ADreamOfLiberty

I love how people insist you can't opt out of failing government services, but isn't that exactly what fleeing Californians are doing? Opting out of the broken California system?

Yes that's what they're doing, and competition between the states has boiled down to "the freest for longest wins", it's been an enormous stabilizing factor in US history.

Unfortunately the other states are all infected and the federal government is the worst of all.

It's utterly absurd that the federal government is more than 1/4th of a state's per capita spending anyway.

What does the federal government do for you? All those things the sheeple list off as "essential to civilization" are done by states, cities, and counties.

You’re a fucking  idiot. Figurative language…nice excuse for your idiocy. 

You’re so dense it makes obtuse people look fucking smart!!! 

Are you on the spectrum or something? There is no way a person of normal intelligence and language skills could perceive a literal attempt to change the subject to cottage cheese.

Here is a genuine attempt to change the subject to cottage cheese:

I think ricotta is better. In fact, other than a slight difference in consistency I am not sure what the difference between cottage cheese and Ricotta is.

Am I banned from Italy? No, of course not. They don't ban you for being ignorant, you need to rise to the level of criminal cuisine mutilation (pineapple pizza).

If this appeal is accepted, Wylted will permanently retire the anti-semitic, transphobic, and racist schtick.

Now, when you say "You aren't forced to pay a specific price" because "you can vote"; are you claiming that the presence of a vote means there is no force against the individual?

[IwantRooseveltagain] Votes, in our system of government, can be ruled unconstitutional by the third branch of government you jackass.

That’s why white people can’t vote to deny black people the right to vote.

I can vote. I can't vote people out because too many are programmed to be idiots when it comes to the nature and purpose of government and economy.

so you acknowledge that you do have a say in how all these services are run. Question settled. 

Is this woman being raped or not?

just because 5 people say they are forming a new government does not make it so. you are now going  into an argument of what makes a nation, which is a whole different rabbit hole I don't intend to go down. 

That simple? But you missed something. You aren't leaving either. Therefore you agree to my social contract. Glad we solved that problem *whew*

By staying, we both agree to THE social contract. and yes, i'm glad that is solved. 

What makes civilization superior to mere society and what defines it is equal liberty by law. You are a pawn for people who don't like equal liberty. Your handlers don't own civilization.

there are problems with all civilizations. I don't pretend ours is perfect. But you seem to pretend like yours would be.

Which is silly. I want to fix our broken system to work better. You want to tear everything down and live in make believe.

If a road doesn't get enough traffic to pay for itself then we don't need it. 

this is an example of how to force everyone into a smaller and smaller net. Making it more and more expensive to try to live outside of major urban areas. I guess we don't need farmers. 

Yes. There doesn't need to be dozens of contracts. Just one for each level of government with options preserved and accessed by computer.

but you want people to be able to opt out of every single government service don't you?

So one for the police, one for the firefighters, one for the libraries, one for the roads, one for the military etc.

If you are suggesting that people should only be offered 1 contract with each level of government, then how would that work? If you opt out of a contract with your municipality, do you just have to leave that municipality? Or do you just get banned from all municipal services like roads?

You can drive down a road at full speed and a particular pattern of electromagnetic reflection from your vehicle associates the car with your person and your toll account. The toll is then charged to your account. There are hundreds of thousands of people that use the road and in less than a second a computer found you and executed a voluntary (and thus moral) payment for public service.

and how do you propose to apply that to police? Should they be required to face scan you to make sure you've paid your police contract before they stop you from being murdered?

Also (and more importantly) the difference that matters is that they aren't funded by stolen money.

I fail to see how it would be any different. If you have to pay them or be a free target for rape and murder, then you don't actually have a choice.

The only people who would have a choice would be those who can afford private security.

When you can't steal the money, there is a basic level of "oh shit we actually have to do our job" because if nothing else the people will stop paying for your crappy department and start another.

Ahh so you are suggesting there would be no government police force at all?

You just want there to be an unlimited number of armed gangs who can be hired to offer protection services. that sounds safe and completely not something that would be massively abused. 

'Lol' is not an argument.

[RationalMadman] As an intelligent progressive

..... lol

You did not answer the question.

because the question made no sense. My answer explained why the question made no sense. You aren't forced to pay a specific price. You can vote out the people in charge and bring in other people to run things if you don't like how it is being run. 

I've signed no social contract and neither have you. 

nope, but by choosing to remain here, you are agreeing to it. If you don't want to agree to it, you can leave. It's really simple. 

translation: I'll keep screaming like a lunatic and be ignored by everyone.

