Positive rights vs negative rights & how that may or may not apply to our current situation

wrath
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Here is a thread as promised to discuss the topic and how it relates to why “not voting” is the proper thing to do in the United States or perhaps not in our current situation.

Edit: Sorry @JonasEggeater, my mistake. I forgot to link back to where this started here:

Here is where the topic of positive rights vs negative rights gets brought up directly by @dacree:

Link to bbs post in thread.

This is what started the whole thing with a response to my post:

Link to bbs post in thread.

I will also start off by saying that while I disagree with @dacree on “not voting”, I sincerely think he’s very intelligent and others and myself can learn some new things from his point of view.

I’ve read the content suggested by @dacree that include:

• The Ethics of Voting by Jason Brennan
• The Immorality of Democratic Voting by Kel Kelly
• Consent to Tyranny: Voting in the USA by Mark E Smith
• Your Obligation to Not Vote by Alex R. Knight III

These are all very much a libertarian slant on things. In the past, I’ve been pretty diabolically opposed to a lot of libertarianism. But, I think I’d like to try a change of pace and see where others and myself can find some sort of middle ground especially with the bleeding-heart libertarian set that I’m actually pretty fond of in a way.

I’ve asked that we begin by bringing evidence to support our assertions and suppositions. If @dacree or anyone else doesn’t want to do that, I won’t like it, but I’ll chat anyway. One last note, I didn’t realize it’s Friday, crap. Well, the nice thing is, I won’t have time for my long-winded posts that bore the hell out of people. Just short replies.

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I’m unfamiliar with the background behind the creation of this thread, but I have an opinion on the voting/not voting matter.

I vote, because I want the resulting statistics to reflect the number of Americans who disapprove of both parties.

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It’s amusing how many folks seem to think that the fact that society reflects society—and the fact that some of that reflection is negative—is somehow an indictment of all society, so therefore all institutions of society are evil. Then they propose feudal pseudo-libertarianism as a solution.

These folks have been punked, but it’s the rich kid/teenaged kind of punked where they wind up thinking that being an anti-democratic idiot is some kind of enlightenment. It’s a better hobbyhorse of destruction than taking up smoking or drunk-driving. It’s not really something the rest of us need to worry about. Let Russell Brand think he’s too cool for yet another thing. That’s his thing.

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AFAIK, libertarians despise Russell Brand as a socialist. I disagree with Russell Brand about not voting, then again, I’ve never really heard some sort of valid strategy from him in that regard. It gets pretty amorphous after that.

This is his big manifesto thing:

Part of this thing on “not voting” FTM:

I don’t vote because to me it seems like a tacit act of compliance; I know, I know my grandparents fought in two world wars (and one World Cup) so that I’d have the right to vote. Well, they were conned. As far as I’m concerned there is nothing to vote for. I feel it is a far more potent political act to completely renounce the current paradigm than to participate in even the most trivial and tokenistic manner, by obediently X-ing a little box.

Total revolution of consciousness and our entire social, political and economic system is what interests me, but that’s not on the ballot. Is utopian revolution possible? The freethinking social architect Buckminster Fuller said humanity now faces a choice: oblivion or utopia. We’re inertly ambling towards oblivion, is utopia really an option?

Say what we will, he resonated with a lot of younger adults with this. I fear it’s a combo of appealing to frustration and laziness since he doesn’t really use the term “utopian revolution” again and dissect it with a plan.

The rest is pretty much ramblings such as this:

I deplore corporate colonialism but not viscerally. The story isn’t presented in a way that rouses me. Apple seems like such an affable outfit; I like my iPhone. Occasionally I hear some yarn about tax avoidance or Chinese iPhone factory workers committing suicide because of dreadful working conditions but it doesn’t really bother me, it seems so abstract. Not in the same infuriating, visceral, immediate way that I get pissed off when I buy a new phone and they’ve changed the fucking chargers, then I want to get my old, perfectly good charger and lynch the executives with the cable. They make their own product, which they’ve already sold me, deliberately obsolete just to rinse a few more quid out of us.

