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Economic Conditions - Nashville, TN, U.S., Global


Mr_Bond

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19 hours ago, titanhog said:

The problem is that we have many who believe they're intellectual...and have convinced many they are intellectual...but they're not.  It's not always easy to separate the Socrates...Galileos and Einsteins from the fakes.

That's true, good point. The very skills required to actually be an expert/intellectual are the same skills that are required to accurately verify expertise/intellectual capacity in others. I guess that's the crux of it - same as it ever was, I suppose.

 

Edited by ruraljuror
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Think the people that protested the last few days will pay market rate for their medical treatment if they get corona-sick?  You know, full blown capitalism and all.

Also, are they from Metro-Nashville-Davidison?  Are their businesses in Metro-Nashville-Davidson?  Aren't these the same types of people that voted in the blackface-plumber-zerogubmentexperience and iHaTeDeVeLoPmEnT dudes into office?

@JoeyX you wanna shed some light on this, big boy?

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The protesters are not helping their cause but.....Can we live like this for an indefinite future? There will be no vaccine for 12 months if not longer, TN hospitals have not been overwhelmed with patients, our economy cannot sustain being closed for another year, so what do we do?  Why continue to wait to start opening back up? I’m all in for opening slowly, but as left leaning as I am, let’s get started. There will be an increase in cases, but unless we wait a year, that will follow under any reopening rollout. I will add to those who think I’m uncaring about those with underlying health issue, I’m in that group too, but I need my job. 

Edited by Nash_12South
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All I will say is there will be consequences for the folks that protested and did not social distance and did not wear mask. I can almost guarantee someone in one or two of those groups is asymptomatic  and will infect a bunch of folks. No sympathy if they get sick and die from me but the folks that brought their children should be jailed for child endangerment.

The longer they protest and show up for the protest the higher chance they will get sick.

Second wave is on its way.

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On ‎4‎/‎17‎/‎2020 at 4:38 PM, ruraljuror said:

... the rich should be taxed more, but …. neither group should be ...persecuted...

I don't know if you know this or not, but taxes are collected by force (i.e., violence).  So saying that someone needs to be taxed more than others is tantamount to saying someone needs to be subjected to more violence than others.  That's pretty much the definition of persecution.  You must really hate rich people if you want to tax them more than they already are.

It's like my gulag reference went WOOSH... right over your head.

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14 minutes ago, Armacing said:

I don't know if you know this or not, but taxes are collected by force (i.e., violence).  So saying that someone needs to be taxed more than others is tantamount to saying someone needs to be subjected to more violence than others.  That's pretty much the definition of persecution.  You must really hate rich people if you want to tax them more than they already are.

It's like my gulag reference went WOOSH... right over your head.

big brain

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1 hour ago, Armacing said:

I don't know if you know this or not, but taxes are collected by force (i.e., violence). 

That's interesting, because you should know my thoughts on this exact issue, because you and I discussed it in the Soccer thread last October.  Here was my last comment on the matter copied and pasted...to which you never responded.  I can't fathom why...

  On 10/30/2019 at 12:43 PM, Armacing said:

How much importance do you assign to the fact that tax dollars are taken by force?  For me, that is just about the most crucial fact in my philosophy about the legitimate scope of government. 

Somewhere out there is a fixed-income granny who wants to buy a new pair of shoes, but according to your argument, she should not be allowed to buy those shoes, rather, she should be forced to purchase a soccer stadium. 

Here is my biggest dispute with your response and philosophy in general.  I can not agree that taxes are taken by force from citizens.  We hand over those tax dollars voluntarily - maybe not in accordance with an agreement that we personally/explicitly have made - but it is in accordance with an agreement that our ancestors made that we continue to reap the benefits of through the heritage of citizenship.  Also, keep in mind that you can in fact renounce your citizenship should you decide that it's no longer worth honoring the agreements made by your ancestors.

Thinking of taxes as federal theft is similar to viewing HOA fees in your apartment building as theft.  You can try to elect a new HOA board to reduce or eliminate those fees. Failing that, you can move into a new building with lower (or no) fees.  But to conflate those fees with some organization picking your pocket removes your own agency and accountability in the process, which is substantial.

