The Glade 4.0

I've seen this definition before, I don't really think it is accurate.

While there is a subtle difference in the terms, it's not in the source of ethics or morality. Morality is used to refer to standards and conduct themselves, while ethics is used to refer to the formal study of those very same standards and conduct. Another name for the study of ethics is "moral philosophy."

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Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

Well Stathol from purely a defense-of-property viewpoint, protecting a 40 million dollar mansion is far more expensive than a 10-thousand dollar home.

Larger area to cover, bigger target for thieves. Presumably the owner of the 40 million dollar mansion has other properties in other locations, etc all of which require police, public infrastructure, etc.

I think thats the beginning of the argument.

And similarly, ethics is usually defined as the study of morals.

Generally speaking, there's no significant distinction between the denotation of either word. The idea that ethics are "secular" and morals are "religious/spiritual" is merely a modern connotation.

That said, there is one category of usage that's a bit different. When we say that a story has a "moral", the moral may not have anything to do with morals in the good vs. evil sense. It may merely impart advice designed to be wise in a practical sense. The same may be true of "moral plays". In this case, "moral" probably refers to mores, rather than morals -- denoting culture customs and habits, rather than ethical theories as such.

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Sail forth! steer for the deep waters only!
Reckless, O soul, exploring, I with thee, and thou with me;
For we are bound where mariner has not yet dared to go,
And we will risk the ship, ourselves and all.

dont forget to differentiate them from morels

And morays. Delicious either way, though.

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Sail forth! steer for the deep waters only!
Reckless, O soul, exploring, I with thee, and thou with me;
For we are bound where mariner has not yet dared to go,
And we will risk the ship, ourselves and all.

Ok, we can play this game. Alternatively, I can appeal to the authority that is English:



Libertarianism contains no such definition. As such, the removal of regulation falls under Anarchism, according to the English language.



Strawman/shifting goalposts.

Your contention, as stated by you in your own words, was that markets "without regulation" were libertarian ones. You did not specify anything about pollutants, and are adding that restraint now to backtrack.

Furthermore, yes they do.




I've never seen a single person advocate that. If you wish to follow classicial rules for a logical debate, you'll provide evidence to substantiate your claim or withdraw the contention.



Government regulation is what creates cause of action, both civil and criminal. Nothing else creates either. Pollution and product safety could conceivably fall under either or both types of law/regulation.



I can think of no free market economy that has evolved into tribal despotism under the original context you posed, which is to say a libertarian free market economy.

I can think of several that have evolved into fascism or socialism/communism, and vice versa.





You mean the existing system of law in the entire western world?

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“The duty of a patriot is to protect his country from its government.” - Thomas Paine

With respect to this --

I'm mostly interested in hearing what argument Montegue has to make, but in the mean time...

There are several arguments that can be made. Off the top of my head:

1) For the most part, personal property security isn't really what the police do. If you want your property to be secure, you install locks on your door, a fence around your home, a security system, etc. Maybe you even get your property insured against theft -- all things that are done at your own personal expense. The wealthy don't particularly rely on the police to protect their property. Neither do the poor or the middle class, particularly. Mostly the police are just there to pursue criminals after-the-fact, rather than actually defending your property.

2) Let me preface this by saying that I'm trying to find some hard data to back this up, but I'm not very familiar with the material. Perhaps Diamondeye can point me in the right the direction. But as a matter of real-world practice, I'm pretty darn sure that a much greater percentage of actual police expenditures, both in terms of man-hours and actual dollars go towards dealing with crime in low-income areas than with patrolling rich neighborhoods.

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Sail forth! steer for the deep waters only!
Reckless, O soul, exploring, I with thee, and thou with me;
For we are bound where mariner has not yet dared to go,
And we will risk the ship, ourselves and all.

There's also the fact that ownership of property in multiple areas is generally covered by taxation on the individual in multiple areas.

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“The duty of a patriot is to protect his country from its government.” - Thomas Paine

I think my argument tends to follow more along the lines of:

wealth is not a fixed value-- that is, if you have money it is generally much easier to make more of it (investing, etc) So to some extent it gains value the more you have of it, representing greater earning potential. But it also loses value in that it is taxed at a higher rate. In the end, there is still a value in making more money than making less (no matter how you want to argue to the contrary)

So just because I make three times as much as someone else I shouldn't expect to pocket that much--the difference in our earnings is not valued at my gross salary, but my net salary.

I think if everyone simply compared their disposable income (with value added for home, property etc) then thats a better indicator of actual compensation.

