Starting today August 7th, 2024, in order to post in the Married Couples, Courting Couples, or Singles forums, you will not be allowed to post if you have your Marital status designated as private. Announcements will be made in the respective forums as well but please note that if yours is currently listed as Private, you will need to submit a ticket in the Support Area to have yours changed.
Typically, yes. There is usually a mandate for the maintenance of a military force to defend the territory, and a police force to protect the safety and property of the citizens. There may also be other lesser provisions for the use of force by other bodies in particular situations social & healthcare, prisons, etc.
Well, then it's immoral. There are means of funding those necessary and proper function of government such as the police and the military and the courts that are completely voluntary such as a national sales tax on non-essentials or a fee on money transfers or contracts. No initiation of force is needed, just rational self-interest. Or a fee such as in the case of the courts.
Well then I think it is time you write a great big treatise on how you see the world should operate and all of the potential problems with appropriate resolutions. Otherwise we will keep plodding along.
I don't see why you think that. I would say that the world should operate on the premise that the initiation of force is absolutely wrong and should be absolutely abolished. That would take care of many of the problems we have now. That would be a good start and then we could work on the other problems and keep on improving things. I mean we've been doing things the same basic way for thousands of years. Who was it that said that doing the same thing over and over again but expecting different results is the definition of insanity? On your view, if we can't know instantly how the world should operate perfectly then we should just "plod along". The problem is that we aren't just plodding along. We are heading for disaster if we don't make a change.
Well it wasn't Einstein and if somebody wrote that treatise it appears nobody seems to have taken it to heart so maybe you can write a more inspiring version.
I've read it and many people have taken it to heart. It's gaining followers particularly in eastern Europe where memories of communism are still fresh. I'm convinced it can save the world. It's called Objectivism: the Philosophy of Ayn Rand by Leonard Peikoff. There is also Philosophy: Who Needs it, For the New Intellectual, Indoroduction to Objectivist Epistemology, The Virtue of Selfishness, The Romantic Manifesto, and Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal By Ayn Rand. If you want a detailed analysis of the Nazis you can read The Ominous Parallels by Leonard Peikoff. If you want to know where the world is headed and why read The DIM Hypothesis By Leonard Peikoff. There is also the Capitalist Manifesto by Andrew Bernstein which is a comprehensive counter to the Communist Manifesto by Carl Marx. There are many more.
...until the first person came along who didn't give a fig for those standards. And of course there could be no restraining that person's use of force since doing so would require force.
I said that there must be a complete abolition of the initiation of force. Retaliatory force is perfectly moral and it is the sole reason to have a government in the first place, not to be meals on wheels and babysitter. The purpose of government is the protection of individuals from the initiation of force. That means those who start its use. When the government takes the rightful property of one man to give to another for the purposes of benevolence, that's initiating force. I believe it was in 1892 in congress where James Madison, the father of the constitution, gave a speech against a proposed bill to earmark $15,000 for French Refugees. He said, "I can not undertake to lay my finger on that article of the constitution which authorizes the Congress to spend, for the purpose of benevolence, the money of the people". OH how far away from that we have come.
Very well, but I can see from your reply that "initiation" is relative.
If those extreme measures involve him initiating force then the government has the right, delegated by the people, to stop him and put him in jail. The fact that someone needs healthcare does not give him a right to pull a gun and demand it. The government, according to our founders, derives its power from the consent of the governed. It does not have any special powers over and above the individual. We delegate to it our right of self-defense, which by the way we retain. We don't give it up by delegating it. Government is that institution that has a legal monopoly on the retaliatory use of force and it must do so impartially. But when the government turns its gun on people who have not initiated force then it delegitimizes itself. Have you really read and understood the Declaration of Independence?
I agree, the film was horrible. But I wouldn't look to a conservative for answers to our problems. They are statist themselves only from the right.
All you're saying is that who it is doing the initiating is in the eye of the beholder. I gave one possible example, but there are all sorts of other ones that might prove the point even better.
All this relates to some ideal world but doesn't relate to actual life.
Genuine conservatism always supports limited government, one that is no bigger than necessary to accomplish some of what you tried to explain in your previous posts but resorted to the claptrap of Ayn Rand in the attempt.
Well, there are very few true conservatives in the world and I would not call them conservatives but classical liberals.
No, I'm not. I'm defining initiation objectively as those who start the use of force. In all cases, the start of the use of force is wrong, immoral, evil.
I cannot dispute that nor do I want to, but it still is the case that in real life it is often just a matter of opinion as to who "started it."
But government often doesn't do what it is supposed to do. That being the case, the man who retaliates against his neighbor would have to be considered the one retaliating, not the initiator of force, in this incident. So he wouldn't be at fault, according to Objectivism as you explained it here.
Who says "we delegate this power?" What if I say that I don't choose to delegate it? That should be my decision in the Objectivist thinking. Oh, that's right, the government will use force against me and no one is on hand who can prevent it!
