freestyle

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hsiBZKmlfb0

Would you care to define what one needs to be liberated from? Reason and logic, perhaps?

Differing politics would imply either a.) differing philosophies or b.) inconsistent application of the philosophies in one or both Having philosophically different views of the world can definitely lead to problems down the line. What happens when you discuss philosophy as opposed to politics? Do you have to agree to ignore those differences too? If the problem is ( b ) then that might be fun to explore and see where it leads. If the problem is (a.), I'd say you can expect many arguments and heated disagreements about many things (not just politics) over time.

I agree with your post, but I would point out... Wouldn't your business policy include a service rate for an instance like this? You have all the means (equipment and man power) to respond to fires. If a "new customer" who has not paid his insurance needs service, why would your company deny itself the opportunity to profit. Perhaps, an emergency rate equivalent to 100 times more than your "insured" rate? You'd set the price to what it is worth. Your "policy" wouldn't be to sacrifice profits in favor of teaching a lesson, would it? (Especially when you could teach a lesson AND profit at the same time)

I've thought of things like this many times (generally, using fast moving traffic and capturing energy in different ways) - However, I just have to believe that there isn't enough energy there - If there were, someone would be exploiting it. We could all put solar panels on our roofs too, but oil and coal is still cheaper. There are plenty of great ideas out there, just not great enough to compete with what we have... yet. Reminds me a bit of:

This is really the crux of the entire thread. IF you are arguing for a form of "taxation" that is not forced, then there should not be any disagrement from Objectivists. With consent, we have voluntary trade - That is the ideal. It appears that the first step in designing a political system free of forced taxation is to establish the method of consent for accepting those services that a government must provide (Defense/Police/Law). Otherwise, Grames, we're at a stand still. The old man in my example is not being irrational in any way. In any tax system I can imagine that requires progressively more from people simply on the basis that they are greater producers of wealth or income violates the trader principle. In addition, a system based on your production requires you to disclose information about your private trading with other people that is of no business of the government. I can imagine a system where there is a set fee for the government services provided and the identities of those delinquent in payment are made to be public information. An objective society may properly scorn the freeloaders to a degree where they might find it more difficult (and expensive) to operate within the private markets. Nevertheless, I cannot concede that people cannot be trusted to choose the good freely and that a government (required to protect the good) can, for all times, only be sustained by evil (i.e. force). I have no doubt that it all hinges on the philosophy and character of the people who organize and live in the society. And, in our present state, I do conceded that we're not in a position to jump to that final step in an objectively defined free society.

There's this from the original post and the story linked at the top of this thread: "I hadn't paid my $75 and that's what they want, $75, and they don't care how much it burned down," Gene Cranick told WPSD, an NBC affiliate in Kentucky. "I thought they'd come out and put it out, even if you hadn't paid your $75, but I was wrong."

I also remember reading somewhere that he hadn't paid (and hadn't ever paid) the fee. I couldn't re-find it in a search though. It may have been in a comment or some random story. In the end, it does not matter if it was intentional or accidental. He hadn't met the requirement to have his house saved, and it followed that his house was not saved. If I knew the man and the true reason for not having paid the fee, that might effect how much sympathy I have for him.

As reported: "I just forgot to pay my $75," Cranick told ABC News. "I did it last year, the year before. ... It slipped my mind."

Agreed on both points. I purposely did not say "free market" failure. But whether there was an actual law or not, the market was not completely free since this is a government service.

100% agreement on the first part. However, something did go wrong. Not having enough information to know who exactly on behalf of the fire fighters never thought about the possibility of this type of situation, I'll just say that, generically, the individual in charge of decision making for the fire fighters did NOT act rationally. (My guess is it is the local government - City Mayor) Since fire fighting is a service, and as we all agree it likely costs more than the $75 annual fee to properly fund the coverage of these areas -- Would it not be in the best interest of the fire house to have a basic "rate card"? The captain should be able to tell a person in an emergency, "This will cost an estimated $2,725, are you OK with that?" Later, the bill shows - for example: Travel time & Vehicles - $350 Fire Fighters Labor - 7 X $100 per hour (3 hours) Equipment - $275 Basically, the rates should be marked up at a level that sufficiently incentivizes payment of the annual fee. The failure here was that there was an URGENT need for a service and, for some reason, the market didn't have an option at that moment. The guy who owned the house was likely willing to pay the anual fee equivalent to 20 years+ in advance so long as the fire fighters would save his house. There is no doubt he was wrong and this is on him 100%. But there was still a market failure. There was a very high premium available for a service, and not only was that service not available -the one organization that was on location and prepared and equipped to provide service actually denied themselves that profit.

Maybe I'm not following... Are you suggeting that an increase in money supply somehow increases the demand for government services?

FULL STORY LINK So, what do you think? Listening to some conservatives and libertarians on this underscores their struggles in not being able to properly articulate a fundamental, cohesive philosophy. How would you articulate "what went wrong" here?

First, who (exactly) is we? There is no such thing as a right to healthcare. Such a right would impose an obligation on those who are capable of providing health care, thereby negating their individual rights. A woman has the right to give birth wherever she believes best and where ever objective laws protecting individual's rights don't prohibit. IF she makes a decision that can be proved legally negligent, then she should suffer the legal penalty. Luckily (not really), women typically want what is best for their baby, so this shouldn't be an issue. Are you thinking that there should be an law that outlaws home births? If so, why is this a focus of yours, and on what premise would you base the objective reasoning for the law?

What else? Free will. Consciousness.

I don't think the current president comes off as happy.

