billisonboard
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Post by billisonboard on Sept 20, 2013 8:46:38 GMT -5
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Post by Deleted on Sept 20, 2013 9:04:59 GMT -5
This is the nature of the social contract.
Some group of people get together and decide what they'd like to be free from, or free to do, or some mix of the two. Then they work out a structure that preserves those freedoms: a legal framework, allowing for redress in the event of freedom being infringed, which also implies an authority, commonly accepted by everyone, that undergirds that framework.
In antiquity, the authority was typically divine, although the priest class were not necessarily the rulemakers (the Egyptians inter alia found a creative workround).
So we have:
1) Group of people associating, and identifying limits to their freedom relative to their alternative, isolated condition.
2) That group still finding enough benefit in assocation that it is worth their while to contract for some red-line beyond which freedoms can be preserved.
3) Some group within that group, citing an authority the others can be made to respect, drafting a code of laws enshrining their freedoms and extrapolating it onto the whole group.
Over time, the framework evolves, and perhaps some ruling class emerges. Perhaps the nature of the contract changes over time.
However -
Whatever the, if you like, global state of the Contract might be at any given time, the actual contract is made by the individual, and goes like this:
"I agree that I know x benefits and y obligations under the Contract as I understand it. I choose to accept z benefits and n obligations of those x and y."
So there is a distinction between the Contract that was, and the Contract that is; and between the Contract that is, and the Contract that is understood; and between the Contract that is understood, and the Contract that is accepted.
Dj, or anybody else, can assert that I don't get to opt out of the Contract; I respond by punching him in the nose. It is precisely because individuals are not bound by the Contract that the State reserves the legitimized violence of the police power, the better to punish transgressors. I can punch the cops in the nose too, but sooner or later they will tase me and subdue me and incarcerate me, and if I keep punching people on the nose I will never get out. For me in that scenario, the Contract has devolved to "I punch people in the nose; they remove me from the vicinity of their noses."
There are, in other words, as many 'social contracts' as their are social interactions. Every interaction forms its own contract, and most of them do not even implicitly reference the notional Contract cited by governments in practicing their confiscations and obfuscations.
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Post by Deleted on Sept 20, 2013 9:06:57 GMT -5
I'm not sure how I feel about the fact that Paul seems to hold the closest views to my own. We have come totally different conclusions with the info presented, but our analysis is eerily similar. Paradox is the womb of truth. The non aliud is beheld in the coincidentia oppositorum. You are living the Cusanian Ideal. "Congratulate thyself; it is enough."
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Post by Deleted on Sept 20, 2013 9:09:05 GMT -5
translation please
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jkapp
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Post by jkapp on Sept 20, 2013 9:13:05 GMT -5
Whiskey Rebellion, (1794), in American history, uprising that afforded the new U.S. government its first opportunity to establish federal authority by military means within state boundaries, as officials moved into western Pennsylvania to quell an uprising of settlers rebelling against the liquor tax. Alexander Hamilton, secretary of the Treasury, had proposed the excise (enacted by Congress in 1791) to raise money for the national debt and to assert the power of the national government. Small farmers of the back country distilled (and consumed) whiskey, which was easier to transport and sell than the grain that was its source. It was an informal currency, a means of livelihood, and an enlivener of a harsh existence. The distillers resisted the tax by attacking federal revenue officers who attempted to collect it. Enforcement legislation touched off what appeared to be an organized rebellion, and in July of 1794 about 500 armed men attacked and burned the home of the regional tax inspector. The following month President George Washington issued a congressionally authorized proclamation ordering the rebels to return home and calling for militia from four neighbouring states. After fruitless negotiations, Washington ordered some 13,000 troops into the area, but opposition melted away and no battle ensued. Troops occupied the region and some of the rebels were tried, but the two convicted of treason were later pardoned by the president. www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/641925/Whiskey-Rebellion Obviously Pres. Washington felt that raising taxes to pay down the federal debt was within the government's mandate. And I doubt you'll find anyone here, including Paul, claiming the taxes were unconstitutional or that paying down the federal debt was putting them to poor use. Wow, a tax to actually pay down debt...what a novel concept. Too bad the only taxes we have today are to lessen the debt - or give cause to add more debt. I think you'd be hard pressed to find anyone in this country against any tax to PAY DOWN our debt. I would have no issues with it, that's for sure. Unfortunatelty NONE of the taxes we have today pays down any debt whatsoever. The more taxes government raises these days, the more debt we seem to create. If this tax-increasing-debt-increasing scenario had happened during Washington's time, there probably would have been quite a few more rebellions to squash...
