[Pants-of-dog]

Actually, if you knew about your great hero Pinochet, you would know the market sometimes does get to stomp on the faces of workers.

But please provide me with one example of the Canadian gov't stomping on the face of a doctor or nurse.

[SolarCross]

Actually, if you knew about your great hero Pinochet, you would know the market sometimes does get to stomp on the faces of workers.

But please provide me with one example of the Canadian gov't stomping on the face of a doctor or nurse.

Pinochet isn't the market he was gov't. Gov holds down the wages of doctors and nurses, that is how it is cheaper. Hence why doctors and nurses in private practice get paid more and don't even need a union to get that. The NHS health workers have a massive union that is totally ineffective at getting anything like parity wages with the private sector. They are overworked and underpaid because the gov't can do that to them. Well they can up to a point, while employed by the gov't to do health care they can't negotiate their prices but they still (so far) have the ability to quit and go work in the private sector. So NHS has chronic staff shortages, they ameliorate that somewhat by importing cheap doctors & nurses from the 3rd world, but still the problem remains. I suppose the next step might be to conscript health workers, they could do that.

[Pants-of-dog]

Pinochet isn't the market he was gov't.

He was a gov't official working directly for the market.

Gov holds down the wages of doctors and nurses, that is how it is cheaper. Hence why doctors and nurses in private practice get paid more and don't even need a union to get that. The NHS health workers have a massive union that is totally ineffective at getting anything like parity wages with the private sector. They are overworked and underpaid because the gov't can do that to them. Well they can up to a point, while employed by the gov't to do health care they can't negotiate their prices but they still (so far) have the ability to quit and go work in the private sector. So NHS has chronic staff shortages, they ameliorate that somewhat by importing cheap doctors & nurses from the 3rd world, but still the problem remains. I suppose the next step might be to conscript health workers, they could do that.

So your argument about stomping faces is no longer being discussed. Cool. We will now look at this new argument.

Now, what exactly is your claim here?

[SolarCross]

So your argument about stomping faces is no longer being discussed. Cool. We will now look at this new argument.

Now, what exactly is your claim here?

Try reading it again with your eyes open this time.

[Pants-of-dog]

No. I have no incentive to read that block of text, parse out a verifiable claim, see what sort of support is included, and then make a critical rebuttal.

Just make your claim. Clearly.

Then cite your support for this claim. Clearly.

Let me know when you're done.

[Rancid]

I think the answer is going to be yes at some point. What will happen to the working class when most of their jobs are automated away?

[Pants-of-dog]

Oh you read it, even with your high school drop out reading comprehension class you must have understood it too as it was only six lines long and I didn't even use big words, so you are just lying again (surprise surprise). Nope that is it, I'm done with you, you stand convicted in my eyes (and I don't doubt the eyes of many others) of wilful lying, trolling and being a 'tard on purpose. There is no point engaging someone with such a hideously deformed approach to debate.

Yeah, it really sucks the way I did not formulate your argument for you.

You made some vague and unsupported statements about doctors and nurses in the NHS. This does not contradict anything I have said. My claim was that the free market has never made a system of health care that even begins to compare to what my gov't actually provides for me.

But hey, if you want to be rude to me and simultaneously claim that my rudeness is reason enough for you to claim yourself victor, go ahead.

[Truth To Power]

As monarch she owns Canada, just as she owns the UK and Australia and a number of other places.

But that legal "title" is actually void. Ownership is defined by four powers: to control, use, benefit from, and dispose of. The queen cannot do any of those things with respect to land in Canada that she "owns" through the Crown.

The author sets them up against each other and in the end she contrives for the designated bad guy to lose and the designated good guy to win, and so the author shows us that in the world she has created the values and characteristics that she likes are more powerful than the values she dislikes.... So even in fiction power is good, weakness is bad.

No, you have it backwards: good is successful, evil fails.

It may also be noted that by far the most powerful character in an author's work is the author herself! She is the one that tells everyone what to say and do and contrives every event and circumstance and all must obey. Indeed it is the power of the author that determines the good and the evil.

No. Voldemort is evil because the READERS think that the things he does are evil, not because Rowling contrived his eventual defeat. In other books --Tess of the Durbervilles is an example -- virtue loses and evil wins. It's still evil.

In contrast to fiction in reality things are different for there is not one all powerful author that sorts the good from the bad by her own likes and dislikes.

Unless you count Darwin.

There are instead an infinite number of wilful agents trying to advance themselves by what means they may, from the humble bumble bee to the monstrous dinosaur. If you want to see the absolute absence of good and evil you should read history or watch a natural history programme rather than Harry Potter or Star Wars.

There is no good or evil in nature -- moral value does not apply to anything but people and their behavior -- but I can certainly see good and evil in history, and so can you. In fact, it's a good thing history agrees that evil is eventually defeated.

Good and evil in the real world are subjective to an agent never objective to a higher super being.

No. Like good and bad diet, good and evil are ultimately objective: we just don't know for certain, or with full precision, what constitutes them in every situation.

