What makes a government “small”?
Certain political factions claim to value “small” government over “big” government, but in the past I have run into disagreements over what exactly constitutes the “smallness” of government.
The context that prompted me to start this thread was an old conversation I just came across again, about a Universal Basic Income, where some libertarians argued it constituted "big government" while others argued that it was actually smaller government. Those who argued it was "small" argued that it would replace a bunch of complex, expensive, and labor-intensive means-tested programs with one simple, low-overhead, easily-automated universal program. Those who argued it was "big" seemed to mostly arguing against any kind of taxation to fund welfare services (and seemed to think that this would mean a lot more taxation), and to be arguing that it would drastically increase government expenses (and hence require a lot more taxation).
But the government already taxes people and spends some of that on social welfare, so this wouldn't be giving the government any more powers than it already has. And the particular UBI proposal in discussion was mathematically guaranteed to be revenue-neutral (give everyone a tax credit of some X% of the mean income, then tax each person X% of their income to fund that, which works out to 0 total revenue/expenses because that's how averages work, but results in a net credit to the ~75% of people below the mean income and a guaranteed minimum after-tax income of at least that X% the mean income for everyone), so that wouldn't make any change in government expenses or the overall tax burden on the people (just how that burden was distributed).
That didn't seem to convince any of the "it's big government" people to change their minds, but it did raise the question in my mind of what exactly they (and by extension, anyone) mean by "big government" or "small".
The context that prompted me to start this thread was an old conversation I just came across again, about a Universal Basic Income, where some libertarians argued it constituted "big government" while others argued that it was actually smaller government. Those who argued it was "small" argued that it would replace a bunch of complex, expensive, and labor-intensive means-tested programs with one simple, low-overhead, easily-automated universal program. Those who argued it was "big" seemed to mostly arguing against any kind of taxation to fund welfare services (and seemed to think that this would mean a lot more taxation), and to be arguing that it would drastically increase government expenses (and hence require a lot more taxation).
But the government already taxes people and spends some of that on social welfare, so this wouldn't be giving the government any more powers than it already has. And the particular UBI proposal in discussion was mathematically guaranteed to be revenue-neutral (give everyone a tax credit of some X% of the mean income, then tax each person X% of their income to fund that, which works out to 0 total revenue/expenses because that's how averages work, but results in a net credit to the ~75% of people below the mean income and a guaranteed minimum after-tax income of at least that X% the mean income for everyone), so that wouldn't make any change in government expenses or the overall tax burden on the people (just how that burden was distributed).
That didn't seem to convince any of the "it's big government" people to change their minds, but it did raise the question in my mind of what exactly they (and by extension, anyone) mean by "big government" or "small".
Comments (101)
I will have to emit that I never heard those arguments before. Great now i have to figure out what they mean all over again.
When it comes to politics I try to take the other peoples terms and put them in terms that is more specific. That way there isn't this ambiguity. Which is the problem your trying to solve with this poll.
So to be "big" and "small" government does mean anything because I try to be more specific than that. Soory I wasn't any help.
Usually, the concern over 'big' government takes place within the context of economics. Keynesians are said to believe in 'big government' because they want the State - through its instrument, the central bank - to have a large amount of influence over the monetary system, whereas the Austrian school believe in 'small government' because they want a free market in money (which means no central banks). Progressives are in favour of 'big government' because they want higher taxes and more 'public services', conservatives are in favour of 'small government' because they want fewer regulations and lower taxes.
But, there are all sorts of ways in which progressives want less government than conservatives, particularly on social issues, like drug use and prostitution. In fact, I don't find the distinction between social and economic authoritarianism particularly helpful. The reason why it is objectionable for a person or group of persons to dictate to me which substances I may put in my body is the same reason why it is objectionable for those same persons to impose a confiscationary levy upon me. Social and economic issues are really inseparable, because all activity, whether we see it as 'social' or 'economic', requires the use of scarce resources, and therefore is determined by the relevant property rights.
What makes one government 'bigger' than another is the degree to which it initiates force and invades people's justly held property. But, since all governments claims for themselves the prerogative to use force in ways that it locks the rest of us in cages for doing the same, all governments are too 'big'. To see why, you need only ask yourself this question: Are the ways in which the State uses force permissible? If 'Yes', then everyone should be able to act similarly, in which case the State is a rights-violator for locking us in cages for doing so. And if 'No', then it is also a rights-violator, for it is engaging in the very kinds of activities which we recognise that people should not be able to engage in.
No, governments offer that situation to an electorate who mandate it. Take up your concerns with your fellow voters.
Quoting Virgo Avalytikh
No, again. Private service providers can manipulate markets using overt or effective monopolies, use rewards or even direct bribery to encourage laws which provide them with income indirectly (revenue on tax breaks for example). They can also create situations (such negative equity, monopolising property, to stretch the meaning of the word 'voluntary' to its absolute limit in terms of transactions.
Quoting Virgo Avalytikh
I don't think anyone thinks social and economic issues are separate, do they?
Quoting Virgo Avalytikh
Define 'justly held property'. Here you are again spending your valuable free time repeating the same trope, but avoiding responding to the arguments already levied against it.
Quoting Virgo Avalytikh
Yes, absolutely, and everyone else can use force in exactly the same way. Get a mandate from the people over whom you're exercising that force to do so, back that mandate up with a constitution built on at least a couple of hundred years of reasonably successful society, fight off any other groups wanting to do things differently. That's the 'way' in which the state uses force, and as far as I can tell there's absolutely nothing whatsoever preventing you from doing the same.
In a perverse way, a democratic styled government seems eventually to lead to anarchy.
We have this republic only insofar as we keep it.
Advocating for anarchy is not a good way to "keep it."
For example, in the American discussion usually a huge part called the "Armed Forces" is left out of the whole conversation as even the hard core libertarians accept that there has to be an armed forces. Even if they are 'citizen soldiers'.
A frequent defence of the State's legitimacy is that its legitimacy derives from the consent of the governed. There are a number of problems with such a view. In the first place, consent is the act of an individual (nobody can consent for me), and it is an act which an individual undertakes with her own property. Consent is nothing other than the exercise of a property right. One can only authentically consent with that which is one's own. You might consent to being governed, but this does not justify the State's use of force against me.
So, in order to to bear out the claim that the State's use of force against me is legitimate, it must be argued that I really have consented, if only implicitly, to being governed by them. But this claim is far more difficult to defend than it is to assert. It requires us to commit ourselves to one of a number of views on ownership, all of which seem to me to be indefensible.
One option would be to maintain that the governed territory is simply the State's own private property. By residing within the territory, I am implicitly consenting to being governed, and am now subject to all of its statutes. But what reason is there to think that this particular territory is owned by these specific people, whom we recognise as our 'government'? Certainly, there is no purely historical justification for this, since all of the governments of our acquaintance were born of invasive conquest. It might be suggested that the State owns the territory because it has a legal right to it. But this would clearly be a circular argument. Since the State is the institution responsible for producing the law, we must presuppose its legitimacy in order to believe that its pieces of paper are adequate to afford itself (or anyone else) a rightful claim to some article of property, in such a way that mine, say, do not.
