[Fasces]

Do you believe in an inheritance tax of any sort?

[eugenekop]

I don't believe in taxes at all.

[Oxymoron]

Yes lets concentrate all the wealth in the hands of a Oligarchs and their decendents. What a fruit.

[Fasces]

So, to summarize, you would allow a small number of people to develop a disproportionate hold of the islands economic wealth/prospects, through their ingenuity, and then pass on that disproportionate hold to their offspring, allowing multigenerational accumulation of wealth and land?

[eugenekop]

Yes, or would you rather criminilize the act of giving gifts? Should I ask you each time whether you allow me to give gifts to my children? Should you send men in suits with guns to see that any gift that I decide to pass will be divided between my family and the men in suits? If you would have suggested this to the people in the island I think they wouldn't like it. Neither would thtey like taxation in general.

[Fasces]

Do you realize how inconsistent your own views are with the principles you claim to hold?

[eugenekop]

Hmm... No. I hold the principle of non-aggression, I and I think I am pretty consistent about it except in cases of war.

[Fasces]

Yes, we are aware that you hold principles except when you don't.

Well, eugene, have fun in the feudal hellhole utopia you have envisioned for yourself.

To answer your question, yes, I would gladly beat your noble aristocrats over the head, hang them from the tallest tree, gut them, and dance in the entrails as I gleefully give out their property for the free use by all the islanders. The sons have no right to deny the rest of the islanders food. They did nothing to merit their position in society, and I see no excuse to their defense. They are disgusting human beings, who do not deserve the right to live, let alone the comfortable existence you have permitted them to carve for themselves out of the luck of birth on the backs of serfs.

[eugenekop]

So which principles will you use to organize society in the island? Because what you sugggest seems to me very unprincipled. There are no general principles, like NAP (non-aggression principle) that guide you. Is anything going to be decided ad-hoc or are there general principles, laws or morality, or mode of production that are supposed to be withheld on the island?

[Fasces]

What, exactly, is inherently good about principles? Why are they necessarily desirable?

[Pants-of-dog]

I would build brick houses for everyone, regardless of what they paid me. I am sure that there would be enough people who are not assholes on the island that I would get enough community support to live.

[Kman]

Well this thread is a bit of a clusterfuck since I dont think Eugene is asking good questions, I think I know what the point it is that he is trying to get across so im gonna try and create a few scenarios myself here that people can think about.

So lets say our fellow pofoites are on a holiday together and we are flying on some plane that unfortunately ends up crashing in the ocean, luckily 50 of us survive and we manage to swim to shore on some relatively large uninhabited island out in the middle of the ocean. This island has fresh water, coconuts, bananas and fresh fish in the nearby reefs.
Its not a luxurious existance on this island but as a group we get by and survive by people catching fish in the ocean with spears and by roaming the jungle for bananas and coconuts and various other things that might be edible like bird eggs.

Now in this society the 49 of you catch what you need to survive and the rest of the time you spend lying around in huts chilling out and relaxing, but I being an industrious fella decide to go into the jungle and look for a good spot for a farm, I find a spot deep in the jungle around 1500 yards away from the main camp and then I start painstakingly chopping down the big jungle trees by using my swiss knife (that I was lucky enough to have in my pocket during the plane crash) as a chopping tool by hitting it with a rock, I ofc still catch fish and find coconuts for myself in order to survive but by using this method and by using every minute of my spare time I slowly start creating a hole in the canopy of the jungle that allows sunlight to reach the ground and after 6 months of painstaking labor I eventually create a plot of land measuring 50x50 yards aproximately and then I plant banana trees on this plot of land and carefully look out for my banana trees for 2 years (I dunno exactly how long it takes but its just an example) and eventually after years of hard labor I start being able to grow banana's at my little farm! On the other hand none of the rest of you could be bothered to do anything so laborious, you liked chilling out under the coconut trees so you dont have a banana farm.

In such a scenario I would most likely end up becoming the wealthiest man on the island since in such a situation I would be able to trade my bananas from my farm for alot of things, I could trade some of them for fish, others for help building a good house for me, even more of them I could give to my fellow islanders in return for them helping me collect my banana harvest.

Now in such a situation would you people consider me to be the rightful owner of that banana farm? or would you force me to give away my banana's for free to people you other islanders considered worthy?

I think that is the type of scenario that Eugene unsuccesfully was trying to describe.

[The Clockwork Rat]

Why the fuck didn't you ask for a hand? It sounds like a good idea, so doing it all yourself just seems daft.

[eugenekop]

I would build brick houses for everyone, regardless of what they paid me. I am sure that there would be enough people who are not assholes on the island that I would get enough community support to live.

