Minimum wage -- an education in how not to debate

http://www.dol.gov/compliance/guide/minwage.htm#Penalites

Are you trying to say that someone pointing a gun at you and forcibly locking you in a cage full of rapists is not immoral in the same way rape and murder is? I respectfully disagree. And do not try to point out that it is 'just a fine.' If you do not pay the fine then they put you in prison. If you resist arrest by self defence then they will kill you in your own home.

No, this is a contradiction. You would have the reader believe that it is immoral to pay someone less than $8/hour. So immoral, in fact, that you are willing to use or advocate the use of LETHAL force to stop them paying less than $8/hour. However you make a second 'exception' to this rule that if they work for FREE, then that's perfectly fine. This is not how moral rules work. This is the equivalent of saying that murder is wrong, but when Hitler does it for the good of the Third Reich, it's fine.

As the rest of your post misses the point in the same way, I won't address it.

But I will say this: The science of ethics holds the greatest power over life and death known to man. You are playing with fire when you make statements about ethics. Bad/incorrect ethics have lead to the mass murder of literally billions of people throughout history. Bad ethics are the causes of religious and political war, poverty, famine, communism, theft, rape and murder on every scale, and most especially on the grand scales. When you make an ethical statement you had better be DAMNED sure you know what you are advocating. Otherwise stay out of it. You wouldn't run into a hospital and start cutting people up with no knowledge of medicine, but you're perfectly happy to run into an ethical argument and start advocating the use of lethal force with no knowledge of philosophy.

Humans are ethical calculators. From the earliest age you are integrating knowledge and asking questions about the world and about your actions. You take an apple: good or bad? You solve a puzzle: correct or incorrect? You have something taken from you by force: just or injust? Someone pushes you over in the playground: Was their action right or wrong? You push someone else over in the play ground: Did you act as you wish to be treated or were you inconsistent with your own values? It is precisely for this reason that ethics -- which is manifest as a moral code in the conscience of each person -- is the most powerful force in the human race -- more powerful even than an atomic bomb. Afterall, it is only a moral code that can tell a physicist whether he should or should not invest his efforts in the creation of an atomic bomb.

Consider how many people have died and will die due to bad, incorrect and inconsistent ethics. Then consider if you want to be a part of that atrocity before you come and debate ethics with no knowledge of philosophy.

Ethics is the most important and lacking thing in the human race at this time. We have advanced medicine, physics, chemistry, mathematics and engineering. Yet what people lack as the moral clarity to treat eachother as human beings. You stand here and advocate the use of LETHAL FORCE against people for nothing more than their own private business between themselves. You are a third party, an outsider and yet you presume to WALK INTO SOMEONES LIFE WITH A GUN, loaded, and point it at their temple with your finger on the trigger and say "DO X OR I'LL SHOOT". This is what you advocate when you say 'there ought to be a law', this is what you advocate when you support the minimum wage. No this is not abstract. Not anymore abstract than the gun at the hip of the policeman who comes to talk to you when you're found to have paid $7.90/hr instead of $8.00. Not anymore abstract than the rape dungeon he will drag you off to if you refuse to pay his fine. It is not abstract or ideal at all. It is in fact the most real of anything in any of this discussion.

I finally put this to you and anyone else reading. If you truly believe that in some situation X, the use of LETHAL FORCE is morally necessitated then you should be willing to pick up a gun and use that force yourself. If you are not then you are inconsistent and a coward.

 

Well this is simple to prove. Even a parking ticket is backed by lethal force.

Let's watch.

I come home one day and find a parking ticket / notice / offence on my windscreen. I throw it in the bin.

Next I get a notice in the mail, that I am required to pay a fine. I ignore the notice. Time passes. I get a second notice. I ignore that one too.

Now one of two things happens. They either cancel my license, or they come to my house and arrest me for non-payment of fines. If they do the first, then next time I am driving and get pulled over by a cop, I will be arrested. (Incidentally if I refuse to pull over they will pursue me and use force to arrest me.) And if they do the latter, I will be arrested at my house.

When I am being arrested, if I resist arrest with the same force being used to arrest me, the cop will pull out his firearm. And if I pull out one to defend myself, he will shoot me.

Thus even a parking ticket is in fact backed by LETHAL FORCE. All it comes down to is the simple fact that if I disagree with these people about whether or not it is right to park my car outside my own house, then they will come and use guns to force their way, and if I resist with equal force, then they will shoot me.

You can't weasel out of the fact that under all those pointless terms and bureaucratic paperwork, there is a gun. The whole apparatus of the state is based on the initiation of force. If there were not the threat of LETHAL FORCE behind the laws and ordinances then they would be voluntary and compliance would be up to you -- like in the same way attending university is voluntary. No one shows up at your house with a gun if you don't attend you classes. But if you don't pay you parking ticket or your taxes they most certainly will.

So no, it's not rhetorical. It's very much the opposite. It's real. LETHAL FORCE is the final argument at the end of every statist sentence. This is why cops carry guns.