For the tiger catching, killing and eating an animal in the hunt is good because it is a thing he wants and needs, failing to catch that animal is bad as energy was expended but horrible starvation will be the pay off. For the animal it hunts the reverse is true being caught is fatally bad, escaping wonderfully good, because it wants to live and does not want to die.

Here you come close to understanding. Good and evil are indeed different in different situations depending on evolutionary outcome, but the concepts only apply to human beings and their actions.

You are claiming that as a right, but have not the power to make it so. You are claiming the landowner is offending your rights but have not the power to punish. You will need a loyal and mighty army to make it so, or it will not happen. If not your own army then you need to persuade the commander of an army to make it so, a governor. In the end it is all power.

Nonsense. If it is all power, why does the commander of the army not just seize power?

The fight for rights is indeed a power struggle among competing self-interested individuals and factions. As for non-slaves taking sides with slaves there are reasons for doing so because compassion and empathy are real and also it may be said other material interests can play their part.

What about compassion and empathy for the victims of landowning, who vastly outnumber the victims of slavery, and the material interest of everyone in society in a more efficient, just, productive, and prosperous system than private landowning?

The Qin Dynasty of China abolished slavery as means of increasing tax revenues because unpaid workers don't pay tax, paid workers do!

Another example of evil being maladaptive.

Rights come from and depend upon force / power and government if it is government, is the local power because it has police, mobs of supporters and / or soldiers.

No, that's incoherent. If rights come from power, how do the powerful decide on rights?

How was the legality of slavery settled in the US?

By Congress and the Supreme Court.

Can you elaborate on that? How does the cause and effect play out? Also please provide actual historical instances as evidence.

Sure. In ancient Egypt, taxes on privately held land paid for government services and infrastructure, and it therefore became history's first great civilization. But there was a flaw in their system: temple lands were tax-exempt. As a result, land was worth more to the priesthood than to farmers and other private landholders who had to pay tax. Over centuries, this drove more and more of the land into the tax-free hands of the temple priesthood, with the result that the priests could afford to build massive monuments to their idiotic beliefs, but government was increasingly starved of revenue. Government started charging harmful and unjust taxes on capital and economic activity, not realizing that only just and benign taxes like a tax on land rent are beneficial to the economy and society. The other taxes slowly choked the economy and destroyed government services (including defense) and infrastructure, so Egypt was then easily conquered by invaders.

In Rome, a similar drama played out: services and infrastructure funded by the land tax were the foundation of the Republic and Empire's power and prosperity, but the system eventually failed because the noble families were tax-exempt. As in Egypt, over the centuries this gradually drove almost all the good land into their tax-exempt hands, until just 2000 individuals owned 90% of the land in the Empire. As in Egypt, this led to unfair and harmful taxation of capital and economic activity to make up the revenue lost to the nobles' purchases of land (Rome also resorted to inflation and confiscations of private property including land). The only reason Rome lasted so long was the emperor's patrimony of land, which produced enormous rents that the emperor could devote to maintenance of the empire.

There are other examples in China, India, Latin America, etc.

You should read history a little more carefully..

See above.

Magna Carta was forced on King John by rebelling barons, they rebelled because John was losing an number of conflicts with a rival king. He "agreed" to magna carta because the baron's military assets were superior to his own, neither the barons nor the king abided by any of the terms which eventually resulted in the First Baron's War.

And...?

As for the English Civil War... well what can I say, a timid king with a small army is undone and killed by a brute with a bigger army. That brute Oliver Cromwell murdered a king no less in broad daylight and got away with it! Why? Because he was ABOVE THE LAW, he was sovereign.. why was he sovereign? Because he won the war, his army was both loyal and victorious. Kings are not above the law because they have the nominal title of king, they are above the law because they have a loyal and victorious army. Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II is above the law because she has a loyal and victorious army, it is this that makes her sovereign.

What makes an army loyal and victorious....?

Blank out.

The glorious revolution? Same deal, there was nothing intrinsically wrong with King James II apart from being scottish, but parliament didn't like him so they invited a dutchman William of Orange to land an army in England to chase him off. James II went to france in exile and William became king. Sovereignty passed from James to William because of a victorious army.

As above.

Incidentally ancestors of the current monarch of England (and many other places) first acquired the throne of England through King William so it was not her ancestors that received any "terminal reminders" in those centuries.

Well, some did die without issue, but they were all in the family, and QE II can trace her ancestry to the parents or grandparents of the executed monarchs.

Slavery has been abolished over and over again all over the world since the dawn of time, though often coming back later.

No it hasn't. It was effectively universal until the Enlightenment.

Land ownership has not had this perennial controversy.

Because it is harder to understand how landowning enslaves people than to understand how slavery enslaves people. You, for example, show no sign whatever of understanding it, or being willing ever to do so.

[SolarCross]

As monarch she owns Canada, just as she owns the UK and Australia and a number of other places.

But that legal "title" is actually void. Ownership is defined by four powers: to control, use, benefit from, and dispose of. The queen cannot do any of those things with respect to land in Canada that she "owns" through the Crown.

