The Political Thread

[The Legendary Shark]

Nor does absence of government automatically make people bad. The overwhelming majority of people inherantly know what is right and what is wrong. The idea that a lack of authority can only lead to Mad Max is the sort of nonsense pumped out by right wing think tanks who believe that ordinary people are too stupid, violent and greedy to run their own lives. I'm not and I don't think you are either.

Not all laws are based on force. I can't speak for anyone else here but I have never beaten, raped or murdered anybody - and that's not because there is always a police officer following me around to force me not to. "Cause loss, harm or damage to nobody; pay your lawful bills, honour your lawful contracts and be honest in your dealings" is just about the whole of Natural Law and is the law I try to adhere to. If I break those laws then society has every right to put me on trial and punish me accordingly but if I adhere to them then nobody has the right to judge me, arrest me, violate me or imprison me. A society without legislation is NOT a society without laws.

What gives any human being the right to rule another? The only person in the universe with any right to rule you is yourself. The only counter-argument to my position that I can see is Might Makes Right - but is this an argument that anyone here wants to make?  If you want to be governed by people who don't give a rat's ass about you then fine, go for it and let me know how that works out for you. Personally, I think I'm just about intelligent enough to know right from wrong all on my own - as I think just about everyone is.

Sometimes, of course, one does submit to authority but on a voluntary basis such as the employer/employee relationship, the trainer/sportsman relationship or the craftsman/apprentice relationship. The fundamental truth of such authoritarian relationships is that one can quit at any time. One cannot quit the authority of government except by crossing over an imaginary line on a map and into another authority's jurisdiction. One cannot be said to be governed by consent simply because one was born into a certain jurisdiction and refuses to leave.

[Old Tankie]

Sharky, based upon what you've previously said about your problems with housing benefit and how it was resolved, you'd have to have a half decent job to be paying enough taxes to make you a net contributor to the Exchequer, so I wouldn't worry too much about your taxes going to pay for bombs and bullets.

[The Legendary Shark]

Just one penny towards such things is too much and more than enough to make me guilty or at least complicit, I think. No matter the level of funding I have contributed, I am a war criminal.
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Some say (and I myself used to believe this) that it's people like Tony Blair and David Cameron who are the war criminals but I've come to realise that this is untrue. Blair may have ordered the illegal wars but it's people like me who helped fund it who are the real criminals.
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"I was just following orders" was no defence at Nuremberg - it was no defence then and it's no defence now.
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[The Legendary Shark]

Maybe I should turn myself in...

[COMMANDO FORCES]

Yes

[The Legendary Shark]

Heh, I wish I hadn't thought of that...


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[JamesC]

Everyone pays some kind of tax in the UK even if it's only VAT.
So at what point does one become a war criminal?

[The Legendary Shark]

Good question. Probably at the point one realises the fact - I hadn't thought of it that way before today, so I guess I'm in the clear (yaay!) - at least until the next time I pay V.A.T. on something (d'oh!). That said, though, is ignorance a good enough excuse? Jeez - what a moral minefield...

[TordelBack]

"I was just following orders" was no defence at Nuremberg - it was no defence then and it's no defence now.

This really is reductio ad absurdum, but if we're back in the Godwin zone I reckon I can go one louder:  by this line of reasoning the Jews paid for their own extermination initially through taxes and finally when they 'allowed' the state to confiscate their property, so really the Nazis weren't to blame, it was the zionist conspiracy after all.  There are levels of responsibility.  Your responsibility with regard to Iraq etc. extends to your role in the governance of the state, which is voting and/or standing for election, activism, campaigning, civil disobedience: once you'd done those things you never had an option on what part of your legitimate contribution was spent on on illegal wars and what was spent on maternity care, therefore you bear no more responsibility for one over the other. 

I can only assume that you get up every morning and congratulate yourself for your responsibility in providing libraries, the emergency services and Dr. Who, before falling to castigating yourself as a mass-muderer and torturer. 