That said, your point about the fixed-income granny buying shoes is well taken.  I do believe that said granny may benefit from the new MLS team in ways that even she may not appreciate, but these are the kinds of exceptions and carve outs that make tax law complicated.  We ought to do everything we can to make sure that these granny's aren't among the 'losers' when crafting new policies, but we can't raise new hotel taxes to cover literally everything, and sometimes people don't even realize when they're actually among the 'winners' group despite themselves (e.g. the fairgrounds new expo center crowd).

In any case, thanks again for the very solid reply - I appreciate it!!

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On 4/18/2020 at 1:28 PM, ruraljuror said:

That's true, good point. The very skills required to actually be an expert/intellectual are the same skills that are required to accurately verify expertise/intellectual capacity in others. I guess that's the crux of it - same as it ever was, I suppose.

 

Dunning-Kruger.

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By the way Vanderbilt's model that was projecting a potential June peak with 5,000 hospitalized has already been disproven... by Vanderbilt. In three days. They said that model projected a 1.5 transmission rate. Vanderbilt over the weekend announced they believe the transmission rate has dropped to 1.

 

April 14:

If the transmission rate continues at about 1.4 or 1.5 — the status quo version of the model — the initial wave of the coronavirus pandemic would peak in Tennessee in June, and it would stress the health care system to capacity with 5,000 hospitalizations. 

April 17:

Vanderbilt's latest COVID-19 model said the spread of the coronavirus could be slowing down in Tennessee. The transmission rate across the state has declined to around 1.0 from 1.4.

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You have to get the R/0 value below 1 to make an impact. This weekend was not good news for Metro as cases went up in proportion to the testing. With the amount of testing going up in the  state  you will see a lot more cases now, which is good and bad. At least the folks that are asymptomatic are finding out, but that in turn will drive the number of cases up.

The states that are pushing too hard in opening public places and the economy will be paying a high price I am afraid, and this may come back and bite them in the rear end. I hope I am wrong, but I don't think so. It has also not been proven you can't get this stuff twice. They just do not know.

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7 minutes ago, smeagolsfree said:

You have to get the R/0 value below 1 to make an impact. This weekend was not good news for Metro as cases went up in proportion to the testing. With the amount of testing going up in the  state  you will see a lot more cases now, which is good and bad. At least the folks that are asymptomatic are finding out, but that in turn will drive the number of cases up.

The states that are pushing too hard in opening public places and the economy will be paying a high price I am afraid, and this may come back and bite them in the rear end. I hope I am wrong, but I don't think so. It has also not been proven you can't get this stuff twice. They just do not know.

The trick about new cases is we still don't have a clue in reality how many people actually have this and what the actual mortality rate is.  So 1,900 people in Davidson are positive. Does that mean 19,000 have had it or 190,000. Do new positive cases mean continued growth, or just a better more realistic snapshot of widespread infection that has slowed.

The only thing you can bet your hat on is COVID related hospitalizations and deaths - are those flatlined, decreasing, etc.

 

Edited by DDIG
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It does appear as though the rate of infection is slowing and that the curve is either flattening or on the decline in most places.  However, I don't see how those numbers don't just increase again since we have squandered our opportunity while we're all sheltered in place to get mechanisms in place to test people en masse and track and isolate those who are infected.  Yes, the rate of infection is in a good place right now, but because we still don't have a clue who has it or how many people have it or have had it, it makes it more or less impossible to eliminate, or even control, so I'm worried that these efforts to isolate and shelter in place over the past month and the resulting economic impacts may wind up being all for naught as a result.  I reeeeeally reeeeeeally hope I'm wrong about that.  

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1 hour ago, smeagolsfree said:

You have to get the R/0 value below 1 to make an impact. This weekend was not good news for Metro as cases went up in proportion to the testing. With the amount of testing going up in the  state  you will see a lot more cases now, which is good and bad. At least the folks that are asymptomatic are finding out, but that in turn will drive the number of cases up.

The states that are pushing too hard in opening public places and the economy will be paying a high price I am afraid, and this may come back and bite them in the rear end. I hope I am wrong, but I don't think so. It has also not been proven you can't get this stuff twice. They just do not know.