Said the plankton to the other plankton in regards to the property of the whale... You can believe what you like, say what you like, but unless you have a substantial military force tucked up your sleeve you can do nothing to render anything "void". The PLA, the US army, the russian armed forces would have decent shot at depriving Her Majesty of Canada, they'd have to risk taking some nukes in the face if they tried so they probably won't but they would have a decent shot at it. You? Nope, no chance.

In contrast to fiction in reality things are different for there is not one all powerful author that sorts the good from the bad by her own likes and dislikes.

Unless you count Darwin.

I don't, Darwin was a scientist not a god; his aim was to understand and describe reality not author it.

There are instead an infinite number of wilful agents trying to advance themselves by what means they may, from the humble bumble bee to the monstrous dinosaur. If you want to see the absolute absence of good and evil you should read history or watch a natural history programme rather than Harry Potter or Star Wars.

There is no good or evil in nature -- moral value does not apply to anything but people and their behavior -- but I can certainly see good and evil in history, and so can you. In fact, it's a good thing history agrees that evil is eventually defeated.

You probably are totally unaware how much you sound like a bat shit crazy religious crank with that. "History agrees that evil is eventually defeated" OMFG LMAO & ROFL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Good and evil in the real world are subjective to an agent never objective to a higher super being.

No. Like good and bad diet, good and evil are ultimately objective: we just don't know for certain, or with full precision, what constitutes them in every situation.

Good & evil are not atoms or planetary orbits, they are labels for things we like or things we dislike, they are necessarily and inevitably subjective. I like Guinness, so for me Guinness is good, but it might make you heave so then for you it is bad, (unless of course you like heaving), the goodness or badness of Guinness or anything is, like beauty, entirely in the eyes of the beholder or his stomach.

For the tiger catching, killing and eating an animal in the hunt is good because it is a thing he wants and needs, failing to catch that animal is bad as energy was expended but horrible starvation will be the pay off. For the animal it hunts the reverse is true being caught is fatally bad, escaping wonderfully good, because it wants to live and does not want to die.

Here you come close to understanding. Good and evil are indeed different in different situations depending on evolutionary outcome, but the concepts only apply to human beings and their actions.

So you say, but it is just your opinion. My opinion differs.

You are claiming that as a right, but have not the power to make it so. You are claiming the landowner is offending your rights but have not the power to punish. You will need a loyal and mighty army to make it so, or it will not happen. If not your own army then you need to persuade the commander of an army to make it so, a governor. In the end it is all power.

Nonsense. If it is all power, why does the commander of the army not just seize power?

If he commands an army he already has power but way to go to get lost on the point which is whatever you subjectively imagine are your rights it doesn't count for anything unless it is backed by superior force.

The fight for rights is indeed a power struggle among competing self-interested individuals and factions. As for non-slaves taking sides with slaves there are reasons for doing so because compassion and empathy are real and also it may be said other material interests can play their part.

What about compassion and empathy for the victims of landowning, who vastly outnumber the victims of slavery, and the material interest of everyone in society in a more efficient, just, productive, and prosperous system than private landowning?

Meh, nobody but you and a handful of cranks cares a hoot.

The Qin Dynasty of China abolished slavery as means of increasing tax revenues because unpaid workers don't pay tax, paid workers do!

Another example of evil being maladaptive.

No it is just an example of self-interest on the part of the governors producing a relatively benign outcome for a bunch of people who had no say in the matter, it was also simultaneously a malign outcome for a bunch of people who also had no say in the matter, the slave owners. You and I are happy too because we both dislike slavery but those are still just our subjective opinions.

Rights come from and depend upon force / power and government if it is government, is the local power because it has police, mobs of supporters and / or soldiers.

No, that's incoherent. If rights come from power, how do the powerful decide on rights?

Compassion, self-interested calculation, superstition, coin toss.. the powerful may use any criteria but whatever the criteria they use it is only becomes a right because they are powerful.

How was the legality of slavery settled in the US?

By Congress and the Supreme Court.

I see and why would anyone who didn't not like or agree with their verdict submit to it?

Magic or force?

Can you elaborate on that? How does the cause and effect play out? Also please provide actual historical instances as evidence.

Sure. In ancient Egypt, taxes on privately held land paid for government services and infrastructure, and it therefore became history's first great civilization. But there was a flaw in their system: temple lands were tax-exempt. As a result, land was worth more to the priesthood than to farmers and other private landholders who had to pay tax. Over centuries, this drove more and more of the land into the tax-free hands of the temple priesthood, with the result that the priests could afford to build massive monuments to their idiotic beliefs, but government was increasingly starved of revenue. Government started charging harmful and unjust taxes on capital and economic activity, not realizing that only just and benign taxes like a tax on land rent are beneficial to the economy and society. The other taxes slowly choked the economy and destroyed government services (including defense) and infrastructure, so Egypt was then easily conquered by invaders.

