Carinthium wrote:a- The burden of proof is that if stealing is wrong, why should the government be an exception?
It's called laws, one of the things defining a governement. In the laws a society define transgressions etc like stealing. So by the very definition of the words taxation is not stealing. Now if you were arguing about medieval divine rights of kings etc you could have a semblance of a point. But in modern democratic countries such arguments are pure propaganda.
Carinthium wrote:b- I didn't actually say this, although poor people do tend to be stupider on average in the West.
This is actually wrong. you need to factor in individual and parental education into the equation. Where you will find consistently higher IQ is in the academic middle class, not the rich. And the academic middle class will consistently get new members from the poor, not the rich. In europe the tradition of intermarriage to prevent inheritance outside of the family really did wonders with the richer side of the genepool, so lots of the old money has lower IQ than their education dictates. This is one of the key features why general education was so extremely effective in the 19th and 20th century. The only time you'd be correct would be if you are refering to the effects of malnutrition.
But you already know this since it has been pointed out to you before. So I'm guessing you are just trolling for a reaction.
Carinthium wrote:d- Jesus would hate me, and I admit this. As I said, I only sympathise with parts of his doctrine.
JC doesn't hate the sinner, he hates sin. JC on several occasion forgave sinners. Its key to why christianity is such a successful religion amongst criminals and the insane.
Carinthium wrote:3- Spelling is irrelevant as long as an argument is clear.
But that is the point isn't it? Bad spelling &/ grammar will make an argument less clear. So a similar argument with correct spelling will by it's definition be more clear than one with incorrect spelling. So it would never be irrelevant.
Carinthium wrote:If I remember correctly, Peter Singer postulated the argument that it is morally indefensible to live in luxury when others are starving. Not believing in an inherent right to property, his argument (if I remember correctly as a suggestion) was that it therefore obligatory to give as much as you can until the point where you yourself are starving (as this is comparative luxury).
His argument fails because humans are tribal creatures and his argument is only relevant on the individual level. As soon as we form societies then using surplus to employ others is more effectively preventing starving than charity. It is why things like feudalism etc was so effective for so long. This since the principle works so effeciently on the smaller scale and larger scale that throughout history towns have outcompeted rural areas with the same population even though the rural areas control the food production. Fast forward to Cities>towns, countries>cities, etc. There are some breakaway points of corruption and bureaucracy, which means that the more effective the legislative body is on controlling all levels of society the more competetive it will become. We also know that it is more effecient for the society to provide wellfare than for individuals of that society to provide charity due to the regional needs and the transient needs. Same thing with income disparity.
So if you would make the moral argument then providing society with your surplus is the correct moral stance, not hand it out to the closest starving person. Its even in Acts...
Carinthium wrote:If there is a moral obligation to give to charity to any extent, the question becomes where the line is drawn. My point is that you do not have an intellectual argument which draws the line in the sense of saying 'I am obliged to give this much charity, and no more than this much.'
While philosophically difficult, this is actually quite easy in practice. This due to the breakaway point not being fixed, but relative to its context. The less wealth disparity in your context the less obligation you would have, while the opposite would be true. However the funny thing is that in practice people in countries with higher tax rates and bigger welfare are more likely to also give a higher % of their disposable income to charity and do volunteer work. Go figure.
Carinthium wrote:1- I was trying to think of the best plot device I could for an anarchic reigme to exist. Anarchy does not mean the absence of informal social hierarchy if that social hierarchy's only tool is peer pressure. I never claimed in this debate that anarchy was plausible- only that it was necessary for freedom to be unrestricted, just as capitalism is.
Actually both the academic definition of freedom and most people's view on it is so fluid that neither the concept of capitalism nor anarachy could ever come close to providing any of it. You'd have to go into the realms of religion to get concepts that by their definition gets close, like valhall, nirvana or heaven or somesuch. Even in those freedom is very much limited. So then we step into the territory of post modern satanists like Crowley, et al, to find something like "Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law". Which in concept is more "free" than both anarchism and capitalism which does restrict ones actions.
But the point is moot anyway since capitalism in itself doesn't strive towards any type of freedom, not even the free movement of capital. Instead the paradox of capitalism is that it requires a competetive market, but part of what a competetive market does is to benefit enteties (usually companies, sometimes countries or regions) that strive to limit other enteties' competetiveness. This through things like the ones you mentioned before, tariffs, import taxes, lobbying, patents, monopolies, etc. So the more "free"/competetive we want a market to be, the more we need a market controlling entity (like governements) to regulate those competing entities from ruining the competetive market. Hence anti-monopoly laws, limiting lobbying, international trade agreements etc. That is why people have had to come up with more limited concepts to describe different types of capitalism, like laissez-faire, social capitalism, etc etc etc. I think that the scholar site of capitalism had over a hundred different concepts/theories of types of capitalism last time I checked.
So unless you further define what type of capitalism you are talking about and what types of freedoms you are talking about, it would be incorrect to say that capitalism in itself has anything to do with generic freedom. Thus it is not logical to compare that to something which by its definition includes it's own definition of the types of freedoms it strives for. Anarachism has that nailed down within its declarations. However, it isn't the academic definition of freedom, nor is it the general population's definition of freedom, and if we would take those into account then anarchy wouldn't be striving for freedom either. Instead it drives towards its own definition of freedom, which to most people would be less free than what they have now.