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Post by Deleted on Sept 20, 2013 9:20:22 GMT -5
The reference is to the thought of Nicolas of Cusa, a one-time Vicar of Rome and an extraordinary if unrealized irrealist. Non aliud means "not other" - for Cusanus, the Divine, from whom both Oneness and Otherness (and the Nothingness of Void) were emanations, could Himself be neither One nor Other, and so was simply non aliud. The non aliud is explicitly defined by negation. So it is with the Cusanian method of apprehending the non aliud. Careful to avoid heresy, Cusanus did not advocate gnosis: he was a good Catholic and a loyal devotee of the Pope. But he did believe that we could glimpse something of the truth in considering the "meeting of opposites," or coincidentia oppositorum. Honestly, I'm going beyond Cusanus with the line about paradox being the womb of truth - my original contribution to the post - but the principle is authentically his.
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billisonboard
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Post by billisonboard on Sept 20, 2013 9:22:21 GMT -5
... I think you'd be hard pressed to find anyone in this country against any tax to PAY DOWN our debt.. I think that any specific tax scheme would draw objections from some segment of the population.
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Post by Deleted on Sept 20, 2013 9:22:31 GMT -5
The reference is to the thought of Nicolas of Cusa, a one-time Vicar of Rome and an extraordinary if unrealized irrealist. Non aliud means "not other" - for Cusanus, the Divine, from whom both Oneness and Otherness (and the Nothingness of Void) were emanations, could Himself be neither One nor Other, and so was simply non aliud. The non aliud is explicitly defined by negation. So it is with the Cusanian method of apprehending the non aliud. Careful to avoid heresy, Cusanus did not advocate gnosis: he was a good Catholic and a loyal devotee of the Pope. But he did believe that we could glimpse something of the truth in considering the "meeting of opposites," or coincidentia oppositorum. Honestly, I'm going beyond Cusanus with the line about paradox being the womb of truth - my original contribution to the post - but the principle is authentically his. To quote Penny from The Big Bang Theory "Sweetie, I know you think you are explaining but you're really not"
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Post by Deleted on Sept 20, 2013 9:24:36 GMT -5
... I think you'd be hard pressed to find anyone in this country against any tax to PAY DOWN our debt.. I think that any specific tax scheme would draw objections from some segment of the population. Otherwise there would be no tax: only charity.
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Post by Deleted on Sept 20, 2013 9:36:06 GMT -5
The reference is to the thought of Nicolas of Cusa, a one-time Vicar of Rome and an extraordinary if unrealized irrealist. Non aliud means "not other" - for Cusanus, the Divine, from whom both Oneness and Otherness (and the Nothingness of Void) were emanations, could Himself be neither One nor Other, and so was simply non aliud. The non aliud is explicitly defined by negation. So it is with the Cusanian method of apprehending the non aliud. Careful to avoid heresy, Cusanus did not advocate gnosis: he was a good Catholic and a loyal devotee of the Pope. But he did believe that we could glimpse something of the truth in considering the "meeting of opposites," or coincidentia oppositorum. Honestly, I'm going beyond Cusanus with the line about paradox being the womb of truth - my original contribution to the post - but the principle is authentically his. To quote Penny from The Big Bang Theory "Sweetie, I know you think you are explaining but you're really not" LMAO! Okay. We're used to thinking of things as either being or not-being; and, of those things that we see as being, we see them as being what they are simultaneous with not-being what they're not. A banana is a not-apple, and so is an orange. Martin Heidegger, and especially Husserl the epiphenomenologist, write a good bit about this, and Frege and that crowd touch on it as well from a positivist standpoint. Ignoring the heavily-referential last sentence, does that make sense? I mean, it seems to be stating the obvious in an overly complex way, but it's just saying: things that are, are; things that aren't, aren't; things that are one thing aren't any other things.