Still waiting for that plan for a “utopian revolution”.

Further along… a lot of stuff about how he’s not a hypocrite. Fine. He think women are beautiful. Thinks we should all have more of sense of humor. I was surprised to hear that from a comedian. See, I was being funny.

Onward…

Capitalism is not real; it is an idea. America is not real; it is an idea that someone had ages ago. Britain, Christianity, Islam, karate, Wednesdays are all just ideas that we choose to believe in and very nice ideas they are, too, when they serve a purpose. These concepts, though, cannot be served to the detriment of actual reality.

I can dig it. We don’t have to follow the rules that society thrusts upon us, we can break rules and create our own realities. Ok, now the plan to enact this en masse?

To genuinely make a difference, we must become different; make the tiny, longitudinal shift. Meditate, direct our love indiscriminately and our condemnation exclusively at those with power.

Ok, solidarity. I can definitely agree that a lack of solidarity is hurting positive change.

Revolt in whatever way we want, with the spontaneity of the London rioters, with the certainty and willingness to die of religious fundamentalists or with the twinkling mischief of the trickster. We should include everyone, judging no one, without harming anyone.

Lost me… contradictory la la land.

The revolution of consciousness is a decision, decisions take a moment. In my mind the revolution has already begun.

Reminds…

Can we somehow get a hold of Russell Brand, convert him with some rational discussion and use his brand to spread a message that voting isn’t the only thing to do, but it’s vital nonetheless. Can some sense be talked into him or is it hopeless?

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I think it’s just a matter of waiting for him to to evolve. Whether that happens or not isn’t going to have much impact except in the media.

The problem with Brand’s attitude, which is temperamentally similar to the libertarian pose, is that every election is a letdown for him. Elections are nationwide media events like sports playoffs, yet instead of crowning a winner, the win does not result in a win. Legislation and administration continues. In that sense, elections usually don’t “fix” things in the history books in any big way, and unlike sports victories the battle for the next election begins the very next day. The letdown people feel is a corporate con-game of CNN just like pro sports are a con-game for ESPN: watch our shouting heads, view our ads, then after the big event, we’ll fill your face with the next bracket for the next season, etc.

The politics are real but the media bullshit is bullshit. People mistake the media bullshit for reality, especially people in the media. The mass media era isn’t over yet but thanks to the web its peak is past, so it’s becoming pretty easy to find information about the real politics and real economics online. That breaks the ESPN “title match-up” model of political reporting. The nihilist response is popular, but it’s a response to the media bullshit.

Picking non-ad-driven but professionally written news outlets should give people a better experience all around and reduce the dippy popularity of anti-democratic reactionary platitudes.

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One could argue that the defining characteristic of democracy is that it is pretty much disappointing for everyone and it’s very hard to change anything. Change is supposed to be slow. But people want quick fixes, and politicians can be very successful by advertising them. In reality, quick political fixes come in the form of bloody revolution, military coups, murder and assassination…

People want to fix the big problems in one fell swoop: it’s surely one reason why there’s always a bigger turnout in national/presidential elections versus local/midterm elections. But electing a new boss doesn’t fundamentally change much. It’s not supposed to! It’s not like he’s the CEO of a corporation who can fire all the under-performing citizens. Thank god, right?

The fact is, a democracy is a slow feedback system. Every single elected position effects the political culture in a holistic manner. We get the politicians we get because that’s the current political culture; we elect a new guy who’s just like the old guy; nothing changes. But occasionally we get genuine choices. A new director of public transportation in an area with a dysfunctional bus system; a new police chief in an area rife with corruption… I dunno, I’m really bad at coming up with examples here, but it’s these little changes over time that slowly shift the political culture.

So I get why people vote, but I also think that a lot of people look at the big elections, see a lot of same-old-same-old, and stop paying attention… and that just seems like a cop out. Maybe if everyone voted more, and in every election, they might actually make some change?

