifestyle however it's less ambigious.

Again, by your logic, we would be morally obligated to raid third-world countires and steal children away from their parents, rather than trying to improve their living conditions. Or to steal the children from anyone whose belief system we see as "less advanced" than ours.
You are COMPLETELY ignoring the harm that is done if you steal away a child from it's parents - to the child, the parents, and society if done on a large scale.

If it goes both ways, then material living standards are the prevailing argument. I was talking about badly discriminated against by their parents anyway.

No, they are not. I challenge you to actually acknowledge my post about this very subject.

As I said, this argument is unanswerable (as far as I can tell). I'll concede the point with MOST people. (Some children are naturally better able to cope, and babies are too young to be traumatised)

You are a moron arguing from ignorance - babies CAN be traumatized, and early-childhood traumas are the worst ones possible.

I'm referring you to a more detailed arguer for the position I'm advocating- you can decide for yourself.

This is not permissible on this forum (or in any proper debate for that matter). If you want to present an argument, present it yourself - pointing to someone else is not the same and not a valid argument, since it's essentially an appeal to authority.

What I meant was that Germany was militarily defeated, probably lost a few regions (losses to Poland etc), but no expulsion of Germans from Polish territory or reparations. Military occupation and trial of war leaders would still happen.

Guess what - there were very little war reparation for West Germany, and it didn't loose any of it's territory (except by the creation of the DDR of course).
Oh, you DO know that Germany was seperated into two different states, do you?

I meant in the moral system I'm advocating.

WHICH MORAL SYSTEM ARE YOU ADVOCATING?
You have been challenged repedeately to present your system. You have utterly failed to do so. Since you are not actually arguing for something, you are actually not arguing at all - you are just randomly disagreeing with things without advancing any alternative (not even an unviable one).

Present the moral system you are arguing for, and show how it works as an alternative to the current ones.

[mr friendly guy]

Refuting the argument by demonstrating it was not a valid argument- thus it can be safely ignored.

Stating an argument is no valid just because its the norm is not a refutation for the following reasons.
1. My position was not dependent on the fact that "this is the norm"
2. Just because something is the norm doesn't make it necessary wrong either, so shouting the opposite does not refute it.

Assuming those people did not consent to live in the society, the government is stealing from it- the government choose to incur the debt, NOT the individuals. If I steal money from you to pay off my debts, that is morally wrong- the same principle applies.

Your assumption is wrong for most counts. Because most people are willing to benefit from society and gain the privileges of citizenship. The fact you don't want to run off to Antartica demonstrates case in point. Even if you say you will buy the equipment to allow you to live in isolated shithole A (as per your reply to Lusankanya), your debt to the seller may be resolved, but your debt to society isn't, because society created the legal tender which you used to pay off the seller.

But you know whats funny. You want this principle (of cancelling debts) to apply to all nations iiregardless of whether these people choose to live in society. Thus you decrease the very freedom you purport to maximise. Comedy gold.

Because I did not choose to be under the government's juridisction, nor to have citizenship.

So where do you live? Are you stateless? Do you live a region where the government lacks control, for example regions of Pakistan bordering Afghanistan? But I bet you you live in either a first world or second world nation which actually has a government.

Again, like Stas Bush I reject pragmatic considerations.

I am judging whats best based on outcome. You can use "pragmatic considerations" as a synonym for outcome as you wish, however you clearly use outcome measures as well. You use the outcome measure "freedom". So why is your outcome freedom better than say, standard of living which was the measure in my examples.

You are assuming it is ridicolous without demonstrating why. Saying something is ridicolous is not a rational argument.

You obviously missed the part where I explained why. Your definition of the words are not the usual context, ie they are too broad, hence its an example of equivocation. Failure to read an opponent's arguments doesn't make you look better.

Definition of free: able to act at will; not hampered; not under compulsion or restraint; "free enterprise"; "a free port"; "a free country"; "I have an hour free"; "free will"; "free of racism"; "feel free to stay as long as you wish"; "a free choice"

Assuming a person has restrictions upon them, they are obviously NOT totally free. If they have restrictions placed upon them of their own free will, then there isn't a moral problem but they still aren't.