The good thing, though, is that as we test more and find out how many more people have the virus...it lowers the rate of death...which is good.  It does scare me, though, that we don't know yet if having this keeps you from getting it again.

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2 minutes ago, titanhog said:

The good thing, though, is that as we test more and find out how many more people have the virus...it lowers the rate of death...which is good.  It does scare me, though, that we don't know yet if having this keeps you from getting it again.

I'm certainly no expert but I'm pretty skeptical you can get it again ... atleast in the near term. We don't know how long the antibodies last. The articles claiming people have gotten it twice are based on pretty flimsy, incomplete data. Fauci has sounded confident you'll have antibodies, he just doesn't know if it is four months, a year, or what.

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2 hours ago, ruraljuror said:

That's interesting, because you should know my thoughts on this exact issue, because you and I discussed it in the Soccer thread last October.  Here was my last comment on the matter copied and pasted...to which you never responded.  I can't fathom why...

That other thread wasn't specifically dedicated to discussing economics like this one is, so I did a little self-moderation and withdrew from that thread because it was heating up.   But I do apologize for not responding to your comment - a mistake that I will remedy now:

2 hours ago, ruraljuror said:

Here is my biggest dispute with your response and philosophy in general.  I can not agree that taxes are taken by force from citizens.  We hand over those tax dollars voluntarily - maybe not in accordance with an agreement that we personally/explicitly have made - but it is in accordance with an agreement that our ancestors made that we continue to reap the benefits of through the heritage of citizenship.  Also, keep in mind that you can in fact renounce your citizenship should you decide that it's no longer worth honoring the agreements made by your ancestors.

This is a bogus argument because it asks us to accept the notion that future generations are bound to abide by all decisions made by previous generations.  I could cite any number examples where societies have righted the historical wrongs perpetrated by previous generations - but that's taking us further away from the argument at hand.  The main point is that taxes need to be equitable - tax payers must receive something of equal or greater value in return for the taxes they pay.  And that means at the individual level.   It is under that construct; value-for-value, that the founding fathers allowed for taxes in American government.

Taxes are not given voluntarily, but rather taken by force.  Even the most cursory review of US history will show that a driving motivation behind the rebellion against Great Britain was dissatisfaction over the "value" the colonists were getting in return for the taxes paid to the crown of England.  So if we want to contemplate the mindset of America's founders, let's ask ourselves why they would fight a war of independence against abusive taxers only to turn around and set up a system wherein people pay taxes but receive less value in return.  No, it's clear to everyone they would not logically do that.

Now, what value can someone receive from a government that possibly justifies the sacrifice of giving up the fruits of one's labor?  The answer is "Defense from violence".   War, theft, murder - - these are all things that government rightly exists to prevent or eliminate.  The government's legitimate function is to limit violence so that it is not visited upon its peaceful citizens by proactively inflicting violence on non-peaceful actors in society.  Killers, thieves, belligerent foreign governments - -  these people are the ones who deserve to be the recipients of the government's violent actions.  They *have* instigated violence against peaceful citizens.

3 hours ago, ruraljuror said:

Thinking of taxes as federal theft is similar to viewing HOA fees in your apartment building as theft.  You can try to elect a new HOA board to reduce or eliminate those fees. Failing that, you can move into a new building with lower (or no) fees.  But to conflate those fees with some organization picking your pocket removes your own agency and accountability in the process, which is substantial.

First of all, HOA's are joined voluntarily, so that's not an applicable example.  But I will address the "taxes as federal theft" comment:  Taxes become confiscatory when they exceed the bounds of the government's legitimate mandate, which as mentioned above, is to prevent violence.  If taxes are taken from a peaceful individual and not used to protect that individual from violence in proportion to the amount of taxes taken, then sufficient value has not been received by the tax payer.  An example of this would be taxes taken from one individual and then used to provide free housing to another individual.  In that scenario it is explicitly understood that the taxed citizen will receive no benefit from the taxes paid, so personally, I would characterize that scenario as "federal theft".

