definitions of _force_, etc.

[algernonsidney]

As a free-market advocate, one of the fundamental problems that I have to deal with is people who redefine words which, to me, have clear meanings.

Consider this statement by a socialist:

"...offering a large payment to a welfare recipient isn't voluntary either. It's financial coercion, different scale, but exactly the same kind that keeps bankers doing reckless things."

This was in an exchange in which I suggested that I would like to start a charity which would pay people on welfare to have themselves sterilized. I suggested offering any person welfare $10,000 in exchange for their ability to reproduce--this would also include paying for the procedure.

To this jackass, offering money to a poor person is "financial coercion." How does a rational person respond to this guy?

[Brant Gaede]

How would a rational person respond to your proposition? If the socialist is irrational maybe it's not all his fault here.

--Brant

[algernonsidney]

This is no surprise. My first response is a non sequitir.

[Brant Gaede]

This is no surprise. My first response is a non sequitir.

Of course it is. When it deserves a sequitir I'll sequitir it, and what does your own non-sequitir response deserve but another?

--Brant

[9thdoctor]

How does a rational person respond to this guy?

This is no different from “a hungry man is not free”. The notion of financial coercion is central to the socialist’s mindset. Have you made any kind of headway with this person on any subject? If he’s not open to changing his mind, why do you bother?

[IamBalSimon]

The way I would respond is to step back a bit and ask the "socialist" if there is any difference between a privately funded charity and a government welfare program that gets its money by forcible extraction from producers, aimed (one hopes) for the common welfare of the populace. If s/he says yes, I'd see if I could get a sensible differentiation from this person. If not, I'd end the conversation as quickly as possible and walk away. Some people are so blind by ideology that there truly is no way to reason with them.

If s/he can provide a decent differentiation, I'd start asking about the things that it's OK for a charity to do (without any reference to the government).

- Would it be OK to require charity recipients to do anything in return for the money? If no, end the conversation and walk away.

Drilling down just a little, I'm guessing that the socialists would say that it's "wrong" to "force" (but it's not force since it's a privately funded charity) someone to do something s/he would not do if she had the means to support hirself. But in reality, all you're doing is offering a very intense choice. The question is whether you have a legal and more importantly an ethical "right" to make such an offer. With some boundaries (see below), I think we do have such a right.

I'd ask the following queries follow only if you haven't walked away:

Would it be OK to require the recipient to:

- learn how to cook?

- take a bath?

- learn the principles of hygiene?

- follow principles of hygiene to a certain charity-established standard?

- provide web design for the charity website?

- stand outside with a placard that tells about the charity?

- agree to have dentistry to fix hir (his/her) teeth?

- agree to have diseases treated?

- agree to face humiliation? (e.g., wear a clown's nose on Main Street)

- be temporarily sterilized?

-------------------------

- be permanently sterilized?

- have an operation to donate a kidney?

- put up a child for adoption?

- put up the child for drug research?

- get a divorce?

- marry someone in the charity?

- submit to sadomasochistic sex that might end up in maiming or death?

- submit to torture?

Are there any items on this list that anyone here would consider unethical and perhaps make illegal? I would be thinking seriously about all of the items below the red line. For instance, I think it is reasonable that there are laws that forbid auctioning of organs on Ebay.

Everything above the line would be OK in my view. But I know enough to know that we draw our lines differently. Where would people here put the line - if anywhere? Between adults would you say it's totally anything goes - including what you do with "your" children?

- Bal

[algernonsidney]

How does a rational person respond to this guy?

This is no different from "a hungry man is not free". The notion of financial coercion is central to the socialist's mindset. Have you made any kind of headway with this person on any subject? If he's not open to changing his mind, why do you bother?

I don't like to quit. Like it or not, we have to deal with these jerkoffs. How do we deal with them?

[BaalChatzaf]

The way I would respond is to step back a bit and ask the "socialist" if there is any difference between a privately funded charity and a government welfare program that gets its money by forcible extraction from producers, aimed (one hopes) for the common welfare of the populace. If s/he says yes, I'd see if I could get a sensible differentiation from this person. If not, I'd end the conversation as quickly as possible and walk away. Some people are so blind by ideology that there truly is no way to reason with them.

If s/he can provide a decent differentiation, I'd start asking about the things that it's OK for a charity to do (without any reference to the government).

- Would it be OK to require charity recipients to do anything in return for the money? If no, end the conversation and walk away.

