The difference between being coerced and coercing

[vhawk01]

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I'd just shoot the f*cking dog and not worry about it... but then again, I don't claim it has some "right" against my not initiating force against it.

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You didn't intitiate anything with this dog.

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You did if it didn't bite you.

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So if a guy runs at you swinging a large axe while yelling that you are scum and about to get what you deserve, and you manage to shoot him dead just before he reaches you...he didn't initiate anything against you because you escaped injury? That's your position?

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I have no position, you do. Please tell me what it is. Exactly when may you shoot him?

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Yes, you do have a position, and it was expressed directly above. Your position (apparently) is that he is not initiating an attack against you unless you get injured by that attack (as per the dog example directly above in the quotes). You said that if someone took violent action against a charging dog which was apparently intent on attack, that the dog didn't initiate anything [specifically, it didn't initiate "an attack". -Jogger] with them unless the dog had actually bitten them (see above). I'm applying this to the charging axe-wielder also, and asking you to confirm that you believe the charging axe-wielder isn't initiating against anyone unless he actually harms them. Is that indeed your position with regard to the charging dog and the charging axe-wielder?

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Correct. However, unlike you, I don't care whether or not they're initiating an attack. I have no moral qualms about "initiation of force", so it doesn't matter (from my standpoint) when exactly the attack begins. I'm perfectly comfortable preempting them on the chance that they are about to attack.

But you say that they, or at least the human, has a right to not have you "initiate a force transaction" against him. Please tell me exactly when it's okay to shoot him because you feel he may be about to harm you, according to your morality.

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Jogger is trying to justify his turning human beings into slaves to meet his own selfish ends by this line of argument. He is questioning the 'exact point' and trying to point out that since there is no concrete objective 'exact point' at which it is ok to defend against attack that this justifies him controlling humans lives as someone might do something bad and since there is not objectiv exact point it is reasonalbe for him to begin controlling you and me and our children from birth as an act of self defense. What a swell guy.

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Its a sad extension of the Heap Paradox. Because you can not describe the exact point at which an act becomes threatening, it is either NEVER threatening or ALWAYS threatening. Just as, since I can never pinpoint the exact moment that human beings became humans, they were either ALWAYS humans, or NEVER humans. Since they ARE humans, we know evolution is false.

[bkholdem]

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I'd just shoot the f*cking dog and not worry about it... but then again, I don't claim it has some "right" against my not initiating force against it.

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You didn't intitiate anything with this dog.

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You did if it didn't bite you.

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So if a guy runs at you swinging a large axe while yelling that you are scum and about to get what you deserve, and you manage to shoot him dead just before he reaches you...he didn't initiate anything against you because you escaped injury? That's your position?

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I have no position, you do. Please tell me what it is. Exactly when may you shoot him?

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Yes, you do have a position, and it was expressed directly above. Your position (apparently) is that he is not initiating an attack against you unless you get injured by that attack (as per the dog example directly above in the quotes). You said that if someone took violent action against a charging dog which was apparently intent on attack, that the dog didn't initiate anything [specifically, it didn't initiate "an attack". -Jogger] with them unless the dog had actually bitten them (see above). I'm applying this to the charging axe-wielder also, and asking you to confirm that you believe the charging axe-wielder isn't initiating against anyone unless he actually harms them. Is that indeed your position with regard to the charging dog and the charging axe-wielder?

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Correct. However, unlike you, I don't care whether or not they're initiating an attack. I have no moral qualms about "initiation of force", so it doesn't matter (from my standpoint) when exactly the attack begins. I'm perfectly comfortable preempting them on the chance that they are about to attack.

But you say that they, or at least the human, has a right to not have you "initiate a force transaction" against him. Please tell me exactly when it's okay to shoot him because you feel he may be about to harm you, according to your morality.