In Rome, a similar drama played out: services and infrastructure funded by the land tax were the foundation of the Republic and Empire's power and prosperity, but the system eventually failed because the noble families were tax-exempt. As in Egypt, over the centuries this gradually drove almost all the good land into their tax-exempt hands, until just 2000 individuals owned 90% of the land in the Empire. As in Egypt, this led to unfair and harmful taxation of capital and economic activity to make up the revenue lost to the nobles' purchases of land (Rome also resorted to inflation and confiscations of private property including land). The only reason Rome lasted so long was the emperor's patrimony of land, which produced enormous rents that the emperor could devote to maintenance of the empire.

There are other examples in China, India, Latin America, etc.

What is your source for these histories? I've had a look at wiki and see nothing even slightly resembling your narratives.

As for the English Civil War... well what can I say, a timid king with a small army is undone and killed by a brute with a bigger army. That brute Oliver Cromwell murdered a king no less in broad daylight and got away with it! Why? Because he was ABOVE THE LAW, he was sovereign.. why was he sovereign? Because he won the war, his army was both loyal and victorious. Kings are not above the law because they have the nominal title of king, they are above the law because they have a loyal and victorious army. Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II is above the law because she has a loyal and victorious army, it is this that makes her sovereign.

What makes an army loyal and victorious....?

Blank out.

Blank out? As in redacted? Whatever you mean by that, armies are loyal if they are paid, or have other vested interests tied with the commander, a belief in the commander's competence also helps (a lot!). Actually a element of pretty much crazed religious fanaticism also played a part in Cromwell's gang.

Victory comes from the quality and quantity of bodies and weapons coupled with the quality of tactical smarts displayed by the officers and commanders and also often some luck.

That is aside from the point though, are you ready to acknowledge the reality that a commander of armed men is above the law for as long as he and his men are victorious?

The glorious revolution? Same deal, there was nothing intrinsically wrong with King James II apart from being scottish, but parliament didn't like him so they invited a dutchman William of Orange to land an army in England to chase him off. James II went to france in exile and William became king. Sovereignty passed from James to William because of a victorious army.

As above.

As above? Meaning what? I wonder if you have the kooky belief that James II lost because he was "evil" and William of Orange won because he was "good"? James II lost because he was a bit soft, a bit Catholic and lot Scottish, in a country swarming with English prods who liked Dutch prods better than they liked Scottish Catholics. William of Orange had a sizable professional army, James could only get a relatively few unprofessional scots together to back him up. So yeah your "good and evil" was just might make right and a great dollop of religious bigotry.

Slavery has been abolished over and over again all over the world since the dawn of time, though often coming back later.

No it hasn't. It was effectively universal until the Enlightenment.

Yes it has. I already mentioned that the Qin Dynasty abolished slavery which they did in the 3rd century BC. For a few more random (and mostly euro-centric) examples:

873: Pope John VIII commanded under penalty of sin that all Christians who hold other Christians as slaves must set them free.
960: Doge of Venice Pietro IV Candiano reconvened the popular assembly and had it approve of a law prohibiting the slave trade in the Italian city-state the Republic of Venice.
1080 William the Conqueror, French conqueror of England and Duke of Normandy, prohibited the sale of anyone to heathens.
1117: Slavery abolished in Iceland[8] (reintroduced as Vistarband from 1490 to 1894 in various forms).
1214: The Statute of the Town of Korčula (today in Croatia) abolishes slavery.
~1220: The Sachsenspiegel, the most influential German code of law from the Middle Ages, condemns slavery as a violation of man's likeness to God.
1274: Landslov (Land's Law) in Norway mentions only former slaves, which indicates that slavery was abolished in Norway
1290: Edward I of England passes Quia Emptores, breaking any indenture to an estate, on the sale or transfer of the estate.
1315: Louis X, king of France, publishes a decree proclaiming that "France signifies freedom" and that any slave setting foot on the French ground should be freed.[11] However some cases of slavery continued till the 17th century in some France's Mediterranean harbours, in the Provence.
1335: Sweden (including Finland at the time) makes slavery illegal. An abolition of slaves setting foot on Swedish ground does not occur until 1813[13] (in the 18th and 19th Centuries, slavery would be practiced in the Swedish-ruled Caribbean island of Saint Barthélemy).
1347: Non-free people were emancipated in Poland under the Statutes of Casimir the Great issued in Wiślica.[14]
1368: China's Hongwu Emperor establishes the Ming dynasty and would abolish all forms of slavery.[3] However, slavery continued in the Ming dynasty. Later Ming rulers, as a way of limiting slavery in the absence of a prohibition, passed a decree that limited the number of slaves that could be held per household and extracted a severe tax from slave owners.[15]
1416: Republic of Ragusa (modern day Dubrovnik, Croatia) abolished slavery and slave trading
1435: In Sicut Dudum, Pope Eugene IV banned enslavement of Christians in the Canary Islands on pain of excommunication.[16] However the non-Christian indigenous Guanches could be and were enslaved during the Spanish conquest.[12]

Land ownership has not had this perennial controversy.