Then its pointless to talk about freedom in this context, because by your own definition and admission nothing is totally free.

It's not good to indoctrinate somebody with false beliefs.

Thanks for playing.

It's more a matter of how many were full blooded.

That wasn't my point. It was that your claim that half castes were badly treated seems false because a lot of Aboriginals these days aren't full blooded, including the head of Aboriginal groups.

1- Have you considered the possibility that the British were too close-minded to think of that?

You again display your ignorance by using the term British instead of Australia. We were fucking independent from the British Empire in 1901 dumbass.

1. Have you considered that is not a valid justification. Because you know, a criminal could have been too close minded to think of not committing the crime. And yes they did consider my option of bringing them to school without taking them from their parents, because thats what they did with white kids.

2- Then they probably would have remained believing Aboriginal superstitions.

But.. but... I thought you don't consider pragmatic considerations and only seek to maximise freedom.

You know what. I don't think you have some moral rules or system as such. You are literally making shit up as you go along and trying to justify it, and its becoming clear because you are contradicting your own purported values. I think your moral system is just whatever you gut feels like it, or you are arguing your system so badly a child can see you contradict yourself.

3- What about cases such as the 12-13 year old Aboriginals having sex with white men?

Serafina has already dealt with the principle, and obviously you missed the part where a lot were taken not because their parents were bad.

Since it isn't violating property rights, the government's legal rights apply (given it is for the child's own good).

I am sorry, didn't you say a) nation's don't have rights and b) you reject pragmatic measures (in which case the child's own good is one). You are slipping mate.

Could you clarify your position and the reasoning behind it please?

Serafina pretty much outlines what should have been obvious.

I said it was probably true. Not that I was persuaded.

This is just backtracking. I quoted exactly where I accused you to advocating it, now you flip flop to the "could be, could be not" cowardly line. I note you choose to ignore where I quoted you saying it.

It's a moral axiom that freedom is good. While I am arguably slightly hypocritical to deny the sort of freedoms I advocate to adults but deny them to those under the age of 18, the argument that they don't have the judgement to decide for themselves works well enough. (Excluding exceptional cases)

I was refering to the freedom to curtail their parent's right to look after their kids, not the freedom of the kids.

Ayn Rand is not libertarian enough for my tastes

So I will rephrase it. This guy is super Randroid.

Most would have been indoctrinated by whites similiar to you.

I am a white guy?

尔开玩笑是吗 ? 或者尔是 一个 大 笨 蛋?

Can you provide evidence of this indoctrination? Especially since they were already complaining about mistreatment waaaay before I even heard of the Stolen Generation? Yeah didn't think so.

[K. A. Pital]

Somalia is not lawless, and my knowledge of geography is too poor to think of any others. Anyway, the risk of order being restored exists- as does informal gangs attempting to enforce laws.

Somalia, Waziristan and many other places do not really have a government controlling them. The risk of order being restored is something you can take if you are a true anarchist. This is why all anarchists who freeload on massive first-world welfare systems are hypocrites. If they were serious about anarchy, they would travel to an anarchic territory.

I was taught the idea of obligations, but NOT obligations to society- just rules that had to be blindly obeyed (I was about five). Even later in life (being taught conservative Catholic morals), nobody told me that I had to repay society for being raised or gave me any sort of contract.

Um... "Rules that are to be obeyed" for children are, generally, his or her responsibilities. These are probably the first responsibilities a child gets - ones put forth by its parents, who fully supply the child and demand him follow the rules in return. After he reaches maturity, he can either ignore the rules set by his parents (or, for that matter, all other rules set in society), or he can conform. Social responsibility includes many things. I think people taught you not to litter, right? This is part of the conditioning - you get stuff from the society, you use the streets and roads. It is only natural that you should not litter. Later on come the taxes and other stuff which is also explained to people - in school, I presume, if the society is advanced enough.