Moreover, this view is quite incompatible with the view that State derives its legitimacy from the consent of the governed. Suppose that the governed populace, or a large portion thereof, decide to withhold their consent. On whom is there a burden to leave? If the government’s legitimacy really does derive from the consent of the governed, then there is a burden on the government to disband or to leave. If, however, the government owns the territory, then the burden is on the populace to leave. This shows that government cannot be understood as a private property owner, if one also wishes to maintain that the government’s legitimacy derives from our consent. The two views are incompatible.
The second way in which I might be said to consent implicitly to being governed is if I am residing on the private property of some other, non-governmental entity, and this other entity has explicitly consented to the government’s terms, by contract for example. By extension, I, too, am subject to the government’s terms. A consequence of this view is that the government’s legitimacy derives from relatively few private property owners. Government, in turn, protects the monopolistic and oligopolistic ownership privileges of the landed class. This view, needless to say, is unattractive for all except those who belong to the landed or governing class.
Such a system is objectionable to many on the left and the right. For those on the left, such as Marxists or left-liberal egalitarians, it is objectionable on the grounds that private property is itself illegitimate. For those on the right, such as right-libertarians who do recognise private property, it is objectionable on the grounds that, as a matter of history, the landed class probably do not have a rightful claim to the land in question. In all probability, the present state of land-ownership is owing to a history of aggressive conquest and entrenched government privilege, rather than peaceful productive transformation.
The third (and, by my reckoning, final) way in which I might be said to have consented implicitly to being governed is if the territory is jointly owned by all the citizens. Each citizen owns an equal and infinitesimally small share in the territory, and has an equal say in how it is to be put to use. What becomes of the territory is therefore determined by whatever result this collective decision-making process yields. If a majority of the citizenry wishes to erect a government then that is the rightful outcome. Those who do not wish to be governed have not had their rights violated, for they have exercised their right of partial ownership and have simply been outvoted.
The burden of this view is to explain why a particular group of people comes to jointly own a particular territory; that is, why the boundaries, ‘national’ boundaries, are drawn precisely where they are, and on what basis 'citizenship' is determined. Why, for instance, should territorial boundaries, or citizenship criteria, not be other than they are? The reason why the boundaries and citizenship criteria are what they are is because that is how they have been defined by States themselves. So, again, this position would be circular. Since we are discussing the preconditions of a legitimate government, we cannot assume the prior existence of governments which ‘gerrymander’ territorial boundaries so as to exclude those whom it wishes from the voting pool.
So all of these views look unconvincing. However, if none of these views obtains, then it looks to me as though there is no sense in which I have consented to being governed. In which case, the State's use of force against me is indeed coercive and illegitimate.
Quoting Isaac
Notice that these privileges, which may indeed be totally corrupt, are government-granted services. The State is both a coercive monopoly and the preeminent bestower of monopoly privileges, precisely through the mechanisms you have enumerated. Regulatory capture, lobbying, exclusive franchises and bribery are profitable precisely because the facility exists for them to be profitable. I go into more detail on this in my own thread.
Quoting Isaac
Textbook progressives tend to be more economically authoritarian and conservatives tend to be more socially authoritarian (though, there are exceptions in both cases). The very idea of the 'political compass' is that it is possible to be consistently authoritarian on social issues, and libertarian on economic issues, or vice versa. But such a view is highly suspect, if we understand social and economic freedom both to be functions of property rights. In my experience 'big government' is a term more frequently employed in the context of economics. But not a lot hinges on this issue.
What makes a government small is the deregulation and dissolving of state power and bureaucracy.
It ain't the meat it's the motion.
How are you defining 'legitimacy'? Legitimate just means allowed by law, but since you reject the authority of law I don't see how we can proceed without you being more clear about what criteria need to be met for something to be 'legitimate'.
Yet again I note you've completely dodged the issue of what constitutes legitimate private property, only giving examples of what you think it's not. Also, you've convenient ignored the simplest challenge to your position. You are indeed completely free to do exactly as the government does.
We can have a discussion, but I'm not prepared to just be lectured at on your prepared talking points only. If you want to address the fundamental issues we can proceed.
Who is proposing that a state do anything else?
Statism takes many forms. Many believe the state should also intervene in economics, the environment, and even private life.
Yes, but not at random. Only to defend the rights property and freedoms of its citizens.
Economic interventions defend rights to employment, sufficient income, and rights to property. Environmental interventions defend rights to clean air, sustainable supply of basic needs. Private life interventions might protect the rights of children or neighbours.
I suspect what you mean is that some people disagree with you about what rights and freedoms people should have, or can you give an example of a government intervention which is universally agreed to be nothing to do with rights, property or freedom?
By “defend rights” I mean with state force. For instance the police would defend someone’s property rights by protecting him from thieves, or the police would defend someone’s free speech rights by protecting him from a violent mob, and so on.
No, I don’t consider your version of rights to be human rights at all, but merely wants and desires.
Right, so as I said everyone sees government as defending rights, property and freedom. Its just that you disagree with others about what those rights and freedoms are. Since there's no objective authority to defer to with regards to rights and freedoms we must resolve these differences somehow so that we can live together with a minimum of fighting, yes?
The best way we've found to do that so far is democracy, yes? So the government we have is the one resulting from a system which you entirely agree with. It's your fellow voters who are your problem, not your government.
Of course, plenty of my fellow voters believe the government has a duty to provide for their wants and desires, and they often call these “rights”. Hence the big bloated bureaucracies and cradle-to-grave infantilization of entire populations.
You call your wants and desires "rights" too, that's the point. Do you think your "rights" come from somewhere other than what you want/desire?
What I mean by “wants and desires” is that proponents of positive rights believe it is someone else’s duty to provide them with things they want and desire, for instance housing, healthcare, a livable wage. They believe it is someone else’s duty (a state) to interfere in their life. What I am speaking about are so-called negative rights, which is essentially someone else’s duty to not interfere in my life.
But yes, it is my desire that states should not interfere in our lives.
I think the distinction between positive and negative rights is spurious and usually just a rhetorical trick to make some rights sound more 'default' than others. The positive right to housing is just the negative right to not die from exposure. The positive right to health care is just the negative right to not be left to die.
Your 'negative' rights to free speech is just a positive right to say what you want.
So you're agreeing that your list of "rights" are no more objective than any other.
So given that we all disagree about what rights we think a society ought to provide us, we use democracy to decide, right? So you don't have a legitimate complaint against the system. You simply disagree with the majority of people about your list, but (unless you're authoritarian) you agree that democracy is the best way of resolving that difference. So everything is fine and nothing need change, right?