3 hours ago, ruraljuror said:

That said, your point about the fixed-income granny buying shoes is well taken.  I do believe that said granny may benefit from the new MLS team in ways that even she may not appreciate

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Well that's the trick about liberty:  Individuals must be free to make their own choices with their own money - even if someone else thinks they are making a mistake.  I don't pretend to know how to better spend the fixed-income-granny's money better than she does.  Do you?

3 hours ago, ruraljuror said:

 We ought to do everything we can to make sure that these granny's aren't among the 'losers' when crafting new policies, but we can't raise new hotel taxes to cover literally everything, and sometimes people don't even realize when they're actually among the 'winners' group despite themselves (e.g. the fairgrounds new expo center crowd).

Interesting that you position yourself against raising hotel taxes but in your other post you said that rich people should pay more taxes.  I would consider someone who has enough disposable income to travel to Nashville and spend X-hundred per night on a hotel to be "rich" by most objective standards.  Why are Nashville tourists exempt from your "tax-the-rich" philosophy but the fixed-income-granny is not?

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Gov. Lee Announces Safer at Home Order Will Expire April 30, Tennessee Begins Phased Reopening Next Week

 

Nashville, Tenn. -- Today, Governor Bill Lee announced the order for Tennesseans to remain at home will expire April 30, with the vast majority of businesses in 89 counties allowed to re-open on May 1.

“Our Economic Recovery Group is working with industry leaders around the clock so that some businesses can open as soon as Monday, April 27,” said Gov. Lee. “These businesses will open according to specific guidance that we will provide in accordance with state and national experts in both medicine and business.”

The Lee Administration will work with Shelby, Madison, Davidson, Hamilton, Knox and Sullivan counties and their health departments as they plan their own re-open strategies.

“While I am not extending the safer at home order past the end of April, we are working directly with our major metropolitan areas to ensure they are in a position to reopen as soon and safely as possible,” said Lee. “Social distancing works, and as we open up our economy it will be more important than ever that we keep social distancing as lives and livelihoods depend on it.”

The Economic Recovery Group (ERG), composed of 30 leaders from the public and private sector is crafting guidance to assist businesses in a safe reopening. The industry representatives participating in the ERG collectively represent over 140,000 Tennessee businesses that employ over 2.5M Tennesseans. More information about ERG is available here.

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Thanks for the response!  It's always interesting to get a peek behind the curtain of another's thought process if nothing else.

2 hours ago, Armacing said:

This is a bogus argument because it asks us to accept the notion that future generations are bound to abide by all decisions made by previous generations. 

Just to be clear, you're right that future generations are not bound by all decisions made by previous generations.  That said, it takes more than disagreeing with those previous generations' decisions in order to overrule them, of course.

The constitution can be amended, for example, and both statutes and common law can be corrected and overwritten on a daily basis if necessary - but the key is there is a process for making those revisions that's encoded into our legal system. It's not enough to simply say that you disagree that the government has domain over a given issue, therefore those laws are invalid.  

What you can do to correct laws you don't like is work on an amendment campaign and elect lawmakers and judges who agree with your philosophy. Failing that, as mentioned in my previous post, you still retain the right to renounce your citizenship thereby unbinding yourself to the decisions of previous generations of Americans. Beyond these remedies however, you're kind of just left spitting into the wind - but that's an option you're free to exercise as well, of course.

 

 

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Posted the last one too soon!  

2 hours ago, Armacing said:

Taxes are not given voluntarily, but rather taken by force. 

You keep saying that all taxes are taken by force, but repeating it won't make it any more true.  Unless your only point is that all laws are enforced (pun intended) by force, in which case you're right that tax laws fall under that umbrella to a degree as well. 

If that's your point, however, you're either arguing against the right of the government to make and enforce laws, or (more likely it seems) you just think that the government should only be able to enforce the laws that you agree with. In either case, you're still ignoring the fact that you have the option to elect lawmakers and judges who agree with you and/or renounce your citizenship, which undermines the 'taxes taken by violence' premise that you seem to be stuck on.

2 hours ago, Armacing said:

I could cite any number examples where societies have righted the historical wrongs perpetrated by previous generations - but that's taking us further away from the argument at hand.  The main point is that taxes need to be equitable - tax payers must receive something of equal or greater value in return for the taxes they pay.  And that means at the individual level.   It is under that construct; value-for-value, that the founding fathers allowed for taxes in American government.