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Jogger is trying to justify his turning human beings into slaves to meet his own selfish ends by this line of argument. He is questioning the 'exact point' and trying to point out that since there is no concrete objective 'exact point' at which it is ok to defend against attack that this justifies him controlling humans lives as someone might do something bad and since there is not objectiv exact point it is reasonalbe for him to begin controlling you and me and our children from birth as an act of self defense. What a swell guy.

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Its a sad extension of the Heap Paradox. Because you can not describe the exact point at which an act becomes threatening, it is either NEVER threatening or ALWAYS threatening. Just as, since I can never pinpoint the exact moment that human beings became humans, they were either ALWAYS humans, or NEVER humans. Since they ARE humans, we know evolution is false.

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I am not familiar with the heap paradox but it seems from what I am reading here that I do not adhere to the belief that somehting is either always threatening or never threatening. There is a matter of degree between 0% threat all the way to 100% threat and subjective judgement is used in determining that as well as when to act and in what way.

[bkholdem]

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From another thread:

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What is the difference between your child tripping outside and being impaled on a knife and dying... and me charging at your child with a knife and stabbing her to death?

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I see none.

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The reason this person sees none is that he is only looking at one narrow aspect:

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In both instances my child would be dead, I would be sad, and I would remove the hazard after the fact (too late for my child, but hopefully in time to save others from the same fate).

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In other words, he is only observing that someone died.

He is totally ignoring that in one case someone *acted* and the other one didn't.

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At risk of a brief threadjacking, at what point would it be okay for me to intervene?

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Is the 'brevity' over yet?

[pvn]

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Wow. Would this apply if he were attepting to transfer all his property to, say, a cancer research foundation? What if he gives 25% to cancer research, 25% to aids research, 25% to malaria research, and 25% to feeding the hungry. OK or not OK?

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I don't think this is as threatening to the well-being of the world as if all rich folks transferred all their wealth directly to their children, but I'd just as soon it were taxed in this scenario as well.

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I was hoping for more than a list of your personal preferences. An actual reasoned argument for the basis of differentiation. What if my child is the world's foremost cancer researcher? Is it "less threatening" then?

What is the threat, exactly? That someone will own something that you have no right to in the first place?

What if the benefactor, instead of transferring his property, destroys it?

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Brief tangent: a lot of statist libertarians (myself included) object to almost all taxes, but not all taxes are equal. Property tax (for instance) is especially onerous in practice, because after retirement, people often rely upon fixed incomes, while their property value continues to rise. The result is higher taxes on less income, and specifically upon people least able to bear the burden. Inheritance tax - a partial tax on the dead - offers no such inherent liability, and has the added virtue of acting as a barrier to aristocracy.

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So you have some preferences. Whoop-de-doo. I like coke more than pepsi.

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The fact that some number of people don't like something is not a basis for initiating force (appeal to majority). If the great majority of people want to kill Arabs, it's OK? Mob rule! Might makes right!

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I'd like to address this after you tell me exactly when I can shoot somebody to prevent what I feel might become an attack.

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You already answered your own question.

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How much property should Mr. X be allowed to transfer?

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Dunno, I haven't given this much thought. My inclination would be to set an upper boundary of a few million bucks, but I'm open to discussion here.

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Arbitrary numbers?

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Who gets to set that threshold, and what happens to the rest of it?

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Society and taxes, respectively.

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How does "society" make a determination?

Taxes, obviously. The question was more of "who gets to direct those taxes?" In other words, how does the tax man (or "society" if you prefer to continue hiding the actions of individuals behind faceless aggregates) derrive his right to overrule the presumptive owner of the property.

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Wow. Rights are useless unless they are consistent. Your "whoever" position is obviously not a consistent one, and therefore cannot be descriptive of anything that could usefully be called a "right".

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When did you come over into the "let's not discuss it if it isn't useful" camp? Everytime I've tried to engage you on the practical sides of ACism, you've tried to deflect the conversation to rights, and now once we're here, you want to talk utility? Whether or not rights need to be consistant, I can see you feel no such need yourself.