Man's natural state is being homeless, starved, becoming ill. None of these things are an attack.

that's just stupid. Man's natural state is working together as a group or a tribe and everyone contributing to that group's success.

Your argument is that you don't want to do that. You are the one that doesn't like man's natural state. 

2.) Of course there are groups that agree with me. Hec the US revolution was basically only a slight corruption from the truth.

lol the american revolution was about no taxation without representation. IE they had no problem with taxes, they just wanted to have a say in the government in exchange for those taxes. The british insisted on charging them taxes but giving them no representation in government. So no, they absolutely had nothing to do with your nonsense. 

Theft = taking without consent

this is false. Theft is illegally taking without consent.

If you steal something, and then police come and take it back, are the police stealing? They are taking something from you without your consent. By your definition they would be.

.... Tolls, of all the public services none is more susceptible to moral funding than roads. There is ZERO freeloader problem with roads.

this only works in high traffic areas. It is profitable to build roads near major cities and charge a toll. It is not profitable to build roads in rural areas because they don't get enough traffic. If we relied only on companies to build roads, much of the country would not be useable. 

companies that send out mail, pay for that mail to be delivered.

uh huh. And without government intervention, large chunks of the world would lose mail access because it isn't profitable to deliver there.

The profit motive and the public good do not overlap.

yes, yes it would. It would be an insanely difficult and bureaucratic task for both average people as well as the government. 

C-O-M-P-U-T-E-R-S

come on, you're really 12 aren't you. you think "C-O-M-P-U-T-E-R-S" will make it easy for an average person to decide which of dozens and dozens of contracts they need to sign and which they don't?

And that it would make it easy for government services to do their jobs when they have to constantly try to figure out who they're dealing with and if they are up to date on their payments before doing their job? Only a small child could believe that.

They can promise to try, and be paid a bonus for succeeding; moving on...

gotcha. So you acknowledge that it would work exactly the way it does now. All they have to do is say they tried, and they aren't held liable. 

Police

$5,521,807,171/year as previously established.

http://council.nyc.gov/html/budget/2017/pre/056%20NYPD.pdf

So this is how I would propose the main police charter (government action) would be setup.

I would offer (at least) four different funding categories: Basic, patrol, investigations, and support. The last three would have a locality option and are called additionals.

The locality option would be whether you want to fund police activity across the city or just in particular areas (perhaps only where your house and store are located).

Basic - administration overhead, 100 detectives, and at least ~10,000 uniformed officers to respond to 911 calls and perform city wide patrol. The administration costs are $680,243,000. For 10,000 uniforms $1,686,354,000/2. For 100 detectives $9,500,406

Total: 1.533 billion. Per capita: $179 / person*year

Funding this would be the minimum before an emergency failure contingency is triggered. Basically every year at any time in that year anyone can pay (or promise to pay) money for the next year. If the basic budget (1.5 billion) is not met by the end of the year, the police department identifies one of the precincts that paid the least and withdraws active police protection from that area and cuts the baseline to whatever the funding level reached and fires cops.

Then a couple things could happen. The area could be taken over by gangs in which case the police would probably quarantine the area as some kind of post-apocalyptic death-zone. All sane people would leave the area, business would fail within the area, and criminals would migrate out as they run out of loot. People would see what happened to the precinct and pay more, or they would say 'fuck that' and the same thing would keep happening until the city was destroyed (failure mode).

Paying for additionals would not be allowed until the basic funding had been achieved. After basic funding additional funding would be nearly continuous.

If funding for additional patrols in a precinct is $1 million then the police department will assign $1,000,000/$175,242 = 5.7 patrol cars (full time). Add $95,000 and you get a dedicated detective. If funders do not specify a location the department can assign the funds to the locations that they think needs the most help.

If the per capita funding was $600/year the entire operations of the NYPD could be maintained. I believe a stable culture could easily exist where this amount was provided. It is not against human nature.

I would not leave it at that though, I would include systems of criminal insurance and positive/negative feedback to motivate both funders and police. It would also mitigate the freeloader problem significantly.

To start with I would modify the above to add another option, for the investigations additional which specifies whether non-contributors are supported or not. What that means will become clear in a moment.