Of course, I’m a hypocrite… I’ve not lived somewhere I CAN vote for over a decade, and I feel utterly politically disconnected from my home country. But I do feel a little guilty every time voting season comes around again…

Sorry if this is all a bit tangental 'n all, haha

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Yeah, I didn’t vote in this week’s Euro elections, mostly because I never got around to arranging it, but also I don’t think I really should, since I don’t live there.

I will probably register for am overseas vote before the general election next year though. I’d like to vote in the US, but citizenship is a long way off yet.

I’ve voted in every general election since I was old enough, although the FPTP system has made it worthless in most cases since I wasn’t living in a marginal seat. I’m still extremely pissed off with the electorate for rejecting AV in the referendum.

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Not to mention restricting the franchise from the kind of people one feels that one does not like, or even restricting the franchise down to the kind of people one feels one is. In lieu of whacking leftists, the right wing has moved on to felony disenfranchisement on the one hand and indulging in wishful thinking about restricting voting to property owners (or “a million dollars? a million votes”).

The forms of violence used to fight back against democracy get more repressed themselves as time moves on. Media exposure drives this. When national media in the U.S. and G.B./Eu began covering the violent suppression of labor and unions, violent suppression ceased to be effective, politically. Management switched to less violent political manipulation, but labor lagged in adjusting, mostly because labor didn’t own the media. They were left with no position to negotiate from at all.

The web provides an end-run around owner-based anti-democratic media.

The owners see this new adjustment happening and they don’t have any response except go back and do what worked in the past. So they try to own ISPs and web access on the one hand while fomenting nihilist and paramilitary extremism on the other. Democracy responded slowly to the de-escalation of violence in labor relations, but now that we aren’t constrained by the labor-unions’ aping of management methods, we might be able to build an era that is much more explicitly democratic.

Hopefully, the next de-escalation will happen in the realm of economic coercion, and that will require the psychopaths of the world to find a new model other than the management/capital model of political manipulation. And this new de-escalation will also take a few generations to complete. I have no idea what form their machinations will take, but their current efforts are losing traction.

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@Cowicide

Let me get this out of the way, Russel Brand can think what we wants. He has little bearing on the subject other than some air time the rest of us have not enjoyed.

I read your final post at House leaders gut NSA-curbing USA FREEDOM Act - #19 by Cowicide and I have to say I’m kinda sad that you still conflate statistics, supposition, and assumptions about an alternative timeline as evidence.

It doesn’t take rocket science or a competent mathematician to deduce that means if there was more Democrats in office, they would statistically vote in larger numbers against the Iraq War. I already explained to you that enough Democratic votes by the population existed. The problem was at that time, the voters previously choose the path of not voting at all along with embracing false equivalency and flip-flopping to vote in more Republicans.

This is the kind of naivety that makes these sort of discussions difficult. Long before the vote was actually taken, both the Dems and the Reps took test votes and knew the final outcome. We were invading Iraq. The split in the Democrat vote, which you see of some evidence of intent, was nothing more than political expediency. Democrats who were not up for re-election voted for the invasion since their positions where safe and those who voted against the invasion were by and large preparing for an upcoming election. The outcome was the same but tailored to allow some democrats a more tenable position in the opposition.

Let’s also not forget that it was a 60/40 slit. 40% of democrats voted to invade. Your position makes assumption based on weak statistics and supposition based on extrapolation where none is possible. You simply guess things would be as you believe. I grant that you are not to blame here. It is just this type of reasoning we have come to expect from those so invested in their illusions. These sort of assumptive arguments are all too common and are given more weight and consideration than is deserved.

What we are discussing is essentially philosophy. Logic is the coin in these sort of discussions. Evidence plays very weakly here. After all, what factual evidence is there of morality other than anecdote? As morality is central my my thesis, I feel a need to have some basic understanding introduced. While John Henry Newman proposed conscience as providing evidence of objective moral truths, John Locke demonstrated that morality cannot be established from conscience as differences in people’s consciences yields different results as it is influenced by “education, company, and customs of the country”, who was supported by J. L. Mackie, arguing that conscience is an “introjection” of other people into an agent’s mind.

