Converation thread

While the idea of abolishing all taxes sounds liberating, it's important to remember that taxes fund critical services and infrastructure that we all rely on. For example, taxes fund public education, healthcare, roads, bridges, and public safety measures such as police and fire departments. Without taxes, these services would either disappear or become privatized, which could lead to inequity in access.

Consider the Great Fire of London in 1666. At that time, there was no publicly funded fire department. Firefighting was often managed by insurance companies, and if you didn't have…  Read more a fire mark from a particular company, they would not assist with your fire. This lack of centralized firefighting services led to the fire spreading and causing widespread damage.

I still want to abolish all taxes because I want to abolish 99 percent of government services

Eliminating 99% of government services might have unforeseen consequences. Consider this: back in the 19th century, before many of our current government services existed, the burden of providing for the poor, educating children, and maintaining order often fell to private charities, churches, or the community. This system was far from perfect and often led to vast inequalities and inefficiencies.

Before the establishment of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in 1906, there were no federal controls over what could be sold as food and medicine. This led to rampant fraud and the sale of…  Read more dangerous products. The FDA was established to protect consumers from these issues.

Before the creation of the Social Security Act in 1935, the elderly, the unemployed, and the disabled often lived in abject poverty with little to no support. Social Security, while not perfect, has significantly reduced poverty among these vulnerable groups.

Literally every program you mentioned I hate. Show me where any of them are authorized in the Constitution, show me proof that they've done anything good. Unlike you statists, I do not believe the benefits of government programs can exceed the costs, hidden as well as visible. These programs all had hidden costs. I support the Constitution and will not even consider anything not mentioned in it. See, I have a basis for my principles -- The Constitution, Declaration of Independence, and Bible. Yours is do whatever appears necessary at the time.

What exactly is the "price" of providing for society..? Is that not the sole purpose of public programs: to provide for the public? Why should it even have a cost, much less to be profitable?

Also, it's pretty hypocritical and ironic that you hate other people for being statists while you proclaim to dogmatically founding your entire ideology around what are literally state documents and the Christian version of sharia law...

Notice it's freedom OF worship, not freedom FROM worship, just because Christianity should be taught doesn't mean I want to force you to convert. Oh the terror! Oh the tyranny! We want merit, we want to stop murder! How evil of us, lol. Also for every government program there's a private way of doing it that's at least 10x better. I hate government and want to fight it.

Are you suggesting that you don't believe in the right to freedom from worship? Just as you have the freedom to follow and practice any religion, shouldn't others also be guaranteed the freedom FROM your religious practices and laws? If you agree that no one should be enforced to abide by the personal beliefs of others, then surely you DO believe in the freedom from religion just as much as the freedom of religion, right..?

Secondly, if you think there's a private way of doing public programs better, then you've already completely misunderstood the entire point of public programs. Public programs are meant to provide for the publicRead more, whereas any private system is meant to make a profit, and these two things are diametrically opposed. A public program is meant to provide access for all people, regardless of wealth, ability, intention, etc...whereas a private system provides for those who can afford their private services. Free public transportation will always be a superior system to private for-profit transit, free public healthcare will always be a superior system to private for-profit healthcare, free public housing will always be a superior system to private for-profit landlording, etc. Publicly-owned and accountable systems will always be superior to privately-owned and unaccountable ones, because the goal is accessibility and provision for all of the public. If your primary goal is simply to make profit, then private systems excel at that, yes...but again, that is a blatantly anti-democratic and anti-public means of organizing society.

I hate government and would sooner abolish it than implement a single. one of your mindless programs

That sounds to me like a pretty good way of saying "I have no real rebuttal against it, I just don't like it because I hate the idea of a healthy society that provides for each other."

Also, do you actually mean "the government" or "the state"..? Because those are two different concepts. A government is merely whatever organized means a society uses to make decisions, so if you're anti-government, then how do you believe societal decisions should be made? Violent free for all?

So you're not actually "anti-state", because clearly you still believe it should exist to uphold military/police presence, uphold laws and legal contracts, likely some form of a court or judiciary system to enforce them, etc...right? So like I suggested in another reply, you're not actually "anti-state", you're just some form of a Libertarian-Capitalist. You still want a state to exist, you would just disagree with others over the extents of what they should have/do, but you're not ideologically nor fundamentally "anti-state".

Also, things that…  Read more are considered "crimes" are defined BY the state, whether we think they're justly so or not, so it doesn't make sense to claim that things like government regulation are "crimes". You can think it's bad or wrong (I would disagree, to an extent), but claiming they are "crimes" is just an ignorant misunderstanding of socio-political ideology and philosophy...

"Crimes" are actually defined by God in the Bible, and I believe in the Rule of Higher Law, not the Rule of Government Law. Therefore crimes against God can be committed by both government and individuals, and both must be punished. The government should only exist as an enforcement arm for the Laws of God but do nothing else, which means away with 99 percent of it

Oh so you are also blatantly Theocratic? So you are only economically libertarian, yet politically you are authoritarian. Got it, I figured as much...

I am NOT authoritarian, if you wish to practice another religion you may. Just do not break the laws that keep everyone safe. I'm not forcing everyone to be a Christian, I'm getting ideas for laws like "thou shalt not murder" from the Bible.

If you think the laws of the bible should be adopted/enforced by the state, then you are incredibly theocratic and authoritarian, yes.

Secondly, if you need the bible to tell you murder is wrong, then you clearly aren't a moral person on your own lol...

Explain morality without God. Do it. Why does it exist? Do it.

Easy, we make it up for ourselves. Every person has their own personal sense of what is "right" or "wrong" based on their own personal values and ideals, and they use those to make decisions in life. Morality is not an objective thing, it's subjective to each person.

It exists because we evolved as social creatures, who express strong emotional and interpersonal characteristics. Things that harm each other, like murder, were disadvantageous, and thus we grew to perceive those things as "bad". That is why many other intelligent, social, non-human species show…  Read more similar behaviors, while most other creatures do not. As we further evolved and developed societies, more social behaviors came into play, like theft, and we had to constantly grow our sense of moralities into what we eventually have today.

What if murder became advantageous? Do you release Hitler did the Holocaust to perpetuate evolution, for the benefit of the species. Evolution creates EVIL things like that.

If you think murder is advantageous, then you would commit murder, which is exactly what some people do...that's why it is subjective. If morals were objective, as you keep suggesting, then everyone would think the same things, but obviously they don't.

Secondly, what Hitler did was called "eugenics", which is quite literally described as: "the study of how to arrange reproduction within a human population to increase the occurrence of heritable characteristics regarded as desirable. Developed largely by Sir Francis Galton as a method of improving the human race, euge…  Read morenics was increasingly discredited as unscientific and racially biased during the 20th century, especially after the adoption of its doctrines by the Nazis in order to justify their treatment of Jews, disabled people, and other minority groups."