So the NYPD would offer a $160/year criminal insurance plan. In this basic plan $100 of that goes to the basic police fund while $20 goes to an insurance account (for the whole city). Anyone who subscribes is known as a basic police contributor (BPC or PC1). [the remaining $40 goes to corrections and prosecution]

Under this plan you are entitled to three stolen property investigations per year and an insurance payout which depends on how much is in the insurance fund. An example would be 1:1.5 for unrecovered stolen property up to $5000 and 1:2 for unrecovered stolen property where no conviction was attained. Furthermore you are entitled to $10,000 if you are assaulted and no conviction was attained. A fraud risk exists, but let's be honest, defrauding the police is not a viable strategy long term.

This is a low per capita cost, for a household it would be $316.8. I expect that nearly all citizens would be PC1. For the middle to high earners it is a small price to pay for insurance and low earners tend to be in crime ridden neighborhoods where theft and assault are considerable risks.

At 90% subscription rate the fund would be growing by 0.9* 8,550,405*$20 = $153,900,000/year

Although not enforceable, it is likely that any private insurance companies would not insure anything against theft without at least PC1 because it would mean the police would not make an effort to recover stolen property.

There would be additional levels which would provide much higher payout maxes. ($320 PC2, $640 PC3, $1280 PC4, etc...)

The insurance fund would grow rather quickly for the higher levels and once the fund reaches some arbitrary but consistent point. The money could be used to increase the general efficiency of crime fighting by:

- Offering bonuses to officers and to entire precincts for reaching certain low levels of crime or exceptional police work.

- Offering bounties for information on criminals or tips which prevented a crime

- Installing cameras, RF trackers on expensive items, rewards to convicts who don't re offend (or GPS trackers on them to aid in suppression)

Courts & Corrections

1,325,603,205 for corrections and

121,483,783+61,895,832+97,948,355+59,717,763+10,827,147 = $351,872,880

(Judge salary not considered)

Total: 1.677 billion

Per capita $196.19

Like police I would give people options on how to fund this and link it to the criminal insurance. As noted above $40, $80, $120 were part of the criminal insurance plans.

However a significant portion of the money would come from punishment funds. Essentially a crime is a crime, and some crimes are worse than others; but it costs money to keep people in prison and the people who 'vote' for longer prison terms should fork over some cash.

There will be other criteria before a change in prison terms is enacted and no one's sentence can be extended after being sentenced but one of the checks will be the commitment of funds implied by the extra time.

Even if victim less crimes like prostitution and drug possession somehow make it into the system (which they would not if it was made correctly) people would seriously ask themselves whether it is worth it to keep so many people locked up for "their own good."

Also note that corruption grows easily where the money flows no matter what. That is very true with prisons.

So far we have $800 yearly per capita cost for law and order. That is 7% of the yearly surplus per capita median income. Still have plenty more to go.

If someone provides a service or good, regardless of whether it is truly critical; do they get to set the price and use force to extract it from you?

these are public assets. We own them. If we don't like the price, we can easily remove the people in charge of them. It is true you are forced to pay, but you have control.

Why does anyone owe the government anything?

because you are part of society. Anyone who is part of that society is required both by law and social contract to contribute to the prosperity and betterment of that society.

If you don't want to do that, you are free to leave at any time assuming you can find another nation willing to take you, or some deserted island somewhere. You are not forced to pay taxes. You are not forced to be part of society. Only if you want to live here. 

It is illegal to threaten someone with physical violence for failing to agree to your terms (unless you're a government). This is thus irrelevant to "the rich" (unless they are part of a corruption scheme with the government).

what are you talking about? Our society is full of these threats. If you fail to work, you will be ruthlessly punished. Evicted, starved, left to be sick and die.

Since virtually all businesses have been progressively paying less and less, while costs go up, businesses have been driving millions into poverty knowing that their workers have no choice but to work. 

Logic agrees with my view. (logic created it)

so let me get this straight, there is literally no organized group in the world that agrees with you. Everyone knows your argument is stupid and would lead to the collapse of life as we know it, but "logic agrees with it". That's the debate version of "my mom thinks i'm cool". 

Government does not require theft. Clear your mind of prejudices you learned as a child and you will see this is obvious.

explain that then. How does a government govern if it cannot collect money with which to do anything? How does it pay anyone to do anything?

That implies that people have a right to vote that rape is acceptable. True or false?\

Rape was legal, not that long ago. I just described that to you. And yes, assuming they could convince enough people to support such a measure they could do so again. For example, some states are currently in the process of trying to go backwards and steal women's right to control their own body. that is obviously wrong, but being done right now.

Society still does lots of terrible things that in 50-100 years we will look back on and wonder how people could be so barbaric.

You sign a contract to use the roads?

I mean, think about if they didn't pay for mail and companies couldn't mail out bills or other information. It would wreak havoc on businesses. 