You're leaving out the part about 'taxation without representation' which was pretty crucial to the argument that our founders were making and (once again) undermines the very point you're trying to make here. You have representation, you just don't like it apparently.

2 hours ago, Armacing said:

Now, what value can someone receive from a government that possibly justifies the sacrifice of giving up the fruits of one's labor?  The answer is "Defense from violence".   War, theft, murder - - these are all things that government rightly exists to prevent or eliminate.  The government's legitimate function is to limit violence so that it is not visited upon its peaceful citizens by proactively inflicting violence on non-peaceful actors in society.  Killers, thieves, belligerent foreign governments - -  these people are the ones who deserve to be the recipients of the government's violent actions.  They *have* instigated violence against peaceful citizens.

Taxes become confiscatory when they exceed the bounds of the government's legitimate mandate, which as mentioned above, is to prevent violence.  If taxes are taken from a peaceful individual and not used to protect that individual from violence in proportion to the amount of taxes taken, then sufficient value has not been received by the tax payer.

I'm not sure where you got the idea that the only legitimate function of government is the "Defense from Violence" but I happen to disagree and so does the constitution (See the commerce clause, Bill of Rights, or the General Welfare Clause - which happens to fall under the Taxing and Spending clause - just as a few examples). 

That said, as noted above, you're in luck that the constitution is a living document and we're not bound to the decisions of previous generations on these matters. Be the change you want to see in the world!!  That said, I will not be signing your petition. 

2 hours ago, Armacing said:

Interesting that you position yourself against raising hotel taxes but in your other post you said that rich people should pay more taxes.  I would consider someone who has enough disposable income to travel to Nashville and spend X-hundred per night on a hotel to be "rich" by most objective standards.  Why are Nashville tourists exempt from your "tax-the-rich" philosophy but the fixed-income-granny is not?

To be clear, I'm not against raising hotel taxes - my point (from the last conversation) was that hotel taxes aren't the only taxes that we need to be raising.  Further, in terms of taxing rich people more, there are certainly more targeted ways to do it than through hotel taxes, which apply to everybody who stays in hotels regardless of wealth/income level.  Happy to discuss that more if you're interested, just let me know!

In any case, that was an interesting conversation - as I said, it's always fun to get a peek behind the curtain. Thanks for your participation!

 

Edited by ruraljuror
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4 hours ago, DDIG said:

I'm certainly no expert but I'm pretty skeptical you can get it again ... atleast in the near term. We don't know how long the antibodies last. The articles claiming people have gotten it twice are based on pretty flimsy, incomplete data. Fauci has sounded confident you'll have antibodies, he just doesn't know if it is four months, a year, or what.

Yeah...that's what I meant to say...that we don't know how long those antibodies will last.  I'm hopeful it would help keep the same people from getting it next fall.

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4 hours ago, ruraljuror said:

Thanks for the response!  It's always interesting to get a peek behind the curtain of another's thought process if nothing else.

Absolutely agree!  These are all just thought exercises here.  Nothing more American than two people openly arguing their points in a respectful way, which I commend you for!  And on that note... on we go...

4 hours ago, ruraljuror said:

The constitution can be amended,...there is a process for making those revisions ...work on an amendment campaign and elect lawmakers and judges who agree with your philosophy....renounce your citizenship thereby unbinding yourself to the decisions of previous generations of Americans

You mistake me for someone who is arguing for a particular policy change.  I'm more interested in discussing the moral and philosophical implications of the events we see unfolding in front of us.  I know about the different mechanisms for changing laws, but before one goes about the business of changing laws, one must first decide what the law should be.  That is where our discussion is now.  We are contemplating what system of laws would be just and moral... so on that basis I will skip over all the other civics/mechanics comments and focus on the philosophy.

3 hours ago, ruraljuror said:

 Unless your only point is that all laws are enforced (pun intended) by force, in which case you're right that tax laws fall under that umbrella to a degree as well. 