With this we can move from morality as a godly given capacity to one of practical reason. It is in this vein I cast the idea of voting as immoral. My position is that voting serves no practical reason and actually serves the immoral role of an opiate fashioned from false participation by the masses. I contend that we are in a de facto oligarchy which has long ago gamed the political system and the national narrative through bribery, coercion, and vote buying of our pre-selected political choices as well as the subtle omission of truth and outright gas lighting of the public discourse.

It is with voting that people are given a false sense of choice and a passive sense of participation. We are kept from bringing about meaningful change that we see as fair or necessary by participating in the vote. While some believe that change can come from this system, the changes most necessary are out of reach. Unless the politicians decide to limit their terms, prevent large donations from corporate interest, and reject lobbyist written legislature, the chances of ending the oligarchy and returning to a republic are non-existent. The public does not vote on these issues. Only our politicians have that power and history has demonstrated a complete lack of motivation on their part to make the changes that need to be made - no matter what party is in power.

Then we have the problem of voting by the misinformed. When the people cast their ballot, most often what we are seeing is an extension of the public narrative presented by one media organization or another. Votes cast by the ignorant often bring more harm than good. After all, how can they be expected to make a good choice when they are told otherwise in 24 hour news cycles that continually beat the drum of partisanship?

My solution is to effect change via the only means left to me. My position is that my dollar has a greater impact on this nation than my vote. By not spending money with corporations that do things I disagree with and spending my money with businesses that act responsibly, I can slowly starve the worst offenders and bolster those I see as good. I would propose that if we spent the energy we now spend on politics and the cult of the vote then we could effect change within the system that actually exists right now rather than the illusion of the system we think still exists.

Since this is a country which is now governed by oligarchical corporatism, we should work within that system according to the real rules of the system… money. Voting is left as something those in power want you to do. It won’t effect them and it keeps you in line. Withholding your dollars, now that’s something the oligarchs and corporatists find unconscionable. So much so, they have even cast consumerism as patriotism. Well, if it is patriotism, then be patriotic and spend your money only with those you feel represent your ideals and viewpoints.

edited for spelling errors

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See, you started by talking about moral questions and how evidence doesn’t have much to do with them. But here you jump to a claim about what voting actually accomplishes and inhibits in practice. And that is entirely a question of evidence; it has to be, because it will be different depending on the country and how functional its democracy is.

Here I think the blanket rejection of what cowicide presented is unfair, particularly since you haven’t given any better evidence. On the contrary, you’re making assertions like that people in power want you to vote to keep you in line, which seems at odds with the efforts that have been happening to disenfranchise people. So that needs backing up to be taken seriously.

Many people working to affect positive change also vote. So does voting actually discourage people from working to affect positive change? That is not simply a moral claim, so I don’t think it it is at all unfair to expect some evidence for it.

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As I stated, logic is the coin of choice when engaged in philosophic discussion. You quoted my position about voting serving an immoral role and asked me to cite evidence. As morality is a philosophical question, only thought experiments and logic can be presented as evidence. You will find no polls, statistics or factoids to realize a philosophical position. Internet searches and URL collections hold no sway in this sort of discussion.

Let me give you and example

Find evidence that the people in power are trying to control you via a media narrative and that they have a desire to do so. Find evidence to the contrary. So, how can one make these sort of statement? Logic.

Those in power are the type of person who seeks power. Those who seek power are seeking power over others. Those in power wish to remain so. Remaining in power is to continue the status qou. The status qou is a system of voting. The system of voting is dominated by corporate persons and their donations. ; ergo, those in power are trying to control the public to maintain the status quo via voting in a system dominated by corporate persons.

It is not a question of evidence. The difference will be in the socialization of the group morality.

I will not get in to an argument of fact. Nor will I engage in evidentiary comparisons here. In an argument of fact, it is the conclusions drawn from factoids which are in question and not the facts themselves. If you cannot develop an argument whose core is logic but rather cobbled ‘evidence’ of statistics and assumption, then there is no discussion to be had.

