kfl%mx.lcs.mit.edu@MC.LCS.MIT.EDU (08/05/86)
From: Steve Walton <ametek!walton@csvax.caltech.edu>
You may not be convinced; try raising a child and working at the
same time.
Plenty of people do just that.
If population is too high, people will stop having as many children-
IF they have to bear the full costs of raising the children.
Your reason for no fathers is simply not correct (reference: the
Bill Moyers documentary to which I referred before).
Sorry, I didn't watch that (or any) TV program. Could you please
use books and magazines as references?
Welfare may have caused the problem, but ending welfare will not
cure it.
It may not cure anything, but it will prevent making things worse.
My main point was not that welfare does the opposite of what it is
supposed to do, though it does. My main point is that welfare is
theft from those who have to pay the taxes for it. Welfare
contributions should be voluntary.
(You have a habit of arguing with anecdotes.)
Real life is made up of millions of anecdotes. YOU have a habit of
arguing from TV shows. Is that where you get all your information?
... moreover, you seem unwilling to admit that there are people
who work hard and get nowhere, preferring to think that they
either don't work hard or don't work correctly.
In the vast majority of cases this is indeed the case. But my main
point is that even if someone does work hard and get nowhere (and by
working hard I include working SMART, i.e. find another job if your
current job (or career path) appears to be a dead end) but I do not
think that it is MY fault, so I don't see why I should pay the person.
And if it's just his perception that he is underpaid, or that the
job offers he is getting are beneath his dignity, well, things are
tough all over. I would like to be an astronaut and a millionaire.
That doesn't mean other hard working people have to pay me because I
am neither.
For every time a gun is used by a private citizen to prevent a
crime, there are 4 suicides and 10 murders committed with guns by
the owner of that gun.
I have seen this before, and I thought it had been given a decent
burial. It seems bogus statistics always come back to haunt us.
Lets see if I can't shoot it down (ahem). What constitutes
preventing a crime with a gun?
1) A person who was considering a life of crime decides otherwise when
he realizes how many people are armed. If he would have committed
a burglary per week for 50 years, that is over 2,500 crimes
prevented with guns. And how many of those do you count? Zero.
2) A burglar is captured at gunpoint by a resident. He serves a
twenty year sentence. How many of the perhaps one thousand crimes
prevented do you count? One.
3) A hundred muggers stop mugging having read of five muggers being
shot by their intended victim in a subway. Figuring one mugging
per day for twenty years, over 700,000 crimes have been prevented.
Many of those 700,000 muggings would have been murders. How many
do you count? One.
4) A robber is shot by the cashier. Who can say how many crimes the
robber would have committed? Who can say how many robbers stop
robbing after hearing of the shooting? Who can say how many
potential robbers decide that crime isn't worth it, and go on to
make major contributions to the world? But in your statistics,
this counts as just one crime prevented. Perhaps not even one,
if the crime was completed before the robber was shot.
5) If an invasion of the US is deterred by people being armed, does
that count as a crime being prevented? As just one crime?
6) If a revolution is deterred by people being armed, does that count
as a crime being prevented?
Many of the murders and all of the suicides could have been
committed without guns.
In Switzerland, every adult owns a gun. The murder rate is very low
there, much lower that in the US. There are few burglaries and few
other crimes. And the Nazis didn't even THINK of invading
Switzerland, despite having invaded or being allied with every
bordering country.
What would you have as a penalty for gun ownership? Surely not life
in prison. Five years maybe? Well, the possibility of a five year
sentence is almost certainly going to keep innocent people from owning
guns. But is it going to keep criminals from owning guns? When they
know that the crimes they plan to commit with those guns carry much
more serious sentences? I doubt it. Any such law would have
precisely the opposite effect from the effect desired.
Perhaps you think that if laws are passed, guns will go away. This
isn't going to happen. Plenty of guns will be available overseas. We
haven't been able to stop drugs, why should we be able to stop guns?
And they aren't that hard to make. Working guns have been constructed
by PRISONERS in the penitentiary! Use some sense.
Are you willing to force gun owners to support families whose
breadwinner is killed by their gun, or to pay for day care
for children whose mother is murdered?
If THE OWNER shot the breadwinner, certainly! If the breadwinner
was shot with a stolen gun, of course not. The person who pulled the
trigger is responsible.
If someone steals your car and runs over someone, are you
responsible? A lot more people are killed by cars than by guns!
But even if all the facts were on the side of the anti-gun nuts,
which they aren't, the most important consideration of all is simply
one of freedom. As long as someone is doing no harm, the government
has no business regulating his behavior. Guns are power. It is a
very bad sign when a government disarms its citizens. Who is in
charge, anyway? If the government doesn't trust the population, it
should dissolve it and elect a new population. I mean, when and why
were we all judged incompetent?
