[Platt]
No. The state like everyone else knows that food is the product of work.
[Arlo]
Wrong. If a prisoner refuses to work, but desires to eat, the state must (and
does) feed him.
[Platt]
I guess you don't see the irony in saying wealth is a low value compare to life
yet see forced redistribution of wealth as necessary for life. You can run from
the issue of taxation, but you can't hide.
[Arlo]
Who's "hiding" from the issue of taxation? Taxation to construct social
infrastructure is a great thing, one which enables freedom. Every time our
armed forces secure our protection, or I drift on a rowboat fishing on a public
lake, or I see a "poor" person receive necessary medical treatment, I am
grateful for it.
[Platt]
It was the tipping point in the American Revolution and the constant reminder of
the state's power over its citizens, threatening their inalienable right to
life and liberty, as our Declaration, which you denigrate, so truly states.
[Arlo]
Denigrate the Declaration??? My god, Platt, how low you stoop!
The American Revolution was about taxation without representation, not about
taxation alone. If you are now switching the argument to declare that taxation
is a violation of liberty, then let's drop all taxation and fund the military
through private donations and charity. Let's abolish pubic libraries and
replace them with B&Ns. Let's make our public lands and roads waterways toll
access only. Let's privatize the police, fire and emergency services.
"Denigrate the Declaration"... you take the cake.
However, here's an interesting moral problem. Let's say you are faced with a
gunman who demands you wallet. If you do not give it to him, he threatens to
shoot the guy standing next to you. Since you wallet is "your liberty", and
this is more valuable than "life", I assume for you the moral thing to do would
be to let him shoot the person next to you and take your precious pocketful of
liberty home?
What underlies all this is your need to place the value of a human being on
their wealth. A poor person is "not valuable" (by virtue of his wallet), and so
if he dies no harm done. We measure who lives and who dies by who has money and
who does not. Sick.
Taxation enables freedom, and national healthcare demonstrates that human life
is not measured by one's wallet... despite what the neocon capistrocracy may
want everyone to believe ("But here in New York it seemed as if when you're
poor you're just poor. And that means you're nobody. Really nobody. And if
you're rich you're really somebody" (LILA) That sums up your position
entirely.)
"Whenever you kill a human being you are killing a source of thought too. A
human being is a collection of ideas, and these ideas take moral precedence
over a society. Ideas are patterns of value. They are at a higher level of
evolution than social patterns of value." (LILA)
As for the haughty capistocracy, its important to also remember that Pirsig said
"It's not the "nice" guys who bring about real social change. "Nice" guys look
nice because they're conforming. It's the "bad" guys, who only look nice a
hundred years later, that are the real Dynamic force in social evolution."
(LILA)
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