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How do you tell about that? I understand you think voting is immoral in the US as it is currently set up. Do you think it is exactly the same for the US before the civil war, or in Soviet Russia, or in ancient Athens, or in modern Sweden? If not, how would you distinguish between them aside from looking at how voting actually works out in those different times and places?

And since the political machine is trying to keep people voting, therefore it has no interest in disenfranchising people. And yet: it is very well attested that one of the parties has been doing so, so evidently this reasoning has some mistake.

You can say you won’t get into an argument of fact, but that’s what statements about how things work in practice are. Trying to use reasoning from loose first principles in the face of competing observations is how people end up with ideologies disconnected from reality.

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Before I start to engage with this interesting topic and my spin on it, I first have to acknowledge one of the finest examples of ‘racing to the high ground’ I’ve yet to read on the net.

I have to admit, that little nugget is probably going to flavour my further interpretations of @dacree 's message but what the hey.

So, off to learn and read and I’ll be back but not without leaving this helpful hint of my pre-existing mindset concerning the voting question this topic sprung from.

Left.
Right.
Third.
None of the above. :ballot_box_with_check:

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Been unable to reply to @dacree’s post, getting a 500 internal server error, so I’ll just try it here:

In response to this post by @dacree:

… I on the other hand need no evidence since I am not trying to prove anything. …

… I read your final post at House leaders gut NSA-curbing USA FREEDOM Act - #19 by Cowicide and I have to say I’m kinda sad that you still conflate statistics, supposition, and assumptions about an alternative timeline as evidence. …

Coming from someone who says they don’t have to provide evidence while demanding it from me makes that statement ring very hollow.

Long before the vote was actually taken, both the Dems and the Reps took test votes and knew the final outcome.

Provide evidence to back that up. The Iraq War wasn’t written in stone and the huge amount of Democrats that voted against the resolution is evidence that supports my case.

In your desperation “to be right”, you are trying to say that when the Democrats overwhelmingly voted against something, that meant they were secretly for it. You’re performing mental gymnastics without any evidence to support your wild claims.

This is the kind of naivety that makes these sort of discussions difficult. Long before the vote was actually taken, both the Dems and the Reps took test votes and knew the final outcome. We were invading Iraq.

Please provide your evidence.

This is a perfect example of why you should provide evidence to back up things you say. If you had gone searching for evidence, you would have found that your baseless supposition was wrong.

Opinion in the Congress leading up to the Iraq War generally favored a diplomatic solution. A January 2003 CBS News/NYT poll found that 63% of Americans wanted GW Bush to find a diplomatic solution to the Iraq situation.

Americans wanted hard evidence. More than two-thirds (77%) said if inspectors hadn’t found a smoking gun, they should keep looking.

Evidence:

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/01/23/opinion/polls/main537739.shtml

If the US public hadn’t embraced false equivelency and voted Republican or voted Republican by proxy by “not voting”, there would have been more Democrats in office who would have found that over 60% in the Democratic House were voting against the Iraq War resolution. And, on top of that, they would have looked at polling that showed that the majority of the American public still wanted to give inspectors more time and still wanted more evidence. The majority of the public still wanted a diplomatic solution over war.

It wasn’t until after the Iraq War was started that public opinion began to support the war, but I’m sure those numbers are radically skewed by those who merely “support the troops” as apposed to supporting every war GW Bush decided to push us into based upon lies and fear.

This is the kind of naivety … this type of reasoning we have come to expect from those so invested in their illusions. … Your position makes assumption based on weak statistics and supposition based on extrapolation where none is possible.

You’re projecting again. You are trying to somehow extrapolate that the evidence shows that Democrats and Republicans are the same, yet the evidence clearly shows that you’re wrong.

Instead of admitting the fault of your logic, you continue to present baseless assumptions that are easily refuted with said evidence.