Because it is harder to understand how landowning enslaves people than to understand how slavery enslaves people. You, for example, show no sign whatever of understanding it, or being willing ever to do so.

Maybe the reason it is harder is because it actually doesn't. Marxists cry about how being paid to work is just like slavery, I don't "understand" that either. In the present times it is sometimes touted about that being in debt is just like slavery. Just calling something slavery does not make it so.

[Godstud]

To re-quote someone on another thread, this is just text diarrhea. Mostly you say nothing but spew out a huge wall of text.

You're wrong about the royalty OWNING anything. Everything could be taken from them in an instant(by the people) and they couldn't say "boo". Your assumptions about how the royalty OWNS things, in t he Commonwealth, is sadly false.

http://royalcentral.co.uk/blogs/insight ... wers-22069

Do some reading:
1. Technically speaking, Queen Elizabeth is the Sovereign of the parliamentary democracy and constitutional monarchy of Canada. Unless you frequently use Canadian money or are particularly savvy with regard to Canadian politics, you may not have known they had any kind of monarchy.

2. All ministers, legislators, members of the armed forces, public servants, and police officers swear allegiance to the Queen. Though the aforementioned court ruling is likely to be appealed, for the time being all new citizens swear allegiance to the Queen as well. All passports are likewise issued in the name of the Queen.

3. Queen Elizabeth appoints a governor general who acts at the federal level and subsequently appoints one lieutenant governor in each of Canada’s ten provinces. The Queen and the governor general make their appointments on the recommendation of Canada’s prime minister. The governor general and lieutenant governor serve as daily representatives of the Queen, and they also give honors and tributes to deserving recipients in her name.

4. In the political world, the Queen really doesn’t do much—she’s not supposed to. Because she is considered to be the personification of the state of Canada, she is meant to remain neutral on all matters of politics.

5. The Queen is a patron of a number of Canadian organizations, including the Canadian Cancer Society, the Canadian Red Cross Society, and the Royal Canadian Humane Association. Her official website also states that Canada is the country she has visited most in her 60-plus year reign.

6. Along with her representatives, Queen Elizabeth partakes in various ceremonies and traditions in Canada, including frequent Royal Tours. Most important anniversaries or celebrations are attended by the monarch herself, while other members of the royal family may attend lesser events in her place.

7. The Queen acts as Colonel-in-Chief of numerous Armed Forces regiments, such as the King’s Own Calgary Regiment and The Canadian Grenadier Guards. Like her other roles in Canada, this one is primarily symbolic and accompanying duties are normally carried out by the governor general.

8. The prime minister and the ministers in his cabinet are all appointed by the governor general on behalf of Queen Elizabeth. (Usually, the governor general will appoint the leader of the party with the majority or large plurality.) The Queen makes an effort to keep up-to-date on parliamentary matters with regular communications with ministers and meets with them when possible.

9. The Queen must apply her royal sign-manual, or signature, as well as the Great Seal of Canada to patent letters, specific appointment papers of the governor general, the creation of additional Senate seats, and any change in her Canadian style and title.

10. Along with the governor general, the monarch can grant immunity from prosecution and pardon any offenses against the Crown before, during, or after a trial.
http://mentalfloss.com/article/53036/10 ... ll-does-ca

[SolarCross]

To re-quote someone on another thread, this is just text diarrhea. Mostly you say nothing but spew out a huge wall of text.

You're wrong about the royalty OWNING anything. Everything could be taken from them in an instant(by the people) and they couldn't say "boo". Your assumptions about how the royalty OWNS things, in t he Commonwealth, is sadly false.

etc..

I don't know that it would be so easy to take, and if they did then sure that would be another way she could lose Canada besides a Chinese / Russian / US invasion. Until that happens though... Cromwell didn't get England just by saying he could, you actually have to do it to get it. Actions > words.

[Truth To Power]

I have actually read this entire off-topic novella and it seems to me that the wheels come off here:

But normal people understand that rights do not come from government or laws, because government's job is to secure and reconcile pre-existing rights.

The cannot in any way follow pass either a philosophical or historical test.

Wrong. The authors of the Declaration of Independence showed themselves incomparably better political theoreticians than you.

"Rights" have been created from whole cloth innumerable times in history.

Nope. Oppressors have granted privileges innumerable times, but privileges, which can be created out of whole cloth, aren't rights, which can't.

Women were given the right to inherit and own property where once the mere idea of it was unthinkable.

No, they were not "given" that right, their possession of that right was recognized in law. And I guarantee you it was never unthinkable to women.

"Normal people" had a hand in the creation of this "right".

A right is a societal undertaking to constrain its members' behavior for the benefit of some member or members. Normal people define rights which law is then supposed to formalize and make precise.

I will not allow you to make statements like this then engage in the circular argument that the government was created to accomplish the task. That does not pass the historical test.

I don't see anything circular about it as long as you don't equivocate like SC, and claim "rights" are whatever laws (or governors) say they are. That just begs the question. And as for the historical test, don't mistake intention for cause. Things are subtler than that.

