Wrong, you are asking the question with the expectation that their response will then easily attackable by one of your 6-7 word sentences that add nothing to the conversation.
Who judges who is adding to the conversation? You?
If my responses lack merit, attack them. Being a big crybaby doesn't advance the discussion, and doesn't make me look bad.
You and I both know that I was talking about the voting democratic majority (the shareholders) and I will not waste my time entertaining a discussion with you concerning some semantic bullshit revolving around the concept of 'ownership'.
It's not semantic bullshit. We exist as material beings, and ownership is a large part of the discussion.
What is a voting democratic majority? Why does it have authority? If 100 million people believe the earth is flat, and one man believes it is round, is the majority correct?
Matters of fact and reality aren't dictated by opinion. I mean, a lot of people like you think they are, but they aren't. The truth exists independently of you or I.
Taxation is not theft, it is the enforcement of property rights.
So by taking my property, my property rights are being enforced?
Hans Hermann Hoppe has a great line, delivered in his typical thick German accent;
When you voluntarily chose to live, work and earn income in a country owned (yup, owned) by a democratic majority, you enter into an agreement to submit to that country's laws and operating agreements.
How did the democratic majority come to own the country? Is that in the US Constitution? If not, how did it happen?
Also, what about the minority? When the Democrats have the House Senate and Presidency, does that mean they own the country and Republicans do not?
You guys have voluntarily chosen to enter into in a rev share with a partner that you now don't want to pay.
When did I give my voluntary consent?
Your argument is like saying that a black slave born on a southern plantation 200 years ago voluntarily agreed to be ruled by his owner. Isn't it? If not, how so?
The portion taken is his money, not yours. There is no theft. You can opt out at anytime. Go sell something in the middle of the sea, you'll never have to pay taxes again.
But this is where the issue of ownership comes in. How did a democratic majority, let alone a corporation of America emerge from ???
See you can have people without a corporation, but you can't have a corporation without people. So it seems to me that there were people first, not the government.
Its not my problem that governments are widespread on planet earth, its yours.
It is both of our problems, but you're not seeing it. You're living it, just like me, but you still believe in outmoded institutions that probably won't be around in a couple generations because they serve no useful purpose.
If you ever do build the idealistic society you describe (which you won't because honestly nothing in this discussion is even remotely practical), and that society flourishes, I expect that it would not be able to be protected without looking a lot more like real actual modern societies.
That's possible. I am not really concerned with constructing societies.
I am interested in morality, specifically I do not wish to cause harm to others, or others to cause harm to me. I want to live peacefully with my fellow man, not to rule or control him with taxes and politics.
That's my highest goals. The market is the mechanism/paradigm. The state is the opponent of those goals.
That's ^^ the argument no one wants to have with me. How do we get to peace?
Someone else will always have a bigger gun and your property rights WILL NOT be enforceable.
Property rights are enforced mostly by consent. It is economically inefficient to enforce theft by violence, very easy to do to get people to believe it is their patriotic duty to bail out wall street and die in foreign adventures.
Because you and many others enforce the delusion of government, mostly because you're very sensitive to social signalling, people like me who want to pay our own way, live peacefully and trade with other people are isolated, attacked and persecuted. That will change, and is changing, but it probably won't happen in my short life. But I sleep every night knowing that things are changing and a world where we get along without force is closer each day.
You guys can attack my position (and ad hominem me) all you want. I think some of you are very intelligent. I also think you're ideologues on these issues and subsequently are unable be either practical or rational.
There is no need to attack you personally, it is easy enough to attack your ideas, which you almost without fail do not articulate, and cannot define clearly.
And again, it is because much of what you think you know, is the result of miseducation and social signalling. I doubt you have spent much time developing a political philosophy, thinking about and studying different approaches, testing things for logical consistency etc.
In the long run, you and I are irrelevant, but I am pretty darn sure the world is moving my way, not yours.
As an aside, when you guys assert things and then bristle when I ask "Why?", it's really on y'all to look at your behavior and check yourselves for having an emotional reaction to a very basic question which is necessary in a discussion of ideas.
If you can't explain "Why" simply and cleanly, then perhaps you need to re-examine your premises. That's what I try to do with every complicated or convoluted thought that comes into my mind. Instead of persisting in repeating something ad infinitum, I think it is all of our responsibility to understand and evolve our positions, or to be honorable and stay out of discussions of ideas altogether. We've got Hellblazer if we need demagoguery.
