To your first comment, what would happen if you refused to pay for the government service? How is that result not coercive?
You are viewing a single comment's thread from:
To your first comment, what would happen if you refused to pay for the government service? How is that result not coercive?
It is coercive, sure, and so is receiving punishment for a crime. If any form of coercion is unacceptable, so is punishing people for crimes.
Force when used in self-defense is not an immoral act. If by crime you mean that someone has been victimized by the criminal (aka the criminal initiated force) and by punishment you mean bringing some sort of justice to bear against the perpetrator, then it is acceptable to act with force against that person. It is the defense of another, a form of self defense, not the initiation of force against the criminal.
Now in the US and all other places in the world there are many laws against acts that have no identifiable victims. Punishing people for these "crimes" is indeed coercive and immoral. It is the initiation of force against someone. So is forcing someone to pay for such nonsense.
You are telling me what you think is moral. To put it simply you are saying it's OK to punish people for crimes with victims. My objections have nothing to do with that. They are on the basis that your proposed system has no way to ensure those outcomes.
The fact that something sounds moral to you (especially keeping in mind that morality is subjective) does not mean that it will work out in practice. If the world was perfect and all people were nice, good and non-abusive, both anarchism and communism would be great to live in. But the world is not like that and perfect outcomes are impossible. That's why I call them utopias.
Let me ask you this. What is the reason that we have invented philosophical and moral principles? Note that by choosing the word "invented" I do not concede that the moral standards I live by are subjective in nature.
Now that's a big question. I'm not really sure I can even answer that properly. What's your answer and how does it relate to your point?
Living by a particular standard does not mean this standard would be sufficient to have a society working well with it as the sole guiding principle.
The purpose is to create a standard or set of standards by which humans can live together harmoniously, with systems built on those foundations. Furthermore, whatever system is invented must be self-organizing because simple human relationships like hierarchies break down when you get to groups larger than a few hundred people. This means that they must be designed in such a way that they're self-organizing, with as much autonomy and flatness of hierarchy as possible. Otherwise societies will fail. So while the underlying value, a harmonious society, is subjective, building the most efficient system to meet that end can be done so objectively.
I don't think your conclusion follows from your points here. To me the conclusion that you can do it objectively (or at all) is an unsupported assertion.
I understand why you would want it, I don't understand why you all of a sudden assume that it is possible and that it is made possible by the principles that you live your life by.
Sure if everybody lived by the same principles, the world would be a great place, but why would you expect that to ever be the case?