Vera Mont

There are no legitimate forms of government; no effective method of governance; not even the remotest possibility of an an administration that can org...

Huh? What have I complained about? I'm happy to pay taxes. I'm at ease with having laws and regulations. I have suggested ways in which one or two who...

I'm not the one railing against having to pull my weight - but yes; it's under consideration; exit strategies are in place.

Excellent suggestions! "People's money." "People's stuff." How does that happen? How many babies have squirmed into the world with a bag of money or d...

So he made a choice: comply with the laws of one country - at least until he can use the legislative process to change them, move to another country, ...

The employer consented to deduct a specified amount of every employee's salary for specified remissions to specified agencies. When you take the job, ...

Then why do you?

You can opt out of the social contract in several ways: Leave the country and try to find one that has more favourable laws and that will have you. Be...

It will be relevant again. See my first post on this topic. I always differentiated between ideology "ism" and a communal system of organization.

No. That melodramatic representation of taxes is both inaccurate and unacceptable. People's things aren't taken; only a predetermined and agreed-upon ...

The key word there is "history". We may need to look farther back for sustainable systems of human organization. And even when we've found a model tha...

For starters, where did you get the money? Who prints the currency? Who regulates the exchange value? I think the problem was individual contribution....

And when you do you use those privatized services, you pay more for less. This also holds true for the public services that have been privatized but s...

In that case, what does this mean?: Who/what does the supposing? To what/whom is this obligation? Who/what imposes the "should"? Who/what sets the sta...

If you're interested in the use of tools, your best bet is You Tube. as an analogy: a famous person who did life well However, I hope you have among y...

In almost 60 years of paying various taxes, I never saw a gun. I have, however, driven on literal highways, sent literal packages through the mail, tr...

This very strongly presupposes a deity, who has requirements of some kind, preferences in human behaviour and standard according to which humans are j...

Many people might benefit from considering thew purpose of their own lives - rather more, i think from considering whether their lives have or need a ...

Yet. But they are heading rightward, and all the way far right: xenophobia, isolationism, repression, authoritarian conformity. If they fall in lock-s...

Important to you. But what's in it for us?

The way they're all doing right now? Even the more robust socialist-leaning democracies. They're not all the same age, or at the same point in their e...

Both of these are intended to serve a need: to satisfy both the abstract concept and the instinctive desire of social animals for some rational balanc...

:clap: :clap:

I think he already knows they grow on trees. No, it doesn't, and the fact that they grow on trees has no effect on their flavour. And putting a respon...

It's useless in describing apples, but useful in illustrating an untruthful statement for the purpose of discussion. It's informative regarding the pr...

If they were useless, they wouldn't be used. If they were not widely and frequently useful, they would not be so widely and frequently used. All commu...

Indeed. And it has never been tried in a state. Yes. The clearly defined "ism" according to which a state might be governed, which entails no atrocity...

It has zero track record on a large scale. A label is not a system. Of course it is. Put an incorruptible AI administrator in charge instead of self-p...

I never said it works on large scale. Of course, nor does any other ideology; all political systems are more or less dysfunctional; all collapse soone...

How do you figure? Humans are still individuals, even if they don't fence off the commons or claim private ownership of natural resources. In a commun...

What way is that? More specifically, to distinguish between communal living and commun-ism. I'm pretty sure they didn't start the same way and have ve...

The debt-ceiling caves in and all production ceases. Then we expend the arsenals of the world, fighting over the detritus of a global economy, and by ...

In the present condition of our societies, no. There are too many of us and the wealth that has already been amassed by a few is not readily divisible...

Reducing taxation reduces revenue that can be directly put to use in mitigating damage, rather than trusting the companies to do what they promise, wi...

Cost in the extraction of minerals is calculated by the industry in economic terms, but that's the least of its real cost to the planet. https://www.n...

Even if it didn't, even if nobody else in the world did it, and it made no difference - should you not always live the way you believe you ought to li...

It's entirely situation-dependent.

That's exactly what I mean! How many examples of interplanetary interaction are you using for that calculation? Why not? They're not us. There is no i...

Afterthought. The above may be an illustration of how contact with an intelligent alien life form might affect our own philosophies. So far, the only ...

I didn't say anything about military strategies. Erratic behaviour, irrational behaviour, behaviour that is detrimental to the health and environment ...

Well, all through the Covid pandemic, I wore a KN95 mask and kept my distance from other people. Those who protested quarantine and threw beer bottles...

I can think of several reasons: They don't think we're advanced enough yet; they don't know that we're intelligent; they're being cautious in case wha...

Of course you would. And speak a different language and wear different clothes and eat different food and root for a different football team. And each...

Why-ever not? Where is the harm in speculation? Particularly about a story we made up ourselves?

First, there is the simple fact of other intelligent life. That should shake up the outlook of a good many anthropocentrists. How each of those groups...

I would like to see that. But might it not first be necessary to lighten their work-load, particularly the administrative bookkeeping, and liberate so...

Fact-check those claims. A self-taught tenured professor should be able to do that all on his lonesome, as easily as a pre-school aged child can.

Unlike some people, I don't like repeating myself endlessly. I've given you explanations, newspaper articles, quotes, references and further clarifica...

It doesn't matter what you or anyone cited: he didn't like school and he didn't like school, so there.

I'm not trying to explain culture; I assumed we had an idea of it already. Okay. Somewhere along the line of great ape evolution, the irrationality ge...