[Want to help describe some SF Objectivism?]

TT,

If I don't otherwise reply, then I'd at least like you to know that I'm saving a copy of everything you've written here to refer to when I do the rewrite.

[Want to help describe some SF Objectivism?]

"Metapsychology: objectivist, pragmatist, helpful (but expect memetic conversion)"

I'm actually not too familiar with the word Metapsychology,

The central region of the setting is divided among the "Sephirotic Empires", which are more like regions of a similar philosophy containing a number of individual polities, comparable to the idea of 'Christendom' or 'the Islamic House of Peace'. The Objectivist Commonwealth is, approximately, as powerful as the combined Sephirotics, and is also unusual compared to them in being a (nearly) unified polity.

but from my quick research it seems impossible to explain this one while taking AI into consideration. In man, there is no mind/body dichotomy. Our rational being is the chemical firing of our body and brain. There is no soul that houses our 'essence'. But in AI there is a 'soul' of sorts. The program itself. So there is a Program/hardware dichotomy in AI.

Objectivists are not pragmatists. Objectivsts are principled/ethical. Pragmatism is the opposite of morality.

Helpful has no meaning. Helpful to whom?

No idea what "expect memetic conversion" means.

These last three items are meant to refer more to how the Commonwealth interacts with other polities, rather than how individuals interact. That is, how the country/nation/government/etc as a whole engages international relations, which, for many philosophies, is somewhat different than how individuals interact with each other. For example, 'helpful (but expect memetic conversion)' would mean that the Commonwealth offers aid to other polities, but tends to do so in ways that are explicitly designed to promote its particular philosophy and to attempt to convert the aided polities to Objectivism. (From the Commonwealth's point of view, Objectivism is /correct/, after all, so such conversion is simply another form of assistance...)

"Metaethics: utilitarian, missionary. Consider minds that are too subjectively orientated bring about mass destruction to the sentient life around them; they seek to avoid this by competitive expansion and biont and hyperturing conversion initiatives"

Absolutely as far off as possible.

Replace with the word "Self-interest" and read http://www.aynrand.org/site/PageServer?pag...bjectivism_pobs starting half way down with "The Objectivist ethics is the opposite of Kant's."

I think the original authour was making a similar difference here between the ethics of interactions between individuals (which I understand the Objectivist position on fairly well, from http://www.importanceofphilosophy.com/Ethics_Main.html , among other sources) and the "meta"ethics of interactions between sovereign nations, for which I'm not entirely sure of the Objectivist position on.

"Society: communion of transapient objectivist Minds"

Absolutely as far off as possible.

A society of Objecitivists would be individuals who deal with other individuals following the Trader Principle. Value for value and always volitionally.

This one, I don't see any problems in fixing that way. In the proposal for the revised version, I'll swap out the word 'communion' for something involving such volitional exchange.

[Want to help describe some SF Objectivism?]

Most of the page I linked is completely wrong, so reading Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand by Leonard Peikoff would probably the the most helpful thing for you to do.

I have a basic understanding of the principles of present-day Objectivism, such as are described at http://www.importanceofphilosophy.com/ ; while a number of the fine details escape me, I at least know the basics well enough to argue for or against them.

1. Firstly, the term "Commonwealth" doesn't seem appropriate. It can mean something pretty anti-objectivist, but not necessarily.

1.a. I'm not sure what term would be best, an Objectivist society would almost certainly not be named for its form of government. An Objectivist government would have almost no power over its populace. No power to tax, to regulate, no roads, no schools, no control in any way over the currency or economy. All of those things would be private. The only things the government has is a monopoly on retribution. Things like police, judges, army, and the powers of these would be strictly limited to punishing those who infringe on the *rights of others.

Given that the setting is around 10,000 years from now, all the terms in use in the website are translations into present-day English from whatever future language is being used.

My current thought is that the 'common' in the name comes more from the common defense - that is, Objectivists believe that everyone has the right to use force in self-defense, and a rationally self-interested extension of that right allows for the similar use of force to defend others, promoting one's own benefit by promoting the common weal. After all, a group of transapients who explicitly announce "You mess with one of us, you mess with /all/ of us" has a pretty high deterrence value for those who would consider initiating force against them or otherwise infringing on their rights.

1.b.*Rights for an Objectivist are strictly Negative Rights. Meaning freedom FROM someone or something. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_and_positive_rights

That, I understand; http://www.importanceofphilosophy.com/Politics_Rights.html is the first reference I check when looking up the Objectivist conception of rights.

2. Orion's Arm's site has the economy listed as a Command Economy. Objectivism claims Laissez-faire capitalism as the only moral economic structure, and is the only way it would ever be.

This gets into a tricky area. From what I understand of Objectivism's views of vegetarianism, as mentioned in http://www.importanceofphilosophy.com/Evil...etarianism.html , those beings who are not 'rational' do not have rights, and thus an Objectivist does not have to worry about violating their non-existent rights. In OA, one of the interpretations consistent with the evidence is that a transapient is so much smarter than an average human that they effectively undergo a mental 'phase change', and such a being might consider a human to have precisely as many rights as a human considers a cow to have - that is, none. Going by this interpretation, Objectivist ethics would primarily deal with interactions between beings of the same 'toposophic' level, with no consideration given to 'lower' beings other than how they benefit the 'higher' beings, such as as property, or left in wild reserves, or even as parts of the higher beings' minds.

The other interpretation I can work out is that Objectivist ethics apply relatively equally to /all/ beings of human-level intelligence or higher, and the complications come from the inequalities of power between human-level intelligences and beings of astronomically greater intellect and power.

In the current writeup of the Commonwealth, there exists a single being of the highest mental level (the sixth 'toposophic'). Going by the first interpretation, the entire Commonwealth would be its property, with which it could do as it wished, which could be interpreted as a 'command economy'. Going by the second interpretation, then, as you say, the write-up would have to change it from command economy to laissez-faire capitalism.

3. It appears you have the population listed as AI. Objectivism is a philosophy developed for Man. Outside of man it would apply to autonomous beings with reason. It's possible to have AI who are autonomous beings with reason (An example of a AI society that appeared objectivist was the robot nation in The Matrix: The Animatrix, imo a very good example of an Objectivist society) but any of this hive mind stuff just doesn't work.

OA assumes AIs of just about any imaginable sort can be created - self-willed or not, conscious or not, sentient or not, consisting of a hive-mind or a single individual.

(Will respond to your next post in a separate post.)

[Want to help describe some SF Objectivism?]

I'd be interesting in trying. Is this link http://www.orionsarm.com/eg-topic/45cfd0563d016 a good place to start a critique or is it not an accurate summery of your thoughts on Objectivism?