Yes, I disagree with statism and statists nearly across the board, except for maybe the night-watchman idea. But no, as a matter of conscience I refuse to say everything is fine when a government demands by threat of force that I give what’s mine so that it can distribute it to others. So unless you believe a government should steal and plunder from its own citizens, I do not see how one can say this is fine and not evil. The fact that most people want this kind of authoritarianism does not suggest that I need to accept it.
Quoting NOS4A2
So you don't agree that democracy is the best way of settling that difference?
Just because you want that type of authoritarianism doesn't mean we have to accept it :razz:
No, I do agree. Their choices should be implemented because of democracy. What I don’t agree with is their beliefs, arguments, and decisions. Those I cannot accept.
There might be some benefit to letting statism play itself out. It still has the opportunity to prove one way or another it’s pros and cons.
Is it moral for you to be in possession of what you designate "mine"?
If you acquired what you call "mine" by way of the market, then:
1) A market is informed by market forces.
2) Market forces are informed by human desires.
3) Some human desires are amoral or immoral.
4) Therefore, market forces are informed, in part, by an amoral or immoral element.
5) Therefore, a market is informed, in part, by an amoral or immoral element.
6) Therefore, what was acquired by way of the market may be in your possession only in light of something amoral or immoral in the structure of the market.
And with that the state intervenes nearly everywhere.
Quoting NOS4A2
Like you as above. If a state upholds the rights of all individuals/citizens, then that intervention happens in all of those areas in some way or another. How much is the real question. And how much intervention comes from the question what are the rights of the citizens.
Well yes, even a small night-watchman state is a form of statism. But the fact that a state “intervenes nearly everywhere” is no argument that it should.
Logical fallacy. It is still possible that all market forces are informed only by moral desires! Praise Xenu!
Haha.
Caught me.
But you'd just agreed that these are your preferences, comparable to the preferences of other for different things. Yet here you refer yours to your "conscience" yet the others you labelled "wants and desires". Do you have any good reason to believe that those who want different things to you aren't also acting according to their conscience?
Quoting NOS4A2
No, we've literally just established it does suggest that exact thing. The fact that you agree other people have different ideas of what a right is, that those ideas are no less subjective than yours, and that the best way to resolve these differences is by democracy. You've just agreed that. So you do, by your own admission have to accept it.
I myself am a philosophical anarchist in principle, but in practice where we live in a world that has states anyway, a lot of self-identified “small government” people chide me for “supporting big government” because I don’t like the de facto power caused by wealth differences any more than I like de jure state power, and if we have to have either I’d prefer they keep each other in check.
I assume they are acting according to their conscience. But so did slave owners.
It is true that by democratic decree we can name this or that idea a “right” and turn it into law, but what I’m trying to say is I do not accept their reasoning and think they are wrong. I believe there are good ideas and bad ideas. Majorities can and have often been on the side of bad ideas. I do not need to repudiate democracy to know a bad idea when I see one.
"Small government" is code for those who wish to endow government with no capacity to interfere with their particular set of interests. So, those who resent programs of environmental regulation (which definitely interferes with some profit making enterprises), small government has no mandate to regulate use of water, land, and air. For those who resent programs of social benefit (everything from Social Security to Head Start programs, Medicare, Medicaid, welfare, etc.) they would like to see a government too small to be able to raise sufficient revenue to carry out these programs. (In fact, Social Security was resented and suits were launched against it -- as well as against Medicare, Medicaid, etc.)
"Small Government" is usually not called for in the face of military procurement (which benefits corporations in the businesses of supplying military equipment); it usually isn't called for by farmers receiving substantial subsidies.
"That which governs best governs least" sounds attractive, but I think most people usually want government available enough, and powerful enough, to assist them effectively. The population of people who want government to help them includes both billionaires and those who are abjectly poor.
Rights are claims on individuals or the government. While it's unfortunate if someone dies of exposure, we can't conclude that their rights were violated. If I wander off into the woods and die after getting lost - sure it's awful, but my rights weren't violated unless you want to be silly and say that "nature committed a crime" or something like that. Even if a homeless man dies on the street are we to say that everyone who passed him by violated his rights?
Rights are not simply wants or desires either. Otherwise I'd have a right to constant back massages.
Hang on, just now it was nothing more than a list of wants. Now there's reasoning? Reasoning which can be good or bad too?
OK. Apart from your own personal preference, what is your 'reasoning' why a government should protect your property?
OK
Quoting BitconnectCarlos
We could do. As you just said, rights are claims on individuals or governments, there could be one to ensure citizens don't die from exposure.
Quoting BitconnectCarlos
So what are they then? All you've given so far is that they are claims on individuals or governments. Nothing in that prevents you from declaring a right to constant back massages.
Yes, anyone can declare a right to constant back massages. That doesn't mean that that right exists.
If you've violated someone's rights you've seriously wronged them, do you agree? Are you seriously wronging someone who desires constant back massages by not giving them that?
What if I said yes? To what are you appealing here? If I said, yes, not providing constant back massages is seriously wronging someone, you'd like to tell me I'm wrong, yes? But to what measure are you appealing to do that?
If you agree that you're wronging that person then.... congratulations, you win, I guess?
I'm appealing to basic moral intuitions.... like that if I demand constant back massages from you that you're not actually obliged to give them. If you just want disregard this then you do you.
Right. But basic moral intuitions don't help us with issues of rights because people disagree. Basic moral intuitions are not agreed upon.
So if we take your "If you've violated someone's rights you've seriously wronged them", and include that by 'seriously wronged' you mean 'committed some widely agreed on moral transgression', then what is preventing the homeless person from claiming a right to housing? Allowing harm to come to someone (say by them sleeping rough) when you could easily prevent it (say by paying more in taxes to fund social housing) is a moral transgression for many people.
There actually is widespread agreement on basic moral issues. How many people do you think are okay with wanton murder or rape? A sense of justice is built into us and I think you'd be surprised at the large number of issues that people agree upon.
It's a fundamentally different type of claim than claiming a right to life, which just involves that no one kills you or maims you intentionally. If I claim a right to housing I'm claiming that someone else must pay for and build a house for me. Also someone must repair and maintain that house now. Now other people are burdened whether through their time being taken or their money being taken.
Yes, but these don't help us resolve differences over rights, which extend frequently into areas of morality over which there is far less agreement.
Quoting BitconnectCarlos
Right. But all you've done there is point out the difference. I could quite legitimately point out that the right to property and the right to life are very different too (in different ways). That doesn't prevent you from declaring both to be fundamental rights. You can't just arbitrarily say its not a right because it burdens someone else. Why doe burdening someone else prevent it from being a right?
Yes, it's not absurd to say that someone has a right to housing or healthcare. On the other hand, if one could gain a right simply by proclaiming it as a want or desire it would result in absurdity like if everyone were just to demand constant back massages.
Now, of course, if absurdity doesn't bother you then, well, more power to you, but I see it as boundary for moral discussion.
I noted an important distinction. If you choose not to accept it as meaningful then okay.