No its not. The morals that people adopt serve their perceived self-interest.

No, they clearly do not, and in fact the mystery of why altruism and self-sacrifice are good has been the central concern in moral philosophy for millennia. That's another difference between normal people and sociopaths, a difference regarding which you seem to be as clueless as SC.

These beliefs (certainly historically) most frequently serve a fundamental religious purpose.

No. It is religion that serves the purpose of morality.

Even the atheist asserts that the origin of these beliefs either arose for the desire for an orderly society (and then were codified by religion) or the desire for the personal gain of powerful people.

Not this atheist. The beliefs arose through evolution: those who held them (or more accurately the genes of those who held them) were more likely to survive and reproduce.

Slavery is most often mentioned. Blinded by our modern belief systems we fail to understand that there was a time when it was thought to be the natural order of things. Slaves were the spoils of war. Or they were a useful class.

There is no doubt that like landowning, slavery was a quick, simple, and effective solution to a real problem, and had real advantages. But today we have better solutions than slavery and landowning.

In the US the movement against slavery was most often and strongest in the churches. The abolition of slavery by a religious person is not altruistic. It is a duty to one's religious belief. Being dutiful to one's religious belief bears a reward which (in the Judeo Christian tradition) is a heavenly reward.

Yet half the Old Testament prophets owned slaves, and God seemed not the least perturbed by it.

But what of the slaves themselves. Did they not assert their desire for freedom independent of abolitionist movements? Sure. But they lacked the power to accomplish their assertions.

And your point would be...?

Then there is the caste system in India. It is unfair to believe that the lower castes did not accept their fate in the service of their religious beliefs. Maybe not so much now but certainly not long ago this was often true.

The religious belief was created to rationalize their fate as landless, and therefore permanently destitute and enslaved.

But clearly you have no such liberty.

Just as I said: I do not have it now precisely because it has been forcibly removed.

Not only that clearly no large group of people ever will have such a liberty.

Objectively false. Our remote ancestors all had it, and would scarcely have conceived that they could lose it.

Just because I own my house and deny you the liberty to drink from my swimming pool does not mean that you have no right to property or water.

A miracle of irrelevancy. Your house and swimming pool are products of labor, and therefore not things I would otherwise have been at liberty to use: you or a previous owner had to produce them. Land, by contrast, already existed, and therefore IS something I would otherwise have been at liberty to use. You know this, but are trying to find some way of not knowing it.

It merely reflects useful conventions for managing the resources we do have.

Like slavery did in its day. And landowning, like slavery, has served its purpose and become obsolete and harmful.

You are not prevented from buying the house next to mine.

Try to address the issue: property in land forcibly depriving people of their liberty to use LAND. A house is not LAND. I'm not sure there is any clearer or simpler way to explain that to you.

Circumstances may find you unable to buy the house and still prevented from drinking from my pool but you are not denied water.

I am denied water if some greedy, evil, parasitic sack of $#!+ claims to own the water nature put there, same as I am denied access to land when greedy, evil, parasitic sacks of $#!+ claim to own the land nature put there. See how that works?

Circumstances may find you unable to find water and forced to barter for it.

So now you are claiming the landless are somehow unable to find the land that greedy, evil, parasitic sacks of $#! exclude them from???

The inevitable absurdity intended to enable the atrocity.

That reflects the self-interest you just said was absurd.

I said no such thing. I said self-interest was an absurd explanation for rights.

In the end there is no "nature" from which to forcibly remove anything.

Another inevitable absurdity intended to enable atrocity.

Nature is not an entity.

It is the physical universe aside from people and the products of their labor.

Nor do you have any "natural liberty" to do anything.

I most certainly do: everything I could do if others did not stop me. You are just spewing obvious absurdities.

You are born bartering as has been every child who ever lived.

Irrelevant even were it not false, which it is.

You lack the "natural" ability to anything else.

Self-evidently absurd. I indisputably have the natural ability to do everything I could do if others -- especially greedy, evil, parasitic sacks of $#!+ who claim to own nature -- did not forcibly stop me.

You are a heard animal in essence.

No, I am much more an unheard animal.

Even if you were the only human on the planet you would be very hard pressed not to be eaten and therefor denied your natural right to this property you so lust for.

Disingenuous garbage. Rights only exist between people, in society, and I'm not the one lusting after property in nature, here.

Of course you just be the natural prey of the tiger onto whose "property" you sadly wandered and which she controlled out of self interest and force.

There is a difference between property and brute, animal possession. Learn it, or continue to talk nonsense on the subject permanently.

But absent her; in her place another predator would appear. None of that would alter in any way the fact that you were destined to be lunch.

Another miracle of irrelevancy.

[Truth To Power]

Said the plankton to the other plankton in regards to the property of the whale... You can believe what you like, say what you like, but unless you have a substantial military force tucked up your sleeve you can do nothing to render anything "void". The PLA, the US army, the russian armed forces would have decent shot at depriving Her Majesty of Canada, they'd have to risk taking some nukes in the face if they tried so they probably won't but they would have a decent shot at it. You? Nope, no chance.