Yes, that is my only point.  But it is indeed an inescapable reality.  A 5-second google search would yield any number of examples where people are jailed for having grass too long in their front yard or killed by police (possibly accidentally) for selling cigarettes on the street.  Regular middle-class and upper-class suburbanites and urbanites who live in the rich or semi-rich side of town rarely come into contact with law enforcement in a context that causes them to become acutely aware of the violence behind every law, regulation, and government directive.  Lower-class people tend to be more aware of it, in my opinion, but this reality need not only be discovered by first-hand experience.   We can discuss more thought experiments to help you more fully understand the way in which all government actions are enforced by violence.  If you take it all the way back to the tribal origins of human civilization, you could say that the earliest form of government was when the tribe decided which tribe member was going to be killed.  Since they all agreed on it, that made it "OK".  But I think you already understand my point, so I will leave that subject.

3 hours ago, ruraljuror said:

If that's your point, however, you're either arguing against the right of the government to make and enforce laws, or (more likely it seems) you just think that the government should only be able to enforce the laws that you agree with.

Well, it's definitely not the first one - I believe in governments that make and enforce laws.  But on the second option, I would say that I'm attempting to apply an objective criteria to every government function:  Does it fall within the paradigm of preventing violence?  If yes, then I think it's a legitimate function.  If no, then I'm arguing that it is not legitimate because enforcing the law would increase the amount of violence experienced by the population rather than decreasing it.  So you're right that I only want the government to enforce laws that I agree with, but the criteria I use to decide which laws I like is mostly objective, and I hope it is also mostly moral.

3 hours ago, ruraljuror said:

You're leaving out the part about 'taxation without representation' which was pretty crucial to the argument that our founders were making and (once again) undermines the very point you're trying to make here. You have representation, you just don't like it apparently.

That's a good distinction, but you're over-emphasizing the representation point.   Colonists weren't unhappy about taxes paid to England because they disagreed with how the money was spent, they wanted to eliminate the taxes altogether.  But that doesn't matter anyway because the argument you are attempting to make is that every law enacted through democracy is prima facie just because it is agreed to by the majority.  We could also take that argument down a winding pathway of historical examples where brutal oppression was meted out against minorities by democratically elected governments.  But we can avoid that branch of the argument if we just realize that it doesn't matter whether taxes come about by royal decree or majority-elected government mandate:  If taxes involve taking something from someone and giving nothing in return, that is not equitable, but rather represents confiscatory taxes, persecution of the party affected by such laws, and in simple terms, government theft.  Surely you do not intend to make the argument that democratically elected governments are incapable of committing the crime of theft because they have the majority mandate, do you?

4 hours ago, ruraljuror said:

I'm not sure where you got the idea that the only legitimate function of government is the "Defense from Violence" but I happen to disagree and so does the constitution (See the commerce clause, Bill of Rights, or the General Welfare Clause - which happens to fall under the Taxing and Spending clause - just as a few examples). 

I think we both agree the constitution was not perfect when drafted and is still not perfect today.  The question I want to discuss is what the law should be, not what it is.  I would be interest to know how you justify, for example, outlawing peaceful trade between individuals and enforcing that prohibition with violent police action. 

4 hours ago, ruraljuror said:

In any case, that was an interesting conversation - as I said, it's always fun to get a peek behind the curtain. Thanks for your participation!

Definitely fun, and we're just now starting to get in to the real meat of the issue.  I'm eager to see where it goes next!

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Thanks again for the response! This is mostly good stuff and provides a lot of context for your perspectives that I was missing previously.  As a result, I agree with a lot (if not most) of what you're saying here, but there are still some major differences where we part ways.

14 hours ago, Armacing said:

The question I want to discuss is what the law should be, not what it is. 

This is the key to my understanding of where you are coming from. I was under the impression that you were discussing your beliefs about how government DOES worknot your beliefs about how you WISH government would work.  These are very different issues.

That said, I really only have two problems with the ideas you presented in your last post.

1. I still think you ought to put an asterix next to your statements that taxes are collected by force/violence. You're right that almost all laws are ultimately enforced by violence, but taxes are an exception because (as noted) you can avoid most of them by voluntarily renouncing your citizenship and/or not engaging in behavior/commerce that falls under constitutionally sanctioned taxable activities.