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As should be obvious from context, I meant rights as a concept, not any particular right. Rights as you explain them are so fluid as to be no more than an expression of the status quo. There's no point in differentiating certain things as "rights" if they are nothing more than a description of popularity at a particular moment; the word becomes redundant and (gasp) useless. Unless you're a propogandist, trying to bamboozle.

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Sure, if you're over that "2 million dollars in assets / 80k per year" poverty line you demarked in your post.

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I never used the word "poverty line". Intellectual dishonesty, part XXVI.

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How many Carnegies, Rockefellers, Morgans are at the top of the Forbes 400?

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What possible relevance can this have? Are you postulating that an aristocracy can comprise no more than 400 people?

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These people were all at or very near the top. Their heirs are no longer there. Do you think the estate tax is the reason they are not?

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Do you think they aren't still part of the aristocracy? And the answers are many, and yes, I'd guess the inheritance tax is part of it. I'm quite sure it will be part of it with respect to (say) Charles Munger, who is on the current list.

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You were bringing up the boogeyman of an absolute hegemony. People who remain "rich" but are slowly but surely being surpassed by more productive people cannot constitute an absolute hegemonical aristocracy. This should be intuitively obvious.

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There are many, many factors that are more important in explaining the breakup of large concentrations of wealth than the estate tax.

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Which, even if it were true - ah yes, let me add: "Source please!" - in no way indicates the estate tax is not a factor... which is not surprising, since it in fact does prohibit the unlimited accumulation of wealth (and therefore, concentration of power) by nepotism.

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Well, the fact that heirs have to eat also reduces their ability to rapidly accumulate wealth. That doesn't mean it's a significant factor.

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Sometimes yes, sometimes no. It's a hell of a safety net though.

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What? You were worried about "unlimited accumulation of wealth". Well, human beings MUST consume. This is ALWAYS a brake on accumulation. THere's no "sometimes" about it.

BTW, the cite you seek for other factors leading to wealth scattering have been brought up in this forum before, here.

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A benefactor could give his entire estate to one person, or he could divy it up between two people, or among 100 people. In the case where he divides it among 100 people, a tax on the entire estate can not be seriously put forward as a measure to discourage an "absolute hegemony".

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Actually this is false. Warren Buffett is worth somewhere between 30 and 50 billion, depending on how BRKA is doing. Do you really think .33 to .5 billion is chump change?

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Moving the goalposts, yet again (shocking!). How can the hegemony be "absolute" if the number of people holding a particular chunk of wealth is constantly increasing?

[pvn]

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In what part of my "theory" did I say that new wealth would not be created?

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OK, please explain, what's going to happen to this "aristocracy" when new wealth moves them down the ladder of absolute ranking? Sure, they're still rich, but not the richest. They're consuming, but not producing at the same rate as the top producers.


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If you'd like to make a bet that 50% (of the survivors, natch) will be in the top .1% of the world's wealthiest people in ten years, let's talk stakes.

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Why would I take that bet? They're currently in the top 400. You're saying that they'll stay in the top 6,000,000? Wow, go out on a limb there.

[pvn]

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You don't seem to get it: land "ownership" isn't absolute in the world as it exists now.

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Why isn't it? Since most of your theories about taxation revolve around governments owning territory, we can extend this and say that governments' territories are not absolute either. So there can be no objection to two nations warring over land. And there can be no objection to me declaring secession of my particular acre from the USA. And there can be no objection to me "trespassing" onto the "property" of that government I just seceeded from to use "their" roads, etc, either.

It all devolves to might makes right.

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So of course this consequence has not come to pass. Reflect on the closest example that the real world has seen, serfdom, and tell me how it's greatly different because, in AC, the serfs can move to a new land-owner's holding.

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Yeah, competition for labor would have nothing more than a negligible effect, right?