More silliness. No one can deprive QE II of Canada because she doesn't have it.

I don't, Darwin was a scientist not a god; his aim was to understand and describe reality not author it.

"Darwin" just means evolution.

You probably are totally unaware how much you sound like a bat shit crazy religious crank with that. "History agrees that evil is eventually defeated" OMFG LMAO & ROFL!!!!!!!

<yawn> Absence of factual and logical rebuttal noted. When has evil not ultimately been defeated? Nazis? Gone. Slavery? All but gone. Communism? Naught but shredded remnants. Divine right of kings? Gone. Colonialism? Gone. Yes, evil still exists, because greed still exists. But it has to take new forms as the old ones are defeated. The main remaining evil is privilege, of which landowning is far the most important.

Good & evil are not atoms or planetary orbits, they are labels for things we like or things we dislike, they are necessarily and inevitably subjective.

Wrong. Good and evil are more like good and poor diet: hard to know perfectly; not the same for everyone or in all circumstances; but ultimately susceptible of objective determination by the objective standard of health. The fact that you might like a certain food doesn't make it good for you, and disliking a food doesn't make it bad for you.

I like Guinness, so for me Guinness is good, but it might make you heave so then for you it is bad, (unless of course you like heaving), the goodness or badness of Guinness or anything is, like beauty, entirely in the eyes of the beholder or his stomach.

Wrong. While there is a lot of consistency between people's ideas of good and evil, as of dietary preferences, preferences are not the ultimate standard, merely an evolved implementation of the standard of survival.

So you say, but it is just your opinion. My opinion differs.

No, it is a fact, and your opinion is factually incorrect.

If he commands an army he already has power

You clearly don't know any generals.

but way to go to get lost on the point which is whatever you subjectively imagine are your rights it doesn't count for anything unless it is backed by superior force.

But that's just incoherent. How can anything be "backed by" force if it IS nothing but force in the first place? Even when slaves' rights to liberty are not backed by superior force, it is their RIGHT which attracts the allegiance of force. Dershowitz establishes this pretty clearly in "Rights from Wrongs."

Meh, nobody but you and a handful of cranks cares a hoot.

Just as no one but Semmelweiss and a handful of cranks cared a hoot about the cleanliness of doctors' hands; no one but Jenner and a handful of cranks cared a hoot about inoculating people against smallpox; no one but John Snow and a handful of cranks cared a hoot about the Broad Street pump; etc.

No it is just an example of self-interest on the part of the governors producing a relatively benign outcome for a bunch of people who had no say in the matter, it was also simultaneously a malign outcome for a bunch of people who also had no say in the matter, the slave owners. You and I are happy too because we both dislike slavery but those are still just our subjective opinions.

You are trying to rationalize evil by pretending that its victims and perpetrators occupy symmetrical positions, and both merely feel that they are in the right.

Compassion, self-interested calculation, superstition, coin toss.. the powerful may use any criteria but whatever the criteria they use it is only becomes a right because they are powerful.

They become powerful by respecting and securing rights. You just don't want to think any deeper than the most superficial level.

I see and why would anyone who didn't not like or agree with their verdict submit to it? Magic or force?

Right.

What is your source for these histories?

"A History of Taxation and Expenditure in the Western World," by Webber and Wildavsky, and "For Good and Evil: the Effects of Taxation on the Course of Civilization," by Charles Adams.

I've had a look at wiki and see nothing even slightly resembling your narratives.

Wiki doesn't allow certain "controversial" facts to be stated.

Blank out? As in redacted?

As in you refuse even to think about it.

Whatever you mean by that, armies are loyal if they are paid, or have other vested interests tied with the commander, a belief in the commander's competence also helps (a lot!).

And if they believe their cause is just.

Actually a element of pretty much crazed religious fanaticism also played a part in Cromwell's gang.

Fanaticism is a big part of any military aggression, but where does it come from?

Victory comes from the quality and quantity of bodies and weapons coupled with the quality of tactical smarts displayed by the officers and commanders and also often some luck.

Now you are getting somewhere. What determines how many soldiers a society can field, and the quality and quantity of their arms? How about their willingness to fight?

That is aside from the point though, are you ready to acknowledge the reality that a commander of armed men is above the law for as long as he and his men are victorious?

Above the law? Certainly. The law is just whatever some gang of fools and crooks say it is. Above rights? No.

As above? Meaning what?

What makes an army victorious?

I wonder if you have the kooky belief that James II lost because he was "evil" and William of Orange won because he was "good"? James II lost because he was a bit soft, a bit Catholic and lot Scottish, in a country swarming with English prods who liked Dutch prods better than they liked Scottish Catholics. William of Orange had a sizable professional army, James could only get a relatively few unprofessional scots together to back him up. So yeah your "good and evil" was just might make right and a great dollop of religious bigotry.

Why did the Protestants feel more loyalty to William?