Drilling down just a little, I'm guessing that the socialists would say that it's "wrong" to "force" (but it's not force since it's a privately funded charity) someone to do something s/he would not do if she had the means to support hirself. But in reality, all you're doing is offering a very intense choice. The question is whether you have a legal and more importantly an ethical "right" to make such an offer. With some boundaries (see below), I think we do have such a right.

I'd ask the following queries follow only if you haven't walked away:

Would it be OK to require the recipient to:

- learn how to cook?

- take a bath?

- learn the principles of hygiene?

- follow principles of hygiene to a certain charity-established standard?

- provide web design for the charity website?

- stand outside with a placard that tells about the charity?

- agree to have dentistry to fix hir (his/her) teeth?

- agree to have diseases treated?

- agree to face humiliation? (e.g., wear a clown's nose on Main Street)

- be temporarily sterilized?

-------------------------

- be permanently sterilized?

- have an operation to donate a kidney?

- put up a child for adoption?

- put up the child for drug research?

- get a divorce?

- marry someone in the charity?

- submit to sadomasochistic sex that might end up in maiming or death?

- submit to torture?

Are there any items on this list that anyone here would consider unethical and perhaps make illegal? I would be thinking seriously about all of the items below the red line. For instance, I think it is reasonable that there are laws that forbid auctioning of organs on Ebay.

Everything above the line would be OK in my view. But I know enough to know that we draw our lines differently. Where would people here put the line - if anywhere? Between adults would you say it's totally anything goes - including what you do with "your" children?

- Bal

I am a great believer in the Golden Rule. He who has the Gold makes the Rules.

Ba'al Chatzaf

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

To this jackass, offering money to a poor person is "financial coercion." How does a rational person respond to this guy?

Chris,

Reframe it.

Chunk up.

Put the issue in a wider context.

Ask if he thinks that starvation and dire poverty are financial coercion in his meaning--since this is "force" that results in actual disease and death..

You offer moves the poor person beyond that line for a while, so tell dufus that instead of engaging in financial coercion (as he understands the term), you are actually fighting it.

Michael

[Brant Gaede]

The way I would respond is to step back a bit and ask the "socialist" if there is any difference between a privately funded charity and a government welfare program that gets its money by forcible extraction from producers, aimed (one hopes) for the common welfare of the populace. If s/he says yes, I'd see if I could get a sensible differentiation from this person. If not, I'd end the conversation as quickly as possible and walk away. Some people are so blind by ideology that there truly is no way to reason with them.

If s/he can provide a decent differentiation, I'd start asking about the things that it's OK for a charity to do (without any reference to the government).

- Would it be OK to require charity recipients to do anything in return for the money? If no, end the conversation and walk away.

Drilling down just a little, I'm guessing that the socialists would say that it's "wrong" to "force" (but it's not force since it's a privately funded charity) someone to do something s/he would not do if she had the means to support hirself. But in reality, all you're doing is offering a very intense choice. The question is whether you have a legal and more importantly an ethical "right" to make such an offer. With some boundaries (see below), I think we do have such a right.

I'd ask the following queries follow only if you haven't walked away:

Would it be OK to require the recipient to:

- learn how to cook?

- take a bath?

- learn the principles of hygiene?

- follow principles of hygiene to a certain charity-established standard?

- provide web design for the charity website?

- stand outside with a placard that tells about the charity?

- agree to have dentistry to fix hir (his/her) teeth?

- agree to have diseases treated?

- agree to face humiliation? (e.g., wear a clown's nose on Main Street)

- be temporarily sterilized?

-------------------------

- be permanently sterilized?

- have an operation to donate a kidney?

- put up a child for adoption?

- put up the child for drug research?

- get a divorce?

- marry someone in the charity?

- submit to sadomasochistic sex that might end up in maiming or death?

- submit to torture?

Are there any items on this list that anyone here would consider unethical and perhaps make illegal? I would be thinking seriously about all of the items below the red line. For instance, I think it is reasonable that there are laws that forbid auctioning of organs on Ebay.

Everything above the line would be OK in my view. But I know enough to know that we draw our lines differently. Where would people here put the line - if anywhere? Between adults would you say it's totally anything goes - including what you do with "your" children?

- Bal

I am a great believer in the Golden Rule. He who has the Gold makes the Rules.

I see you're trying to upgrade from bombs, poison and guns.