The government is the only body which attempts to enforce a social contract- the others exist, but being non-coercive are tolerable as I can break them when it suits my interest. (picking my nose in public etc)

No, the community is not "non-coercive". Even lacking a formal government, the community can simply gather and decide you're a jackass who has to be killed. Like tribes did before they had a formal government - they had these gatherings of all members with a form of direct democracy on every important decision. So even without the government there can be society, there can be coercion and there can be responsibilities put on you by other institutions. The family is not a government, a tribe or community is not a government, the gang outside on the road are not a government. However, they are parts of the society (and in some cases, they are the entirety of the society available to the person). And they can be coercive.

Britain and the United States were used to democracy, France could have a forced association between dictatorship and the Holocaust shoved down their throats, and so on. Finally, do you really think in the real world that most Third World leaders are afraid of war crimes tribunals? Restricting that sort of thing to the Third World is not much of an achievement when the American and Soviet blocs wouldn't have changed anyway. (Policies of the respective countries are unlikely to be affected)

Actually, they sort of are. Unless they get a mighty backer (like Indonesia getting US backing for its policies), they might face problems down the road. And this tends to keep some of them cool-headed.

What I meant was that Germany was militarily defeated, probably lost a few regions (losses to Poland etc), but no expulsion of Germans from Polish territory or reparations. Military occupation and trial of war leaders would still happen.

If occupation happens, then reparations also happen. Germany looted industry from captured territories, destroyed industry which was there and killed tons of people in occupied lands. It would be a complete diplomatic collapse if Germany would get out free for everything it did.

What right does society have to get people to act responsibly and metaphorically mooch off them? And, as I pointed out earlier, most people are never given a contract.

Society does not have rights. It provides them to people (or, more to the point, certain people provide rights to other people). People do not have rights by fiat either.

Unless simplicity is one of your principles, that position is not justified. If it is, that contradicts utilitarianism.

What contradicts utilitarianism? How is this position not justified? If a level of freedom X starts to cause suffering, it is probably better to go to the previous level where suffering was lower, or at a lowest point. That makes sense no matter which "principles" you subscribe to, unless you do not subscribe to humanism, and instead of humans you prefer to put something else as the highest value.

There might be other possibilities but your hypothetical doesn't work- the benefits of a "warm fuzzy feeling" for being a world power can be discounted as easy to produce through self-delusion anyway (e.g.- amount of rampant nationalism in the world). In historical cases such as the British Empire, the loot goes to the upper classes. The stimulation to the economy is not much different from where it would be as stimulation to country B's economy thanks to world trade- the only difference comes from the tarriff rate.

The British Empire's loot got to the upper classes, but at some point the very status of Britain as the metropole started benefitting the people. A British citizen was enjoying all benefits of industrialization which other nations did not have.

Let me make this perfectly clear to you- I see no reason to believe in national rights. There are only human rights.

As you wish. I do not believe in the "rights" of nations or individuals, for that matter.

In addition, compensation from individuals to individuals can cover most of the claims currently dealt with by reparations.

No, it cannot. Individuals in a nation would not voluntarily give their money to others who might have been harmed by the actions of the military of their nation. A tax and reparation rectifies the problem. Resorting to individual lawsuits would be preposterous, especially considering the often disparate income levels of people and the failure of the justice system to treat them equally.

Just because somebody doesn't want to live in society doesn't mean they have the courage to fight against it. They may have no place to go in effect- e.g. anarchists (clearly a group that actually exists if small).

See what we discussed before. If you are too cowardly to fight with something you do not agree with, this means you take a part of the responsibility. It is a small part, but a part nonetheless. End of story.

Why?

*shrugs* Because you had other options and did not take them, which means you prefer the benefits of society. Easy.

1- Yes with children. 2- If forcibly indoctrinated and converted from a false belief to a false belief, the differences between the beliefs determines if harm or good is done.

Monotheism can arguably be more harmful.

I meant in the moral system I'm advocating.

Your moral system has human as the highest value or something else?

That is taken into account when deciding how many children to remove. As a utilitarian, how can you object to that?

I do not, I just said it is a complex question which requires calculations of utility which are too hard to make.

[Broomstick]

Why? What is wrong with pragmatism?

If a moral principle has pragmatic exceptions, it can hardly be called a principle- a moral system can have one actual principle (e.g utilitarianism) or many (e.g.- medieval honor), but if a principle can be compromised within a system without breaking the rules it doesn't count as one.