Another way you approach it is an appeal to fairness: Imagine we were on a passenger plane and that plane crashed into an island and all the passengers now had to rebuild society. Everyone is working and planning and maybe they've elected a leadership, but I just flat out refuse to contribute. I'm happy to take whatever food or clothing the tribe gathers, but I personally refuse to contribute anything despite being able-bodied and perfectly able.
Now I demand a house and a sufficient income from the tribe.
If everyone were to do this there would be no civilization.
Again, you can dig your heels in and demand that these rights exist but I mean God...
I'm not advocating such a thing. I'm asking how you are justifying your rejection of some of these claims.
Quoting BitconnectCarlos
No, you noted a distinction. You offered no justification at all to support a belief that it was "important".
Quoting BitconnectCarlos
Yep. That's a reasonable line to draw. If everyone followed the same principle civilization would fail. So with a claim to a right to housing in a modern capitalist economy, how will civilization fail as a result of that right?
Isaac, what is your response to the parasite case that I presented earlier on our island civilization? Does he have a right to the community's continued support through housing and food?
Depends upon who you ask. There is no single accepted answer. It's a motto, a slogan... most often employed by people who cannot further explicate it.
As I said. I think the likely collapse of civilization is a reasonable ground to deny a right. We can't very well justify a claim to something which itself will cease to exist as a consequence of that claim, the would be somewhat contradictory.
There are, however, plenty enough houses. If everyone claimed a house, everyone would have a house. I don't see any evidence at all of immanent civilization collapse resulting from such a claim.
Earlier on in the thread you mentioned the right to sufficient income. If everyone is given a house and a sufficient income just as a matter of right then you've destroyed the incentive to work for a lot of people. Sure, civilization can survive with a few parasite but if everyone is incentivized to become one then the system collapses.
Are we talking about a dorm or an actual house? How much house do people have a right to?
Also, if the principle were that everyone were entitled to an equal-ish share of what is available, and too many people stopped producing as a consequence of that, then how much is available to be shared would go down, as would the size of an equal share of that, which would then incentivize people to work more again.
That would also be in line with the Lockean proviso that people are free to appropriate so long as there’s enough and as good left for others. If there’s not enough and as good...
Ok, but who owns these homes? You can't give homeless people a home that someone has just left for a few months to go on vacation. It's still theirs.
We're getting way ahead of ourselves here: When you say entitled to an equal-ish share are you talking about land appropriation? If I'm imaging this correctly this seems to be saying we're just fleecing millionaires and billionaires. Am I getting you right or no?
Woah, you've jumped from a simple example with only one variable to this massive assumption in an extremely complex multi-variate environment. What evidence are you using to support the idea that people will not be incentivised to work if they're given sufficient income? And how on earth did anyone construct the control group to eliminate all other potential variables?
If we did somehow learn that people weren't incentivised to work when given sufficient income, we could link that income to work. It still could be a right (even though you'd have to work for it), like a right to employment.
But these are taking extremes. The right to clean air, clean water, good working conditions, freedom from abuse, a decent wage, freedom from discrimination, an education. None of these things have even the slightest evidence that they'll end civilisation, so why shouldn't we allow them as claims?
To go back to basics, what concerns me is that someone needs to build those homes, manage those homes, HVAC.... and they don't have a choice in it. This is fundamentally different than just not killing someone. If someone has a right to a home that home must be built. Similarly, for upkeep, maintenance workers basically become slaves... the task must be done and ideally done as soon as possible. Additionally I asked you earlier how much home these people are entitled to.... a dorm-style room with the essentials or the average house which costs around $225k in the US? Or something more expensive for all the troubles these people have been to? A dormitory style home runs into difficulty when you consider that many of the homeless are drug users and not mentally stable so they would be difficult neighbors. Unsupervised, these places probably turn into drug dens. Supervised - we have to turn people away. The problems balloon if we're now going to provide every homeless person with their own average American house.
We're bouncing around too much here. You bring up a lotttt of issues here which each could warrant their own debate.
I'd just like to stick to the topic. We were talking about housing and "sufficient wage."
That statistic is about continuously unoccupied homes, not just people on vacation. And I’m actually not for just redistributing homes like that, but my point is that at this time there not being enough homes to go around isn’t a problem. There are more than enough homes to go around, if only their ownership were somehow distributed differently.
Quoting BitconnectCarlos
“Fleecing” suggests a that they would be left with nothing. I’m actually not advocating forced redistribution (just talking about the consequences of hypothetical rules), but even if I were, taking a lot from people who have unfathomably more than that still left is not “fleecing”.
Yeah, the issue is complicated. I do feel bad for the homeless. Ultimately, though, if a home belongs to someone then the homeless can't just have free-range on it. We also need to keep in mind that drug addiction and mental health issues are rife among the homeless and shelters will turn people away who aren't clean or safe to be around. It's just a very tough issue. Would you be willing to let the homeless into your home? Would you trust them when you're not around?
Stakeholder owned and/or controlled public institutions & private businesses, where the latter is well-regulated and accountable to the former, rather than shareholder owned and/or controlled public institutions & private businesses, where the latter is subsidized, bailed-out and effectively unaccountable to the former. No monopolistic, or cartel-like, Big Businesses without a subsidizing & hegemonic Big Guv'mint (re: neoliberal, national security, corporate-welfare, state capitalism). In other words, democratize the economy in order reduce the size of the corporatist 'merely formal democratic' state.
Why don't they have a choice in it? Where did I suggest we get slave labour to build houses?
Quoting BitconnectCarlos
Nope. Someone could have a qualified right to housing. A right to a house, presuming there's one available. A right to a house, presuming there's enough GDP to build them. A right to a house, no greater of lesser than the average. There's all sorts of qualifications we can put on rights without abandoning them.
Quoting BitconnectCarlos
No, the topic is 'small government'. You were advocating small government on the grounds that the government need not supply the things some people were claiming to be 'rights'. The very substance of my argument against that is that you cannot justify that position at all. One of the reasons you can't is because the issues are multi-variate and complex, you cannot simply dismiss these claims on the basis of a simple philosophical position, you're now having to demonstrate that each claim is unsustainable on its own merits. If well-educated expert economists don't even agree whether these things are sustainable or not, then we're not going to resolve the matter by putting forth what we 'reckon' might be the case.
The point is that you've agreed these claims are not denied the status of 'rights' on some categorical philosophical basis. We agreed that harm to society resulting from satisfying these claims is the only reason to dismiss them. Seeing as the harm to society these claims may cause is still a moot point among experts, that should be the end of it.
Giving everyone what they need to live a decent life (at the expense of those who have more than they need) would be a nice thing. Letting people starve on the streets (so that others can afford a second yacht) is not a nice thing. So if the jury is still out on whether it would cause any long-term harm to secure everyone a decent life (and it definitely is), then anyone still choosing to not even try is just either selfish, dogmatic or hasn't thought it through properly.
A right to healthcare is a desire for healthcare. I don’t disagree with your want, just your reasoning for calling them a right. No need to twist around what I say.
A government should protect my property simply because I pay it to do so. If I don’t wish to pay I should defend it myself or perhaps with the help of my neighbors and community.