--Brant

[IamBalSimon]

I am a great believer in the Golden Rule. He who has the Gold makes the Rules.

Ba'al Chatzaf

Really? Should I now consider you (who does nice work for the blind and dyslexic) no more than a Goa'uld. I would hope you were an Egyptian pharaoh or scifi bad guy in name only.

More seriously, though: how about when you're on the receiving end of the one who has more gold than you? Would you tell the gold owner, "do it to me; I live for being done to." Somehow, I don't think so.

And finally, more on point: who has more gold and raw power to make rules than the United States government? Yet we also have a Bill of Rights built into our Constitution that tells the gold owners, "Oh no you don't!"

- Bal

[BaalChatzaf]

And finally, more on point: who has more gold and raw power to make rules than the United States government? Yet we also have a Bill of Rights built into our Constitution that tells the gold owners, "Oh no you don't!"

- Bal

See how often the Bill of Rights is set aside or twisted by those who have the Gold or those they bribed.

Money talks. Lots of money screams.

Ba'al Chatzaf

Edited May 9, 2011 by BaalChatzaf

[IamBalSimon]

And finally, more on point: who has more gold and raw power to make rules than the United States government? Yet we also have a Bill of Rights built into our Constitution that tells the gold owners, "Oh no you don't!"

- Bal

See how often the Bill of Rights is set aside or twisted by those who have the Gold or those they bribed.

Money talks. Lots of money screams.

Ba'al Chatzaf

You are correct --- to some extent. Yet our government CAN and has been successfully challenged. Moreover, you didn't answer my question. I wasn't asking merely as a matter of tactics. I was asking as a matter of ethics. You said, "I'm a great believer in..." That sounds like a preference and, perhaps, an ethical position. So - you should be willing to take as well as to get, or do you think that you can get others to accept special rules just for you? If you are on the receiving end of power, do you still think unbridled power is the way to go? If you had a billion bucks, would your next move be to see how many trusting blind people you could knock down a flight of stairs? I'm sure you could hire lawyers to get you a get out of jail free card. So would you have a good time at their or anyone else's expense? Somehow, I don't think so.

- Bal

[anthony]

Consider this statement by a socialist:

"...offering a large payment to a welfare recipient isn't voluntary either. It's financial coercion, different scale, but exactly the same kind that keeps bankers doing reckless things."

This was in an exchange in which I suggested that I would like to start a charity which would pay people on welfare to have themselves sterilized. I suggested offering any person welfare $10,000 in exchange for their ability to reproduce--this would also include paying for the procedure.

To this jackass, offering money to a poor person is "financial coercion." How does a rational person respond to this guy?

Excuse me, Chris, but why does the person on welfare earn the "financial coercion", and not anyone else, say....me?

I'm keen to get sterilized, and might do it anyway without the paid costs and $10,000 pay-off.

But thanks, I'll grab your deal, instead.

Or is this contract prejudiced against people who are self-sufficient?

Tony

[BaalChatzaf]

And finally, more on point: who has more gold and raw power to make rules than the United States government? Yet we also have a Bill of Rights built into our Constitution that tells the gold owners, "Oh no you don't!"

- Bal

See how often the Bill of Rights is set aside or twisted by those who have the Gold or those they bribed.

Money talks. Lots of money screams.

Ba'al Chatzaf

You are correct --- to some extent. Yet our government CAN and has been successfully challenged. Moreover, you didn't answer my question. I wasn't asking merely as a matter of tactics. I was asking as a matter of ethics. You said, "I'm a great believer in..." That sounds like a preference and, perhaps, an ethical position. So - you should be willing to take as well as to get, or do you think that you can get others to accept special rules just for you? If you are on the receiving end of power, do you still think unbridled power is the way to go? If you had a billion bucks, would your next move be to see how many trusting blind people you could knock down a flight of stairs? I'm sure you could hire lawyers to get you a get out of jail free card. So would you have a good time at their or anyone else's expense? Somehow, I don't think so.

- Bal

Neither offer the bribe nor take the bribe. A bribe blinds the eyes of the upright and perverts the words of the wise.

Bribery is the fatal poison that kills republics.

Ba'al Chatzaf

[IamBalSimon]

Ba'al - I think we are talking past each other and not really communicating. Clearly, I don't understand the point you are trying to make. I'll own it as a flaw in my ability to understand something that seems to be accepted as "coin of the realm" here in OL.

You seem to be equating charity with a "bribe." Would that be correct?

- Bal