It's not so much compromise as bumping up against real-world limitations. Sure, person A might be obligated to pay money to person B, but if person A suffers misfortune (hurricane, earthquake, whatever) that leaves person A without money or material goods then person A can not pay person B. You might want to be free to sit on a riverbank and daydream all day, but if you do that you'll starve to death either because you aren't earning money to buy food, or you aren't busy growing your own food.

You'd benefit from technology if you knapped flint tools and used fire – humans are inseparable from technology.

Yes, but you didn't want me to benefit from anything "given" by society. That includes technologies I "learned from society".

Correct – there are no technologies that weren't learned from society. Humans do not exist outside of technology. Therefore you can never be free of society.

Well, maybe if you were a feral child – but then you wouldn't be posting here. Feral children – those who are free of society during their formative years – typically lack human language and have to be housebroken like an animal. Sure, they're free of society – so free of it they don't even have the option to join if they want to because lack of society in their formative years has irreparably damaged them. They are lesser human beings, utterly dependent on the charity of others, or else utterly dependent on a daily struggle for survival and/or stealing from others to get by.

Humans are social animals. They need other people.

As a practical matter, though, such regions are so sparsely observed by officials that you most likely could live a lifetime out there without interference provided you exercised a little discretion and restraint.

Oh, sorry - perhaps that still infringing on this total freedom you're seeking?

The risk of such officials interfering on my freedom would be too great, and as you said I wouldn't be free enough.

Reality messing up your theory again? I thought you weren't considering the pragmatic.

Who are you to arbitrarily decide that their means of managing their holdings is wrong? What about THEIR freedom?

It's inefficient, and leads to people being punished for the actions of others. I'm not calling it MORALLY wrong, just not in their best interests. I would also not be using coercion in this scenario.

No coercion, just massive amounts of propaganda. Propaganda is an attempt at verbal coercion, coercion isn't just putting a gun to someone's head. And what creates enjoyment isn't always about efficiency. Much of what compromises what people do in their free time has zero to do with efficiency.

Beyond that, though, the structure of such tribal societies leads to a sort of collective insurance – true, in good times the individual does not benefit as much as under other systems, but during times of hardship the individual can receive aid from others. This is a bargain so many people are willing to strike that societies keep reinventing such mechanisms over and over – among us non-tribals we call it “insurance” or a “social safety net”.

There is considerable difference between the forced collectivism of 20th Century socialist/communist movements and customary tribal “collectivism” which is typically laced with obligations and counter-obligations between members.

Unchosen obligations- if they did continue with collectivism, I would advocate a formal constitution people cuold choose to amend so they could at least decide on a conscious level what rules were best for them.

Once again, you demonstrate you are a fucking ignorant twat.

The Cherokee nation has a constitution, which has been amended several times. The earliest one written down was in 1827 – it might have been earlier except they didn't have a writing system until the 1820's. The Lakota (Sioux) have a separate constitution for each of their five reservations. And so on. Next time at least check Wikipedia before you open your mouth and demonstrate what a fool you are.

The Six Nations (Iriquois) don't, as far as I know, have a written constitution but were voting on matters and electing tribal officials long before the Europeans showed up, and for most matters required not merely a majority but a supermajority of 75% to pass an initiative. Women had voting rights and veto powers equal to the men. Anyone who didn't like their system was free to leave, of course.

Native tribes in the US may have owned land in common but frequently the right to use those lands was regulated by custom, and they certainly allowed ownership of personal possessions and chattel.

Oops- I don't tend to know much non-white history, I admit. If they did, it makes it considerably more acceptable.

GET OFF YOUR FAT, WHITE ASS AND LEARN SOME, THEN!

Holy fuck, jackass, it's not like the information isn't out there. Globally, white people are a minority, you do know that, don't you? White history is only a slice of world history. Get fucking educated. Your mama will probably be happy to see you put down the Xbox controller and emerge from her basement.

Native Americans are not extras from a Disney movie, they weren't all nomads galloping about the Great Plains in buckskins and feathers. You clearly know fuck-all about them.

Except the people who originally stole it (where theft did occur – there were times when it was sold, albeit under some pressure) are all long, long dead. Not to mention there is the problem of where to put a third of billion people just in the US (much less others elsewhere) who would then have to move elsewhere.