[vhawk01]

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I'd just shoot the f*cking dog and not worry about it... but then again, I don't claim it has some "right" against my not initiating force against it.

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You didn't intitiate anything with this dog.

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You did if it didn't bite you.

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So if a guy runs at you swinging a large axe while yelling that you are scum and about to get what you deserve, and you manage to shoot him dead just before he reaches you...he didn't initiate anything against you because you escaped injury? That's your position?

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I have no position, you do. Please tell me what it is. Exactly when may you shoot him?

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Yes, you do have a position, and it was expressed directly above. Your position (apparently) is that he is not initiating an attack against you unless you get injured by that attack (as per the dog example directly above in the quotes). You said that if someone took violent action against a charging dog which was apparently intent on attack, that the dog didn't initiate anything [specifically, it didn't initiate "an attack". -Jogger] with them unless the dog had actually bitten them (see above). I'm applying this to the charging axe-wielder also, and asking you to confirm that you believe the charging axe-wielder isn't initiating against anyone unless he actually harms them. Is that indeed your position with regard to the charging dog and the charging axe-wielder?

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Correct. However, unlike you, I don't care whether or not they're initiating an attack. I have no moral qualms about "initiation of force", so it doesn't matter (from my standpoint) when exactly the attack begins. I'm perfectly comfortable preempting them on the chance that they are about to attack.

But you say that they, or at least the human, has a right to not have you "initiate a force transaction" against him. Please tell me exactly when it's okay to shoot him because you feel he may be about to harm you, according to your morality.

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Jogger is trying to justify his turning human beings into slaves to meet his own selfish ends by this line of argument. He is questioning the 'exact point' and trying to point out that since there is no concrete objective 'exact point' at which it is ok to defend against attack that this justifies him controlling humans lives as someone might do something bad and since there is not objectiv exact point it is reasonalbe for him to begin controlling you and me and our children from birth as an act of self defense. What a swell guy.

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Its a sad extension of the Heap Paradox. Because you can not describe the exact point at which an act becomes threatening, it is either NEVER threatening or ALWAYS threatening. Just as, since I can never pinpoint the exact moment that human beings became humans, they were either ALWAYS humans, or NEVER humans. Since they ARE humans, we know evolution is false.

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I am not familiar with the heap paradox but it seems from what I am reading here that I do not adhere to the belief that somehting is either always threatening or never threatening. There is a matter of degree between 0% threat all the way to 100% threat and subjective judgement is used in determining that as well as when to act and in what way.

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Yeah, I wasn't accusing YOU of that, I was talking about jogger.

The Heap Paradox, perhaps better called the Heap Fallacy, is also called the Sorites paradox. Basically, it states that a grain of sand is not a heap, nor are two grains of sand, but eventually, if you have enough grains, you have a heap. But there was never a point where you went from "some grains" to "a heap." Its a common tactic for evolution-deniers, because they think that, since you are unable to demonstrate this crossover point, then there never WAS a crossover point. Jogger is doing something the same. Since you cannot demonstrate exactly when something becomes a threat, then it either is ALWAYS a threat (justifying his state to do whatever it wants at any time to prevent any kind of action pre-emptively) or it is NEVER a threat (demolishing any AC notions of self-defense or reactive coerciveness). He doesn't allow for the correct answer, that there IS no single point, but that there is a clear difference between things that are threats and things that aren't.

[jogger08152]

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You are silmply looking for a rationale to justify your violent means of keeping slaves to do your bidding. Admit it.

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Actually I'm just waiting for you to tell me exactly when I can start pre-empting, 'cause I think government is a great preemptive tool and I sure "feel" threatened...

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Some of my paranoid schizophrenic clients 'feel threatened' too.

I, unlike you, am not so arrogant to presuppose that I have any authority over you therefore I am not in a position to give you permission to 'start preempting'.

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I want to know when you give yourself permission to start preemptively initiating violence.