That's the existing article, which was in place before I joined the OA project; it's what will form the basis of any revisions, so is certainly a good place to start.

One note - the setting assumes the existence of 'transapients', sometimes called 'posthumans', which are capable of thinking useful thoughts that a human brain is literally incapable of thinking. (There are various levels of such transapients, the higher levels able to think in ways that the lower ones can't.) The page describing the setting's basic rules about any conflict between different levels is at http://www.orionsarm.com/xcms.php?r=oa-page&page_id=33 , but can generally be summed up as being about as lopsided as a group of well-prepared wolves (or amoebas, depending on the levels involved) trying to fight a group of well-prepared humans. Some general notes on 'canon' for the setting are at http://orionsarm.com/xcms.php?r=oa-page&page=gen_canon .

[Want to help describe some SF Objectivism?]

I'm part of a collaborative writing project, "Orion's Arm", http://www.orionsarm.com/ , a science-fiction, transhumanist space opera universe set around 10,000 years from now. So far, one collection of short stories in the setting has been physically published, and more ideas are on the way.

One of the polities in the setting is called the "Objectivist Commonwealth", which is supposed to be based on something approximating present-day Objectivist philosophy. While I disagree with certain of the conclusions of Objectivism, I seem to /know/ more about it than any other OA member, and so I've been asked to see if I can come up with improvements for the existing write-up. But, knowing the limits of my own knowledge, I thought it might be a good idea to ask for input from some actual Objectivists.

So... is anyone here interested in helping me make sure I don't make unknowing errors about Objectivism in the new write-up?

[Does disagreement imply immorality?]

Objectivist Ethics is defined a certain way, and Objectivist virtues are very specific things. Obviously, if you believe something different, and are or strive to be some other way, then you can't claim to be moral in the Objectivist sense. That would be an obvious contradiction. Objectivism does not define morality loosely, and there's a very good reason for that, in my view.

I'm glad to hear you say that - it seems to be quite close to my own recent insight about comparing different philosophical systems to Euclidean vs non-Euclidean geometries.

That said, Objectivists have no business interfering with the things you believe in, and the way you are. As long as you do not initiate force, or advocate the initiation of force in society, Objectivists will not consider you anything but a valuable potential trading partner, and even a friend.

That 'as long as' seems to have been the tricky point, at least in the last thread; according to some of the posters, believing that some sorts taxation may provide more good than harm (when used to fund certain specific life-saving systems) is, practically by definition, 'advocating the initiation of force in society', and thus people who "believe in taxation" do not fall under your "as long as" clause.

[Does disagreement imply immorality?]

I've read a few posts, here and elsewhere, in which the posters seem to imply that someone who has learned of Objectivist philosophy, but still disagrees with their interpretation of any given Objectivist principle, is necessarily therefore somewhere in the spectrum of irrational to immoral. I'm not talking about monsters who think the entire world should be enslaved for their benefit; but much smaller disagreements, such as between an Objectivist and a secular humanist who disagrees with the Objectivist about various political issues.

If you present an argument based on Objectivism's axioms to someone, and they demonstrate that they follow and understand the argument, but they disagree with it (due to having a different set of axioms), does that mean they are being irrational? Does it mean they are immoral? Should they be shunned, or mocked, or accused of trollery? Does such disagreement mean it's not worth working with such people even for shared goals?

Or, let's take a different sort of disagreement, between two people, each of whom claim to be Objectivists, but find themselves disagreeing about some aspect of philosophy, neither able to convince the other. Does this imply that at least one of them is not a 'real' Objectivist, and should thus be treated as irrational, etc?

Or, phrased another way: do you believe that the only way a person can be moral is if they agree with your current beliefs about morality?

(As in my previous thread, this post is based on my outsider's perception of Objectivism and how Objectivists behave, and I freely acknowledge that the evidence of my experiences may have led me to faulty conclusions, in which case I would appreciate any help you would care to offer in correcting my flawed understanding.)

[Is taxation irretrievably immoral?]

That wasn't your claim. Your claim was that you have a condition which limits you in a way analogous to having an "off" biological clock, which doesn't allow you to pursue work in a "regular" way, and that therefor you can make enough to feed, clothe and shelter yourself but NO MORE, certainly not enough for health insurance. That's the claim that is unbelievable. If you had said "I have an expensive medical condition and I consider myself fortunate that I don't have to pay for it all by myself thanks to a socialized medical system", that would be a different claim, and you would have a different question. Are you changing your story or are you too "honest" for that?

I apologize that in my desire to maintain my privacy, I have allowed myself to be so unclear that I have failed to communicate very well, allowing for this misinterpretation. I will now try to clarify. I have what I suppose we can call my Chronic Condition, which is what limits my earning potential to its present level. In addition to that, I have had several, and expect to have more, Acute Episodes, requiring modern hospital care for my life to continue. The former is what limits my income to its present level; the latter is what, if I had to directly pay my own medical bills, would have required treatment so expensive as to be unaffordable, leading to my demise outside of a society with government-funded health care.

Beyond that, it's irrelevant. It doesn't matter if you "need" medical care. Your need doesn't give you the right to force anyone else to pay your way. Your contention is that it does. You've been told where you can find complete arguments to the contrary, and you're saying "no, I don't feel like doing that, if no one can explain it in posts on a forum then I don't care to know".

"Sure, you can learn the secrets of the universe. All you have to do is climb these hundred flights of stairs." "I'm in a wheelchair." "You just don't feel like it. If you really /wanted/ to learn, you could do it. And no cheating by using the elevator."

Please do not mistake disagreement for lack of understanding. I believe that I have learned the basics of the argument you mention; I simply disagree with some of the premises of that argument, based on the slightly differing set of axioms used by myself and the Objectivists here. Remember the difference between the axioms of Euclidean and non-Euclidean geometry? Each system of axioms creates propositions that are correct within its own framework - and while some of those propositions are the same or similar to propositions in the other framework, some are entirely incorrect according to the other system's axioms. Learning about both systems can provide useful insights, regardless of which system is assumed to be the correct one at any time.

You don't have to. But all you managed to do here is create a 5-page thread that goes nowhere and concludes nothing. And you're probably going to leave thinking you learned something about Objectivism.

I am sorry that you feel this thread has been so useless. I have found it quite enlightening so far, both about myself, and, if not necessarily about Objectivism, then at least about Objectivists.

Grames - thank you for that reference, I'll go give it a read now.

[Is taxation irretrievably immoral?]