What Cusanus was saying, from a standpoint of trying to understand God, was that the are-ness of things-that-are and the aren't-ness of things-that-aren't must come from the same place. He was relying on the Biblical authority of Genesis - " in the beginning, the world was formless and void" - and the Gospel of John - "in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God." The Johannic logos is actually a very good approximation for the Cusanian non-aliud. More generally, words possess this odd paradoxical property in their nature: a "tree" is not a tree, and one of the ways we can tell is that when I write "tree" I think of a tree, and when you read "tree" you think of a tree too, but your tree is not my tree even though our "tree" is shared. Mojo and bloomer, sitting in a tree -
And God, according to Cusanus, is the unimaginable union of are-ness and aren't-ness in the Divine Nature. The problem for him then was trying to wrap his head round what that meant, and finding things in the world around him that seemed to both be and not-be at the same time was his solution to that problem. He himself, being a most unorthodox orthodox Catholic, was a good example.
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Post by Deleted on Sept 20, 2013 9:39:16 GMT -5
Not "seem to." It's quantifiable. Over the last few decades, every dollar in additional revenue has been matched by approximately $1.09 in additional spending. This was as true with Tip O'Neill and the Gipper as it will be with Boehner and Obama.
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Opti
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Post by Opti on Sept 20, 2013 9:48:43 GMT -5
I think many people believe this, but I think overall it is false. The poor can only qualify for benefits based on their lack of income and how it compares to the average or some multiplier of the poverty level which is usually below median income. Some articles are written stacking benefits for poor couples showing how in certain circumstances a couple making $30,000 can when qualifying for a certain basket of social programs do as well as a couple making $60,000 who buys those exact same social services.
What is rarely shown is the huge breaks middle class and rich individuals get because their income and cirmcumstances qualify them for it. Up to a certain income, you can a bigger tax break than the standard if your mortgage interest, property taxes, medical expenses, and charitable donations exceed the standard. Moreover, if are rich enough you can invest in things like Romney did which have tax rates that are much lower than what they would be taxed at if they had to be taxed at income rates. And businesses have all sorts of tax deductions that poor folk working for an income can not use.
I think what is in play here for many of the unhappy middle class and richer folk is a version of social comparison. They don't fully appreciate what they have, but feel they would appreciate it more if more people had less. In other words, they derive a significant portion of their happiness from shadenfreude, delighting in the misfortune of others. Some people can't delight in the fact they had say $10,000 more allowed in tax deductions on schedule A because of their personal situation but instead will look angrily at the poor family that gets $5000 in government benefits or the unemployed person living back with Mom and Dad who qualifies for $2400/yr. in food stamp benefits. They don't really notice the single working person making so little they qualify for $100 in EITC because taking that away won't give them the social joy they are looking for(in my opinon.)
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Post by Opti on Sept 20, 2013 10:00:22 GMT -5
The moral code isn't self evident. If it was, what was acceptable behavior would be the same across all cultures, all religions, and over all human history. Even the bible punishes the rapist less than the rapee if the man picks a single woman to rape. His punishment is to get a lifetime to abuse her. Her punishment is to be married to him and be subject to his whims until he dies or she does. As a woman I see nothing self evident about it. What I see is the hand of man not God all over that one. Also, in some countries beating children and women are acceptable. Some have limits some don't. In watching the movie 'The Duchess" recently I was reminded English and likely American society in one point in history OK'd beating women as long as it was with sticks not too large. (Width of a man's thumb or finger I think.)
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Virgil Showlion
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Post by Virgil Showlion on Sept 20, 2013 10:38:30 GMT -5
To quote Penny from The Big Bang Theory "Sweetie, I know you think you are explaining but you're really not" LMAO! Okay. We're used to thinking of things as either being or not-being; and, of those things that we see as being, we see them as being what they are simultaneous with not-being what they're not. A banana is a not-apple, and so is an orange. Martin Heidegger, and especially Husserl the epiphenomenologist, write a good bit about this, and Frege and that crowd touch on it as well from a positivist standpoint. Ignoring the heavily-referential last sentence, does that make sense? I mean, it seems to be stating the obvious in an overly complex way, but it's just saying: things that are, are; things that aren't, aren't; things that are one thing aren't any other things.
