To what degree are you willing to trade social freedoms for economic ones (or vice versa)?
Posted by fliz 9 years, 7 months ago to Ask the Gulch
Do you agree with the claim that there's a trade-off between the two?
Government welfare is mandatory in a world w/ complete social freedom....
Government welfare is mandatory in a world w/ complete social freedom....
What's "initiating force?"
and is that the only thing that's not ok to do with them? What about if you simply fail to clothe and feed them and they simply freeze or starve for lack of ability to sustain themselves?
what then?
Murder is charged at the state level. ..same with rape.
Just because it isn't in the constitution doesn't mean it's fair game to indulge in.
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In addition to the death penalty laws in many states, the federal government has also employed capital punishment for certain federal offenses, such as murder of a government official, kidnapping resulting in death, running a large-scale drug enterprise, and treason. When the Supreme Court struck down state death penalty statutes in Furman, the federal death penalty statutes suffered from the same problems that the state statutes did. As a result, death sentences under the old federal death penalty statutes have not been upheld.
In 1988, a new federal death penalty statute was enacted for murder in the course of a drug-kingpin conspiracy. The statute was modeled on the post-Gregg statutes that the Supreme Court had approved. Since its enactment, six people have been sentenced to death for violating this law, though none has been executed.
In 1994, President Clinton signed the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act that expanded the federal death penalty to sixty crimes, three of which do not involve murder. The exceptions are espionage, treason, and drug trafficking in large amounts.
- See more at: http://criminal.findlaw.com/criminal-...
should I go on?
as to your first question, freedom from slut shaming and freedom from the tax burden of a welfare state.
If there's too much crime, that impacts your economic freedom.
The best idea I've seen so far is to refuse to give the unfit parent any financial support until they either give up the child voluntarily to adoptive parents or... (and this is the part it gets harder) we "violate NAP" for the child's sake or let the kid die.
which is it?
Juvenile Delinquent. Heinlein held there was no such thing Delinquency means failing in responsibility and responsibility is a trait of adults. Therefore juveniles cannot be delinquents. However for every juvenile in trouble there is an adult delinquent responsible. Maybe parents or it maybe teachers or social workers. Whomsoever society has charged with the that responsibility. For those who are not held responsible by society they are out of the picture. Why ask them permission to 'give up the child voluntarily?' They are no longer responsible. Bullying a blind kid in school? Send the teacher or principal or guidance counselor or better yet all three to the country work farm. Kids aren't being fed? Whose responsible when school is out? Why weren't they fed. No matter they weren't Ms social worker. Guilty. 30 days chopping weeds. As for the parents on welfare. Three job offers and three refusals. Kids are taken parents are chopping cotton. Paid of course but that goes to feed the kids. When you are ready for the dog being treated better than the kids line of thought say the magic word.
It's not just rights it's responsibilities. The assignment of which carries penalties for failures and rewards for success.
Now find a candidate in either the left wing or the right wing of the left willing to champion that viewpoint and if you can't why contemplate voting for any of their candates? To bring the responsibility home to roost.
I wasn't /totally/ mature at age six, but I was mature enough to know that going around and punching people in the face was irresponsible.
If I did that, I'd be delinquent, even at that age.
Huh?
I must not understand what "social freedom" means. Can you elaborate?
Social freedoms aren't legally enforced. That'd be draconian. Despite there being no laws against being a "slut." A chief complaint from the left is "slut shaming." They're willing to prop up a welfare state that extracts taxes to support single moms, just so they can support their lifestyle. They support government subsidies for abortions and birth control, and are the majority of welfare recipients.
Asking people on an objectivist board whether they support government subsidies of any manner is obviously a stupid question, but my question pertains to how far you're willing to go to socially ostracise people who's behavior "externalizes costs."
Would you participate in socially ostracising people to functionally restrict their social "freedoms" w/o violating NAP? (I don't know if NAP is fair game on this board. Apologies if it isn't.)
If we got rid of welfare, there /will/ be women who are unable to provide for their children asking for handouts. What will you personally do when it comes to that? Will you let the children go hungry? Will you violate NAP and take the children?
I have an answer in mind for myself, but I'm curious where other people who have objectivist ethics stand on an issue that's really "the rubber meeting the road"
As to shaming, nothing in anyone's rights requires that I approve of what they do, nor must I remain silent about my disapproval. If you are talking about individuals not liking someone's behavior and expressing their opinion, that's called freedom.
I'm not suggesting laws mandating helmets. I'm suggesting socially shaming people who don't wear helmets. I'm asking to what degree you're willing to be steadfast in your ostracism of people who don't wear helmets to make sure they aren't causing externalized costs to the community.
Even if this isn't in the form of welfare or socialized healthcare, there's still the externalized cost of the orphaned wife/kids, the psychiatric treatment for the person who had to scrape brain off their windshield, the increased traffic from accident cleanup...
In order to be free of the burden of dealing with other people's shit financially AND maintaining a stateless society that is't some draconian nightmare, we need to, as individuals, be vigilant against behaviour that is "problematic".
The non-aggressive way to deal with things is ostracism.
This question makes me realize I may be arbitrary in drawing this line. I can't stand arguments that gov't should make people pay for small indirect costs of actions. The other day I was thinking about how letting my kids play in the front yard has an indirect cost on society because they're more likely to be a target of crime or be involved in an accident than most kids who are inside on tablet computer. I wouldn't wan the gov't to tax me more having my kids outside. OTOH, I think gov't should, either through the courts or taxes, charge people if they're emitting a pollutant that's devaluing someone else's property. I'm not sure where I draw the line.
Sue for damages.
The scenario i'm pointing out is where there is a "tragedy of the commons."
Abused and neglected children are trickier. They're overwhelmingly the source of criminality in society.
What I'm suggesting is more akin to somebody polluting a shared resource, like air. You can't "all sue for damages" because then there needs to be a body politic that represents "all" (and we're trying to avoid that, right?)
The best you can do is withdraw all the support they need to survive. (Boycott them economically and ostracise them socially)
..but this requires a cohesive culture where people all agree that certain actions warrant ostracism and boycott.
It seems like you can run a calculation on the sum of the costs of the activities to individuals. For example, you could compare rents in areas that are very similar except for levels of pollution. Then you could work out a numerical cost per square foot of pollution. Then you could charge people for that cost. Ideally you'd give the money to those who lost value to the externality. But even if you can't, you can still tax the activity. We're going to tax something, and it's better to tax something like this than things like work or investing. It discourages people from doing a deal that appears to create value, but on balance does not when you count externalities. Unlike a hard limit on pollution, it does not stop activities that create more value than the cost of pollution they incur on others.
some people want unpolluted air on their property more than they want the money.
This is true. Maybe a certain type of pollution only matters to a segment of the population that's sensitive to it. This would be reflected in market prices, though. Even the person not sensitive do it loses value if the market price goes down.
https://mises.org/library/subjective-...
I'm in a minority in that I support gov't welfare for the poor. Some poor children will get out poverty, but more would if they had a handout. Some will get into a life of trouble. If we can accept for self-interested reasons paying for police and jails for those who get into trouble, we should accept paying for handouts that prevent the trouble before it starts.
This gets tricky, though, because to sell the programs, politicians have to show how they help many voters, i.e. the middle-class. Having a middle-class looking to the gov't for a handout is a terrible thing for many reasons.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XooUY...
*citation needed
There are clearly boundaries to your freedom.