I'm not twisting anything. You called rights 'wants'. You never mentioned that some had 'reasons' to be included as rights while others didn't. So what are the criteria for something to be a 'right' that you think say, free speech, qualifies for but healthcare (where its available) does not?
Quoting NOS4A2
So? The same could be said of healthcare.
Quoting Pfhorrest
Sure, no that is not small goverment. What i would say is the most important aspect of the idea of small government, is not the amount of laws or complexity necessarily, nor any other poll-options for that matter, but the notion that the power of government to issue laws is restricted to certain clearly defined domains. Typically one would assume this would lead to less laws, but it doesn't have to.
Quoting ChatteringMonkey
But this is the case with all governments I know of, yet the debate does not seem to be settled. I don't know of any government which has totally unrestricted powers to issue laws. Most are restricted by requiring first a political mandate of some sort, most have constitutions which must be abided by, many have subjected themselves to unified higher authorities such as the UN or the EuCHR.
Totally unrestricted probably not, but surely there are differences in how much governments are restricted. That is what the discussion is or should be about it seems to me, the degree of restrictions.
Here's one example of a difference in restrictions, in communist Russia the economy was owned and steered by the government for a large part. In the US and Western-Europa we've allways had some kind of restrictions on government power in that domain, like freedom of trade, commerce and entrepreneurship.
Rights for citizens, are restrictions on the powers of government.
Indeed. What I've been trying to get at with both @NOS4A2 and @BitconnectCarlos, is that if we're not referencing some objectively justified criteria for what services should not be provided, then we're doing nothing more than exchanging 'wishlists'. If that's the case we already have a system for dealing with competing wishlists in democracy, so there's nothing further to discuss.
If, on the other hand, there's some fundamental aim we're all agreed upon, then it is largely an empirical matter as whether any service supports or frustrates that aim.
So, do you have any criteria that you think might be more universal than just what you personally prefer?
Yes, psychology, sociology and ultimately political sciences are still in their infancies, particularly because they are such politicized issues... but also because it simply is very complex.
But there are no doubt a ton of empirically verifiable insights to be gained from these sciences, like regarding the optimal sizes of organisations, or regarding which things are best decided on what level of government etc etc...
It's tough, because of the whole climate surrounding these issues, but I think i should be possible to come to some empirically grounded conclusions.
To add something very vague to that... We kind of know that total control like in the communist states of old doesn't work, right? And we kind of also know by now that no government at all, or far-reaching deregulation in some sectors, also tends to lead to disasters... so empirically some amount of regulation seems to work better than no regulation or complete regulation.
I agree, in general, but we need also to agree on objectives as no empirical data can tell us what our objectives 'should' be. I fear that, in this, we will end up with so much disagreement as to render any objective data about how to achieve these objectives useless.
Hence I defer to the idea of battling it out politically.
Take housing as an example. If we all agreed that the long-term welfare of our society as a whole was a primary objective, then we could, in theory, consult architects and economists to see if an increase in taxation to pay for the new housing would be sustainable. I'm fairly sure, however, that even if the answer came back as an unequivocal yes, dissent would start with people declaring the tax 'unfair', 'fairness' now having sprung out of nowhere as an objective higher than societal welfare.
I'm not even sure we can get there, but I agree it's probably true. Technically, the disasters of excessive state control could have been caused by any number of comorbid features. Those states were hardly tried out during easy times globally. Likewise with no states at all, one would have to look at context to check it wasn't external factors which caused the problems. I don't think we really have a large enough sample size.
That being said, we've got to decide one way or another and I agree the failures we've seen at either extreme are good enough evidence to be going on with, in the absence of any better.
I'm kind of sceptical that this will turn out to be a fruitfull avenue, as so much of battling it out politically ends up being about securing votes, so ultimately about the perception of doing something rather than actually doing that something.
But I think we agree, ultimately people will have different values and objectives, that is typically not something you can figure out scientifically. But so much of the political ideas on how to implement those values and objectives are empirically verifiable, and little effort has gone into figuring those things out. Maybe if we could at least get clear on those, some of the disagreement would go away.
Yeah sure, and the world changes. Maybe with big data and AI, total governement controle would be more feasible now...
On the plus side, the sample-size can only get bigger :-).
Yeah, my definition of 'political' is also much broader than just getting votes.
Quoting ChatteringMonkey
Yeah, I certainly think it can't hurt, and may just eliminate a little of the disagreement. At least clarify the options. One of the big problems I think is that people can try to support their policies with an excessive coverage of objectives (by which I mean claim their preferred policy meets 'everyone's' aims). If we had greater clarity about methods it would at least cut down on this type of deception. Very few things are panaceas and most sacrifice some objective for another, yet if you read any political manifesto you'd think they'd found the door to Valhalla.
Quoting Isaac
I agree with everything you said here, though I do wonder how much difference it would make ultimately. Apparently voting for political parties, is much less about what the individual policies are of the political parties on certain issues, but more akin to supporting and identifying with a certain sports team. You choose a side, and usually stick to that side no matter what policies they propose, because its your side. So there's that.
Besides municipal, county, village, & (small) island governing bodies almost by definition, and most Western social democracies (i.e. market socialist welfare states), any network or federation of cooperatives like Mondragon in the Basque region of Spain, etc have "small(er)" adverse, or unaccountable, impacts on civil society (e.g.) in terms of public cost : public benefit ratios (high) than most laissez-faire / administrative 'nation states' - certainly in comparison to the United States and other state capitalist paradises like Singapore, Vietnam, China, (Thatcherite) Britain, etc - the public cost : public benefit ratios of which are low(ering) while the public cost : private benefits are skyrocketing (i.e. corporate subsidies (e.g. "neoliberal supply-side" policies) that shift fiscal burdens on to median income taxpayers, non-luxury consumers & the rest of the precariat).
I never called rights ”wants”. I called your version of rights “wants”, which I don’t believe to be rights at all.
Human rights are claims against tyranny. Pretend rights like healthcare are not, but are demands for goods and services from the government and other tax-payers.
What you 'call it' is a pointless waste of time on a philosophy forum, we're not discussing your pet names for things. If you want to establish a difference between your list of 'rights' and my list of 'wants' which has a bearing on which the government should provide, you'll have to do more than just label them.
What criteria are you using to decide which services the government should and should not supply?
What justification are you using for your claim that these criteria are anything more than just your personal 'wants' regarding what you want your government to provide?
Quoting NOS4A2
Defence of property, protection of free speech and defence from military invasion are all services you demand from the government. Why are your demands different from mine? 'Cause all I'm getting at the moment as a difference is that yours allow people to become self-obsessed sociopaths, whereas mine actually give a shit about other people.
Yes, it does.
I'm trying to figure out why it's not the same in my mind...
I guess that a government that has limited legislative power, a small government, could have very strict laws on the few subjects they are allowed to regulate. So small government doesn't necessarily mean permissive across the board, but it certainly does for the things they are not allowed to regulate, as no regulation is permissive naturally.