What Cusanus was saying, from a standpoint of trying to understand God, was that the are-ness of things-that-are and the aren't-ness of things-that-aren't must come from the same place. He was relying on the Biblical authority of Genesis - " in the beginning, the world was formless and void" - and the Gospel of John - "in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God." The Johannic logos is actually a very good approximation for the Cusanian non-aliud. More generally, words possess this odd paradoxical property in their nature: a "tree" is not a tree, and one of the ways we can tell is that when I write "tree" I think of a tree, and when you read "tree" you think of a tree too, but your tree is not my tree even though our "tree" is shared. Mojo and bloomer, sitting in a tree -
And God, according to Cusanus, is the unimaginable union of are-ness and aren't-ness in the Divine Nature. The problem for him then was trying to wrap his head round what that meant, and finding things in the world around him that seemed to both be and not-be at the same time was his solution to that problem. He himself, being a most unorthodox orthodox Catholic, was a good example. I believe the last time I saw his name mentioned was in a discussion over whether a black swan was the same thing as a white raven.
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Post by Deleted on Sept 20, 2013 11:06:26 GMT -5
All colored birds are colored birds Everything is everything.
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AgeOfEnlightenmentSCP
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Post by AgeOfEnlightenmentSCP on Sept 20, 2013 11:16:16 GMT -5
More to the point, if you are going to call the "social contract" the ability of government to rule over us, dictate how we live our lives, and confiscate our property without an open revolt- then hell- North Korea has a "social contract". I've already posed the question: does government really exist? The answer to the question is yes, but it's also no. It exists while we believe it exists. If people were to, en masse, change their minds, government could in fact be "ignored out of existence". If a small number- say 12 million people- simply ignore it, ignore its authority, pay no attention to its laws, and do whatever they want- government will be forced to pretend to grant them the right to do so- but in reality, government would be nullified. Just ask 12 million illegal immigrants. It is very odd to agree with you on stuff. Just so it isn't 100%, I think if you ever do really manage to opt out of your current social contract you are going to find your fortunes much decreased. I find it funny you don't like it when you benefit from it so much.Again, this protection racket language. Why would my fortunes decrease? The answer is very plain: the threat of violence. If I opt out of this protection racket, or um, "social contract", then I am at risk from other bands of thieves and pirates- correct? So, the whole world is screwed up when you get right down to it. But the question of how to resolve most of these problems lies in free association / voluntary societies. I believe in order, in agreements, and "contracts" but I think the way to execute them is to have everyone understand that they are able to be canceled by any and all parties thereto. The states certainly believed this prior to the civil war. The right of states to "opt out" or secede was never seriously in doubt until the civil war. It was understood that the states had given the federal government a limited number- and they are enumerated- of powers the scope of which could not be exceeded lest the states ultimately enforce the contract by withdrawing the authority they had granted. Post civil war we no longer have a Constitution- there's no longer a compact between the states and the federal government. The federal government is, in every sense of the word, tyrannical. It rules and is tolerated by the states purely based on the threat of the use of force by the federal government against the states and the people should they even dream of attempting to enforce the agreement, let alone exit the contract. Now, for many years we have tolerated this precisely because, for the most part, in post-civil war America we have endured a 'soft tyranny'. Now, however we are at a crossroads- and while some are very optimistic that we can save the Constitution and the republic- I no longer believe it is possible. The dollar is going to collapse, there will be a period of peaceful anarchy in the post-American republic period- in the beginning. However, government won't wait very long before it does what all desperate governments do when they feel as thought they are irrelevant- being ignored, no longer in charge: the government will lash out. It will visit "hard tyranny" on the people in short order to show them who is boss, and retain its position of power. And make no mistake- this is not "coming to America" - it's hear. The US Dollar has been done for nearly a decade. The problem is simply being ignored for the time being by our creditors- but their good graces won't last long. When (not if) the collapse gets into full swing, there will be a political collapse as well. And the federal government will behave like a cornered animal. It will not longer be able to bribe people and states with borrow and print policies (though that will continue on as if the collapse isn't happening as it is now- for some time. In my opinion, if your money is in Dollar-denominated assets right now- get it out. And get some of your money outside the reach of the US government, and be ready to GO! at a moments notice. When that time comes- and it could really happen any day- you won't have months to get your act together- you will have weeks. You won't be able to make withdrawals from your accounts- what you have is what you will have. And Dollars won't take you far. And if you think they can't get their shit together and secure the border- wait until people want to LEAVE. They'll lock that shit right down. Air tight.
