On Mon, 5 Dec 2016 03:26:36 -0000 (UTC), Roger Blake
wrote:
On 2016-12-04, Stormin' Norman wrote:
Institutionalized theft, using your logic one could call Social
Security a Ponzi scheme. However, both statements are wrong as we the
people have legislated and legalized taxation, social security and
conscription. If you did not have a say in these legislations, you
might have a point, however, our society has deemed them to be legal.
Social Security *is* a Ponzi scheme by any reasonable definition of the term.
Actually, the most significant difference is that Ponzi Schemes are
illegal and Social Security is legal.
I do not see government as having any special status and judge its
actions the same way that I would any individual or private organization.
If it is immoral for an individual or a private concern to do something,
as far as I am concerned it is also immoral for a government to do
it. People have been conditioned from an early age to give the State
special status and dispensation, particularly when it uses the excuse of
"the will of the people." I don't buy it.
If you object, you should petition your representatives for change and
the redress of your grievance.
Every action of government is based in violence and coercion, same as the
mafia. The fact that we have some say over who the dons are going to be
does not change this. That's the reason that in the US, government was
supposed to be limited and constrained to a set of specific functions
laid out in a written document. Unfortunately it has managed to weasel
out of its chains and has now metasticized into virtually every facet
of our lives.
I disagree, many actions of a totalitarian government are edicts,
handed down by one or a few people who are not the duly elected
representatives of the people. Those edicts are enforced through the
threat or actual use of violence and intimidation.
In the USA, our duly elected representatives pass laws which are
reasonably considered to be the will of the people. Any citizen has
the right to protest and seek to change those laws through their
representatives without fear of retaliation or retribution from the
government.
Should you opt to engage in unlawful behavior up to and including
anarchy, the people have deemed that our laws should be enforced by
our representatives and their supervised agents.
In other words, if you consider the enforcement of laws established by
a representative democracy to be "violence and coercion" then you do
not understand our system of government, refuse to work within the
framework of that system or are anarchistic by nature and have no
place living in a civilized society. I am not sure what your options
are, possibly you could find a way to emigrate to and survive on Mars.
I will say it once again, if citizens object to laws and regulations,
they should be petition their representatives. The government is what
we make of it. Yes, it is a slow and tedious process, but that is how
a representative democracy works.
I am not familiar with Heinlein or "Starship Troopers" so I am not in
a position to comment.
In short, Starship Troopers described a society in which the right to full
citizenship had to be earned via voluntary Federal service. In the book
only such full citizens were able to vote or hold public office. Individuals
were free not to serve but in that case would live under those constraints.
(Though they were otherwise entitled to the same rights and protections.)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starship_Troopers