The average current annual tax form has hundreds of check boxes. It wouldn't be hard.

yes, yes it would. It would be an insanely difficult and bureaucratic task for both average people as well as the government. 

No one can guarantee that they can reach you in time to save you from being mugged, or assaulted etc.

The modern high speed internet, with streaming video, 3d graphics, and so on, may not exist without pornography and video games. Society benefits as much by its vices as by its virtues, so there is more to consider when formulating prescriptions than merely harm reduction.

That's probably one of the most untrue and worst defenses I could imagine.

Face the facts.

You are supporting a load of perverts by their own admission.

I sure as hell would immediately doubt the expertise of any doctor who refused to explain until we were well outside of my knowledge base.

So tell me... what do you do once your knowledge base has been exceeded?

And while you ponder that question here's another for you; Where did your knowledge base come from?

Exactly how much of the information you claim to know about the world came from first hand experience or scientific experimentation you conducted yourself?

"Hey! Don't use gay as derogatory term."

Seems better to object to someone being insulted for what they are,

Than the word.

If what they are is not objectionable.

God! I'm so happy someone has the balls to say this. Thank you @ADreamOfLiberty . You are so spot on with this. Far too many people take this kind of thing way too lightly.

People, P-L-E-A-S-E listen to this guy. His advice is sound.

Do you agree that people should be called the way they want to be called?

Porn. Sexually explicit entertainment.

Translation: I'm wrong about something.

The point of a debate for me is to find out where I am wrong.

Yes... that's true; but it's... odd to say both are your opinions. You should just call them propositions if you already know one is false.

If X is a critical service, then we all have a duty to pay into the system make sure those services are provided.

no, that is not correct. There are lots of critical services that don't need direct government control because the profit motive and the public good largely overlap. For example, telecommunications. Companies have a profit motive to build bigger, better communications systems to provide better service and get more customers. You don't need the government to build it themselves. But there are services where the profit motive and public good do not overlap.

So you claim they owe the worker despite the worker agreeing to work for the pay they did.

lol your argument is terrible. So if I tell a worker, work for 1 dollar a day or I'll kill you, as long as they agree to it that is fine.

You first, mine is the civilized worldview. You stand in defense of the diseases of civilization while I defend its core.

are you high? literally nowhere in the world agrees with your view.

Literally every country collects taxes and could not exist if they didn't.

fair enough. but you don't have a right to not pay taxes. and taxes are not immoral.

...and if the government decided that a person was hoarding their body and it was time to pay their fair share would it be any less rape because people voted on it?

I mean, by definition yes. Men used to have a legal right to have sex with their wives, even against their will. It was perfectly legal. Now we recognize that women are legal people too with legal protections separate from their husbands, so now they have a right to control their body. So yes, absolutely. People have the right to vote on what is or isn't acceptable and as we change over time, what is acceptable changes too. 

[RationalMadman] I am breaking the site rule of cross-thread contamination but the thing is how can you say that less than a week ago and now say what you just said:

[Best.Korea] I have multiple opinions that sometimes contradict each other.

Humans are the worst species that ever existed. By all standards.

All standards? What about the standard of achieving space travel?

So I asked if you would accept US steel taking an arbitrary amount from you and providing society with an arbitrary amount of steel.

Isn't this what is essentially happening with the current corporate welfare? This is reality, not a hypothetical.

Yup. They most certainly will.

Next is beastality then necrophilia. 

This world needs to be nuked if pedophilia comes before bestiality or necrophilia.

Exactly, that's what honest people do when they can't steal.

But do they have a right to not set a price, tell you that you're benefiting from what they do, and then take what they deem fit and use it for what they deem fit?

you aren't making any sense. You are comparing a business producing and selling a product to a government providing a service. Your rambling is just nonsense. 

But the state provides services that are critically important. Therefore we all have a duty to pay into the system to make sure those services are provided. 

Every time they pay another person or company they are paying their fair share. You may have known the fact, but you do not understand the implication. A man who interacts by honestly gained consent cannot be a thief.

No, they are one rich person paying another rich person. That is not "paying their fair share" if both those rich men made their fortunes using public funds, then amass huge amounts of wealth while their workers struggle to stay afloat and the resources they took advantage of to amass their wealth wither. 

Thus no one owes taxes.

lol so go live on a deserted island somewhere.

If you want to live in a country, you pay taxes. Im sure small children could explain it to you. 

If I built the parking lot the analogy is sound.

lol no. Because just because you own a parking lot, does not mean you get to determine the laws that apply to that parking lot. 

