Ok, Corey, I'm doing my response to your long post now.
CoreyRIT wrote:You are an idealist. There is always going to be someone who is more powerful than somebody else. Politics or no politics. I'm stronger than you and threaten to kick your ass if you don't give me your wallet.
I know that what you're saying about physical power is true. However, government and their laws are what gives people the ability to change my destiny without actually forcing me. I can fight a mugger off. I can run from him. But government is everywhere, I can't fight it or run from it.
CoreyRIT wrote:Two men want the same house. One man offers $100,000 the other offers $500,000. Who will get the house?
You're a dumbass. I convince you to give me $300 a month for robot insurance. (Those who deny the existence of robots may be robots themselves) Here my superior intelligence forces you to my will.
The man whose willing to pay more gets the property. That's not coercion, that's fair. The situation would be force if the individual who did not win the bid suddenly turned on the wealthier party with a gun and took the house.
If you convince me to buy a faulty product then i was tricked, not coerced. If you pointed a gun at my head and took $300 out of my pocket while offering Robot Insurance, that's force. Which is exaclty like the govenrment's unemployment insurance.
CoreyRIT wrote:What keeps the government going? Certainly not money. nahhh... that's impossible. Barely any politicians are rich.
I'm not sure of your point here. the fact that the government steals from us is not what gives them the power to force me to obey their laws. money does not legitimize their regime.
CoreyRIT wrote:I can throw my money around all the time to force you to do many things. Your landlord sells his complex to me. I bulldoze the thing. You're out a home. You have an account at my bank. I charge you a $100,000,000 fine for having exactly $1234.56 in your account (guess you should've read the fine print). Tough luck, your life is over. There is a new device on the market that sends waves into someone's brain which turns them into your slave. Cool, I'm the only one who can afford it.
You didn't force me to live in the home. If I don't own the complex, for me to resist your right to bulldoze it would be force. It's your property. If you want to rent it to me, good. If you want to tear it down, then I will find a new home. If you charge a vicious service fee and I failed to read the fine print, it is my fault. It's not force. You didn't force me to not read the contract that i was signing, nor did you force me to invest in your bank.
If you take over peoples minds, that's coercion. But you didn't take over my mind with your money, you used a weapon to do it. Money itself can't force me to do anything.
CoreyRIT wrote:Quit the US? Quite easy actually.. just pack and leave. (They don't kill you for that you know)
I don't want to leave. I own the land. I just want to live on my 3 acres of dirt and not pay tax or obey laws. Do you think if I tried that, the government would allow it? *coughwacocough*
CoreyRIT wrote:Why is that morally flawed? If you don't like the majority rule then disassociate yourself from the group. You are not forced to be in the group. If you get a job and you don't like what your boss makes you do, quit. You are binded to what your boss wants while you are associated with that position.
I can do that at work, but as I have just explained, not with government.
CoreyRIT wrote:If those 4 men are the only people in the world then yes, they are right. However they are not the only ones in the world and they are part of a larger group (i.e. the US population) and the majority of them believe that beating up mexicans is wrong.
Now this I have a problem with. You are saying now that right and wrong really do depend on who has the most guns. Hitler was morally right. Rascism is morally right. That's what you're telling me, that these men are correct as long as they're part of the largest mob.
CoreyRIT wrote:My mistake. You are right. In that case I change my example to going out to a movie. Now how do you decide?
By consensus. However, again, i'm not forced to go to the movie my friends pick if i don't like it.
CoreyRIT wrote:The only thing that guy wants is rocks for without rocks he wouldn't have a business. So I'll pay him a rock for a pet rock. I make out like a bandit!
Not to mention barter systems are for the middle ages. Ahh the good old days when nobody was coerced to someone else's will...
Well what are you giving him today? Either you pay with your debit/credit card, in which case the vendor gets nothing, or you give him some paper. The stuff you trade isn't important, it's the value to the person you're trading with that matters.
CoreyRIT wrote:But would the nuclear bomb have existed had einstein not invented it? Would the US still drop something that didn't exist?
It doesn't force my kids into anything. I didn't say that. I said that it changes my life. Does it not?
I'm not arguing that we don't have an impact on each others lives. I'm arguing that Einstein's existence didn't force the United States to drop the bomb.
CoreyRIT wrote:Force is acceptible when the reasons behind it are good. You run a child pornography business in your basement and I know it. It is morally good for me to force myself into your house and stop your operation. I see you dumping poison into public water lines. I smash the line so that the water doesn't reach homes even though it isn't my property. My kids hate school but I know the value an education is so I force them to go to school.
Correct. I am not a pacifist. I believe in the non-aggression principle, that is, that you do not iniate force. In the child porn example, the person who runs the porn factory has aggressed against the children and should be stopped. In the poision example, I'm agressing against a whole town of people.
Forcing your kids to go to school is not a moral action. If your son believes that he does not need school, he knows better then you what he needs. You can strongly reccommend he continue his education, but forcing him is wrong.
CoreyRIT wrote:Government runs the same way. I believe majority rule is good and that force is also good when the end result is good. I can't defend it any better than the fact that I believe the principles are good. Very similar to your way of defending why you think force is bad because its bad.
But I have a rational basis for finding flaw with majority rule. Majority rule is irrational. It is irrational to suggest that once a person is not part of the largest mob, his rights no longer matter.
Force is irrational. Force renders the mind useless. Any action taken under force or the threat of force is a non-thinking action. The use of force is a non-thinking action. Human beings are seperate from the lower animals because of our ability to think and act rationally. When we use force, we aren't acting human.