Seriously, I consider it a grave insult to be told that I cannot be
trusted with firearms.
Who protects me from those who commit crimes while under the
influence of drugs?
If drugs are legalized, the price will drop enormously. Why should
marijuana be more expensive than tobacco? Since the price is so much
lower, addicts won't need to commit crimes to get the money for their
habit.
We already have an enormous problem with drunk driving;
Yes, but we DON'T have an enormous problem with drunks shooting
people to get money for their next fix. Alcohol is just as
mind-warping and just as addictive and just as destructive as any
other drug. Why is it different? Only because alcohol happens to be
legal and the other drugs don't.
What do you suggest be done about drunk driving? Prohibition has
been tried, and doesn't work. During prohibition, organized crime
flourished, and plenty of people were killed by poisonous alcoholic
drinks. Prohibition of drugs is having a similar effect. The only
logical response to drunk driving is severe penalties. That is also
the only logical response to drugged driving.
I don't understand; you responded to my comment about having a lot
of people in prison by saying that we should have even MORE people
in prison, and for longer times.
No, I was giving examples to show how completely random the justice
system is. I was giving examples of both extreme leniancy and extreme
severity. When being innocent is no guarantee that you won't go to
prison and being guilty is no guarantee that you will, and when it is
anyone's guess for how long in either case, prison is no deterrent.
For what its worth: the "guy in San Francisco" was Dan White; he
committed suicide shortly after his recent release from prison.
Perhaps if he had served a longer sentence he would feel he had
atoned for his crime and that he didn't have to kill himself. I know
that he was harassed by many people after he was released, but I doubt
that was the reason he killed himself - he could simply have moved to
another city.
Uniform sentences would require the federal government to pass
laws which would supersede the states'.
I don't favor mandatory sentence laws. Room must be left for the
judgement of the judge and the jury. What we need is more common
sense on the part of judges and juries.
Why do you automatically assume that such a law would have to be a
federal law rather than a state law?
Yes, but can you name a company whose owners were reduced to
poverty because no one would work for them? Many employees have
been, which was my point.
There have been a few. Can't think of the name of any at the
moment. But neither can I think of the name of any blacklisted
employees at the moment. But I don't doubt that there are a few of
them. Do you really think there are very many? In what fields?
Sorry, I was not precise. I use the term "middle class" as an
economic distinction; it is not the same as the bourgouisie, which
dates back to at least 1200, but consists of what we call
"businessmen" now.
Does anyone still use words like bourgousie and proletariat? I
thought they went out in the 1930s, if not earlier. I have no idea
which class I or anyone I know would be in. I don't think the terms
have much meaning.
Have [labor union's] bad effects been sufficiently large that they
should be destroyed?
No. Did I say they should be destroyed? I said that they should
not be given rights not shared by their individual members.
Do you think it should be illegal for a group of workers to
voluntarily band together and go to their employer and say, "None
of us are going to come to work unless you give us all a raise?"
No. Do you think it should be illegal for the employer to say "get
back to work right now or you are all fired"? As happened with the
air traffic controllers strike?
The [social security] system is currently projected to have a 10
trillion dollar surplus by 2010, ...
This is bogus accounting. They don't have a surplus unless it is
possible to end the social security tax and to continue to give social
security benefits to everyone who ever contributed, equal to at least
the amount (plus inflation) that they contributed. This is not even
close to possible. What they mean by surplus is if everyone continues
to pay taxes (to be increased as necessary) everyone retired will
continue to get benefits. Even by that standard, I find ten trillion
dollars utterly incredible. Do you perhaps mean ten billion or ten
million?
Most jobs offer life insurance as a fringe benefit, whether
you need it or not.
What if yours doesn't?
Well, what if it doesn't? How does that make it MY problem, why
should *I* (and other taxpayers) have to pay? If I am insured, I am
already (voluntarily) paying for benefits for contributers who have
died. I should also contribute (involuntarily) for benefits for
people who didn't bother to pay anything themselves?
And most wives have skills of their own, and have been working
outside the home for quite some time.
How is this relevant to today's welfare recipients as described
previously?
It explodes the stereotype that a woman without a man is helpless
and needs financial aid to survive.
I vehemently object to being taxed to
support people with wealthier lifestyles than me.
So do I, hence my objection to Social Security. I do NOT object
to the small fraction of my salary which goes to support those on
welfare.
But don't you think it should be up to you? You don't object, but
don't you think you have the RIGHT to object? What if it increases
slowly but steadily each year, faster than your salary increases. At
what point do you object? Do you think you should have any say so at
all? Or do you consider your paycheck to be government property, to
be picked over by the bureaucrats and the remainder tossed to you when
they are finished with it?