Those quotes directly contradict 100% of what you're saying. The basic choice that is pre-moral is whether or not you chose life as your standard of value, ie., whether you choose to live or not. If you choose to live, how you go about achieving your life requires morality, and in this case, your choice to support a system that initiates force and enables you to take the unearned is immoral.

It appears that we've reached the point where we're simply going to start repeating our assertions at each other, possibly interspersed with "Sez you" level sniping at the other's claims. As I said just above, either you accept my claim that I require medical care beyond that which I can afford to pay for in order to simply stay alive, or you don't. If you do accept that, then the rest of my argument follows. If you don't, if you believe that I'm lying about my medical needs, then ask yourself this: what possible benefit could I get from making such a lie? And, even moreso, could any possible such benefit outweigh the costs of abandoning my attempt at maintaining a reputation for honesty?

[Is taxation irretrievably immoral?]

I think what's being said is that you're lying. Clearly, if you can type, you can make a living. We* just don't believe your insistence that you can't possibly provide for your own needs without stealing from others (via taxation).

Edit: speaking for myself, not assuming everyone agrees.

I'm aware of that belief. And, as long as I maintain my privacy by not publicizing certain details about my situation, you will continue to lack the evidence that would change your mind, and so it will be quite reasonable for you to disbelieve me on that point.

However, consider this: I am the one and only DataPacRat in the world, and so my posts here under that name are tied to my whole online identity. I consider the benefits of having a reputation for never trying to deceive another to be worth a great deal, and so I do my best to never lie, and, whenever I discover I am mistaken about something, to immediately and publicly own up to my error. I am, to the best extent that I am able to be so, an Honest Rat. If there were ever a single demonstrable example of my having deliberately deceived anyone, then that reputation for honesty would disappear in a heartbeat... and I would be considered no better than any other despicable liar you care to think of.

Hopefully, as I spend some time here, I will continue to demonstrate my honesty sufficiently that you will be willing to accept my claims at face value... even in the case where I choose not to provide evidence for those claims for privacy purposes. Or, perhaps you will continue to believe me a liar, in which case nothing I can do would persuade you otherwise.

[Is taxation irretrievably immoral?]

'DataPacRat'

If you had to choose between stealing a loaf of bread or starving (with no wiggling about for third choices), is theft moral? That Gordian knot of a puzzle was solved by somebody who said that survival is a /pre-/moral choice. That is, that issues of survival are not questions of morality or ethics, but of how to define what one's moral/ethical system is in the first place.


... and there's that insight I was hoping for. Most Objectivists I've talked to treat health care as an issue about government funding, and thus about taxation, and thus about rights, and thus about politics, and thus about a subset of ethics... while I treat it as a survival issue, of making the difference between life and death, and thus a pre-moral issue.[/code]




I see that you are treading a fine line here.



Indeed. 
It is in emergency situations - where human survival is impossible and where one's primary goal is to simply get past a disaster - that standard morality does not apply; but that does not cover the broad category of survival as you discuss it. E.g. stealing because you are hungry is not moral, simply because there are rational choices (like earn the bread).



That is why I added the caveat about wiggle room for that classic dilemma. When there /are/ third choices, in which it's possible to survive without violating anyone else's rights, then of course that would be the preferred option.






[code]Yes, I believe that, to me, my life is more important than your rights. And that, to you, your life is more important than my rights. As long as the issue is of survival vs rights, survival trumps rights. (Things get a lot stickier when it's a question of one person's survival vs another's, or one's rights vs another's, but, again, that's a whole nother topic.)




The standard of value is life - all men's life; one is not more important than another.

I believe some previous posters in this thread disagreed with the point about whether the standard is all lives, or one's own life, so I trust that you won't mind that I won't take your word on that issue being settled.

In virtually all cases in life, survival does not compete with rights.

I'm used to being called weird by ordinary folk; I find it amusing that I'm so far off the charts that even Objectivists (who, regardless of the merits of the philosophy, aren't exactly mainstream in present society) consider my situation to be an edge case.

[Is taxation irretrievably immoral?]

And once you have chosen that you'd rather live than die, morality applies to how you go about doing that.

Precisely. And, in my posts above, I have described the circumstances that are required for me to continue to live - and, outside of those particular circumstances, the way I choose to go about living, my morality, is very close to the Objectivist system. I'm all for reducing government, getting rid of what taxes are possible, and generally avoiding interfering in anyone else's life, and pretty much any other aspect of Objectivist philosophy you'd care to describe... /after/ my survival needs are met.

The main argument going on here seems to be different assumptions on what is required to survive. Outside of that specific area, I don't really have any serious arguments with any of the points that have been mentioned.

[Is taxation irretrievably immoral?]

Survival is not a "pre-moral" question

I find that statement interesting, given that I acquired the idea of survival being a pre-moral choice... from Rand's own philosophy.

From http://www.importanceofphilosophy.com/Ethi...alStandard.html : "To every living thing, there is one primary choice, and that is to live or not -- to engage in the action required to further its own life or to engage in action that destroys its own life. The only other alternative is death. Choosing life as your standard of value is a pre-moral choice. It cannot be judged as right or wrong; but once chosen, it is the role of morality to help man to live the best life possible. "

From http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/morality.html : "Life or death is man’s only fundamental alternative. To live is his basic act of choice. If he chooses to live, a rational ethics will tell him what principles of action are required to implement his choice. If he does not choose to live, nature will take its course." -- “Causality Versus Duty,” Philosophy: Who Needs It, 99

and: "It is for the purpose of self-preservation that man needs a code of morality. The only man who desires to be moral is the man who desires to live." -- Galt’s Speech, For the New Intellectual, 123

[Is taxation irretrievably immoral?]

Actually to me, my rights are more important than your survival. In fact it appears that my rights are more important to me than your survival is to you, since you're willing to waste your time arguing about how it's okay to violate my rights in order to survive rather than working to ensure you never have to do that. I guess it's just easier that way, huh? If there's no one else around for you to steal from in order to survive, do you just fold your hands and give up? Or then would you discover that you're actually capable of keeping yourself alive?

Responding directly to your questions: Were I to be without modern Western medicine, I would die. With it, I would live. If I had to pay any significant amount of cash for insurance or individual treatments, I would not be able to afford it, and thus would not receive the health care, and thus I would die.

Responding to your non-questions, I plan to live forever, or die trying. Reason is one of the greatest tools for helping me survive, and the better I can hone my reasoning abilities, the more likely I will be to survive. I am hear to learn what I can; and thus, even if I'm not persuaded to share your beliefs, and you're not persuaded to share mine, my learning what your beliefs are is far from a waste of my time. Should you gain any understanding of my beliefs, that's a happy bonus.

The thing is, 99.9% of human beings who manage to survive infancy (and live in free or relatively free countries) are totally capable of continuing to keep themselves alive afterwards. The other 0.01% that is so disabled that they can't possibly produce any value, either physically or mentally, can easily be provided for through private charity. Without ever having met you I can say with total certainty: you're not one of them.

You seem to be applying the fallacy of the excluded middle - that someone is either able to completely take care of themself, or they are completely incapable of doing so. Naturally, I do not fall into the category of people completely incapable of taking care of themselves - as I said before, I manage to keep a roof over my head, my larder stocked, and about a hundred dollars more each month. However, due to my particular circumstances, my survival needs require somewhat more than that, and thus I do not fall into the former category, either. Thus, your two categories are insufficient to describe the entire range of human experience, making your point moot.

Of course, if people are constantly told that they aren't capable and anyway have a right to expect someone else to earn the money they need to survive for them, they turn into whiney little leeches who think "moral" is defined by whatever is easier for them. They don't get that there's no room or cause for pity among rational, living human beings.

I know, I know ... I "misunderstood" your posts and just don't "get" what you're saying, right?

Actually, my comments about that were directed to the poster 2046 in particular, whose question was what I was responding to in my previous post.

Sure. If you want to understand the actual Objectivist position, I'd suggest reading first "The Virtue of Selfishness" and then "Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal". You could try the library. You could probably also get both books, including shipping, from ARI for under $30. If you can't swing that then I guess you don't get to understand, since hashing it out on the forum isn't going to help you much without reading the original materials. Oh well.

Given my experience in other topics, if someone claims that the only way to understand a topic is by reading one particular reference, and nothing can be learned on that topic without reading that particular work; that it is impossible for anyone else, such as forum posters, or other reference works, to provide a reasonable grounding in that topic; then they are mistaken. I have already learned a good deal about Objectivists from this forum, and even gained a few insights into my own beliefs, so I'm quite happy to remain here for a while, continuing to learn what I can, at least until I find somewhere else online where the cost/benefit ratio of time spent to insights gained is even better.

As for $30, I would like you to consider these numbers: Take your own monthly income, and subtract your own rent/room and groceries/board. Whatever the remainder is, multiply it by 30%. Whatever this amount is, it is in some senses, for you, the same relative value as that $30 would be for me. Imagine that someone suggested that you should purchase a couple of books for that 30% of your monthly discretionary income; do you think that that is the best value you can receive for your money? Or, as I suspect, are there other things that you can spend that much money on which you would value more than those particular books?

[Is taxation irretrievably immoral?]

Do your needs negate my rights?

Given that you have previously demonstrated a lack of understanding of a point I raised, I do not expect that you will understand my reply to this question, let alone agree with it. However, I've found it quite useful to re-examine my beliefs every so often, and have gained the occasional new insight from doing so, so I'm writing this post more for myself than for you. And, who knows, maybe I'll manage to communicate something to you - it's said that you don't truly understand an idea unless you can describe it to your grandmother.

I'm going to make a differentiation between "needs", that which is necessary to survive, and "wants", which may be useful but won't lead to death if not met. If your question is about the latter, then my answer would be completely different.

Rephrasing your question slightly, it becomes the classic philosophical dilemma, if you had to choose between stealing a loaf of bread or starving (with no wiggling about for third choices), is theft moral? That Gordian knot of a puzzle was solved by somebody who said that survival is a /pre-/moral choice. That is, that issues of survival are not questions of morality or ethics, but of how to define what one's moral/ethical system is in the first place.

... and there's that insight I was hoping for. Most Objectivists I've talked to treat health care as an issue about government funding, and thus about taxation, and thus about rights, and thus about politics, and thus about a subset of ethics... while I treat it as a survival issue, of making the difference between life and death, and thus a pre-moral issue.

I would be willing to steal a loaf of bread from you, violating your right to property, to survive; just as, if our positions were reversed, I would expect you to try to steal such a loaf from me in order to survive. Similarly, I am willing to live in a society where you are forced to pay taxes, again violating your right to property, for health care that make the difference between me living and dying. (Of course, once I /do/ survive, whether via bread or a hospital, it then becomes both of our rational self-interest to try to arrange for a society where such life-or-death choices never have to be made in the first place, but that heads off into a whole other topic...)

So, responding directly to your question: yes, I believe that, to me, my life is more important than your rights. And that, to you, your life is more important than my rights. As long as the issue is of survival vs rights, survival trumps rights. (Things get a lot stickier when it's a question of one person's survival vs another's, or one's rights vs another's, but, again, that's a whole nother topic.)

[Is taxation irretrievably immoral?]

Does it seem hyperbolic? Does it seem a little bit absurd? Well, it definitely is, but it's your position in reductio ad absurdum form. Me and my friends have been voted in, we call ourselves a democracy. We are the majority. We were voted in by "the majority." We represent "the majority."

Which is why there is a difference between a mobocracy-style democracy, for which the term 'tyranny of the majority' was termed, and a constitutional republic that follows the principles of classical liberal democracy, in which various provisions are put into place to try to prevent a majority from violating the rights of a minority. Or, put another way, the difference between the Rule of Men and the Rule of Law.

Now do your social duty and do what I say, give me your money, or I will come to your house and take it. Do you disagree, yes or no? Do my "needs" negate your rights, yes or no?

"Mister Smith, have you stopped beating your wife yet, yes or no?"

'Yes or no' answers are often impossible to supply to a question which is based on incorrect assumptions. Such questions are what the word mu was created as the answer for.

Any differences would be superficial and/or would be non sequitur to this discussion.

As I said in my previous post to you, that is the answer I suspected you would give. I am afraid that I am simply far too ill-equipped to try to teach you enough about the rule of law, constitutions, separation of powers, checks and balances, and similar foundations of political science to give you enough understanding of the topic for us to have enough common ground to have a decent discussion on the topic. Without that common ground, we would, at best, be talking past each other, and, at worst, would be trying to use the conversation to try to indicate to third-parties our affiliations with particular social groups - conversation as membership-signalling rather than an attempt for enlightenment, as noise rather than signal.

If you express an indication that you would /like/ to learn more on the topic, then I will be willing to do my best to help you find decent resources to educate yourself; or, if you are interested in learning what my actual opinions are, rather than demanding yes-or-no answers to questions for which no yes-or-no answer exists, then I will be happy to explain myself to the best of my ability. But if you are interested in neither of these, then I will simply learn all that I can from your post - both from what you say directly, as well as how you choose to say it - and then move on to learning as much as I can from other posters.

[Is taxation irretrievably immoral?]

I assume you realize that is completely incoherent.

I regret that, despite the accusations of eloquence that have been levelled at me, I was unable to present my point in a way that you would understand. Unfortunately, I cannot think of any way to express it better to you, so I am simply going to shrug my metaphorical shoulders and not give trying to explain that point much more thought or effort.

I'm not here to try to convert you to my way of thinking, or to necessarily be converted to yours; what I'm here for is to try to /understand/ you better, and, perhaps, to try to answer your questions so that you understand me better, as well.

The question is simple. Do you know the sum of the amount of money you earn that you do not get to keep specifically because it is spoken for by your government? (I'm not asking for the amount. I want to know if you've ever pondered that.)

The answer is simple. Yes.

I can even offer an amount, though it's a back-of-the-envelope approximation: about $160 per year. That number is derived from the fact that I can only think of two direct sources of taxation - income taxes and sales taxes. For income tax, I pay the government around negative two hundred dollars per year. For sales taxes, after some fiddling with BOTE numbers, I figure I pay about 15% on about $200 of my monthly expenditures, or about $30/month, or about $360/year. $360 + -$200 = $160 annually. I am specifically ignoring money which I pay to someone else, and which they, then, in turn, pay to the government, not only because that number is effectively incalculable, but also because it is no longer money that /I/ am paying to the government.

(for an economic counter-point to your ideas of where money goes, you should take a look at this short little story: The Glass Window

I am well aware of that economic parable. In fact, I once rather enjoyed explaining the flaws in the version of it that was presented by the villain in "The Fifth Element".

No one here argues that people would (or should) get killed off.

It isn't rational to think that anyone benefits by living in a society where people are dying in the streets. This should be a discussion about the principle of not violating *ANY* individual's rights and how best a society will do that when it philosophically rejects the initiation of force.

1. Man's Rights

2. The Nature of Government

If you read those two essays you should have a good grasp on the Objectivist's position on what is a "right" and what the proper roll of government ought to be.

I've been using the summaries from Importance of Philosophy to provide me with a basic understanding of the Objectivist position.

It seems like you are working backwards and looking to establish a perimeter around a yet to be determined core. If you refuse to identify a fundamental principle which you will hold without contradiction, then your moral and ethical system will be, at best, arbitrary.

<cracks knuckles>

At present, and after spending a significant amount of thought on the matter, the philosophical system I work with is based on a single axiom. If you know of someone else who came up with it first and named it, I'd love to hear it, but for now, we can call it DataPacRat's Axiom. The English language is about as far from symbolic logic as it's possible to get, so I'm not especially worried about the precise phrasing, but it runs something like: "Applying reason to the evidence of my senses can lead to useful conclusions."

From that axiom arise a number of propositions. Some of the most basic are that solipsism is useless, that logic is useful, and that other minds exist. You will note that these premises are similar, though not necessarily identical, to the three Objectivist axioms that Existence Exists, the Law of Identity, and Consciousness. Given the similarities, that has led to a structure of metaphysics and epistemology that is highly similar, though not necessarily identical, to Objectivism's metaphysics and epistemology. As ethics and politics are based on metaphysics and epistemology, once again, once again, I have arrived at a system that is similar, though not always identical, to Objectivism's structure.

As a system under development, I am quite comfortable with trying out entirely arbitrary propositions, to see if they are compatible with my existing philosophy, and - and here's the important bit - with the actual evidence presented to me by my senses about the universe. The equation 1/((1 - (v^2 / c^2))^0.5) was, in the 1890's, quite arbitrary, its only virtue being that it didn't conflict with what was observed about the universe; and, in 1905, a theory was finally proposed in which that equation was no longer arbitrary, but arose as the result of certain other arbitrary principles... which had the two virtue of not conflicting with the evidence, and deriving greater explanatory power from simpler premises. Arbitrariness is no vice, as long as there is sufficient feedback that it can, at least potentially, be falsified; and, if falsified, discarded.

You might find the essay, Twelve Virtues of Rationality to be worth perusing, as, at the moment, I agree with most of the points raised there, and some of them are non-obvious.

[Is taxation irretrievably immoral?]

So, if me and a bunch of my friends got together and decided that we need to have X, Y, or Z, in order to stay alive, (strictly in the interest of "exercising our reason" of course) and we decided to call ourselves "the government" and pass a law forcing you to pay for X, Y, and Z, you would agree that you have a social responsibility to pay for our needs and you wouldn't have a problem if we sent men with guns to your house to take your money and property and force you to labour for our needs? Or do you disagree?

And here I thought /I/ was the one being accused of using hyperbolism in this thread.

Before I answer your question, I would like to ask you one of my own. Could you tell me what significant differences, if any, you see between a liberal democratic republic whose government votes to implement a tax; and a tyrannical kleptocracy run by a junta who rob their country's residents of whatever they please?

I /suspect/ (but could be quite mistaken) that you do not see any real differences between the two - that since both involve the removal of the citizen's property by a government with the threat of force applied to would-be non-payers, then that's all that matters, and all supposed differences between the two are largely irrelevant. If that's the case, then it will be quite difficult for me to write an answer you would not completely disregard due to conflicts with your basic assumptions. However, if I'm wrong, I'll cheerfully admit so, and will do my best to answer your question (that is, if you don't feel that the question I asked contained my answer).

[Is taxation irretrievably immoral?]

Do you think your "needs" negate my rights?

That's a good question. I'm not sure of the answer; could you be a bit more specific about which 'needs' and which 'rights' you're referring to?

As a first approximation to one possible version of that question, I currently believe that a 'need' for staying alive is more important than a hypothetical 'right' to avoid paying taxes created by a representative government. That is, that rights are tools that allow man to exercise his reason, and staying alive is another tool that allows man to continue to exercise his reason, and negating the latter tool has somewhat more permanent and irreversible effects than negating the former, thus it seems more important to pay more attention to the latter even at the expense of the former.

But if that's not what you're asking, then I'll need a somewhat more extended question to reply to.

[Is taxation irretrievably immoral?]

Have you ever done any rough calculations to estimate how much of the money you earn/spend ends up going to your government in the form of taxes or any other fees? (Including sales tax, income tax... any utility fees or charges, *anything* that is specified for and/or goes directly to any form of your gov't). I live in California, and I have done this calculation for myself. I find it helpful to look at specifics whenever possible.

I have read most of L. Neil Smith's novels, and he suggested a similar thought exercise in at least one (though I don't recall which just now). Depending on how you go about the exercise, it could be argued that half of whatever you pay goes to the government, so without taxes you'd be twice as rich; but half of whatever the person you pay also goes to the government, so without taxes you'd be four times as rich; and, repeating the exercise, you could come to the conclusion that without taxes, you would become infinitely wealthier.

As a counterpoint, I propose another exercise: consider how much of your money ends up in the hands of Hollywood's various media and entertainment companies. It may be a smaller fraction than ends up in the hands of a government, but it is still, presumably, a significant fraction. And a fraction of the money of your grocery store's employees also ends up in the hands of Hollywood, and a fraction of the money of the people /they/ buy things from also ends up in the hands of Hollywood, and so forth, and so on; therefore, eliminating Hollywood would make everyone richer, right?

The most severe flaw in both of these thought experiments is the implicit assumption that once money is in the hands of the disparaged group, it disappears from the face of the Earth. In reality, the money that is collected, goes right back into the economy again, one way or another. Taxation isn't guilty of /erasing/ wealth; it is only guilty of the lesser crime of distorting the invisible hand of the free market, and the question then becomes whether the benefits of a tax-free economy outweigh the benefits of various government interventions.

Another flaw, and one perhaps worth discussing, is the apparent assumption that such economic transactions are a zero-sum game, without any parties increasing value or otherwise multiplying wealth, but it's been long enough since I read about such issues that I've forgotten all the appropriate jargon.

From your description of things, it sounds like whatever that real (actual $) amount is that you are taxed is a lesser amount than the value of government provided services (possibly medical alone even) you take/receive. If so, that sounds like a good deal for you.

From what I've been able to find out about American health insurance plans, even the most basic plans cost rather more than $100/month, the most I'd be able to spend on it (and even then, doing so would involve ceasing to pay for such things as clothes, bus fares, cleaning supplies, and other sundries). My tax burden is, roughly, limited to sales tax, which is around 15% - call it around $30/month. I think it's safe to say that, on a pure cash basis, the benefits I receive from the government are greater than the costs of what I pay.

If this is the case, how much thinking do you do about who is generating that extra wealth you accept? Do you picture it in your mind as coming from "everyone", or might you imagine that a single individual somewhere in Canada likely paid the exact $ amount more in his taxes than what he received back?

Depending on that amount, this person may be a hard working, determined young person trying to work his way up in the career of his choice, or maybe a small business owner with a business that is just reaching a nice level of success. Or maybe it is a rich banker.

To quote a song, "Everybody needs somebody, sometime." Or maybe, "Every town / Has its ups and downs / Sometimes ups / Outnumber the downs / But not in Nottingham". The basic idea behind any sort of insurance is distribution of risk - nobody can know ahead of time when life will kick them in the (insert favourite body part here) hard enough to wipe them out... and yes, I've seen people, good people, who did everything 'right', get kicked, and kicked hard. It's to everybody's benefit to have a social safety net in place to prevent such people from falling so far that they are forced into, say, choosing between committing crimes or dying... both to avoid others who fall from potentially robbing them, and in case they get kicked and start falling themselves. Unless one wants to take the position of social Darwinianism, where letting such people get killed off improves the gene pool, the question would then become what /form/ the social safety net should take, and what the practical pros and cons of each approach are. It could then be argued that the debate on that question has been ongoing for quite some time now, and the consensus answer has been the society we find ourselves in today.

I was drawn to this forum because I have always thought of people in individual terms. Hearing people speak in terms of classes of people, or groups, has always struck me as abstract and pointless. You're drawn to statistics, so I imagine you would disagree.

I have yet to find a description of classes in modern society that makes any sense to me, so I try to avoid talking about classes except in the broadest, most metaphorical sense.

You said: "I do well enough to keep myself not only housed and well-fed, but with about a hundred dollars extra a month for whatever else comes along."

I get the feeling that you would find it in line with your morals to seek a statistical amount for "well enough for society" and then force through law that each individual is given the amount needed to reach that level by means of taking it (as needed) from those over that level.

I suppose the question is answered by determining whether you are philosophically an individualist or collectivist. If you hold the principle of individual rights as a primary, then forced *anything* is immoral.

My ethical/moral system has been under development for some time now. The standard I've been poking and prodding at for the last few years is "the promotion and preservation of sentient life (especially my own life)". But I'm willing to consider others... so let's try shortening that to "my life" - not lives in general, or "one's" life, but /my/ life, and see where that leads us.

I want to be able to exercise certain political freedoms, such as the right to free speech, the right to defend myself from violent attackers, freedom from arbitrary imprisonment, and so on. It is rather infeasible to arrange for a society in which I have those rights but others don't; thus, it's in my own self-interest to promote a society in which everyone enjoys those rights.

Similarly, it seems to be in my own rational self-interest, both short-term and long-, to have access to certain aspects of a modern health system. If I had to pay for those medical thingummies out of my own pocket, I would not be able to afford them. As it happens, I live in a society in which individuals are not expected to pay enormous sums for medical conditions that could not be anticipated, but such costs are absorbed by society-as-a-whole in the form of a governmental health care system. As living in such a society allows my continued survival, while living in a society in which I would have to pay such costs myself would lead to my demise due to my lack of ability to pay for such costs, it seems to behoove me to promote such a social safety net.

I want my mental map to represent the actual facts of how the universe works as accurately as possible, so that I can consciously choose /effective/ ways to apply various forces to change the universe towards states I prefer it to be in; therefore, it is in my best rational self-interest to learn as much as I can about the universe, at a number of scales, including physics, biology, neurology, psychology, sociology, and politics. While I may disagree with what you say, I still want to hear you say it, so that I can understand /you/ better, and, by inference, other people who are similar to you (including, to a degree, myself). While trolling for lulz would certainly create a certain sort of post, such responses tend to lack the fine nuance that reveal detailed thought processes and foundational assumptions, thus, in order to learn as much as I can, I should be trying to avoid trolling and to write posts that elicit the most thoughtful and detailed responses possible.

[Is taxation irretrievably immoral?]

Well, you could start out by registering at the Ayn Rand Institute website: aynrand.org, and getting the Ayn Rand Sampler, which contains some of her works. Her Ford Hall lectures are also available free for your listening pleasure on the same site. I believe Anthem has also entered the public domain and is available free online.

I've registered at ARI, and will see what I can find there.

Sorry, I simply mistook all these superlatives in your previous post as sarcasm: "I'm not an uber-rational, hyper-competent Objectivist super-man, striding boldly into the future, self-sufficient in every way; never harmed by third-party externalities; able to read contracts at a glance and having every piece of information necessary to find where I'd be screwed over; able to detect building design flaws, medical fraud, contaminated food, and so on, and able to take such companies to court to hold them liable and argue my own case."