Now, I know what sort of pointless counter-argument you are going to devise in advance, so let me counter it pre-emptively. You are going to say something like 'well they can take you to prison without shooting you' and so on and so forth. So let's cast it a little differently to gain some perspective.

You run a small restaurant in a quiet neighbourhood. One day a gang moves in and starts demanding weekly ransoms from every business in town 'or else'. You did no elect to have this gang represent you, and you did not contract or agree to their presence on your property or in your life. But because they are threatening you, you pay them. Now over time they develop an elaborate system. If you are late on your weekly ransom, they will send you a notice demanding payment. And if you ignore that one, they send you a second notice. If you ignore that one, they pass out the word to 'bring you in' to the gang headquarters, to deal with you. If you resist them when they are bringing you in, they will shoot you. If you refuse to cooperate with them in their headquarters they threaten to lock you in a cell, and if you resist, they will shoot you.

Ok. Physically, in actual tangible concretes, tell me in what way the above scenario is different from the parking ticket. Would you argue that the gangsters are not using the threat of lethal force to take your property?

 

A lien is backed by force as well. If the company or bank does not comply with the conditions of the lien then guns will be used against them either to force their business to shut down (i.e. revoking business licenses) or to extract money from them by force (i.e. fine) thus setting off the same chain of events backed by the same force you are denying exists.

Here is direct evidence from the very people you are arguing on behalf of that fines are backed by guns:

Source: http://resources.lss.bc.ca/pdfs/pubs/ifYouCantPayYourCourtFine.pdf

You still flatly refuse to acknowledge a contraction while stating it in broad daylight:
You say it's 'OK' to work for nothing -- i.e. volunteer all of your time.
You admit it's 'OK' to be paid nothing as an intern -- that is: exchange your labour in return for education.
You say its 'OK' t be paid for your work.

So if all of those things are 'OK' then why is a combination of them not OK? For this you have no answer. But according to your position you are willing to pull a gun on me if I disagree with you and go ahead and hire someone at $7/hr. Revolting. :sick:

REGULATION IS ALWAYS THROUGH GUNS. It's just a fancy word for 'don't disagree or I'll shoot you.'

Again you don't know even know the law.

http://www.bclaws.ca/EPLibraries/bclaws_new/document/ID/freeside/00_96113_01#section84.2

I suggest you read the body of nonsense you are defending before you come here and defend it. Basically if you don't follow these 'voluntary guidelines' they will pull you before a judge and require you to answer questions. Upon which if you refuse you will be locked in a cell and be given court fines -- which if you don't pay, you will be locked in another cell for longer. If at any point you were to resist this process with the same force they use to compel you, then you would be shot. If you do answer their questions, the same thing will happen. You get a fine or a lien. If you refuse to pay they lock you up. If you refuse to be locked up then they will shoot you.

You are trying to call something its opposite in order to baffle or confuse your reader. If regulation is voluntary as you are suggesting then it would not be a law. If it is not voluntary (as it is not) then it is backed by the use of lethal force. There is no middle of the road sophism, only the hard real absolutes of: If you do X you will be threatened by men with guns, and if you do Y you will not.

Finally for anyone who could find no tangible physical real difference between the scenarios I presented in my last post -- that is: between the gang who moves in and starts demanding weekly ransoms and the people calling themselves 'the state' -- I will take this as a default on your position. If you freely admit through default that the people doing business as 'the state' are nothing more than a gang of criminals then you have no business defending them further.

 

This is just stupid. Based on this reasoning no one ever would have hired gas attendants and the job would never have existed anywhere. But obviously until some point in US history, and in most other places, attendants were hired. Unless you are trying to posit some fundamental change in human nature has occurred between the 1970s and today, I think you are blowing it out your ass.

So, again you are arguing that no one has the legal capacity to enter into a contract. Therefore how should the world work? Should we have a central planning board which tells you where to work, live, and who to mate with? And if you disagree they take you around back and shoot you? Either people are free to voluntarily associate -- and this means they are free to enter into binding contracts also -- or they are not. If you choose the latter you must accept a world in which everyone is told what to do -- they can't choose anything for themselves!

Some people may benefit, in the same way if you rob people with over $100,000 and give it to people with only $50,000, some people will benefit. But it is immoral to use guns to take property and tell people with whom and with whom they may not free associate.

There is no such moral obligation, because there are no unchosen positive obligations -- because this would be slavery. If you really believe other people's suffering is a blank cheque on your life then go to Africa right now, sell everything you own, and give all your food, clothing and resources to the first person you find worse off than yourself. And then when they blow all your resources on their own vices and bad habits you can work for them for nothing and make them everything they ever wanted but were too immoral to have on this earth. If you believe in this positive moral obligation then you must do this. You must commit yourself to enslavement to your lessers -- and protip: there are about 6.5 billion of them.

