TomAiello

Property is an individual right. (or are you saying that individuals shouldn't be allowed to own property--only their corporate masters can do that?)

I don't really wonder--I know. If you tell them you're in a hurry, they'll give you a card stuck to a form to fill out and send in. Then you can get the benefits of the card (coupon savings, etc) without ever filling out the form and sending it back, so that you can stay out of their database. -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

This is just the kind of fear mongering scare tactics we've come to expect from those paranoid, tin foil hat wearing, right wing conspiracy theorists at the....ACLU. -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

Any word on whether the people in question were lawful CCW holders, or were carrying illegally? Or whether any of those people were already felons, who weren't legally allowed to own guns? -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

Vote for this once, and you'll never be bothered with that tedious voting chore again! -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

Nope. I'm mostly advocating the creation of a new system. Within the confines of the current USA? I doubt that's very likely. Define "ok"? Do I think that's terrible? Yes. Do I want to pay for a military force to go kick their butts and impose my morality on them? No. Sovereign nations have a right to conduct their own affairs as they wish. When we expel you from our nation, then your affairs are no longer our business. You get to regulate them all for yourself, without my interference. -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

Nor did the US, in 1776. But by 1860, the situation had changed markedly. -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

Hm? Look! Something shiny! -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

and all the stories pointing out that the Mayans never made any such prediction. Wasn't 2012 just sort of a clerical point in the Mayan calendar, where they would restart it at zero? Kind of their equivalent of leap year? -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

I believe that you still should. Of her two "best" books - Fountain Head and Atlas Shrugged - I would have you lean more toward Atlas Shrugged. I think the easiest introduction to Rand is Anthem. -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

Seriously? There are people who'd take that seriously? I just want to see it because the CG looks really entertaining. -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

The defense force of the nation being attacked? At least that's what I'd expect. The nearby communities, presumably? Whoever's children are involved? Or are you suggesting that we need to maintain a giant military machine to impose our morality on anyone, anywhere in the world, who happens not to share it? Oh wait, that's exactly the way it works right now... Sure. Sovereign states have a right to arm themselves however they see fit. I see no moral justification for invading a foreign country because, ohmygosh, they have those scary looking weapon thingies. -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twenty-eighth_Amendment_of_the_Constitution_of_Ireland_Bill,_2009 -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

Except that your children, and their children, and their children, need not remain on active duty for all eternity. And have you seen the divorce rate lately? What do you think the chance is that Ireland will get a divorce, should they ask? As I recall, the divorce filings in our own country a while back were pretty unsuccessful. -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

How is that different from a tax? It's voluntary. You are not being compelled to join the new system. The primary defining characteristic of taxation, the thing that makes it taxation, is it's involuntary nature. And how is THAT different from a tax? Presumably, because the citizens have agreed to reform the existing system, and as part of that agreement have also agreed to fund a new one using a different system. By having foresight? And setting strict limits as to what the government was going to do in the future? I don't think it's as unreasonable as you assume. It hasn't. Neither have a lot of other things. That doesn't make them impossible. I bet a few million would have been enough, actually. And they could have accessed those assets pretty readily, because they had just seized a whole lot of real estate with actual value, that had previously belonged to their opponent. Remember, we're postulating the establishment of a new system. I'm volunteering to pay now so that my descendants need not be caught in an ever escalating cycle of debt financed governmental expansion. That's a duty that I feel to my children. If you want each generation to pay, it would be easy to establish a "per child" fee that gets paid into the endowment at birth. People can choose to have more children, staying in the system, and pay the fee. Or they can choose not to have children. Or they can choose to leave the system, rather than pay the fee for the children they are choosing to have. The big concept here is the voluntary financing of government. I don't think it's impossible. -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

On paper, expulsion works just fine. -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

The amazing thing about democracy, and one of it's major shortcomings, is that one need only repeat a question at intervals for a long enough period, and the people will assent. After that, they have no further opportunity to dissent. Say "no" a hundred times, and still we ask. But say "yes" once, and the issue is resolved forever. Makes lots of sense, doesn't it? -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

I don't think one can equate equal treatment under law to equal benefit from the law. The benefit you derive from living in a society with a good justice system is the same as the benefit I derive from the same. The "benefit" of the overall system isn't something you receive when you're actually engaged in the justice system--it's the overall society that results from that system. Good accounting means leaving a large enough cushion (and sufficient surplus endowed funds) to cover contingencies. It does not mean spending all the money available up front every year. -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

Isn't the whole point of a justice system that ll citizens benefit from it equally? If you have an endowment it does. Anyway, the point of responsible accounting is to maintain expenditures within the limits of the endowed income stream, not to create new revenue. -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

Put him in a work camp, where he can work off his debt. I was thinking something like Nevada, actually. You could easily fence off a few hundred square miles there and just toss people in to fend for themselves. In all seriousness, any discussion of a system like this pretty much has to be contemplating the establishment of a new system. Which means the real answer is "like the United States." We'd just eject people from our island and send them back to California. -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

The founders of the state, or, alternately, the citizens at the time the reform was instituted. So, you would establish the funds by way of wealth redistribution. Nowhere did I say that. If you're establishing a new system, it's easy to require a voluntary "buy in" fee to create the endowment(s). People want to join the new system, they pay in. They don't, then no problem, they stay wherever they are at. If you're reforming an old system, you can levy a per-person fee that doesn't redistribute wealth at all. The citizens. Who are the same folks that guarantee everything else. In other words, taxpayers, since taxes are how the citizens guarantee such financial obligations. Actually, I was postulating a system without taxation, so there would be no taxpayers. The citizens would guarantee the revenue stream by actually paying attention to the accounts and managing the spending from them. -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

That's an excellent argument for reforming the prison system, isn't it? If we didn't incarcerate non-violent offenders, they'd be able to work off their debt to society much quicker. And if we decriminalized victimless crimes, then we'd have a whole lot fewer "criminals" to deal with. Plus, if we focused prison time on training inmates to be productive members of society, they'd probably require less intensive security, and also be more likely to earn money to square their debt later. That still leaves the question of violent offenders who need to be permanently locked up, but there are solutions there, too, such as an endowment based system, or simply an expulsion from the geographic space occupied by the system. -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

The founders of the state, or, alternately, the citizens at the time the reform was instituted. The citizens. Who are the same folks that guarantee everything else. -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

The primary determinant of success is not intelligence, but rather a willingness to work. This has been noted by numerous people, at widely divergent times, ranging from Virgil ("Ruthless striving overcomes everything") to Edison ("Genius is 99% perspiration..."). High intelligence? Sure, it can help. So can accidents of birth, good looks, physical stamina, and dozens of other characteristics. None of them are worth a damn without a willingness to work your ass off. -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

Adam, I've just finished reading the article. Here's a (relatively) Libertarian response. The author misses the distinction between initiating aggression and responding to aggression (with force). The ideal Libertarian (not Anarcho-Capitalist) state would be empowered only to respond to aggression (so, to enact justice when one citizen infringes the rights of another), but never to be the first initiator of aggression (or the first user of force, if you prefer). This appears to be the central point at which Libertarians part company from Conservatives (who believe the state legitimately holds the power to initiate the use of force), and also with Anarcho-Capitalists (who believe the state use of force to be illegitimate in all cases, even as a response). -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com