Since it isn't sarcasm, I should mention that the above is not an accurate characterization of the Objectivist view of moral perfection.

That's good to hear. Previous discussions I've had with (people claiming to be) Objectivists led me to the conclusion that that level of superlative was the ideal towards which they strove, and falling short of such an ideal was the result of a moral failing.

There's an old saying about the difficulty of filling an already-full teacup; I've come here not only to try to add to my knowledge, but to learn where my existing beliefs are mistaken and correct them, to whatever extent is possible.

So DataPacRat, why not work for yourself, set your own hours. The internet (which you have access to... for free even) is open 24/7/365 so why not examine it as a viable way of making some money? The saying goes, "Where there is a will there is a way". So where's the will?

This is, in effect, what I do. I do well enough to keep myself not only housed and well-fed, but with about a hundred dollars extra a month for whatever else comes along.

Perhaps I've drifted somewhat from my original point. I survive in what I consider comfort, including having a pet cat; I have extensive political freedoms: I can say what I want, believe what I want, I'm not subject to random imprisonment or violence. I can buy a hamburger whenever I want. I have a /credit card/ (with no annual fee, and which I'm smart enough to avoid using where possible, and to pay off immediately when I do use it for online purchases). Due to the interesting quirks of Canadian copyright law, I am able to legally download a variety of content, which effectively multiplies my income. (Due to some other interesting software, such as TrueCrypt and Tor, it is even possible for me to untraceably and deniably download content not covered by those quirks, should I choose to do so, though obviously actually admitting that I /did/ use those programs for those purposes would kind of defeat the point...). There is only one solitary area where I depend upon tax-funded government largesse for my survival, and that is certain portions of the health care system. I think my main point, to the degree I've had one in this thread, went somewhat astray when Jake Ellison asked what I would do when all taxpayers left Canada, which I tried to respond to in post #34.

When I was on a 6-month deployment on a navy ship, day to day life was set by the watch schedule. Invariably there are less people than watches to stand and the schedule slips forward by about 4 hours every day. In other words, I've lived that life. It is stressful to have your sleep patterns disrupted constantly, but there are ways to cope and I could have continued like that indefinitely. Staying awake when you want to be asleep is not impossible, so I can't imagine how your real difficulties rise to complete disability.

It seems that I chose my thought-experiment poorly. I did not mean to imply that a mis-timed circadian rhythm was my own difficulty; I was trying to come up with one that seemed of similar scope, for the sake of discussion, while still maintaining a certain level of privacy about my own life. Feel free to ignore the specifics of the problem I described, and to invent some other situation leading to a similar level of near-unemployability by any conventional business.

[Is taxation irretrievably immoral?]

I'll take your word for that. But I know for a fact that you have the potential to be far more productive, and you choose not to be. You are obviously intelligent enough to acquire a skill that would get you a well paying job. You chose to aim low, and that is no one's fault but your own. That particular choice also causes you to have no idea what Ayn Rand's philosophy is. You are perfectly capable of reading the actual books she wrote, instead of taking the shortcut of some website, before deciding to launch into a cheap, sarcastic diatribe against our views. You just chose against it.

Not that I care. My only desire is to be completely insulated from the consequences of your poor choices. If I lived in Canada, that would be impossible. Which leads me to the clarification I would like to take you up on your offer for: if you are convinced you are right about human nature and morality, and what you read in those books you listed is the way to go, and I am wrong, and the idea of a moral, rational hero is a delusion for you to snipe at with sarcastic detachment, why are you in favor of a society in which you are in any way tied to people like me? In which your health depends on my contributions, and mine on yours? Why can't we go our separate ways, let me voluntarily deal with doctors who wish to deal with me, on terms of our choosing, and you with doctors who wish to deal with you? Wouldn't you and people like you apply the wonderful probability theorems you read about in your books to the production of goods and services, without the need to support us silly idealists in our delusion and failure?

Jake,

If you can suggest a "well-paying job" which can accommodate someone who seems normal when posting to an online forum but who has what is effectively a non-physical disability, which I haven't already thought of, then I'm all ears.

I am sorry that you think I have been sarcastic - I have not intended to be, and I regret that my writing was poor enough that it could be interpreted as such.

I would be happy to read Ayn Rand's non-fiction works directly. Would you happen to have a source for them where they cost approximately CAD$0, including shipping?

I'm not convinced I'm right about anything - quite the contrary. I know that my views on a number of topics, including human nature and morality, are better now than they were in the past, and that they will near-certainly be better still in the future.

Your questions seem to be phrased rhetorically, and based on several false assumptions about my own beliefs, and the false assumption that I've been sarcastic. The most accurate answer I can give for most of them is thus "mu", but that's a rather unsatisfying response for both of us; perhaps you might be able to rephrase what you're trying to ask, without that assumption, so that I might be able to come up with a better answer?

[Is taxation irretrievably immoral?]

You write far too well for someone who is actually on the verge of considering himself incapable of producing enough to sustain his own life or should be seriously considering himself to be incapable of increasing his own productiveness to a level that affords a decent standard of living.

Thank you for the compliment; I've been both reading and typing, at various levels of skill, since I was four, and I'd hope that I've gotten the hang of the written word by now.

(Warning, possible goth/emo whining-sounding writing ahead, though I'm trying to avoid that and offer a serious thought experiment.)

However. Imagine that, say, for your entire adult life (and then some), your body had a circadian rhythm of about 24 and a half hours, instead of 24, a rhythm which stubbornly refused all remedies to fix it. That one night, you'd fall asleep at midnight; a week later, around four am; another week later, around 8 am; and so on, while still requiring about 8-10 hours of sleep per day. That you had to make adjustments such as keeping track of every 24-hour store, simply because much of the time, they were the only ones open when you were awake that day. That nearly all forms of employment required a certain sort of scheduling from you, a requirement so basic that it's never even mentioned... and a requirement that you are literally physically unable to comply with. And, of course, that there is no obvious physical sign that you are different from anyone else, the entire thing being able to be dismissed by others as being "all in your head", which you can obviously overcome "if you really wanted to" with "enough effort".

In your particular actual case, in current actual society, there are a myriad ways the government may directly or indirectly be creating conditions that are as you describe. Minimum wage laws and other labor regulation in particular come to mind. However the circumstances that would lead a person with the mental acuity and expression capability you have demonstrated in this thread to actually be unable to find productive work in a free society are exceptional enough that the fact that such a person would have to rely on charity is no argument against the absence of taxation and tax funded entitlements.

I probably fall outside the standard deviation of any norm you care to mention.