 

Equivocation. Your use of the word 'freedom' here does not entail negative rights. Your use of the word 'slavery' here does not entail ownership of one person by another. You have redefined your words by way of fallacy in order to make something voluntary sound like something involuntary.

Tangibly, physically, show me in what way poor people are enslaved to rich people by the formation of VOLUNTARY contracts. Then we'll discuss that. Otherwise if you can't speak in concrete real terms, then stop speaking.

The rest of your post advances the same set of equivocated terms and fallacies so I won't bother going into it.

In otherwords, this is just a long way of you admitting that Liens are backed by force. If you don't allow them to seize your property they will use guns to put you in a cage. If you defend yourself, they will shoot you. This a Lien is backed by -- enforced by -- the threat and use of lethal force.

Further you deliberately misuse the term 'stealing'. It is impossible to steal your own property, as by definition stealing is taking something that does not belong to you. It is this kind of deliberate misuse of terms that makes your debating dishonest. An honest debater clearly defines and sticks with terms, and when he misuses them it is only by accident and not by way of attempting to make his opposition believe a fallacy.

Trade is not backed by force. If you make a contract you acquire voluntarily some positive obligations in exchange for some benefit. (This is called consideration and is an element of every contract.) When you are ''fined" by the state or by a thug, this is an involuntary positive obligation placed on you. To say these are the same (the taking on of a voluntary positive obligation and the being forced to accept a positive obligation at gun point) is to say that there is no difference between free men trading between each other and masters owning slaves. Clearly a contradiction.

Most of the rest of your post rests on the same equivocation and contradictions like the above poster. So I won't bother to address it. If you think I've legitimately missed an important argument, please repost it in concrete terms. I mean in physical real terms as in what is physically actually happening in the scenario, and I will debunk it.

Farmers provide health care to their cattle in order to make that livestock more productive. They also provide feed and shelter. Does this make the cows free? Does this make what the farmer is doing substantially different? No. Healthy livestock makes his business more efficient and likewise, healthy tax cattle make more money.

The people doing business as 'the Government' are criminals by fact of their actions. Robin hood is no less a criminal by the fact that he 'gives to the poor'. Stealing from the rich is sufficient to make him a criminal. Likewise, stealing from people and locking them in rape-cages at gun point, and murdering millions of people abroad are sufficient on their own to make the individuals doing business as 'the Government' criminals. In fact they are organized criminals -- the Government simply being, in every place in the world, the largest and most efficient criminal gang -- I.e. the one that outlasted and subdued all the others.

That a basic activity is criminal (or immoral; the terms can be used interchangeably as far as I am concerned) is not dependent on the outcome or the circumstances of the act. Murder is immoral absolutely, as is rape, as is stealing. These acts are immoral because they involve the initiation of the use of force. This attributes to them an irreducible status of being immoral.

 

You are not offering anything. A Lien is put on you. It is an unchosen positive obligation backed by force.

No, it is not stealing to fail to give them your property. It was stealing (or technically fraud) to assume a contractual obligation that you are unable or unwilling to fulfill. As I already said, it makes no sense to steal your own property, as theft is defined as the taking of something that doesn't belong to you.

What you describe is not trade. Further, contracts formed under duress are invalid because, again, a contract is a voluntary agreement made between consenting adults. It contains no involuntary or force based component. Stop trying to fallaciously insert one.

This is all thats necessary. As I've already said if a basic action is immoral then it is irreducibly so. There is no circumstance or consequence that changes its nature. Ethics does not work that way. It is not the case for example that murder is wrong, but that murdering one person to save 500 is right.

A moral standard must be universally applicable and cannot make special exceptions or rules for pet scenarios or for special 'classes' of people. All human beings possess the same basic attributes: moral faculty (conscience) and free will (volition). Thus there is no reason one person should be exempt or have a special moral rule just for him/her that is distinct and separate from the moral rules universally applicable to everyone else. That is to say: wearing a blue costume or calling yourself 'the Government' does not change your fundamental nature as a human being. Each individual still possess the same basic faculties as a moral actor and thus there is no reason special rules should apply to one person and not to another. If, by contrast, anyone may posit any special exception to universal moral rules, then this is a default on all of morality. You are basically saying 'anything goes' and no one can decide what is or isn't moral. Of course this is nonsense.


So, because moral rules must be universally applicable -- to all people at all times -- there necessarily cannot be any circumstance or outcome that justifies an immoral act.

Further I'd like to add that the people doing business as 'the Government' provide an appallingly poor level of health care and income insurance to people, whilst at the same time using guns to stop people competing with them in these fields, thus depriving people of both their money and any proper healthcare or insurance. This is only the tip of the iceberg and if you take but a moment to do your research you will find the people doing business as 'the Government' have the worst track record of any institution providing these services. So bad that if they were a company operating in the voluntary free market you yourself would call for them to be put in jail.

That you haven't done this research suggests to me you are not ready to debate this topic further. You can start your research here: