DarylLloydDavis:That's why I'm not a libertarian.
Not only you're not a libertarian, you seem to be a controlling megalomaniac with a God-complex. It doesn't even occur to you that the universe may not abide by your purely subjective preferences about what is "just", "good", or "moral".
My sense of moral value ultimately outweighs my hunger for economic liberty and prosperity, which I believe is empty absent moral values.
Who's stopping you from persuading like minded people to voluntarily contribute their property toward whatever goal you perceive to be "moral" or "good"? How do you reconcile your "morality" with forcing others to share it at a point of a gun? How exactly do you "organize" someone else's business so that the CEO gets paid less and the janitor gets paid more? Why should any of those people be concerned about your opinion or your sense of "morality"?
This OP of yours eliminated whatever little hope I had about your ability to reason or think logically.
Clayton
Guilt is by action only. Collective guilt is caveman morality
That's where we differ: I believe that guilt can be by inaction too. One isn't purged of all moral responsibility because he didn't choose to be in his milieu, didn't choose his company. Moment to moment, it still matters what one does. As I wrote to Wheylous:
There are real trade-offs in the real world. If a man exercises his individual freedom and turns his back upon someone trapped under a fallen tree, he is immoral. For a truly moral person it makes no difference whether someone would have forced them to do the right thing anyway. This is the common complaint of a selfish brat, who objects to a moral act because of the conditions imposed for doing it. Just do it.
So what would you have done to someone who decides they don't like your morality? It seems the only options you have offered so far is murder.
guilt can be by inaction too
You're evading the argument - of course inaction is tortious or immoral wherever there is a duty to act. I am using the word "action" in the sense of human action: individual choice. Emphasis on individual. And emphasis on choice. You are not morally guilty for anything that is outside of your control for anything which is not your choice. To say otherwise is to deny the golden rule. And, to say the same thing again, you are not morally guilty for anything which is done by another, precisely because it is outside of your control and is not your choice. To deny this, you must deny the golden rule. At the point where you deny the golden rule, all possibility of communication has broken down between you and me.
Guilt (righly understood) can never be by association - morally or legally. Only the individual who has the power to make a difference in the state of affairs - and either exercised that power contrary to his obligations or failed to exercise that power consistently with his obligations - is guilty. When his power to choose is removed, he cannot possibly held guilty. To hold someone responsible for something they had no power over is like punishing a dog for getting sick. It's just cruelty and the attempt to civilize it or dress it up in flowery language makes me angrier than just about anything. Don't even try to pull that bullshit with me. If you espouse cruelty and double-standards, have the balls to just come out and say it, don't hide behind duplicitous language.
Clayton -
DarylLloydDavis:Wheylous DLD, all morality is subjective, not objective I don't believe that.
DLD, all morality is subjective, not objective
I don't believe that.
Disbelieve it all you want - it's still true.
DarylLloydDavis:All value is subjective though.
What do you think morality is?
The keyboard is mightier than the gun.
Non parit potestas ipsius auctoritatem.
Voluntaryism Forum
Clayton:You're evading the argument - of course inaction is tortious or immoral wherever there is a duty to act. I am using the word "action" in the sense of human action: individual choice. Emphasis on individual. And emphasis on choice. You are not morally guilty for anything that is outside of your control for anything which is not your choice. To say otherwise is to deny the golden rule. And, to say the same thing again, you are not morally guilty for anything which is done by another, precisely because it is outside of your control and is not your choice. To deny this, you must deny the golden rule. At the point where you deny the golden rule, all possibility of communication has broken down between you and me. Guilt (righly understood) can never be by association - morally or legally. Only the individual who has the power to make a difference in the state of affairs - and either exercised that power contrary to his obligations or failed to exercise that power consistently with his obligations - is guilty. When his power to choose is removed, he cannot possibly held guilty. To hold someone responsible for something they had no power over is like punishing a dog for getting sick. It's just cruelty and the attempt to civilize it or dress it up in flowery language makes me angrier than just about anything. Don't even try to pull that bullshit with me. If you espouse cruelty and double-standards, have the balls to just come out and say it, don't hide behind duplicitous language.
It appears to me that DLD is trying to impose positive obligations on all of humanity. For example, he seems to consider everyone to be a priori obligated to "help out" others when the others are "in need". He seems to expect the rest of us to treat him as an authority on this matter, because... well, just because.
Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you: the statist.
You are not morally guilty for anything that is outside of your control for anything which is not your choice.
Since when does "guilt by association" mean guilty by coincidence? If I am in a situation where I can do or say something in protest of an immorality, and I do not, then to some marginal extent I've become less moral myself.
you are not morally guilty for anything which is done by another, precisely because it is outside of your control and is not your choice.
You're totally over-interpreting. When something immoral is done by another, this is not the end of the story. One can still call it immoral; call for action against it; and convince others of the immorality of it. That's exactly what I am doing with respect to the minimum wage and welfare. It's an ongoing problem; so the question of guilt is ongoing as well.
If you espouse cruelty and double-standards, have the balls to just come out and say it, don't hide behind duplicitous language
What are you referring to? That I want to end welfare? Am I not on the von Mises forum? Is this really a shock to you? Or is it that you equate low-wage workers and welfare with a particular group, yourself? I'm not hiding any double standards: I want fewer dependent, irresponsible people, irrespective of race, religion or ethnicity, who feel no shame at bringing into the world children for which they cannot themselves provide. That is the primary source of poverty. And I want fewer people on Earth generally, because I don't want a DeathStar for a planet. If the minimum wage discourages low-skilled people from being irresponsible, because they have no more opportunity to provide for more children except through charity, then it is more moral than welfare; and will decrease poverty in a single generation. If you find this fate for single mothers with no welfare cruel, then you have less faith in the generosity of private individuals and the potential independence of such women than I do--or than your love of individual freedom implies.
@ Autolykos
It should come as no surprise that DLD has not once tried to deny being a pychopath and that he wishes to murder those who do not bend to his belief of morality. I imagined that he would have tried to defend himself, but it seems he is comfortable with the knowledge that he is a pychopath. I always thought statists tried to deny the logical implications of their beliefs, but it seems we have a true specimen of evil in our midst.
DarylLloydDavis: The argument that an artificial wage floor will in turn keep the unemployment rate artificially high, by pricing low-skill workers out of the job market altogether, makes possible a prediction that all jobs paying above the market price in a low-skill industry ought to be perpetually filled.
DarylLloydDavis:In the absence of such welfare programs, if the prevailing market wage for low-skilled workers is below a level sufficient to provide a subsistence living for such workers, to what fate do we leave these workers
I want fewer people on Earth generally
That's not up to you, is it?
This is indicative of the whole problem with your way of thinking, Daryl. I want there to be freely available energy (as in free, Zero-Point Energy) which physicists tell me is a physical impossibility, at least as far as we understand the physical world today. It's not up to me. I have no say in the matter. Likewise, how many people there are on planet Earth is not up to you or me. It's under no one's control, not even governments:
The real truth that dare not speak itself is that no one is in control [of the world], absolutely no one. Now there may be entities seeking control; the World Bank, the Communist Party, the rich... But to seek control is to take enormous aggravation upon yourself because this process that is underway will take the control freak by the short and curlies and throw them against the wall. - Terence McKenna
- Terence McKenna
Most of these things are not up to us. The existence of poverty is not up to you or me, unless you personally happen to be a billionaire (and, even then, there's only so much you can do about it). The market rate for labor is not up to you and me, even if we employ the apparatus of the State to hurt some people and make an example out of them for thwarting our sense of what the market rate for labor "ought" to be. The substances that people ingest is not up to you and me ... even if we use the same apparatus of State to hurt a lot of people who ingest the "wrong" substances.
People will do what they will do and there isn't a damn thing you or I can do about it. To charge the taxpayers money in order to try to change things that you don't like but which aren't up to you is like investing money into researching unaided human flight (h/t Rothbard). You might as well just burn down the equivalent value of houses as spend the revenues on the charade of doing the research. Both are equally destructive courses of action.
The State and its panoply of ideological satellites employ slick-tongued apologists to concoct a billion different excuses for why the State has a moral duty to take money from the taxpayers and intervene in the peaceful industry of private citizens. But it's all bullshit. The government just wants more money for itself and its wars and it will spend whatever it has to spend on the security and propaganda apparatus to ensure the smooth flow of revenue.
We need a little government like we need a little rape. There is zero room for compromise with the State. We don't need even a tiny drop of government because the government is naught but a protection racket writ large. I like to call them the Day Mafia (kind of like the Day Walker, Blade, if you've seen that movie). They do in broad daylight what everybody else has to do under cover of night if they're going to do it.
Josh
It is not a market price but a distorted market price further complicated by competition with welfare and unemployment "benefits."
You're making my point for me, Josh. In my OP I wrote: "...in the absence of welfare assistance, the shortage of low-wage job openings will act as a disincentive for single and teenage motherhood, and an incentive for furthering education and training... " In other words, I realize that welfare is part of the problem; and I want it gone--replaced by private charity and responsible behavior. As for the minimum wage, I don't consider that welfare:
Again, in the OP I wrote that the minimum wage "...helps those who are actively helping themselves." I believe that hard work is a virtue whose value a just society doesn't leave entirely to the subjective "market" valuations of self-serving, usually-shallow, often-greedy bosses. The argument that the "free" market works like such a finely-tuned, competitive machine that affording a "living wage" for every worker is impossible--this to me is garbage. Every mid to large-sized company I've ever worked for, worked with, or dealt with has shown time and time again a tendency toward wastefulness, redundancy, and inefficiency. And if, to make it work, small businesses and part-time workers have to be exempted, so be it. But I think it's immoral to pretend that conditions just wouldn't allow for paying good people good money for working an honest day's work--while at the same time we pay irresponsible people for sitting on their butts.
I'm not arguing that the decision is mine. I'm expressing my preferences, and stating my case for the morality of those changes.
how many people there are on planet Earth is not up to you or me. It's under no one's control, not even governments
Again we differ. I say that it does matter--even whether I make my case or not. I too would love to see zero-point energy; and I wouldn't be surprised if Tesla or his scientific heirs have invented it. The point is, that our simply discussing this preference openly, on this forum, may tip off someone to the technology--someone who is in a position to find out what the government already has, and make it known. But if we don't voice our opinions and our preferences, even at the risk of ridicule, or of stigmatizing the innocent, then we're marginally shirking our moral part in that improvement process.
The substances that people ingest is not up to you and me ... even if we use the same apparatus of State to hurt a lot of people who ingest the "wrong" substances.
Amendment XV – The manufacture, sale, transportation or use by citizens of the United States, twenty-one years of age or older, of any intoxicant which is not likely to induce severe physiological addiction and withdrawal or temporary insanity, as understood by law, is hereby legalized and made subject to all laws respecting regulation of agriculture and commerce.
But the use of any intoxicant, legal or illegal, concurrent with a violation of a federal, state, local or precinct law shall be a felony crime: an offense that suspends the self-sovereignty of the accused before and during trial and abrogates it upon conviction; until the accused shall have been exonerated, or shall have served no less than one year in state or federal incarceration. And the use of any illegal intoxicant by a custodial parent shall be, ipso facto, felony child neglect and cause the immediate loss of custody of all minor children upon arrest; whereupon custody shall be restored only upon exoneration, or completion of sentence and judicial consent.
Sorry. Couldn't help myself. And your argument for no policy, because a policy implies a state, is more of a moral abdication, than a defense of pure freedom. Even in a society with common law, one must expect that some "policy" would evolve. And in such a society, you might be called upon to put in your two cents. Should a mother of young children face any sanction--e.g. lose her kids--if she's addicted to crack, beating the kids, and prostituting herself? Or is this just the freedom of the free market, and the kids, its units of marginal utility?
To charge the taxpayers money in order to try to change things that you don't like but which aren't up to you is like investing money into researching unaided human flight (h/t Rothbard).
As for public policy having no effect on behavior, I don't believe that either. I promise you, even setting the minimum wage aside for the moment, that if welfare were ended altogether, there would be huge changes in incentives and deterrents, and ultimately in individual choices, vis a vis, single, welfare mothers. Guaranteed. Look at China, for goodness sakes: they can make vast changes, whether it's right or not. And I like the element of public shaming brought into play, the message of morality: it is immoral to bring kids into the world at other's expense, or when there isn't enough food to keep them fed. It's vulgar. Just like I think it's vulgar to perpetuate the myth that companies operate under such tight competitive restraints that it would be unthinkable to guarantee full-time workers, at mid to large-sized companies, a wage sufficient to establish financial subsistence--a place to live, enough food and clothes, heat, AC, etc. We've all seen the policy idiocies and gross inefficiencies of corporations, both from the customer's point of view, and from within.
At the very least, look at it like this: If we were to disassemble the market-distorting intervention of the state, we should start with corporate subsidies, unnecessary regulation, monetizing debt, cross-generational SS/Medicare transfers, and paying people who are capable of work, not to work. Of all the market distortions from government, and I agree that it is one, the very LAST thing to go should be the friggin' minimum wage.
this process that is underway will take the control freak by the short and curlies and throw them against the wall.
I wax. (Just kidding.) I'm not torqued up about changing anything. Frankly, I feel as though I've already largely done my part, by making public a blueprint for what I believe a moral, functional society would look like--my direct democracy Constitution. At the margin I decided that I ought to make some effort to make its existence known; since it doesn't exactly pop right up with every related search--but never with the expectation that I would, or could, force others to buy into it. So, about a month ago maybe, I entered into my first such forum, making mention of the document, defending it, and providing links for it. And in the past few weeks I've posted arguments here in defense of principles and perceptions of human nature that undergird my blueprint for society and morality.
But, believe me, I'm quite resigned to go down with the ship. I hold no illusions, nor have any ambitions, of using duplicitous language to advance some ulterior agenda. I just feel obliged to try to make a difference in whatever unique way I might be able, given the realities of the current state system. And if the state fails, so be it; but if your scenario of free, common-law cultures doesn't bear fruit, and it's more of a hellish squalor, then I'll have the consolation that I at least tried to make possible a workable, peaceful transition to a freer society. I'm more focused upon first teaching how to swim, before tossing everyone in the deep end.
The government just wants more money for itself and its wars and it will spend whatever it has to spend on the security and propaganda apparatus to ensure the smooth flow of revenue.
You tend to talk of government as though it were a single, cognizant entity: It's a direct reflection of the weaknesses in human nature. And human nature is a constant, subject only to influences of force and persuasion. Yes, I'm trying to persuade others of the morality of forcing the immoral to act morally, much as we use prisons to force rapists to not rape. All I hear in your protestations against the force of government, as far as what would actually result without it, is a resignation to, and perhaps even a desire for, an ammoral chaos, given real human nature.
Yet I give you the benefit of the doubt that you believe that ultimately from this chaos would emerge a common-law freer society. I just don't see how you don't see that the problem isn't a "government-entity": it's damn near everyone. And without some force to control the aggressive among us, they would run roughshod over the supporters of liberty--or keep us constantly at gunpoint. I suppose you like your odds better that way--me, I'm not so sure: I like leaving aggression to the aggressive, on a day-to-day basis. They have their lessons to learn, about the discipline and utility of force; I have other lessons to learn.
DarylLloydDavis:Amendment XV - The manufacture, sale, transportation or use by citizens of the United States, twenty-one years of age or older, of any intoxicant which is not likely to induce severe physiological addiction and withdrawal or temporary insanity, as understood by law, is hereby legalized and made subject to all laws respecting regulation of agriculture and commerce. But the use of any intoxicant, legal or illegal, concurrent with a violation of a federal, state, local or precinct law shall be a felony crime: an offense that suspends the self-sovereignty of the accused before and during trial and abrogates it upon conviction; until the accused shall have been exonerated, or shall have served no less than one year in state or federal incarceration. And the use of any illegal intoxicant by a custodial parent shall be, ipso facto, felony child neglect and cause the immediate loss of custody of all minor children upon arrest; whereupon custody shall be restored only upon exoneration, or completion of sentence and judicial consent.
I find this to be highly immoral. Can you prove me wrong? (Note that this will require proving that objective morality must exist.)
DarylLloydDavis:Yet I give you the benefit of the doubt that you believe that ultimately from this chaos would emerge a common-law freer society. I just don't see how you don't see that the problem isn't a "government-entity": it's damn near everyone. And without some force to control the aggressive among us, they would run roughshod over the supporters of liberty--or keep us constantly at gunpoint.
If all humans are evil, how can one group of them make the rest good?
to the op,
if a $7.25 minimum wage is good, then wouldn't a $725 minimum wage be even better?
Disingenuous. You did respond to every post and you are quirte interested in defending your own position. There's nothing wrong with that. It makes you human and not the unbiased objective thinker you pretend to be. Welcome to the world of ideological bias.