Two wolves and a sheep voting on what's for dinner.

ok. so let's remove the vote. the same thing would be for dinner. You pretending like voting is the problem in that scenario is just childish. 

Apply your logic to consent for sexual contact, how do you feel about that?

lol seriously? we do. We have laws that determine what kind of sexual contact is ok. Those laws are decided by the government, which is voted on by the people. How is this news to you?

Are they in the room with us now? You seem to have google confused with "everyone".

Google is the gateway to what they have to say genius.

We base it on whether other experts in the feild regard the individual or the organization as credible.

Still believe the best argument determines the truth regardless of the speaker? Yes I never stop believing that.

You continue to pretend that's where our disagreement is because you can't support your own nonsense with straightforward honest argument.

We're not talking about how truth is ultimately determined.

We're talking about how we deal with the fact that we cannot be experts in everything.

Your position appears to be that we never trust any information that we have not verified for ourselves personally

...

Actually no you can't accept the facts you were told because you did not verify those yourself so instead you have to perform all of the experiments yourself in order to establish that the human body does in fact work the way they're telling you it does in order to then read all of the test results for yourself in order to determine that their medical assessment is accurate... Then you'll approve.

which followed to it's logical end means if your doctor tells you that you need surgery then you will not accept until you have seen all of the test results and had someone explain every fact of how the human body operates before you approve...

By then you'll be dead, but at least you didn't appeal to an authority before you formed a belief.

Our modern world would not have been possible without taxes and government services. 

I would have hoped a history buff would know that in the USSR bread was an essential government service.

you don't know what the word service means do you? Because bread, by definition, is not a service.

I meant when they get something from a store they pay for it.

I don't believe anyone has ever claimed otherwise. So it's a wierd thing to say. 

They owe nothing but what they agreed to pay, same as the rest of us.

no one "agrees to pay" taxes.

"I didn't agree to parking laws, so I'm not going to pay my parking ticket"

It's childish.

Individuals each have the same amount of say in this. A rich person should have no more say in this than a poor person. 

notice that everyone from all of the fifty states, NASA, the UN, the WHO, and oh yeah, every other country on earth is working on ways - not to prove that there is a coming water crisis - but working on how they're going to address it. You know what you won't be able to find? A single credible organization anywhere on earth claiming otherwise.

But what do any of these people know, they're only authorities on the subject so according to your epistemology that's reason in and if itself to dismiss them.

BTW I'm really curious, what do you do for a living and how long have you been doing it?

If I wanted to debate the long term viability of the Earth's fresh water supply I'd issue the challenge.

Reentry, so say only if they had lived in California in the past five years.

that might work

You either can't name one, or you don't know what the word communist means. 

Without public services, most companies couldn't function. So yes, it is critical that they pay back into to system to help support it since we all rely on those public services. 

...

But the state provides services that are critically important. Therefore we all have a duty to pay into the system to make sure those services are provided. 

And it sounds like you are suggesting like life without any taxes would be some kind of paradise. that is literally not possible. society would collapse and some other society that does use taxes (literally all of them) would take over. 

...

this is dumb. I mean, should fire fighters charge the person whose house is burning and refuse to put it out if they can't pay?

Trace any economic interaction. The rich pay there way in every conceivable measure the same as the rest of us.

no, not really. They pay a lower tax rate than you do. In some cases billionaires can actually pay $0 in tax. 

They did already (excluding fraud and corruption as always). That's what the money means.

what? the fact that they have money does not mean they paid their fair share.

The rich constantly use loop holes and tax havens to avoid paying their fair share.

It's remarkably stupid to think that all of the worlds experts who overwhelmingly agree...

...and there it is, the delusion of universal consensus among a priesthood. Too many appeals to authority and your brain falls off.

I would point you to resources that could explain it to you but I seem to be unable to find anyone who can credibly explain it who's not an expert. I wonder why that is?

A thought occurred to me.

If this is achievable with chicken it must also be with human muscle.

I was just wondering what status the pro-life lobby would attribute lab grow human tissue.

And then we could also question whether lab grown human tissue should be regarded as a valid protein source.

We could actually grow and eat ourselves.....Wonder how the vegan lobby would view this.

That tells me that it is probably pretty normal for kids to witness a certain furtive amount of  adults having sex and this may even be an important part of the process of growing up and understanding sex.

• Matt Gaetz bragged about fucking a famous porn-star when she was 17 on the floor of Congress, with a nude picture of her in hand. The Republicans are the porn star fan-boys- they go to all the conventions.