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Pastimes : My House -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: TimF who wrote (2904)	10/21/2002 5:46:01 AM
From: Solon	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 7689

"But would you call handing over your money to an armed mugger a voluntary transaction" Yes. If I had a contract with him to paint my house for the money...then it would be uncoerced. The point is that all actions involve an element of compromise with regard to other possible choices. One needs to be sensible about the matter. What are we not "required" to do to some extent? breathing? putting on our pants to go outdoors in public? not putting on clothes at a nudist camp? We do what is required of us by our own values--taking into account the influences in our environment of people and things. If one is to salvage any sort of meaningful distinction in language, then a generalizing comment which considers "everything" required as being NOT voluntary...cannot be regarded as terribly useful or condign. In the Constitutional Democracy which is the U.S. Republic....the people are both governing and governed. The people whom represent the State at any particular time have enforceable obligations as do all the people. They each rely on the Constitution and the Courts to regulate and enforce their expectations of conduct and of justice. This sounds like a de facto "deal"--like an "agreement"--to me. This latter discussion sprang from my perplexity over your usage of the word "seize" when referring to your payment of taxes. This seemed to me to be either an intentional and deliberate distortion, or a peculiar point of view. Authorities do indeed "seize" possessions on rare occasions when due process has established a breach of law by any person--individual or corporate--inside or outside government. But if we are to use the word "seize" to indicate the legal compliance with the responsibilities of the Constitution...then how can comunication remain clear and effective? Yes, I understand that seize and voluntary and most words have shades of meaning that may inform different contexts of usage. But when I hear a person state that the Tax Authority "seized" his property, it does not occur to me that he means to convey the idea that he put a cheque into an envelope and mailed it to the Tax Authority in order to avoid being convicted of criminal behaviour by a jury of rational peers. Instead, I immediately think that the person HAS indeed BEEN convicted of a breech, and has had his property confiscated for liquidation at sheriff's auction after repeated refusals to make matters right, or to prevail in a court of law. So my questioning of the word "seize" had nothing to do with whether or not you are able to make a cogent argument that your tax rates should be raised, lowered, or in some way modified: it was merely to express that I did not find your statement to be clear, and that I therefore thought it likely to cloud the meaning of our discussion and to delay any possibility of reaching a common understanding. As to your saying that it is wrong to "require that someone pay such a big chunk of their income."--There will always be people to make such claims REGARDLESS of the actual percentage being taken. As you know, people are organized into various groups for the purpose of seeing their own opinions being translated into laws. And I doubt that any single solitary person will ever believe that the law has got it absolutely RIGHT. I suppose a megalomaniacal dictator might consider it to be so, but in democracies we all must accept the compromise of many disparate opinions which represent the very real differences in the interests and circumstances of people. We cannot hope that any determination is thus entirely "right" for everyone. The best we can hope for is that everyone can live with the ongoing compromises without feeling they are so "wronged" that they need to go outside the system of checks and balances or to rely on other than the Constitution and the Courts for relief...