[extropy-chat] Bush wants another $75 billion for wars

[Damien Broderick]

At 11:42 AM 10/29/2004 -0700, Mike L. wrote:

>ANY government program that takes your
>money as 'taxes' to redistribute it to someone else is theft at the
>barrel of a gun.
>
>...Sounds like something one would
>expect from a 'house slave'.

Many of us have been raised to think of it, and accept it, as an implicit 
social contract where we pay forward the debt we share with everyone else, 
our portion of the debt assessed according to how much spare resources we 
already own. Rather in the way most children learn to share food at the 
table rather than wolfing down the lot after shoving everyone else aside. 
For a small test case where this kind of commity has failed, look at

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/29/opinion/29birkett.html?th

People often default on this shared enterprise; some are locked up as 
scoundrels, others run corporations like Enron. Some justify their default 
by reference to philosophies such as libertarianism, which finds the basis 
of the implicit contract, and its implementation in a given society, to be 
unfair, absurd or simply onerous. It's an arguable position, but its case 
is not won by fiat or redefinition of `theft' or accusations of servility 
against those who accept a pay-forward and proportional solution to the 
inevitable interstitial and even structural damage done by markets, crime, 
race hatreds, etc.

> >Winners, losers. It is not an endless, infinite bucket of
> > money/resources. I ask "how much is enough?" Should there be
> > requirements to return such wealth beyond a certain point?
>
>Return wealth to who? Upon what basis is a claim made?

Upon this basis:

"The steel tortoise gave MacKinnon a feeling of Crusoe-like independence. 
It did not occur to him his chattel was the end product of the cumulative 
effort and intelligent co-operation of hundreds of thousands of men, living 
and dead." --Robert A. Heinlein, `Coventry'

Heinlein's utopian judge condemns MacKinnon, a reckless rugged 
individualist: `From a social standpoint, your delusion makes you as mad as 
a March Hare.'

Damien Broderick