Zac D., Let me try to circle back to the original point of the post... Are you suggesting that if we (or scientists in 2010) cannot identify or articulate the logical reason behind a particular human action, it must mean that the action is illogical? In effect, assuming the action was not a product of the person's conscious choice or exercising of free will, and not being explainable by biology, the source for the action would be "supernatural"? By the way, there is some discussion of this in Ayn Rand's "The Art of Fiction" - Tangentially perhaps, but she discusses the phenomenon of how writers can sometimes feel like a book is "writing itself" at times. I can't remember precisely how she phrases it, but she goes into some discussion about how when your conscious premises' are sound, they are therefore integrated even on the subconscious level. (Like I said, I can't remember off the top of my head, but it was the explanation for how things could seem to flow out of you without you consciously thinking of them.)

Where is this true? Here, in California, I am taxed without my consent and am forced to pay not only higher amounts than my fellow citizens but higher percentages as well. Making this even worse, I consume far less of the public services than those paying less (and sometimes nothing) in taxes. If I do not pay, I can have liens placed on my assets, wages garnisheed and even be put in prison. Grames, there is NOT mutual consent. There is, in fact, no consent. There is no implied consent. Is your argument something akin to, "taxation isn't initiation of force, the policeman arresting you for not paying your taxes is though".

Then you've changed your position. If I'm consenting to it, I have no problem with it. The sacrifice comes when I don't consent. See the grumpy old man above that doesn't like the percentage of income system of taxation. In another system, we may find an individual who is a conscientious objector to what he feels is unreasonable attempts at expanding the military beyond what he agrees is necessary for his own protection. An equal fee from everyone perhaps? "I didn't earn that much, what do I do?" We'll all shop at the big successful companies like Home Depot though. In that voluntary system we may be indirectly funding these services, but with the option to patronize the institutions and business we choose.

If they do it, it is wrong. Police are to be bound by objective rules of evidence. They operate, properly, in the realm of retaliatory force. If they initiate force against the innocent, that is a violation of that innocent person's rights. Is it not?

That is no comparison though. Having a police force is consistent with the principle of barring the initiation of force in a rational society. "... it's possible that taxation may be necessary in the same way that a police force is necessary." It is most definitely not the same thing. We agree that taxation is force initiated. A police force is intended to protect the citizens from acts of force.

RichardP, there is confusion as a result of your profile stating that your "Real Name" is Dominique Poirier.

That is an impossible if to prove. How could one objectively argue that individuals with free will could never provide for their own defense without some of those individuals having to submit to force? I wouldn't spend too much time trying to figure out how something like this could "never" be. As for holding to the moral ideal of true Capitalism, A.R. goes into some detail in the opening chapter of Capitalism the Unknown Ideal "What is Capitalism?" "The objective theory of values is the only moral theory incompatible with rule by force. Capitalism is the only system based implicitly on an objective theory of values—and the historic tragedy is that this has never been made explicit If one knows that the good is objective— i.e., determined by the nature of reality, but to be discovered by man's mind—one knows that an attempt to achieve the good by physical force is a monstrous contradiction which negates morality at its root by destroying man's capacity to recognize the good, i.e., his capacity to value." I don't want to over-quote, and there is much more if you take another look at that chapter with this debate in mind. Grames' argument finally hinges on man's inability to value his own life enough to protect it without being forced to. (That statement might take us off course... but don't leave my grumpy old man up there hangin'... What do we tell him? His argument is reasonable, is it not?)

That is possible. It is pretty much what we have... (but surely not limited enough to my liking) What you have to resolve is the justification for claiming WITHOUT consent an individuals income. Consider the following: What of the grumpy old man that says, "5%?!? You want 5%? My income is 20x more than the guy next door. I live a humble life. Why should I pay 20x more than him? I don't agree to this. I never have! I donate five time more than his 5% anyway, because I choose too! And you demand 15 times more?! No. I've given plenty!" Now what?

I understand your argument, but I still cannot find a fundamental principle behind it. Since I believe that you are incorrect in your premise that a government is forever destined to fail should it be organized around a non-coercive funding principle, I'm compelled to ask you to, as Miss Rand would say, "check your premises". What I'm looking for is the fundamental in your argument. You must be moored to something, correct? Trying myself to play devil's advocate for your argument, I cannot formulate a principle without sacrificing the individual to the collective. Remember, the founding of America was considered (by the founders) and experiment. There was no history of successful self-government. ("A republic, if you can keep it..." and such) "We base all our experiments on the capacity of mankind for self-government." James Madison I would submit that you, being unable to resolve the concretes of how a voluntarily financed society could work, have left a more primary issue unresolved. That being an objective principle. Instead of my own restating of the principle at work here, I'll quote Rand directly: From: Ayn Rand - Government Financing in a Free Society "What the advocates of a fully free society have to know, at present, is only the principle by which that goal can be achieved. The principle of voluntary government financing rests on the following premises: that the government is not the owner of the citizens’ income and, therefore, cannot hold a blank check on that income—that the nature of the proper governmental services must be constitutionally defined and delimited, leaving the government no power to enlarge the scope of its services at its own arbitrary discretion. Consequently, the principle of voluntary government financing regards the government as the servant, not the ruler, of the citizens—as an agent who must be paid for his services, not as a benefactor whose services are gratuitous, who dispenses something for nothing. ... The premise to check (and to challenge) in this context is the primordial notion that any governmental services (even the legitimate ones) should be given to the citizens gratuitously. In order fully to translate into practice the American concept of the government as a servant of the citizens, one has to regard the government as a paid servant. Then, on that basis, one can proceed to devise the appropriate means of tying government revenues directly to the government services rendered." It is your counter to this passage which I'm not clear on.