[Recrewt]

Sharkys back and making waves (see what I did there).

Whilst war crimes are never OK, I think you might be overstating the amount of money spent on UK defence.  Using the figures from 2013 below, UK Gov spent about 5.5% of its budget on sticks and stones whereas a whopping 60% was spent on social protection, health and education.  Hmmmm, maybe those politicians aren't so bad after all? 

[Jim_Campbell]

Using the figures from 2013 below, UK Gov spent about 5.5% of its budget on sticks and stones whereas a whopping 60% was spent on social protection, health and education.

Excellent, clear graphic.

Take a look at those numbers, and then ask yourself why this Government has over 3000 people employed through ATOS to harass sick and disabled people off benefit in the name of reducing £1.7bn in benefit fraud, but is still cutting staff numbers at HMRC who only have 300 people chasing an estimated £70bn in unpaid income tax...

Whatever the motivation, it's certainly not about reducing the deficit or pursuing the best course of action to shore up the public finances.

Cheers

Jim

[The Legendary Shark]

Calling myself a war criminal does sound absurd, even to me, as I know that every penny in taxes I've ever paid has gone towards just two things: paying down the government's debt and demonstrating surety for future government borrowing. However, my recent and still evolving realisation that all government/authority is a myth has got me thinking some weird and uncomfortable thoughts. Now that I know the government has no lawful power over me, what kind of a position does that put me in?


If I continue paying taxes to that myth, am I now voluntarily condoning its actions? In the case of V.A.T. I think the answer is no - because all taxation is theft and so taking responsibility for where that money "goes" is analogous to me taking responsibility for what a mugger spends my money on after he's stolen it from me. If I'm mugged and the mugger uses my stolen money to buy a gun in order to engage in more and bigger muggings, I don't think I can be held responsible for that portion of my stolen wealth that goes on to fund more criminal activities. So I guess I'm in the clear on V.A.T.

But does knowing this oblige me to do as much of my shopping as possible on the black market, which has its own down sides? Is it better to buy black market goods which may have a history of violence or stick with "official" goods which may contribute to a greater violence in the future? Should I "mix 'n' match" my purchases between the two markets, using my judgement to try and minimise my contributions to naughtiness? Should I grow as much of my own food as possible and engage in barter wherever possible? Should I avoid using government issued money as much as I possibly can? If I can't avoid contributing to the destructive and unlawful myth, I should at least cut my interaction with it to a minimum, I think.


Given that all government/authority is a myth, does my contributing to it in any way make me complicit in its illegal, unlawful and immoral actions? I don't know, I'm still trying to figure out how to accomodate this new "myth of authority" idea into my worldview and it's driving me nuts.


Any ideas?

[Theblazeuk]

How do you define legality without authority? Some things aren't myths so much as consensual abstractions.

[Professor Bear]

Whatever the motivation, it's certainly not about reducing the deficit or pursuing the best course of action to shore up the public finances.

I liked how the Condems raising tuition fees has actually cost the UK economy more, because it's simply created a larger amount of unpaid debt.  I also like that IDS' UC scheme will not only cost more to run than what it's replacing, but it doesn't even work and he's set to throw twice as much as what's been spent on it already at a second go at a system demonstrably unfit for purpose.

This was all knowledge available beforehand, too, so at some point you have to accept that continuing to enforce their broken vision is not about making these mechanisms work, it's either about breaking something they don't think should exist in the first place, or it's about creating a means for private citizens to receive public money.
A third option exists, but that would be that they don't know what they're doing and none of this makes sense, but I find it hard to believe anyone could be that destructively stupid, I want to give the benefit of the doubt that they're smart enough to simply be dishonest.

[Recrewt]

The most worrying fact about all the austerity measures that UK Gov have recently taken is that they have not reduced the actual debt at all, rather they have reduced the rate at which it increases.

I do appreciate though that the task presented to them is far from easy.  For example, the NHS has in the region of 1.4 million employees .  Next time someone complains about why they need all those managers - that's why.