For example,  if you're a business owner and don't want to pay payroll tax, then incorporate your business outside the US. If you're a consumer and don't want to pay sales tax on your new TV, then you can go buy it in Montana or New Hampshire where there is no sales tax. If you're an income-earner and don't want to pay US income tax, give up your citizenship and conduct your business from Germany and pay German income tax or go to the Bahamas and pay no income tax at all. None of those options will end with the US government inflicting violence upon you, which undermines your premise.

14 hours ago, Armacing said:

I would say that I'm attempting to apply an objective criteria to every government function:  Does it fall within the paradigm of preventing violence?  If yes, then I think it's a legitimate function.  If no, then I'm arguing that it is not legitimate because enforcing the law would increase the amount of violence experienced by the population rather than decreasing it.  So you're right that I only want the government to enforce laws that I agree with, but the criteria I use to decide which laws I like is mostly objective, and I hope it is also mostly moral.

2. You're desire for the legitimate functions of government to be limited to 'the prevention of violence' is the other area where I have to majorly disagree with you. Even as a purely philosophical exercise this idea is more full of holes than the world's largest piece of Swiss cheese.

For example, under your 'violence prevention paradigm' how could governments justify property rights? Seems to me that I could burn down your house with no repercussions so long as I did it while you were at work or on vacation when nobody would get hurt. Better yet for me, what would prevent me from moving into your house while you're at the store if there's no legitimate prohibition against breaking and entering or squatting on another's property. How could you remove me from the premises without resorting to violence yourself? And if there's no government property records to track and enforce deed ownership, what would prevent me from simply claiming that the house was mine and locking you out? Even if you wanted to sell me the house, how could we ever conduct that kind of transaction without a court system to enforce the validity of the sales contract and without banking regulations that make credit and loans possible. If banks had no means to legally enforce payment on loans and/or to foreclose on property, that would put an end to the housing market (or really most any market, for that matter) overnight.  

As you can see, such an oversimplified paradigm of legitimate governmental functionality becomes messy really quickly - it's would be a 'finders = keepers' society that I doubt any of us would ever want to live in, and that's just the beginning of it. I haven't even begun to touch on some of the real-world examples that we've actually experienced prior to building out a regulatory infrastructure that obviously goes well beyond your philosophical ideal.  Labor rights like the prohibition of child labor and the creation of the weekend and overtime/hazard pay come immediately to mind as good examples of how workers can be exploited in market-based systems where no governmental oversight exists. Environmental regulations are another easy example since almost all of us were alive back when aerosols ate a hole in the ozone layer and lake Eerie used to spontaneously catch fire with unfortunate regularity. When companies are allowed to dump their toxic byproducts into our waterways at almost no cost, it's hard to blame them for doing so, and who could stop them? Market forces were not enough, otherwise the Clean Air and Clean Water Acts would never have been necessary in the first place.

Even if you want to take a really abstract and broad view of what constitutes 'violence' in order to give the government justification for keeping our water systems free from the industrial pork farms manure pipeline or the leather tannery's runoff, you're still going to encounter a million problems with anti-competitive monopolistic behavior, bribery, company stores/indentured servitude, extortion, and piracy of copyrights and patents...and that's just off the top of my head. The last point about patents alone would pretty much up-end our entire pharmaceutical industry, and the absence of an FDA would certainly deal the final blow. I for one have no interest in drinking any traveling salesman's snake oil. 

And all of that addresses only the prohibitive functionality of government, and it's just the tip of the iceberg. Under your philosophy, we'd also lose the proactive/productive aspect of government functionality that built our interstates/infrastructure and includes R&D that created the internet and MRI machines as a couple not-so-minor examples.

I could go on for days here, but I think you get the gist. Your philosophy about the limitations of government might seem good in the abstract, but I don't think most of us would like the reality very much to say the least. I don't disagree that there are a lot of stupid and pointless laws on the books, but the presence of stupid/pointless laws in no way negates the importance of the laws/regulations and government services that do serve very practical and necessary functions that go well beyond 'decreasing violence'. 

 

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