DFK - let's come to agreement about what I mean when I say "regulation". I mean to speak specifically about federal regulation of business. This would include things like worker safety rules such as OSHA, laws against discrimination in the work place, emissions caps, laws against dumping waste, air pollution controls, restrictions on food and drug manufacturers and standards for product safety.

Libertarians on this board and off oppose such government intervention in the market, and claim that the market itself is all the regulation we need. They claim such laws are attacks on liberty because they restrict what people can do with their business.

So, in your vision of a libertarian economy, would the government have the power to, say, restrict the amount of carbon emissions that a factory can generate? Would that government be allowed to slap a warning label on a dangerous product like Cigarettes? Would they be able to pass laws that require cars to have seat belts?

Stathol - I think the argument is pretty simple. Let's say I am very wealthy, and have a lot of property. The value of my property is significantly greater than the value of another, significantly less wealthy person's property. Therefore, I get more value for my taxes in terms of protection of property than a poorer person. The military that my taxes pay for are watching out for a lot more than a minimum wage worker. The police and fire are protecting a significantly higher value of property when they protect my home. I get more bang for my buck.

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It feels like all the people who want limited government really just want government limited to Republicans.
---The Daily Show

Sounds good.

Libertarians support most of those things.



1) You're blanketing all libertarians as being against all of those items, without proof.
2) You are wrong in that assumption, as most libertarians support most things you mentioned.



My vision of a libertarian economy is irrelevant, particularly on issues this specific. You've stated that libertarianism supports, essentially "no regulation." I'm fine with using the definition as you defined it above.

That determined, the burden of proof in a classical logic debate falls upon you to demonstrate that libertarians support "no regulation" as defined above. Not "some regulation" and not "most regulation." "No regulation."

Anything else is nitpicking the issues you wish to support your argument. In other words, changing the goalposts to try and win.

Again, using rules of classical logic and debate, provide evidence or withdraw the contention.

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“The duty of a patriot is to protect his country from its government.” - Thomas Paine

So, just to be clear, Liberatianism would support federal regulation of safety standards, pollution limits, and anti-discrimination policies?

If that's the case, how do you classify self-described libertarians like Elmo? He has argued fervently against those kinds of practices before. And Khross? I have never seen him argue in favor of federal regulations like the ones I describe.


The evidence is pretty clear, I think. Every single libertarian source I have read opposes the kind of regulation I describe. Von Mises, libertarian think tanks like CATO, and the last 8 years in this community stands as a lot of evidence to support my position.

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It feels like all the people who want limited government really just want government limited to Republicans.
---The Daily Show

Not really. Elmo doesn't even represent the libertarians of this community well, much less libertarians in general. Taking Elmo and Khross and thinking the 2 of them are a valid sample of all libertarians is nonsense.

Simply mentioning things like "Von Mises" and "CATO" and claiming that their mere existance is evidence of your position is equally absurd. How are they evidence of anything? Is the Easter Bunny evidence too?

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

The fundamental problem here is that Monty is not recognizing the difference between desiring "no regulation" and desiring "regulation other than what Monty wants."

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Buckle your pants or they might fall down.

Federal:

Safety standards: No

Pollution laws: Unneeded as they can be settled via court action

Discrimination laws: Only in regard to government institutions.

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"...but there exists also in the human heart a depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to attempt to lower the powerful to their own level and reduces men to prefer equality in slavery to inequality with freedom." - De Tocqueville

Diamondeye:

Since when do I get lumped in with Elmo?

Montegue:

So, never have said something one way or another on a subject is now advocacy for whatever position you wish to ascribe to me?

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Since this:



What I was poiting out was that even if your positions are more or less the same in Monty's eyes, he still can't use the 2 of you as some sort of proxy for all libertarians.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

This is mathematically unsupportable.

Let's say that I own a house worth $400,000 and make $100,000 a year and you own a house worth $200,000 and make $50,000 a year.

Let's further say that the tax rate is completely flat on both property and income. We'll say there is a 5% tax on property and 25% on income.

I pay $20,000 per year on my house and $25,000 on my income for a total of $45,000 out of my total assets of $500,000. $45,000/$500,000 = 9% of my total assets per year in taxes.

You on the other hand pay $10,000 per year on the house and $12,500 in income tax. $22,500/$250,000 = 9% of your total assets per year in taxes.

So, just from that simple calculation we can see that I'm not getting any more "bang for the buck" than you. I'm getting the same amount because I'm paying more bucks to get the extra bang. If my tax rate were higher than yours I'd be getting less bang for the buck because now I'm paying more bucks not just in absolute terms but in relative terms as well, to get the same amount of "bang".