Yes, there's that. It's probably only swing voters who would be affected. But then it's only swing voters that ever matter anyway.
Actually I was showing that you were misrepresenting my arguments, which is a waste of time on a philosophy forum. You claimed I said something which I didn’t. So you’ll have to do a little better than that.
My claims are different because they aim to protect citizens from tyranny. Yours introduce a sort of tyranny, that one must give up the fruits of his labor for the sake of others.
If you gave a shit about people you wouldn’t delegate your duties to the government. There is nothing stopping you from providing healthcare or housing yourself. So why won’t you? So I doubt that claim that you actually give a shit about others.
Right. And why (apart from your own personal preference) should government services be limited to protection against tyranny? Why (apart from your own personal preference) should people who share the same country not give up some of the fruits of their labours for the sake of others?
Quoting NOS4A2
Yes there is. I don't have enough money. I need someone with power to extract money from those who have more than me.
It isn’t a Government service to refuse to engage in tyranny of its citizens. It’s a matter of ethics and good government.
As for the why, human rights have a long history of philosophical and historical justifications for their merits. There is a long list of thinking men and women who argue for free speech, for example. These are long, hard-fought battles, and the existence of rights are the fruits of these battles.
Straight from the horses mouth.
I'm not talking about the government's tyranny. You said that the government should protect your property, protect your right to free speech and defend you from threats to your freedom. Those are services. Why (apart from your own personal preference) should government services be limited to those.
Quoting NOS4A2
So, do I take it your answer to the question of how you justify your claims about what services the government should and should not provide is whether a long list of intellectuals agree with it?
There is a long list of thinking men who argue for all the other human rights too, as there are who argue for free healthcare, even full egalitarianism. Are you suggesting there's some sort of consensus among intellectuals about what services the government should provide? I don't think your neo-con liberalism is going to come out well from that criteria.
Quoting NOS4A2
And? You asked me why I didn't provide healthcare and housing. Its because I haven't got enough money. If I want others to have healthcare and housing I'll need to get money from others who are richer than me. What point do you think you're making here?
Yeah, I'm considering limitations on the government part of its laws, so a government that is (by its own laws) limited to only regulating a few things is, by those same laws, necessarily permissive of everything else.
It's probably worth mentioning a bit of technical philosophy here, the Hohfeldian analysis of rights. Hohfeld analyzed "rights" into four kinds, along two axes: an active-passive axis, and a first- or second-order axis. (Neither of these is the same as the positive-negative axis; that's a third thing that Hohfeld's not concerned with, that can be applied to any of these four types of rights).
A first-order active right is a "liberty", which is a permission to do or not-do something.
A first-order passive right is a "claim", which is an obligation on someone else to do or not-do something.
It's worth mentioning again here that these are not the same as positive and negative rights. Usually when people are talking about positive and negative rights, they're talking about positive and negative claims specifically: a positive claim is an obligation on someone else to do something, and a negative claim is obligation on someone else to not do something.
Claims and liberties limit each other though, because obligation and permission are De Morgan duals: an obligation is the lack of permission to not do something, and permission is the lack of an obligation to not do something. So you have liberties to do everything nobody has a claim against, and all of your claims limit others' liberties. (Even, maybe especially, your negative claims: your claim against someone doing something limits their liberty to do that).
A second-order active right is a "power". Second-order means rights regarding rights, so a power is basically the liberty to change who has what rights. Powers are the kinds of rights that governments have, the kind of thing that lets them declare who may or must do or not do such-and-such, who has what permissions and obligations.
A second-order passive right is an "immunity", which is a claim against having one's rights changed. Immunities are the kinds of rights granted by the US Bill of Rights, which do not directly say that anyone is or isn't permitted or obliged to do something, but that the Congress does not have the power to make changes in who is or isn't permitted or obliged to do certain kinds of things. Because like claims and liberties, powers and immunities limit each other: one has powers to do everything that nobody has immunity against, and all of one's immunities limit others' powers.
"More permissive laws" means more liberties, fewer claims. Since permission is the default in absence of any law, more immunities (like ChatteringMonkey is talking about) means less power to change that status quo ante, resulting in fewer claims being granted, and so more liberties remaining.
I suppose after writing all of that out, I realize that my own conception of "smaller government" is "fewer powers" rather than strictly "more liberties", much like ChatteringMonkey here, but for a non-technical poll that doesn't require all this background, I think they're equivalent enough as "More permissive laws".
In that sense that the protect my rights, yes they are a service. I actually don’t agree with any statism, so those aren’t my personal preferences, but as someone who pays taxes towards a government these are the only services I require. These services limit government power while at the same time defending me from those who would take my freedoms away. That’s why I see it as preferable to big government statism.
No, what I mean is it’s about confronting the arguments, not accepting the consensus.
Should I be allowed to take from you the fruits of your labor and use it as I see fit? Personally I see that as morally wrong just as I would any kind of thievery.
Nothing is stopping you but your own refusal to act. So why not try to care for others instead of demanding others fund and do it for you?
And in another installment of the never ending argument....
Because rights entail duties. A duty must be fulfilled.
The right to housing or warm water or ventilation or heating entails that there must be someone to do that work, unless you want to add the exception "unless they don't want to."
So which one is it. If you want to add that qualification it's now just a matter of free choice.
Yeah and we all have a right to a ferrari assuming we can afford one.
You do realize that we have homeless shelters?
I realize that's the topic of the thread but the topic of our conversation is the nature of rights. We were focusing on housing and sufficient income, but last post you brought up like 8 other different rights that may or may not exist. I'm happy to discuss them individually when I have the time, but we're still sort of on this topic because I feel there's a disconnect.
This is a perfectly valid way to go out it, if you're going to pitch an idea I'm going to try to press you for specifics and when you can't provide those specifics or the details result in undesirable consequences that makes everything worse then maybe, just maybe, you should take that into consideration.
My go-to argument is concrete examples because it's more straight-forward. I have presented a philosophical distinction between positive and negative rights but you didn't really care. Nonetheless, I'd say that the "duties/slavery" argument that I'm presenting now is a little more abstract in that it's not dealing strictly with implementation.
When you place the material well-being of society above fairness or free choice you will fail.
But you haven't provided any arguments whatsoever. All you've done is said things you prefer. You prefer states to only "limit government power while at the same time defending me from those who would take my freedoms away." and you dislike those that provide other services. All Along you're hinting at it being about more than just your personal preferences but you haven't said in what way.
Quoting NOS4A2
Who said anything about "as you see fit"? I was talking about taking excess to meet people's basic needs. Yes, you should be allowed to take excessive wealth from me to give it to others who do not yet have their basic needs met. I see it as morally wrong to allow some people to suffer while others have more than they need.
Quoting NOS4A2
I am. I support governments who take money from those that have spare and give it to those in need. Why is demanding money from those who have spare not caring?