So the money should be taken from their heirs up to the real value of the amount originally taken. As for the third of a billion, they can be reduced to the condition of the significant number of people in quasi-poverty even in the United States. (In addition, if they move to countries with welfare they will at least live decently)

What about the people who came along later, who had no part in the theft? How do we determine which land was legitimately purchased and which wasn't? How is it justified to reduce the descendants of people to poverty when those descendants themselves did nothing wrong? What do you do about people who aren't wholly one ethnic group or another? Or perhaps you didn't realize that many “white” people are actually a high percentage of Native, and even some duly elected tribal leaders today have a hefty slice of Caucasian or other ethnic groups in them? Do we exile the Paramount Chief of the Cherokees if he or she isn't “pure” Native?

And what makes you think the rest of the world could absorb 300 million refugees from your scheme? What makes you think any welfare system could absorb that number of people? And how the hell are you going to move that many people out of North America? (Never mind Central and South America, where the same would apply. You're really talking about a billion people being moved to other continents)

And what the hell makes you think EVERY Native is living in dire poverty? Sure, a lot of them are, but not all of them.

This by the way, doesn't even begin to touch on Native reparations to African American descendants of slaves, as many Natives were slaveholders prior to the Civil war. At one time, the largest plantation with the greatest number of slaves in Georgia was owned by a Native family who were, by the way, fucking wealthy by anyone's standards. Except of course that their wealth was confiscated by whites so how the hell are the descendants of that family supposed to pay reparations to the descendants of their black slaves?

There is so much wrong from a merely practical standpoint with your scheme.

The brutal fact that fucks with your theory is that NO ONE is “totally free” by your definition, and no one ever will be.

So I seek to maximise freedom.

We frown on moving goalposts here.

Who gets to define what's good for the kids? Governments don't (or at least aren't supposed to) own people, either.

The best interests of the children are paramount here, not who has rights- governments can often do better.

Governments can often do worse – look into the results of Romanian orphanages under communism.

On top of that – you would also have to show that children of Australia's Lost Generations actually WERE better off than they would have been otherwise, and that would have to include mentally better off as well as materially.

I'll assume you're conceding the point about their material living standards, as you don't seem to be contesting it.

Material wealth is not everything – as the saying goes, money can't buy happiness. These children were still discriminated against in adulthood, leaving them just as unemployed and poor as those never taken, and much of the difference in income was due to the taken children living in urban areas with greater access to welfare. Aborigines still living off the land, even partially, had less need of money and living in less crowded conditions, were less likely to suffer from European-brought disease.

So... really, who is better off? Someone on welfare who can't get a job and is despised by those around him, living in a slum, and utterly dependent on the generosity of the state for survival or someone living out in the bush with little or no money but able to feed himself, come and go as he pleases, and associating with like minded people? Really, why aren't you arguing for the freedom of the bush?

2- Don't orphaned children instinctively end up with substitute parents if avaliable?

What? Fuck no – that's why we have orphanages and foster parents. What the hell makes you think these kids all had a happy ending in a loving family that overlooked their origins?

3- After being indoctrinated, the children will have the (admittedly false) comfort of living in a civilised, Christian nation.

Ah, yes, a “civilized” nation that looks down on them and refuses to hire them for gainful employment, then bitches because their on welfare instead of working, the lazy bums. Some fucking comfort that is.

Second, how would one prove unambiguously that a child is better off with foster parents rather than biological parents? Yes, there are cases where such things are decided, but the burden of proof required is considerable, and goes beyond just who has the most money.

Admittedly it's a rare thing- when the alternative is a Third World lifestyle however it's less ambigious.

This may shock you – but there are miserable rich people and happy poor people. Money is important, but it's not everything.

British Christians believed that by making gestures and muttering in a dead language one turned bread and wine into flesh and blood and then they ate it as part of ritual cannibalism ... that's not superstition and “black magic”? Or maybe you're just not used to seeing Christianity as another colleciton of myths, fables, and superstition rather than specially protected belief system.