So, even if you believe in a "social contract" what we have is not a voluntary social contract. We live under tyranny every day and at all times. Dictatorial force holds the whole thing together. The only way you have ordered liberty is by free and voluntary association- and I think you are starting to see what's possible in place like Detroit's East Market District which I use as both an example of what could be- if left alone, and an example of how an irrelevant, trapped-animal government behaves in such situations... They say it's food stamp fraud- I guess that's why State Troopers, USDA, and Homeland Security are taking part in the raids. The real reason, to my thinking while it may in fact be to nail down food stamp fraud, is to rehearse for the real deal. You can't just have 250 - 300 vendors in an open-air market not being inspected, and looked after by the nanny state. Read more: www.wxyz.com/dpp/news/region/detroit/feds-raiding-businesses-in-eastern-market-area-as-part-of-bridge-card-fraud-investigation#ixzz2fRyP2WfA
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AgeOfEnlightenmentSCP
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Post by AgeOfEnlightenmentSCP on Sept 20, 2013 11:22:34 GMT -5
The moral code isn't self evident. If it was, what was acceptable behavior would be the same across all cultures, all religions, and over all human history. Even the bible punishes the rapist less than the rapee if the man picks a single woman to rape. His punishment is to get a lifetime to abuse her. Her punishment is to be married to him and be subject to his whims until he dies or she does. As a woman I see nothing self evident about it. What I see is the hand of man not God all over that one. Also, in some countries beating children and women are acceptable. Some have limits some don't. In watching the movie 'The Duchess" recently I was reminded English and likely American society in one point in history OK'd beating women as long as it was with sticks not too large. (Width of a man's thumb or finger I think.) The stick thing still applies, I believe, in South Carolina. The fact of the matter is that morality is self-evident, and the only solution to any problem is self-government. If we rely on laws backed by the threat of force to compel good behavior, you can forget it. The perfect example is your example. Do you think that right up until domestic violence laws were passed, women were still being beaten with sticks, or do you think the law was a lagging indicator- a reflection of a change already made by the vast majority of people in society on their own, without government? Of course it's the latter. The perfect example is the stick thing- and sodomy laws. They're still on the books, but I haven't read about the police raiding a Chicago bath house in a very long time- if ever. Might have been the last one was before my time.
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Post by Deleted on Sept 20, 2013 11:29:07 GMT -5
To quote Penny from The Big Bang Theory "Sweetie, I know you think you are explaining but you're really not" LMAO! Okay. We're used to thinking of things as either being or not-being; and, of those things that we see as being, we see them as being what they are simultaneous with not-being what they're not. A banana is a not-apple, and so is an orange. Martin Heidegger, and especially Husserl the epiphenomenologist, write a good bit about this, and Frege and that crowd touch on it as well from a positivist standpoint. Ignoring the heavily-referential last sentence, does that make sense? I mean, it seems to be stating the obvious in an overly complex way, but it's just saying: things that are, are; things that aren't, aren't; things that are one thing aren't any other things.
What Cusanus was saying, from a standpoint of trying to understand God, was that the are-ness of things-that-are and the aren't-ness of things-that-aren't must come from the same place. He was relying on the Biblical authority of Genesis - " in the beginning, the world was formless and void" - and the Gospel of John - "in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God." The Johannic logos is actually a very good approximation for the Cusanian non-aliud. More generally, words possess this odd paradoxical property in their nature: a "tree" is not a tree, and one of the ways we can tell is that when I write "tree" I think of a tree, and when you read "tree" you think of a tree too, but your tree is not my tree even though our "tree" is shared. Mojo and bloomer, sitting in a tree -
And God, according to Cusanus, is the unimaginable union of are-ness and aren't-ness in the Divine Nature. The problem for him then was trying to wrap his head round what that meant, and finding things in the world around him that seemed to both be and not-be at the same time was his solution to that problem. He himself, being a most unorthodox orthodox Catholic, was a good example. God created everything and it's opposite, is in everything and it's opposite, and it all exists at once.
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Post by mmhmm on Sept 20, 2013 11:41:01 GMT -5
Incorrect. The law in South Carolina (on this matter) only states it's legal to beat one's wife on the courthouse steps on Sunday. It says nothing about a stick.