Yes, but there's no shortage of housing which means presumably there's no shortage of people who've chosen to build houses of their own free will. If suddenly no one wants to build houses then we might all have to muck in, but so far there's no evidence that this might be a problem, so why even raise the issue?
Quoting BitconnectCarlos
I'm not talking about shelters, I'm talking about housing (and jobs, and decent wages and healthcare etc).
Quoting BitconnectCarlos
No. That doesn't make any sense at all. You're not an expert on these matters, neither am I. So it's absolutely pointless us trying to work out if there are undesirable consequences, or if they outweigh the desirable ones. This work has already been done by people with far more knowledge on the subject than either of us, why on earth would we try to repeat it? The result is - we don't really know for sure. Some experts say that long-term harms will arise, some say they won't. Our job as citizens is not to bash out the evidence (we don't have all the data) it's to decide what to do in the face of the uncertainty. Which experts do we trust? What position do we take when we can't be sure of the consequences? Those are the questions we're qualified to answer.
Quoting BitconnectCarlos
And why would I? All you've presented is the distinction. No argument at all about why that distinction matters.
Quoting BitconnectCarlos
But this is just idle speculation (not to mention a very idiosyncratic definition of 'fairness'). You have no evidence that it will fail, so why presume so?
I’m not going to type out all the arguments for you. If you’re curious they can be easily found.
The “taking” aspect is the problem. You can do whatever you want with your own excess. You cannot do anything you want with mine.
Because caring involves taking care of the needs of others. Demanding others to care for others is not the same.
This is just on the practical part, I'll respond to the rest later:
Construction functions in regard to market conditions. Houses don't just spring up spontaneously they are built according to demand.
Pfforest mentioned that there was no shortage of homes nation-wide. He mentioned that there were more homes than there are homeless people. This is probably true. The obvious wrench in the plan of putting the homeless in these homes is that these homes are probably owned by somebody. All of the land in the US has been claimed - it is owned by somebody, and very often but not always the owner of the land is the owner of the property. At the very least the land belongs to someone.
It's just not the case that there are open pastures of free, unoccupied and unowned homes out there. If this happened to be the case then I don't really care if homeless people decided to homestead in them. However, the local community probably would because it would plummet their home prices and they'd be faced with a ton of new domestic issues due to this influex of the homeless.
So what are they entitled to? A dorm? A house? Plenty of homeless are either rejected from the shelters due to drugs/mental health or just refuse to live there in the first place because they have to be around other homeless people who, surprise surprise, aren't the most pleasant crowd. What is your solution to these people?
If you start from the premise that small government is generally better, and that means more permissive laws (more liberty and immunity, fewer claims and powers), then it seems like you would demand a justification for every claim or power added.
The obvious first claim we'd want to add is a claim to property in our own bodies, which is to say a claim that we get to decide who is or isn't allowed to do what to our bodies. A claim against battery, basically. That's pretty easily defended. Nobody wants anybody to be able to just attack them.
We also usually want an exception to that claim: we want it to be permissible to act upon someone else's body as necessary to prevent them from acting impermissibly upon other peoples' bodies. Otherwise, the actions required in the defense against battery would be impermissible, so battery, while impermissible in principle, could nevertheless proceed unabated in practice.
A claim to property in anything else besides one's own body is an additional claim beyond that, in need of defense. And exceptions to that may likewise be warranted.
The first power that anybody usually wants to grant is the power to contract: the power to create claims against one another (or grant liberties otherwise prohibited to one another) by mutual agreement. This is an additional thing that needs defending, beyond any kind of property rights.
And there are likewise probably some important exceptions we'd want to make to that power in order for it to be workable in practice, just like the exceptions to the claims we normally make above.
The point I'm making here is that each of these steps toward what "small government" people typically want is actually a step toward bigger government than the presumed default of maximal liberty and immunity. The more exceptions to the power to contract, or the less the power to contract in the first place, the smaller the government. The more exceptions to claims to property, or the fewer the claims to property in the first place, the smaller the government. The smallest government possible would be one where anyone was allowed to do anything to anyone or anything, and where nothing, not even mutual agreement, could create obligations that limited that liberty.
Pretty sure that nobody wants government that small, not even anarchists (who are not anti-government, just anti-state). But if smaller is by default better unless otherwise justified, you need to justify each of those steps -- the claim to property in your own body, to property in anything else, and the power to contract -- and defeat the justifications of any exceptions to them that others might propose.
So you can't have an opinion on an issue unless you're an expert in it. Okay.
You're flying in the face of modern philosophy and science here: One of the key premises is that anyone is able to bring evidence and doubts, and that truth doesn't just lie in an appeal to experts.
Lets start with the duty/slavery idea I mentioned earlier. In the right to life, your duty is just not to kill others. In the right to housing and everything along with it, your duty is now to take care of everyone's home. What if you don't want to? What if you're the only mechanic for miles?
Yeah right. You could have filled a book out of all the crap you've written in defence of Trump and now suddenly it's too much effort to summarise a single argument? Either way, I'm not interested in the arguments at this stage. I'm sure that they exist - for both small and large government. Mere existence of an argument, then, is not sufficient to justify taking a position - especially one which will cause harm to others. You must be persuaded by it to the exclusion of others. So declaring the existence of an argument is pointless. You need to show why you are persuaded by it, and why you are not persuaded by arguments to the contrary, and why (in the light of this uncertainty) you've opted to err on the side of the more harmful option.
Quoting NOS4A2
It's not your excess. It belongs to the government, if the government were to make a law requiring you to pay a certain amount of tax, then that money would legally be the government's not yours. Notwithstanding that, I absolutely can do something with your excess. I can gather together enough people to overpower you and take it.
Quoting NOS4A2
Sounds the same to me. If I really cared about a dying man what would be the most rational expression of that care - me trying to save him myself, or me trying to persuade a qualified doctor to do it? Personally, I'd go with the latter.
No they're not. If I held a gun to your head and said "build me a house" I suspect you would do so, regardless of whether the market demanded it. You're treating 'market forces' as if they were some kind of Law of Nature, they're just the result of the economic institutions we've set up. It's perfectly feasible to build houses for all sorts of reasons.
Quoting BitconnectCarlos
We're talking about government here though. The very same people who declare that these people are the 'owners'. Now you're mistaking our legal institutions for some kind of Law of Nature. If a person claims to own an excess and the government wishes to take that land back, they simply file a counter-claim. Claims are not physical laws.
Quoting BitconnectCarlos
As I said, I'm talking about housing, jobs, decent wages, healthcare, services... the whole package, the lack of which is largely responsible for the state of homeless people.
Quoting BitconnectCarlos
I didn't say you couldn't have an opinion. You've got to realise the gravity of what you're suggesting. There's a man on the street living under a cardboard box - no home, no job, no healthcare. He's starving hungry, probably ill (both physically and mentally) and ten times more likely to die than average. You're telling him that he can't have a little help from the man buying his second yacht because you 'reckon' in your completely lay interpretation of complex economics, that it would probably be a bad idea in the long run. This despite there existing perfectly well-educated experts who think it would be fine. You've decided to just let the man starve and side with the naysayers because you just 'reckon' they have it right. I'm trying to establish why - given that you're not sufficiently expert to decide, given that alternative , expert opinions are available, given the very high stakes, you've chosen the side you have.