Yes it has. I already mentioned that the Qin Dynasty abolished slavery which they did in the 3rd century BC. For a few more random (and mostly euro-centric) examples:

No, those are just a few minor exceptions that prove the rule.

Maybe the reason it is harder is because it actually doesn't.

I've shown that it does.

Marxists cry about how being paid to work is just like slavery, I don't "understand" that either.

Because they can't show how people are deprived of their liberty by wage work. I HAVE shown how people are deprived of their liberty by landowning.

In the present times it is sometimes touted about that being in debt is just like slavery. Just calling something slavery does not make it so.

Slavery is labor compelled by force. So "wage slavery" is an oxymoron. Debt slavery is figurative (though the debt money system has elements of compulsory labor), but the removal of people's liberty by landowning, and their consequent need to labor for others just to get access to the opportunity to earn a living to survive, is functionally equivalent to slavery.

[Bosnjak]

Yes, the government has to provide a minimum income. and the government should have Social real estate program, to lower the cost of renting flats.

Social minimum standards are the reason why Europa has such a low crimerate. A person in jail costs the state 250 Dollar / Day.

It is also a boost for economy, because the poor spent all the money, which generates jobs, and later capital for companies.

Wellfare in competition with wages, so have employers to increase wages.


Wellfare allows people, after an illness or joblless not to get homeles,s where they nearly never can re-enter the job market.

But I thin the state should demand for higher Wellfare-Cheques, community work.

[Drlee]

Yes, the government has to provide a minimum income. and the government should have Social real estate program, to lower the cost of renting flats.

Social minimum standards are the reason why Europa has such a low crimerate. A person in jail costs the state 250 Dollar / Day.

It is also a boost for economy, because the poor spent all the money, which generates jobs, and later capital for companies.

Wellfare in competition with wages, so have employers to increase wages.


Wellfare allows people, after an illness or joblless not to get homeles,s where they nearly never can re-enter the job market.

But I thin the state should demand for higher Wellfare-Cheques, community work.

I agree with everything you said but one thing. Your crime rate is not that low. There are places where it is but then most of the US is quite a bit safer than London for example.

I wish others believed as you do.

[Albert]

From my experience with the poor is that they deserve to be poor. Homeless should not be fed at all.

The only good reason why people in need should be helped is because there are few good people among the needy. Who end up there out of misfortune or circumstances of birth. So with help they eventually will get out of poverty.

[fuser]

I think the answer is going to be yes at some point. What will happen to the working class when most of their jobs are automated away?

Revolution by [s]working class[/s] Robots.

[Bosnjak]

From my experience with the poor is that they deserve to be poor. Homeless should not be fed at all.

The only good reason why people in need should be helped is because there are few good people among the needy. Who end up there out of misfortune or circumstances of birth. So with help they eventually will get out of poverty.

Come on just 250.-- bucks in food stamps, and a capsule apartment... The US burns trillions in Wars, but has hungry and homeless people, often veterans.

[Truth To Power]

From my experience with the poor is that they deserve to be poor. Homeless should not be fed at all.

No, almost all the poor are much poorer than they deserve. They are victims of both privilege and government policies that rob them and prevent them from improving their economic condition. The homeless are homeless because their rights to liberty have been removed and made into the private property of landowners.

The only good reason why people in need should be helped is because there are few good people among the needy. Who end up there out of misfortune or circumstances of birth. So with help they eventually will get out of poverty.

Garbage. Most of the poor are good people, and many of those good people never get out of poverty.

[Drlee]

Garbage. Most of the poor are good people, and many of those good people never get out of poverty.

Absolutely correct.

The very poor people with which I work are literally in desperate circumstances. Once someone becomes truly homeless there is no intervention at all, short of housing them, which will stop and inexorable descent into hopelessness and finally death. In my city of just over a million folks it is a full time job for a homeless person to feed himself. They can't travel by bus so they must plan a walk between feeding opportunities. They must plan on which days a month showers are available and sometimes set out early to get to them. They must plan circuitous routes to avoid high enforcement areas and residential areas where the police will harass them on the way to find a meal.

Consider this. I put a bandage on a lady's infected wrist last Sunday. She should have been seen in a hospital and I told her as much. The best we could do for her was clean her up and give her a bandage. We could not give her the antibiotics she needed. But that is not the point. As I was putting a bandage on her arm she said to me, "Thanks for doing this. I knew it was infected on Thursday and I knew you guys would help me if I came today." So she planned to get a bandage on her wrist for three days.

Imagine a life where you have to affirmatively plan to be somewhere where you can go to the bathroom. Then you have to travel to that location and wait for the spirit to move you, so to speak. It is unthinkable. Yet tens of thousands of Americans do it every day. This in a country where our economy generates about $56,000.00 per person.

And here is the worst thing of all. If the government set out to take a huge bite out of homelessness by adapting a "housing first" model just for the government money currently being spent, it would save the taxpayers a fortune. In other words, it has proved to be cheaper to give someone an apartment than to leave them on the street.