"What, are there no poorhouses? Are the debtors' prisons
full?"--Scrooge
Please do not assume I am a Scrooge just becuase I think that a
person should have control over their wealth. I am not advocating
that they give none of it to the needy, I am advocating that it be
their choice how much to give to the needy, and to which needy. Just
as Scrooge freely chose to voluntarily donate some of his wealth near
the end of the book. (No, he was not coerced - he was merely shown
the natural results of his not doing so.) The book would have been
quite different if the ghosts or the authorities were to have taken
his wealth by threat of force.
This seems to be the heart of your ideas in these postings--if I
may paraphrase, that taxation is theft, at least whenever the
government uses tax money for a purpose with which an individual
does not agree.
Yep.
I submit that by choosing to live in the United States (and it is
a free choice), you are agreeing to abide by all its laws, ...
I didn't say I was evading taxes. I just think they are unjust.
What about when slavery was legal? It was illegal for a slave to
run away. Was it immoral too? Can there be no such thing as an
unjust law?
I may be agreeing to abide by the laws, but I am not agreeing to
agree with all the laws. Surely you think that people have a right to
complain about bad laws?
May I suggest you either (1) move to another country,
What other country? There are plenty of countries much further
along on the socialist path than the US. Are there any less far gone?
As far as I know the US government is the best national government in
the world. Which is not to say it can't be made better. Much better.
(And much smaller.)
or (2) refuse to pay that fraction of your taxes which you feel
is improperly used.
That would be all of it. Not that I object to all of the uses to
which it is put, and not that I wouldn't voluntarily give the same
amount of money to the same recipients. It is the whole idea of
involuntary taxation that is repugnant to me. It is nothing less
than armed robbery and partial slavery.
Thoreau went to prison for non-payment of property taxes, which he
felt to be immoral; do libertarians do the same?
Some do.
Please don't call taxation theft unless you are willing to resist
said theft.
Huh? What about someone who is robbed or raped. Did the fact that
they did not (lets say) resist their attacker mean that they consented
to the robbery or the rape?
I do not think that evading taxes would be a useful thing to do.
There would be too great a chance of being caught. If I was caught I
would be sent to a very unpleasant prison, and my motives would be
misunderstood. If not caught, I would live in fear of someday being
caught, and, since I would be hiding evidence of the cheating, it
wouldn't send any message to anyone.
Other responsibilites, primarily work and family, prevent me from
continuing this dialogue further.
I am sorry to hear that. Perhaps if you use a really good text
editor and practice rapid typing, a few hours each weekend would
suffice to continue the discussion?
You have enlightened me, and forced me
to put my own beliefs in some coherent form. I may even go check
Out some libertarian books from the library and read further! Any
recommendations?
Anything by Ayn Rand. _The_Moon_is_a_Harsh_Mistress_ by Robert
Heinlein. Anything by L. Neil Smith.
...Keith
-------davis@wanginst.UUCP (08/15/86)
Keith writes: > In Switzerland, every adult owns a gun. The murder rate is very low >there, much lower that in the US. There are few burglaries and few >other crimes. And the Nazis didn't even THINK of invading >Switzerland, despite having invaded or being allied with every >bordering country. The truth: In Switzerland, most _males_ own an army rifle. But to argue that the crime rate is low for that reason in incorrect, in my view. The Swiss culture is deeply centered around local communities. No one can "misbehave" without his/her family, relatives, neighbors, town, state, and finally the federation getting involved to help things, generally in that order. I use the term "misbehave" very generally -- in also includes personal troubles, etc. I believe that it is the close-knit nature of Swiss society, and the incredible emphasis on following rules and behaving properly that results in such a safe, well-ordered society. And I would argue that the reason the Swiss are safe from all those guns at home is their (well-founded) trust in each other, not the other way around. I just lived in Switzerland for two years, and worked with Swiss people who are in the army, and with Swiss who are not. Very few women are in the military, and they aren't trained to shoot. Some percentage of men perform alternative service, or go to jail, or are medically excused from service. A good friend who is turning 50 soon, and thus will have completed his military service, is _very_ happy that he can get the &*%@#! gun out of his house. The guns are there because they are _required_ to be there if you are in the military. My friends who don't serve don't have guns. Most of my friends who do serve dislike shooting very much. No one can just buy a gun for private use, except for target practice. Handguns are virtually unheard of, and I think illegal for private use. Switzerland is _so_ tiny and controlled compared to the US, that most comparisons are invalid. We simply don't have a society where most people know the town where their great-great-great grandparents lived, and the majority still live there. And Switzerland is much more economically uniform (i.e. wealthy). -- ___ ... Roll away ... the dew... wanginst!davis (uucp) franklin a. davis (fad) davis@wanginst.Csnet (Csnet) -------