This is a science list, but since this thread continues to pursue socialist ideals here, I think it appropriate to revisit the moral argument. The most moral thing you can say about any plan such as this, is that it's a-moral, that there is no such thing as morality, and that you're pursuing the idea for whatever personal reasons you have. For if you believe in morality; if you believe that it's a necessary ingredient to living and working with other people, then you cannot make up rules whereby you steal money through force, from one person, to solve whatever problem you find, to benefit another. That is simply arbitrary, and defeats the entire purpose and scope of morality. It is simply predation.
To any other living organism, you would clearly see that it defeats the life of the organism. If you clip the wings of a bird, would you think that it can still live the life of a bird? If you cut off the tail of a fish, would you think that it can still live the life of a fish? Any time you use force and violence against a living organism, you are defeating the organism's ability to survive. Likewise with humans, if you threaten them with force and violence, you are forcing them to act against their nature. You are defeating their ability to live. You cannot scale this mechanism upwards and infer that since threatening one person would act in a contrary fashion to that person's life, then threatening thousands would bring about some sort of reversal of causality. Threatening thousands and millions of people, simply stifles the society. Morality must be the central tenet of human society -- and it must apply equally to everyone. When we stop using threats of violence to solve our societal problems, then the solutions we put together will be real, workable solutions. Craig