1- This is the Anglican Church (mostly) we're talking about. They tended to "believe" in the modern sense, rather then actually believe.
2

And number 2 was supposed to be...?

First of all, what makes you think that the average aborigines was any more credulous than the average Anglican?

Second, aboriginal culture and religion had a notably practical use. The “songlines” are myths but they are myths set in the actual landscape and thus function as navigational aids. Songlines delineated landmarks and such important things as where waterholes are located – sort of important when one lives in a desert such as the outback but still important in more lush areas of Australia. If you know a songline you know the territory and how to safely navigate it. They are maps, maps that allow people to navigate over an entire continent. In other words, they had a PRACTICAL use, far more so than Anglican ritual. Basically, they were extended mnemonic devices.

Raised by blacks or raised by whites, any black child in the US would have been “badly discriminated against”. God, you are fucking retarded to say something like that.

If it goes both ways, then material living standards are the prevailing argument. I was talking about badly discriminated against by their parents anyway.

No moving the goalposts.

However – what proof do you have that “half-castes” or “half-bloods” were discriminated against by their parents? Please offer it.

And by your reasoning it would have been equally OK to steal white children from poor white parents and have them raised by wealthy black people (because, yes, there have been middle class and even the occasional wealthy person of African descent in North American history). Or, when the Europeans first came to North America the Natives would have been justified to steal all their children as they strange pale skinned people were clearly incapable of surviving on their own. In the 1830's the children of whites should have been given to Natives Major Ridge and John Ross, as they were the wealthiest landholders in the the Georgia region and the Cherokees at that point had a higher literacy rate than their white neighbors (which is damn impressive considering they'd had a written form of their language for less than a generation, but by then virtually all Cherokee had the ability to write their own names at the very least – the petition protesting the Treaty of New Echota in 1835 had over 15,000 signatures – not a single “X” or “mark” on the whole thing).

Would the white children have been happier being raised as Cherokee and Chickasaw and Delaware? At the time, the Natives were just as prosperous as the Europeans, in many cases more so. The current destitution of Natives in the Americas has to do with their lands and wealth being confiscated by force of arms, not with anything inherently inferior in their cultures.

As I said, this argument is unanswerable (as far as I can tell). I'll concede the point with MOST people. (Some children are naturally better able to cope, and babies are too young to be traumatised)

Incorrect. Babies certainly can be traumatized. Serafina touched on that, too.

Still, it is possible to avoid governments. Travel to a lawless territory.

Somalia is not lawless, and my knowledge of geography is too poor to think of any others. Anyway, the risk of order being restored exists- as does informal gangs attempting to enforce laws.

There is this thing called a “library” I suggest you look into as obviously the public education you were subjected to (assuming you had some education – you are, after all, able to type in English) clearly didn't take well. If navigating to the library is too difficult for you (perhaps you never learned that songline) there are these things called the “internet” and a “search engine” which will enable you to self-educate. Feel free to take advantage of them.

Frankly, I'd love to see you dropped into a state of “pure freedom” such as you envision. Unless you're seven feet tall with the muscles of a gorilla you'd soon learn the disadvantages of such a state for the average human being.

[Thanas]

So I am going to post the question which seem to be central to this topic - you seem to rejet social contract theory. On what basis and what are you going to replace it with? If you reject social contract theory, how do you justify taxes?

I disagree with it because of one plain fact- most people in any given society are unfamiliar with social contract theory, and so cannot have implicitly consented because they don't know that there are issues they can consent about.

If real consent exists for a society, taxes are justified because people knew what they were getting into. (presumably)

You claim to have read literature on the social contract theory. I now call BS on that claim, because if you had, you would have had writers solving that problem.

That said, you also do not consent to the criminal law, but you still obey it, right? Or do you reject any law you do not consent to? Do you have a magic vision of all laws in the land being laid out for you and you consenting to them for them in order to be valid right after you are born? I guess that would be pretty silly, right?

So obviously there are laws and contracts which are binding over several generations, long after the original generation which consented to it (in this case: the founding fathers and their followers) are dead and gone. The social contract is one of them - it was reaffirmed in the constitution when said fathers were not willing to dissolve into anarchy.

If you reject the social contract, then I would also argue you move to Somalia.