How about you worry less about how naive you think I am and focus on providing actual solid evidence to support your own claims? You haven’t thus far.

Evidence plays very weakly here

Well, when you bring to the table incorrect percentages and present them as fact, I tend to agree.

My position is that voting serves no practical reason

Right, because you’re embracing an over-simplistic, absurd view of our current reality where evidence for assumptions is irrelevant and Republicans and Democrats are equal in their negative impacts on society at large.

My position is that voting … actually serves the immoral role of an opiate fashioned from false participation by the masses.

If “not voting” would work to wake up the opiated “sheeple”, then we’d already be there. As I’ve already shown multiple times (with evidence) a huge segment of the American public already doesn’t vote.

Like I’ve told you. We’ve tried “not voting”. It’s doesn’t work and only ushers in more greater evil Republicans and the very real negative consequences that come along with them. You’ve provided nothing that refutes this reality.

While some believe that change can come from this system, the changes most necessary are out of reach.

I would probably believe that as well if I ignored things like evidence and reality.

Then we have the problem of voting by the misinformed.

Right, those pesky, misinformed “sheeple” strike again. We’re much better off with outright dictatorships.

Then again, I’m sure you think we already live in a dictatorship, correct? Our republic has a struggling representative democracy within it. You’d have us kill what’s left of it.

Votes cast by the ignorant often bring more harm than good.

You are very confused. You’ve already repeatedly stated that voting is useless since we’re only voting for two sides of the same coin. What does it matter then if the voters are ignorant “sheeple” or not?

Since this is a country which is now governed by oligarchical corporatism

That’s an extremely over-simplistic characterization of our country. While our country is certainly overrun with oligarchical corporatists, there are people that are within our very government that are fighting them. They do it even for thankless ingrates in this country that refuse to educate themselves on this fact.

Voting is left as something those in power want you to do.

I guess in an evidence-free world one can continue to believe that even though I’ve shown you clear, repeated evidence of a very real effort of Republican voter suppression and disenfranchisement along with district gerrymandering to neuter fair voting as well.

The oligarchical corporatists at the very top do NOT want you to vote and, if you do, they want you to embrace false equivalency and flip flop instead of voting more progressively over decades.

Flip, flop, flip, flip, flop, flip, flop…

flipflopflipflop.jpg699×117 84.9 KB

The recent NSA scandal had a vote that failed to neuter it. Guess who voted in greater numbers to stop it? The Democrats. For some reason the media rarely focuses on how much dissent there was from Democrats. I wonder why?

I’ll tell you why, because false equivalence falls right into the hands of those who want to enslave you. It keeps our country ping-ponging back and forth between lesser evil and greater evil without making the slow progress we’d have by now if we’d consistently voted in lesser evil.

So much so, they have even cast consumerism as patriotism.

That was Bush who championed that. A Republican.

But, never mind, that’s just pesky evidence at play again. :wink:

As @andy_hilmer said and @chenille basically said… you’re a bit disconnected from reality.

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If we accept the concept that all persons are created equal, “that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness” or if you prefer the U.N. Universal Declaration of Human Rights “Whereas recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world … All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.” then we must accept that people have the liberty of self determination.

In this state of being we should be able to generally agree that I cannot and should not impose my will on an unwilling person. To do so by threat of force or loss of liberty would be doubly immoral under this premise. In other words, no human being has the right to rule over another. Yet voting is the very process of ruling others. Therefore, voting violates our fundamental human rights.

By the process of voting, we somehow expect we are able to suspend human rights. We are so bamboozled by this process that while we would condemn a person who takes money from another to pay for his criminal life, we seem perfectly willing to pull a lever to endow certain anointed people the power to take your money and spend it on killing innocent people in extrajudicial drone killings.
Therefore, I submit that no matter the nation or people, voting is an immoral act. It is the stripping of human rights by proxy. It leaves us feeling free from the guilt of our actions by ritual alone.