Now, lets say that we get these incomes because I own a grocery store and you work for me as the manager. Are you really going to tell me that my job requires twice as much expense in terms of police, fire, and military protection as yours does at the same grocery store? How about my house? Is it twice as hard for those agencies to protect a $400,000 house compared to a $200,000 one?

You might argue that "well, you benefit more because if they didn't protect those things you couldn't make that money and live there in the first place" but that makes no sense because if I didn't provide that grovery store, you couldn't work there, nor could my other employees, nor could anyone purchase food there, and if that were because there was no police, fire, or military, no one else could open a grocery store either!

So, no, I, in the above example do not benefit any more from this "social contract" than you in the same example. In fact I benefit less because I pay the same amount proportionally on my assets as you, but the government gets a massive economy of scale in terms of providing me with protection for them.

It's even wose if we assume that under the above system there's public healthcare. If you and I both break our legs unloading a grocery truck and go to the hospital, I'm paying twice as much money for public healthcare as you(since I make twice as much and we are taxed the same rate). Does it cost twice as much for the hospital to treat my leg as yours?

The idea is absurd.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

That's cool. I just wanted some clarification on the issue.

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I'm wondering why you are messing with the mob. Breaking legs unloading a grocery truck? Yeah, right. Buying from the wrong supplier most likely, learned your lesson yet?

Sorry, after the moral morale minuses in this thread, I had to inject some whimsy.

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The U. S. Constitution doesn't guarantee happiness, only the pursuit of it. You have to catch up with it yourself. B. Franklin

"A mind needs books like a sword needs a whetstone." -- Tyrion Lannister, A Game of Thrones

This is completely absurd as DE already pointed out. The military isn't an insurance company. The liability you create for them by owning property does not increase their duty. They do what they do. The same for local law enforcement. Either they protect your property or they do not.

If this inane point was actually valid, then that means gated communities and people who buy home security systems, gate their property, hire their own security etc. should be reimbursed by the government they pay taxes to because they are subsidizing some of this work normally done by police. But this is not the case.

Conversely, if your inane point was valid, these people wouldn't have to shell out money for additional security; their proportionally greater contribution for their proportionally more valuable property should have the adequate protection in the first place.

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"It's real, grew up in trife life, the times of white lines
The hype vice, murderous nighttimes and knife fights invite crimes" - Nasir Jones

It's especially absurd when you consider the nature of national defense. Property values and income do not enter into any defensive calculation that I know of. Certainly, places and things that are of higher dollar value are very generally more likely to suffer attack, but that's only a very general rule. How a given person, place, or thing needs to be defended depends on a huge number of factors, and how much they actually are defended is another matter entirely.

Take, for example, just National Missile Defense. People who live in large cities receive much more protection against rogue missile attack than people living in rural areas because that is where such missile attack is most likely to take place. People who happen to live in rural areas that are near major military installations, especially ICBM silos or bases for strategic bombers, also receive more protection than city dwellers because those areas are prime targets in nuclear war, but less than urban dwellers because nuclear war with Russia is pretty unlikely compared to rogue missile attack.

More rich people live in urban than rural areas, certainly, but the same is due to poor people. A rich person has more to lose to missile attack in terms of property, but in terms of protecting life and limb they are equal. Moreover, a poor person unfortunate enough to suffer missile attack has likely lost a much greater proportion of their total assets, while a rich person has probably lost proportionally less since they are far more likely to have investments, savings, and property elsewhere.

So, if we were taxing people only for missile defense, any given poor person really is receiving at least as much, if not more, protection compared to a rich person. We could apply this exercise to any number of areas of life, but the bottom line is that the assertion that one person benefits more or less than another from a "social contract" is patently absurd.

In fact, it's a circular argument. "Wealthy people benefit more from the social contract. We know that they benefit more because they are wealthy."

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Once again, you're creating a False Dilemma, a logical fallacy.

Your failure to properly construct the argument using logic, or alternatively, to intentional setup of the argument to attempt to trap me, will yield no response beyond acknowledgment of the lack of logic.

You are again asking me and "all or nothing" proposition regarding libertarianism as though "yes" and "No" are my only choices. They are not. Furthermore, you have now, for the first time, used the capital "L" when referring to libertarianism, indicating a shift from a frame of thought to some particular group or entity.

Rephrase your question using appropriate logic, offering appropriate choices, and explain your change in the use of libertarianism from a noun to a proper noun.



False. You're Appealing to History and Appealing to Authority. Those are not sufficient evidence.

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“The duty of a patriot is to protect his country from its government.” - Thomas Paine