I prefer comparing myself, not just to my contemporaries in the city where I live, but the whole world, and history. Compared to the vast majority of humans on the planet now, and even moreso compared to those who lived before the 20th century, I live in nearly unimaginable luxury - the very fact that I can connect to this forum and post to it is proof of that. While my future may be more uncertain than most of my contemporaries, taking the long view, I have every hope that it will change for the better rather than for the worse. If I can make it to, say, 2050 AD, then I may even get to see what's often currently called the "Singularity", after which all bets are off... (Mind you, from another point of view, we've already passed through the event horizon of a Singularity, given how rarely Golden Age science-fiction dealt with the impact of worldwide information networks, but I think I'm getting far enough off-topic as it is...)

For anyone still reading this post... from what I can tell, it seems to be a general consensus among the posters that the current form of taxation in America, Europe, Canada, etc, is a bad idea, and that having little-to-no taxes is a better idea. My next question is... do you have any plans on how to get to B from A? That is, are there any intermediate steps between the current system and your ideal one which are easier to reach than your ideal, and for which you are working towards?

[Is taxation irretrievably immoral?]

No shit. One of those edge cases is every single communist and socialist country in the World, where the poorest segments of society are generally affected first by the general moral and economic decline of society. This applies to socialist democracies such as Venezuela or France (where young people in general are 20%+ unemployed, young Muslims 50% and living in abject misery), just as it applies to hardcore communist countries where tens of millions died from hunger and malnutrition.

If you're planning on ensuring your long term well being by attacking and destroying your betters, instead of doing your best to find a place for yourself living in harmony with them, I assure you, you'll be the first to be discarded once everything goes to Hell, as it invariably does. Sounds like you're almost homeless as it is: what are you going to do when the people you are so self righteously robbing all leave Canada?

(I hope you don't mind if I treat your question's "when" as if you wrote "if", as I'm not nearly so certain as you seem to be that the assumptions underlying your question are facts.)

Your question may be phrased rhetorically, but I have, in fact, had to consider and plan for such a situation. I hope that you will be willing to take me at my word that I am, in fact, earning as much as I am physically and mentally capable of, and have done as much as possible to minimize my expenses - for example, I have made arrangements for an internet connection that doesn't cost me any cash. If events happen to turn unworkable the various workarounds, kludges, hacks, and so forth that I use to get by, and I am unable to arrange for replacements, to the degree that I am no longer able to afford even my current room and board, then, obviously, I will become homeless. I already own a copy of "Surviving on the Streets: How to go down without going out" by Ace Backwords, (available from various sources, listed at http://www.bookfinder.com/search/?author=b...st=sr&ac=qr , for about $30+) and I've volunteered to help with things such as a local "Out of the Cold" program; so I know that I can stay alive, to a certain degree, in such a situation, but they're not circumstances I would enjoy, and without even my present meagre reserves, my life would become unpleasantly perilous, with measurable odds of perishing in any given winter.

I'm not an uber-rational, hyper-competent Objectivist super-man, striding boldly into the future, self-sufficient in every way; never harmed by third-party externalities; able to read contracts at a glance and having every piece of information necessary to find where I'd be screwed over; able to detect building design flaws, medical fraud, contaminated food, and so on, and able to take such companies to court to hold them liable and argue my own case. I'm just a guy trying to get by as best I can given the circumstances I'm in. I think that learning more about Objectivism will help me do that, even if I don't end up becoming a full-fledged Objectivist myself, so here I am.

I think I've done my best to answer your question; if I've misinterpreted it, or failed to elaborate on a point you want me to, just let me know, and I'll do my best to correct my lapse.

[Is taxation irretrievably immoral?]

So you are arguing a utilitarian point of view then. The greatest benefit for the greatest number.

Not... exactly.

Around a year ago, I read "An Intuitive Explanation of Bayes' Theorem" at http://yudkowsky.net/rational/bayes (and the related documents and community forums, such as "Twelve Virtues of Rationality" at http://yudkowsky.net/rational/virtues ), and began seriously thinking about what statistics (especially Bayesian ones) implied about truth; and the book "Mind Hacks" (companion site http://www.mindhacks.com/ ), which demonstrates, in extremely practical forms, some of the limits to human rationality and cognition. From what I've been able to learn of Objectivism (using http://www.importanceofphilosophy.com/ as a main source for at least the overall structure, if not necessarily the details), it is effectively impossible for me to be as rational a person as I would need to be to properly follow Objectivism; thus, I have been thinking about ways to enhance my life (as my moral standard) in ways that compensate for my mental deficiencies, such as by figuring out various rules-of-thumb that are sufficiently useful, and can be applied in many situations without needing to spend too much time thinking about them. One such rule-of-thumb is "a rising tide lifts all boats"; that is, improving the general quality of life, especially for the poorest segment of a society (which I'm willing to file myself under), is likely to improve my own quality of life. It's not an absolute, there are many edge cases and exceptions and so forth - but it's worked well /enough/ for my purposes, so far.

Oh, and... http://www.ottawacitizen.com/health/Cage+f...6339/story.html

If that's what you're using as a reference, then you might wish to peruse http://lefarkins.blogspot.com/2010/01/unte...ble-moment.html , which rebuts that particular celebrity's statements.

It's sad how effective their propaganda has been... Do you actually think that happens at hospitals in America?

My understanding of US health care is that for the uninsured (which, for the sake of argument, we can assume I would be among), outside of emergency rooms, if someone cannot pay the medical bills for a particular treatment, they will not receive that treatment.

As for American vs Canadian health care, it might be best, for this thread, to skim http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of...th_care_systems and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_care_in_Canada , and assume that I've trumpeted all the numbers which back my point of view, you've trumpeted the numbers backing yours, and if we want to discuss the matter further, to start a new thread on the topic.

Now, back to taxation...

What says all taxation is immoral? Where is there stated such an Objectivist position?

http://www.importanceofphilosophy.com/Politics_Taxation.html certainly seems to indicate that that is the Objectivist position. I could also refer you to the forum in which the earlier conversation took place, and that position was stated as being the Objectivist one, if you wish.

Wait a second . . . you don't pay ANY taxes?

I fill out the income tax forms annually; however, due to my income bracket, none of my income is taxed. Due to certain minor tax credits, I usually end up receiving about a hundred or two dollars in rebate each year.

I do pay sales taxes on bought items, which is the only tax I can think of that I pay directly (as opposed to paying someone who pays taxes for something, which kind of blurs the whole point, so I'll cheerfully ignore it for now).

To every other post I'm not directly replying to: Thank you; I'm learning quite a lot from what you're writing.