Yep, I agree. That's why we wouldn't need to resort to robbery that is called the welfare state.

What, exactly, is inherently good about principles? Why are they necessarily desirable?

Predictibility, fairness, justice, efficiency. If you know that some principles are good you won't let temporary trends or difficulties lead you away from your moral compass. For example some public figure may become very unpopular, and without principles judges might convict him even without evidence. However since we have a principle of due process and reasonable doubt protected by the constitution we will know better.

[Figlio di Moros]

How about the "let's all work together to live as best as we can with limited resources" principle? I'll take it a step further than Fasces, if I see some guy stripping coconuts, not even hoarding them, but notice a diminishing portion of fruit-bearing trees, he gets one warning. The second time, I use the dead tree as a boat, flay him for a sail, his bones for hooks and meat for bait.

Now in such a situation would you people consider me to be the rightful owner of that banana farm? or would you force me to give away my banana's for free to people you other islanders considered worthy?

No, the trees you cleared were community property and you didn't provide proper compensation for use of that land.

Also, if you took five years to get a harvest, you wouldn't be able to trade it for jack. You come back one day with a steady supply of bananas and expect to trade it for... what? The fish we already share with you? The coconuts we collect? Improvements of your mud hut?

Besides, a fish farm would've been way more "profitable"(in the "I'm not lacking meat" way) than a banana farm.

[Fasces]

Now in such a situation would you people consider me to be the rightful owner of that banana farm? or would you force me to give away my banana's for free to people you other islanders considered worthy?

No, you shouldn't be forced to give your bananas for free, in that scenario, because an alternative and viable form of nutrition exists, assuming you acquired your plot in a yet unnamed legal way with full agreement from other islanders, who recognize your authority over that land as your property.

If there was a disease that wiped out all other food sources but your banana farm, then hoarding the bananas would be unethical [as would charging the outrageous prices supply and demand would naturally lead too], and in such a case, I would advocate taking them with or without your support. This would be done while the other inhabitants clear out their own canopies on which to plant their own banana farms. At such time that your bananas are no longer the sole source of food on the island, then your rights to use that property as you wish should be reinstated.

Predictibility, fairness, justice, efficiency. If you know that some principles are good you won't let temporary trends or difficulties lead you away from your moral compass. For example some public figure may become very unpopular, and without principles judges might convict him even without evidence. However since we have a principle of due process and reasonable doubt protected by the constitution we will know better.

The problem with your principles, eugene, is that they are entirely deontological.

[Kman]

No, the trees you cleared were community property and you didn't provide proper compensation for use of that land.

But what makes you think you own this plot of jungle far away from the main camp? does the ''group'' by definition own the whole island and every spot on it just because they washed ashore there? and why do you object to me cutting down a group of useless jungle trees if I put in their place a highly useful group of banana tree's?

Also, if you took five years to get a harvest, you wouldn't be able to trade it for jack. You come back one day with a steady supply of bananas and expect to trade it for... what? The fish we already share with you? The coconuts we collect? Improvements of your mud hut?

Yes and I could also trade them for labor since my banana farm could produce food much easier and reliably than simply going around the jungle looking for bananas and coconuts or diving in the sea to catch fish which would create incentives for people to come and trade with me instead of spending alot of the day trying to scavenge for food.

Anyway it doesnt have to be a banana farm, it can be anything that makes life easier for people that also takes alot of labor and time to create, like a fishing net for example.

The interesting thing is that white settlers actually experimented with these sort of things when they first came to North America, there were some colonies that actually were very communistic, they shared most things, the problem with this arrangement though is that when you share everything there is no incentive for hard work for the invidual actor and because of that the communist colonies often experienced mass starvation, while the colonies based on private property rarely did.

The basic point im making is that if you dont let people enjoy the rewards that hard work naturally brings in a free market then they simply wont work hard and when people dont work hard people become poor.

[Fasces]

Not working hard does not merit a death sentence, however. Nor can a dead man learn from his mistakes.

[Pants-of-dog]

Yep, I agree. That's why we wouldn't need to resort to robbery that is called the welfare state.

Nor would you need to resort to capitalism or any other method of allocating resources, since we woud be a small enough group that people would take care of each other simply because they are not douchebags.

[Kman]

Nor would you need to resort to capitalism or any other method of allocating resources, since we woud be a small enough group that people would take care of each other simply because they are not douchebags.

You can have capitalism in a small society, infact you can have capitalism between just 2 people living alone on an island since both of them producing and trading with each other without any use of force = capitalism.