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No you don't want to know that. You want to justify your sinister authoritative actions whereby you control others nad subjugate them to serve your will and engaging in this line of questioning in an attempt to rationalize and justify treating human beings as slaves through control through government.

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No, I want to know when <u>you</u> give <u>yourself</u> permission to start preempting. If your position happens to support the institution of government, we should let the cards fall where they may, right?

And by the way, I'd like to extend my congratulations for setting what I believe is a new standard for ACist melodrama: "...your sinister authoritative action to subjugate, enslave and control others to serve your will through government..." Seriously, this stuff would be more effective if you could post it as an audio file, narrated in a Darth Vader voice with O Fortuna playing in the background.

As an aside, are you sure it's wise for you to hang around with paranoids, even professionally? You might consider doing a little introspecting over the weekend; possibly your clients are exerting undue influence on your thinking?

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You made up your mind a long time ago

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So help me unmake it. Please tell me when I may preempt someone from attacking me.

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I have told you several times already that I, unlike you, do not presume to have authority over other people's actions.

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I'm not asking for your permission. When I ask "when may I preempt..." I mean it in the context of your moral code.

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and are merely trying to justify your sinster controlling of others much in the same way that a paranoid justifies his preemptive strikes.

In addition to getting help here:

http://www.coping.org/control/idealism.htm

as I recommended previously I also recommend that you consider changing the manner in which you evaluate things from how you 'feel' and begin using rational thought and expose your ideas to reality testing.

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This last is a great idea! Tell me exactly when you think it's acceptable to shoot someone who you think is about to attack you.

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I am done addressing this point with you. You are a big boy. Simply admit that you are trying to rationalize your control of others through this line of questioning or I am done engaging you here. I have grown tired of engaging you with your willful avoidance of outlining your position.


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Your closing line is genuinely funny. Unless I don't admit to something that isn't true, you'll stop talking with me? After I've asked for your position probably 20 times, and every time I've asked, you've juked like Fokker pilot in a dogfight?

I'll tell you my position as soon as you tell me yours:

"Exactly when is it morally acceptable, in your view, to preemptively initiate force against another human being?"

[IsaacW]

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Depending upon the nature of the confrontation, this can be true. Now: would it be okay to shoot him if he were walking toward your front door while carrying a gun? How about if he were walking down your street while carrying a gun? How about driving across your state line while carrying a gun? At exactly what point is it okay to initiate a force transaction against him because you feel he might be going to initiate one against you?

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It is impossible to make a list of every possible situation and the point in each where it is OK to defend yourself. We trust you to make this decision on your own. If others disagree with you, you may be called to arbitration (think free market court) to defend your actions.

You have been told this many, many times now. We should all stop repeating ourselves.

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So really, there is no standard, nor expectation that I won't initiate a force transaction against somebody. Rather, I can initiate any force transaction I wish, whenever I wish, so long as I think I can convince some other third party that it was somehow "okay" for me to do so. Is this an accurate description of your "morality"?

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No. Of course you can initiate any force transaction you wish, whenever you wish; you can do that now. The key is the concept of arbitration, in which a specific third party is used to settle a dispute. The specific third party will be agreed to by both you and the targets of your force transactions. If you targeted me and I disagreed with your use of force, I would demand that we use an arbitrator with a strong reputation for fair judgments.

[jogger08152]

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From another thread:

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What is the difference between your child tripping outside and being impaled on a knife and dying... and me charging at your child with a knife and stabbing her to death?

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I see none.

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The reason this person sees none is that he is only looking at one narrow aspect:

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In both instances my child would be dead, I would be sad, and I would remove the hazard after the fact (too late for my child, but hopefully in time to save others from the same fate).

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In other words, he is only observing that someone died.

He is totally ignoring that in one case someone *acted* and the other one didn't.

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At risk of a brief threadjacking, at what point would it be okay for me to intervene?

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Is the 'brevity' over yet?

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Apparently not. I'd thought it would be, but I can't seem to get a straight answer.