If I adopt life as my standard of value, we’re speaking of my life. “Other people’s lives” is not the standard.
sNerd, I think you misspoke here. Isn’t it human life that is the standard and your life is your purpose? The standard is not one particular person’s life, but what human life qua human life requires to live and prosper?
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?
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?
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?
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.
If you have a functioning brain and/or a mostly functioning body, you can do something productive. Steven Hawking seems to be doing well for himself. We’re just suggesting that maybe, just maybe, it’s not right to rob people, and that your needs establish no moral claim on the life of any other man.
Besides, it’s not like voluntary charity doesn’t exist. If you recognize that a man can keep 100% of his production by right, and not by permission, then people will generally have more money and you’ll likely have people giving move money to causes they approve of.
sNerd, I think you misspoke here. Isn’t it human life that is the standard and your life is your purpose? The standard is not one particular person’s life, but what human life qua human life requires to live and prosper?
This is accurate if you’re talking about abstract “human life” (i.e. the fundamental requirements for ALL humans to live, not just you wherever you happen to be) vs. your personal concrete life, but that’s not what SNerd was refuting: he was talking about taking “human life” to mean ALL HUMANS TOGETHER as though we all form one huge collective mega-organism vs. an individual life.
It would be more *precise* to state that the requirements for an individual human life is the standard of morality and YOUR individual human life is its purpose when you’re quoting that particular passage without the rest of the context of Galt’s Speech.
I am sorry that you think I have been sarcastic - I have not intended to be
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. According to Objectivism, morality pertains to choices. Therefor, any man can be moral , by simply making the right choices, within the context of his own knowledge (right choice within the context of your own knowledge means a fully rational choice, not the impossibility of error). That means you can even make what later turns out to be an error, because some crucial information was beyond your reach, and remain entirely moral. (For instance, an ancient thinker may have been entirely rational, even though he made his choices based on the false assumption that the Sun revolved around the Earth. On the other hand, if a person today tells you that, you know for a fact that he’s not rational, because he made the irrational choice to ignore knowledge that is perfectly obvious. Another example, IMHO, would be me thinking you were sarcastic: I think it was a rational choice to proceed based on that assumption, but it would be entirely irrational to still do that now, after you told me I was wrong.)
Obviously, it takes a lot to have a focused mind, which is the only way to consistently make the rational choice based on what you know, but it does not take any super human, or even above average mental or physical capacity. All it takes is mental focus. From such a way of life a lot will follow, including self respect, pride, independence, and eventually skills to do things most others can’t do. Just as you have been able to learn to write eloquently, you have the capacity to program a computer, or play the guitar, or write a screenplay, or manage a business, or direct a movie. You can’t do it now, but the fact that you’ve been able to learn to write the way you do tells me you are capable of learning some of these other things too. Maybe you won’t, but you could.
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?
It starts will a gradual cultural change. A change in the philosophy dominating the society. As a practical matter, there cannot be political change and action to the extent required without having enough people choosing to think about what is truly best for them.
The political actions would follow and would be manifested in the promotion of free-market (laissez-faire) capitalism and vast government decontrol over society.
Sounds simple eh?
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?
BTW the Brock Lestner story was not my point of reference. My point of reference comes from being a Canadian, and all those other factual points I posted which you conveniently ignored.
Jake is right by the way. No one here is stupid enough to believe that you were not trying to take the piss out of us with that snide little characterization of an Objectivist.
This is accurate if you’re talking about abstract “human life” (i.e. the fundamental requirements for ALL humans to live, not just you wherever you happen to be) vs. your personal concrete life, but that’s not what SNerd was refuting: he was talking about taking “human life” to mean ALL HUMANS TOGETHER as though we all form one huge collective mega-organism vs. an individual life.
It would be more *precise* to state that the requirements for an individual human life is the standard of morality and YOUR individual human life is its purpose when you’re quoting that particular passage without the rest of the context of Galt’s Speech.
Not to divert the thread, but Ayn Rand, who is the standard for *precise* said “man’s” life. She didn’t mean a collective, and neither did I.
Ayn Rand wrote as much in “Government Financing in a Free Society”. It’s a basic Objectivist position that ALL taxation is IMPROPER. Go read and come back when you know something useful if you want to be included in the discussion.
What Rand actually writes is:
In a fully free society, taxation—or, to be exact, payment for governmental services—would be voluntary.
That is, taxation is not necessarily involuntary. A sales tax - required by law on dollar transactions - would be voluntary if the government allowed the use of alternate currencies for transactions, which would not be taxed.
The individual making the choice between U.S. dollars and Galt Dollars (to invent an alternate exchange medium) would have to decide whether the protection afforded him from fraud, etc. by the U.S. Government, was worth the extra burden of tax on top of the price of the good purchased. This would be a natural way to fund government, while pressuring the government to provide value greater than its cost to the people.
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”.
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.
That is, taxation is not necessarily involuntary.
Typically, around here, when we speak of taxation, the implication is that force is involved, as it is today. If you want to differentiate from the current form of taxation you would really want to be explicit and say “voluntary funding” or something comparable.
A sales tax - required by law on dollar transactions - would be voluntary if the government allowed the use of alternate currencies for transactions, which would not be taxed.
I’m afraid this argument just doesn’t work. It is the same argument used by those who say “taxation is not a use of force since everyone is free to leave the country”. Even if there were a completely free country to flee to, that still wouldn’t sanction the government using force. Just as the existence of the USA doesn’t mitigate the immorality of the Soviet Union.
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.
This thread had two discussions running concurrently, so if you folks who are arguing about the Objectivist stand on taxation would take it to another thread, that would be appreciated.
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).
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.
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. 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.
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.
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.
__________________
It stands to reason that where there’s sacrifice, there’s someone collecting sacrificial offerings. Where there’s service, there’s someone being served. The man who speaks to you of sacrifice, speaks of slaves and masters. And intends to be the master.
-Ayn Rand “The Soul of a Collectivist,” For the New Intellectual, 73.
This thread had two discussions running concurrently, so if you folks who are arguing about the Objectivist stand on taxation would take it to another thread, that would be appreciated.
Interesting: I thought this thread began with the question of taxation…
Interesting: I thought this thread began with the question of taxation…
In a different context.
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.
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.
Do you think your “needs” negate my rights?