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Opti
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Post by Opti on Sept 20, 2013 11:52:25 GMT -5
Laws can be both lagging and leading. When Singapore was set up one of the concerns was getting three major ethnic groups to have pride in keeping everything orderly and clean. It was those who set up the government that decided leaving gum stuck somewhere in public was going to get harsh punishment. In this case, laws led the behavior.
Leading and lagging can also be true depending on where you physcially are. Look at Lincoln's time and ending slavery. I have had the bias laws are lagging more than not, but had someone point out India and some laws and realized its true less often than I thought. I think many times its very mixed, like my slavery in the US example.
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Post by Deleted on Sept 20, 2013 12:17:16 GMT -5
Everything out of its opposite - the orthodox doctrine of creatio ex nihilo.
To Cusanus, it were impossible for the void to pre-exist God, which meant the nihilo must come from God. It were equally impossible for the void to contain entity, which meant the creatio must also come from God.
That led him to the idea that God created Being and Nothingness alike, and so that God must be something beyond Being and Nothingness alike. Whatever that something was, it was capable of containing opposites. And that led Cusanus to the idea of looking at opposites for signs of God.
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Post by Deleted on Sept 20, 2013 13:16:07 GMT -5
Actually I was thinking more on the lines that the current social contract and it's rules is what allows you to accumulate property in the first place. You acquired what you have based on these rules. If you opt out, you completely opt out and would therefore forfeit what you have been allowed to accumulate. The same goes for your state. You don't get to take advantage of all the benefits and then whelch when it's time to pay up.
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Post by Deleted on Sept 20, 2013 13:51:17 GMT -5
Actually I was thinking more on the lines that the current social contract and it's rules is what allows you to accumulate property in the first place. You acquired what you have based on these rules. If you opt out, you completely opt out and would therefore forfeit what you have been allowed to accumulate. The same goes for your state. You don't get to take advantage of all the benefits and then whelch when it's time to pay up. I submit to you that the bolded portions are idealized versions of the truth. In fact, routinely, people at all levels of society opt out of social contracutal obligations. Fathers abandon children. Warren Buffett refuses to pay his tax bill. Lawmakers refuse even to debate bills that will be politically embarrassing. We drive by the homeless man, locking our doors lest he accost us. We keep the twenty we found lying on the floor of the department store. We spread gossip about our neighbor. We kill our faithless spouses. And some of us do so with impunity. There is a system. It is gameable. It is so, because it is a system. You cannot make a rule without making a loophole, and somebody will exploit that loophole. We should play Nomic sometime.
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Post by djAdvocate on Sept 20, 2013 14:01:46 GMT -5
Of course governments can and do exist without a social contract. People recognise this about dictatorships. It can be true no matter which model of government the powers that be impose. More to the point, if you are going to call the "social contract" the ability of government to rule over us, dictate how we live our lives, and confiscate our property without an open revolt- then hell- North Korea has a "social contract". don't exaggerate. this is not NK. and property taxes were among the very first taxes. without enforcement, people would simply not pay them.
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Post by djAdvocate on Sept 20, 2013 14:05:55 GMT -5
This is the nature of the social contract. Some group of people get together and decide what they'd like to be free from, or free to do, or some mix of the two. Then they work out a structure that preserves those freedoms: a legal framework, allowing for redress in the event of freedom being infringed, which also implies an authority, commonly accepted by everyone, that undergirds that framework. In antiquity, the authority was typically divine, although the priest class were not necessarily the rulemakers (the Egyptians inter alia found a creative workround). So we have: 1) Group of people associating, and identifying limits to their freedom relative to their alternative, isolated condition. 2) That group still finding enough benefit in assocation that it is worth their while to contract for some red-line beyond which freedoms can be preserved. 3) Some group within that group, citing an authority the others can be made to respect, drafting a code of laws enshrining their freedoms and extrapolating it onto the whole group. Over time, the framework evolves, and perhaps some ruling class emerges. Perhaps the nature of the contract changes over time. However -
Whatever the, if you like, global state of the Contract might be at any given time, the actual contract is made by the individual, and goes like this: "I agree that I know x benefits and y obligations under the Contract as I understand it. I choose to accept z benefits and n obligations of those x and y." So there is a distinction between the Contract that was, and the Contract that is; and between the Contract that is, and the Contract that is understood; and between the Contract that is understood, and the Contract that is accepted. Dj, or anybody else, can assert that I don't get to opt out of the Contract BZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZT! WRONG! dj asserts nothing of the sort. he asserts precisely the opposite.