Groups of people acting out of some sense of righteousness are not representative of the political machine as a whole. One cannot take the outlier and frame it as a normalized representation of the whole. We would have a quite difficult time of finding a body or group of people in which all opinions and goals are shared or more importantly understood.

That is a wonderful demonstration of the problem with facts based argument being applied to a values based discussion. While you may see certain observations as competing with my or others position, that is only because the conclusion drawn from your observations will almost certainly result from your subjective presuppositions and opinions. Therefore, I would suggest that attempting to introduce subjective conclusions as fact in a discussion of values brings little or no value to the discourse at hand.

I’ve read debate after debate on these forums and they all seem to have the same basic form. Party A has links and citations to back up an opinion. Party B has links and citations to back up a differing opinion. Yet, when the opinions in question are a matter of values the argument fails in cross examination for both sides. Therefore, I suggest that these type of discussions should follow a model not based on evidentiary cross examination, but rather a debate form that was born in correspondence. We can see this forum as the modern newspaper. However, instead of a daily issue, it allows immediate access and response.

I think this medium suitable for the Lincoln Douglas style of values debate via correspondence. It seems to me the most appropriate framework for this sort of discussion. As such, I will not get in to a trivial debate of facts and statistics. I will however engage in reasoned discourse.

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Your philosophy is fucking cool. I don’t agree with it exactly, but it’s a neat perspective. You would fit in well with my friends.

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As present thus far I wouldn’t agree with it exactly either. There remains the issues of governance, laws, as well as how the conceit of sovereignty results in voluntary and involuntary surrender of certain liberties; subjects not yet broached here.

In any case, thanks for your positive comment. I imagine your friends are probably insane which would make for fine company in my book.

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Therefore, I submit that no matter the nation or people, voting is an immoral act. It is the stripping of human rights by proxy.

It’s interesting that you offer your concern for the stripping of human rights by proxy, but still can’t see how you do that (by proxy) by not voting and ushering in Republicans who are absolutely notorious for stripping human rights from citizens. Even our very basic right to vote in the first place.

You’re not stopping Democrats from stripping away human rights by not voting. You’re only helping (by proxy) to ramp up the efforts to strip human rights on steroids while making the efforts of those of us who are fighting for human rights all the more difficult in the meantime. A third party that supports human rights doesn’t have a chance in hell with rampant Republican voter suppression and district gerrymandering in place.

I get it. You want to live in a libertarian utopia. But, those of us in the real world would like some help with the real fight of our lives instead of battling against more walls that are propped up ever higher by those that retreat into destructive fantasies.

I suggest that these type of discussions should follow a model not based on evidentiary cross examination

Right, because you tried it in the previous thread and it failed for you.

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This is why philosophy has ceased being a serious subject. There’s room for a discipline called philosophy (the love of wisdom) which makes sense of ideas (and their supporting evidence) and translates them from one discipline of art or science to another, but there is no room for a subject which claims authority on no basis at all except syntax that manipulates fuzzy ideas. So philosophy gets nothing like the respect it had just a century ago. It’s no surprise that your desire to run away from the messiness of the world results in a policy prescription which calls for people to turn away from the world.

But by all means, withdraw and contemplate the cave as an abstraction. Just don’t request that we hobble ourselves equally.

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I think you just basically summed up why debate with libertarians is fruitless and mostly unproductive. I guess I keep flogging a dead horse hoping one of them will finally offer a coherent alternative plan that doesn’t involve mythical free market unicorns, rehashed platitudes, improper dismissal of externalities, ignoring current realities, etc, etc. – but it’s just not going to happen.

I sincerely think some of their brains are wired differently. I mean, it’s one thing for a kid to go through the libertarian stage, but to latch on throughout adulthood and not ever evolve later is something else entirely. What makes up a libertarian lifer is a touchy subject I’ve been studying for a while and I have some ideas, but some will find my theories offensive to their sensibilities, so I usually keep it to myself.

That said, I would be very interested to see the results of some tests and see if there is a correlation with certain disorders and libertarians. Shit, never mind, now I’ll be attacked for even just suggesting it.

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