I mean, if you're wrong (and we do nothing), people suffer miserably for no reason. If you're right, but we increase welfare nonetheless, the economy takes a dive (which is does periodically anyway). given that either could be the case, why err on the side of the wealthy?
Quoting BitconnectCarlos
I don't understand your appeal to autonomy in this one area. We're obliged to do all sorts of things we don't want to do all the time. What if I don't want to drive on the left? What if I don't want to pay my taxes? What if I don't want to pay for the groceries I've just put in my trolley? Why is obliging people to help others suddenly an obligation too far when obliging people to uphold economic contracts occupies far more of their life?
The trouble is that if anyone were allowed to do anything to anyone, then one of those things they'd be allowed to do is collect together, from an armed administrative group and use that force of arms to make people obey the rules they set. In other words big government is itself allowed by small government. This is the central flaw in the argument against any kind of consequence of collective bargaining power, you have to put in place, right at the heart of your 'oh so free liberty-state' one absolutely massive infringement on liberty - that you cannot use collective bargaining. Otherwise you end up with the exact type of government we currently have. If you're going to ban collective bargaining right at the outset, then you've not only caused a massive infringement on liberty without justification, but you've swung the balance of power massively in favour of individual wealth.
So, I agree with your overall analysis - trying to get at the objective justifications for certain rights (and not others) is what I've been doing in my comments. But the very first right that needs to be justified in 'small government' is the banning of collective bargaining.
I also wanted to add an addendum to this bit from earlier:
Quoting Pfhorrest
John Locke, the infamous big-government advocate, famously advocated exactly such an exception: the Lockean proviso that there be "enough, and as good, left in common for others".
I don’t need to do anything because I’m not trying to persuade you of anything. I was trying to answer your questions in good faith but was met with snark and appeals to emotion, both of which have failed to persuade me to your position. You couldn’t even declare the existence of an argument, let alone make one.
It is my excess and I can do what I want with it because I produced it. Legal or not it’s still thievery and it’s still unjust. You cannot even gather enough funds to do what you demand of others, so I’m not worried about you gathering a mob. Besides, your acts of tyranny and authoritarianism will be met with opposition, even from your precious government.
I wouldn’t expect you to help him. That involves care and effort. Calling a doctor is the very least one can do for a dying man, just like paying a tax is the very least one can do to care for others.
My question - why do you think that the list of government services you want provided (and those you do not) amounts to more than just your personal preferences?
So far you've given me;
a) A difference exists between the types of service you prefer and the types you don't.
b) Academics have made arguments that the types of service you prefer should be the only ones provided.
(a) is insufficient on its own as an answer because the mere existence of a difference in type does not exclude items from the list. There is nothing preventing the government from providing more than one type of service.
(b) is also insufficient on its own to answer the question because academics have also provided arguments to the contrary. This makes the choice of which argument to go with just your personal preference, unless you can show why your preferred argument is more persuasive.
So no, you haven't tried to answer my question in good faith at all, you've tried to avoid it. In order to answer it you do indeed need to show why you are persuaded by your position (as I specified) because without showing that you have not shown how it is anything more than your own personal preference.
Quoting NOS4A2
No, it is theivery if it is illegal. That is the definition of thievery. If you have some other means (other than law) of determining who owns what I'd be interested to hear it, but - very important - I'd need to know why such a system is anything more than your own personal preference. Otherwise you cannot support an argument that your position is anything other than 'wants'.
Yes, but this isn't how houses get built in a free society. If you're putting a gun to someone's head or threatening construction crews with jail time you're pretty screwed as a society.
This really gets to the heart of the matter in your view, and I'm glad you're laying it out it out on the table. I'm being serious here: I like that you're laying it out on the table and in direct way.
If you're just going to point to this man in the cardboard box and say "how could society allow this? "How dare you ignore this in a wealthy society such as the US!" then I don't know if I have an immediate rebuttal to your appeal. You're declaring something an emergency and emergencies shouldn't be questioned they should be solved.
It seems a human rights issue that the government must immediately save them and provide them with hot meals 3x a day + a warm shower and continued maintenance to ensure their house is a-ok and throw in food, support whatever children they have, I mean why not it's for the well-fare of society and billionaires and millionaires have plenty of money.
I'm guessing you're young. I would guess between 18-22, maybe 23.
In reality - and I know you're not to listen because this man's existence constitutes an immediate emergency that must be solved by whatever means necessary - the issue is much, much complex. We need to ask ourselves a number of questions:
1. Why is this man homeless? Where is his family? Why isn't his family accepting him?
2. Is he a drug user? Will he be able to function around other homeless people without being a danger to them?
3. Does he have any pertinent mental health issues that may make him for the time being unfit to live around others?
4. Can he be trusted to keep a home clean and maintain it? Does he have a criminal history?
5. Has he chosen to live on the street because of the freedom it provides and the panhandling opportunities that come with it?
6. What is his previous experience with homeless shelters? What is his previous living history?
I know it sounds cruel, but ask yourself this: Would you take him in? If you worked hard to finally own a house would you trust a few homeless people in your house or would you be okay leaving them unsupervised? If you wouldn't take the risk, is it fair to ask a community to take the same risk?
I don't really feel like arguing this one. If you're comparing having to pay for groceries with forcing people into manual labor there isn't a point in me going on about this point and we can drop it. I'm just glad that you're honest about the implications of your argument and you're able to accept the honest consequences. Cool beans - no need for a response here.
The gun was an example. It could be nicer motives like duty. Notwithstanding, what makes you think we live in a free society. The builder is already being forced to build, someone stole the common land he could have used to fend for himself and so he is forced to work. Someone speculates on property, driving the prices up of his basic needs and he is forced to work longer and harder. In what way is that any more free than legally forcing someone to work for the common good?
Quoting BitconnectCarlos
And this gets to the heart of where you're coming from. Yes it's complex, yet all of your complexities err on the side of not housing the man. Are you seriously presenting that list as an unbiased summary of the complexities? What about;
The effect free market national/globalising has on the local communities which might have supported the man.
The extent to which lack of government investment in youth and welfare services increase the chances of him being a drug addict and decrease the chances of his getting any long-term support to kick his habit.
The fact that government cuts to mental health services make it vastly more likely that he has an untreated mental health condition.
The way in which erosion of worker's rights mean fewer people have any pride or dignity in their work and this leaches out into their home lives.
I know you're intention might be good, but presuming everyone who disagrees with you must be young and idealistic, whilst you alone have the wise world-weary answer is condescending and a poor argument. I'm 54 and I know plenty of intelligent academics who are (some of them) even more left-wing than I am about these things. They are both old, and experts in their field, so let's leave the condescention out of this shall we?