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djAdvocate
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Post by djAdvocate on Sept 20, 2013 14:09:06 GMT -5
Obviously Pres. Washington felt that raising taxes to pay down the federal debt was within the government's mandate. And I doubt you'll find anyone here, including Paul, claiming the taxes were unconstitutional or that paying down the federal debt was putting them to poor use. Wow, a tax to actually pay down debt...what a novel concept. Too bad the only taxes we have today are to lessen the debt - or give cause to add more debt. I think you'd be hard pressed to find anyone in this country against any tax to PAY DOWN our debt. i am against it- in a time of recession. otherwise, i am absolutely for it.
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djAdvocate
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Post by djAdvocate on Sept 20, 2013 14:11:50 GMT -5
It is very odd to agree with you on stuff. Just so it isn't 100%, I think if you ever do really manage to opt out of your current social contract you are going to find your fortunes much decreased. I find it funny you don't like it when you benefit from it so much.Again, this protection racket language. Why would my fortunes decrease? The answer is very plain: the threat of violence. If I opt out of this protection racket, or um, "social contract", then I am at risk from other bands of thieves and pirates- correct? So, the whole world is screwed up when you get right down to it. But the question of how to resolve most of these problems lies in free association / voluntary societies. you are every bit the dreamer that Noam Chomsky is, and just as unrealistic.
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Virgil Showlion
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Post by Virgil Showlion on Sept 20, 2013 14:13:22 GMT -5
This is the nature of the social contract. Some group of people get together and decide what they'd like to be free from, or free to do, or some mix of the two. Then they work out a structure that preserves those freedoms: a legal framework, allowing for redress in the event of freedom being infringed, which also implies an authority, commonly accepted by everyone, that undergirds that framework. In antiquity, the authority was typically divine, although the priest class were not necessarily the rulemakers (the Egyptians inter alia found a creative workround). So we have: 1) Group of people associating, and identifying limits to their freedom relative to their alternative, isolated condition. 2) That group still finding enough benefit in assocation that it is worth their while to contract for some red-line beyond which freedoms can be preserved. 3) Some group within that group, citing an authority the others can be made to respect, drafting a code of laws enshrining their freedoms and extrapolating it onto the whole group. Over time, the framework evolves, and perhaps some ruling class emerges. Perhaps the nature of the contract changes over time. However -
Whatever the, if you like, global state of the Contract might be at any given time, the actual contract is made by the individual, and goes like this: "I agree that I know x benefits and y obligations under the Contract as I understand it. I choose to accept z benefits and n obligations of those x and y." So there is a distinction between the Contract that was, and the Contract that is; and between the Contract that is, and the Contract that is understood; and between the Contract that is understood, and the Contract that is accepted. Dj, or anybody else, can assert that I don't get to opt out of the Contract BZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZT! WRONG! dj asserts nothing of the sort. he asserts precisely the opposite. DJ asserts that you can opt out of the contract, he just doesn't particularly care that electing to do so will either find you floating on a tub in the middle of the Atlantic, or riddled with bullets.
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jkapp
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Post by jkapp on Sept 20, 2013 14:25:01 GMT -5
More to the point, if you are going to call the "social contract" the ability of government to rule over us, dictate how we live our lives, and confiscate our property without an open revolt- then hell- North Korea has a "social contract". don't exaggerate. this is not NK. and property taxes were among the very first taxes. without enforcement, people would simply not pay them. Exactly...which means the social contract is not as "accepted" as some believe it to be. It is only with coersion/threats that the social contract is kept in place.
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jkapp
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Post by jkapp on Sept 20, 2013 14:30:29 GMT -5
Wow, a tax to actually pay down debt...what a novel concept. Too bad the only taxes we have today are to lessen the debt - or give cause to add more debt. I think you'd be hard pressed to find anyone in this country against any tax to PAY DOWN our debt. i am against it- in a time of recession. otherwise, i am absolutely for it. technically we've been in recession for decades...we've just had bubbles periodically hiding it So waiting to be out of recession to pay down debt is akin to being in perpetually increasing debt (which, as is proven by our debt numbers, exactly what's been happening). Especially since the powers-that-be have no interest in ever reigning in spending...
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