JKJ;

a) You seem to be equating Swedish social democracy with 'Idi Amin' - that suggests to begin with that you have no sense of proportion.

b) You don't seem to understand there are conflicting senses of what is right ; and sometimes morality is not clear-cut. I support returns on small investment because there we are dealing with people of very limited means who are making a sacrifice by deferring consumption and making an investment. They are investing capital earned through genuine hard work - and IN PROPORTION to that hard work. One more time: That same argument does not apply to the truly wealthy.

c) I never mentioned 'imprisoning' or 'caging' anyone. These kind of suggestions and accusations are blatantly LUDICROUS. You're better off to ask those kind of questions to Tony Abbott...

The arguments are not that complex ; If you don't understand what I'm really trying to say now you probably never well.

Tristan

You yourself have just admitted that you can't see or understand any difference between coercing someone into something, and proceeding with their agreement.

You've just finished telling us that there is in principle no way of knowing whether there's anything wrong or bad with physically attacking someone in order to take their property without their consent, or coercing them to provide services they don't want to provide.

According to your theory, there is *in principle* no way to know whether armed robbery, rape, or slavery are bad. They might be or they might not be. According to you, it depends.

1. If a majority vote for it, that justifies it; if not, then democratic socialism has no justification.
2. It depends on Tristan Ewin's assessment of the relative deprivation of the person benefitting from the aggression. Correct?

Can you see that, if there was a scale from 1 to 100, with 100 being what is morally wrong, oppressive, exploitative, anti-social, confused and stupid, what you've said is right up there at 100? What could be more morally stupid than confusing aggressive physical attack with peaceful social co-operation, and vice versa?

So when I confront you with what you've just said, you hurry to deny that law and policy are enforced. But this is mere foolery. No branch of the State - legislature, executive or judiciary - agrees with your claim that compliance with law is voluntary, and neither do you.

People who don't agree with your policy suggestions are to be forced into obedience, aren't they? That's your whole purpose, else your suggestions would be voluntary, and it would be capitalism, which you despise.

Please answer these questions:
1. are the policies you propose to be voluntary? Or not?
2. what do you understand is the significance of the economic calculation argument to your article?

Yes of course JKJ - everyone who isn't at the extreme end of libertarianism is a Stalinist or a Fascist. All tax is coercive and hence totalitarian. By this reckoning every significant party in the country is totalitarian. Indeed - the vast majority of parties all over the world is such. And by your reckoning all government should be voluntary. So anyone in the country should be free to just 'drop out' and pay no tax. Don't know who will pay for the roads, rail, police, hospitals, schools. But 'that's not your problem' is it?

Society and economy would collapse. But at least there would be "no coercion".

And no - I don't believe in those proposition - I am simply presenting the argument to show that your position is ludicrous.

For the record I consider myself to be a liberal democratic socialist. I am openly critical of socialist authoritarianism. But you don't seem to be able to realise the difference between paying taxes or being thrown in the Gulag.

What a refreshing thread. Actual issues explored in depth and a minimum of mere pissing contests. The author’s interventions in the thread have helped maintain that quality (without exhibiting the sensible ideology that fits my own blind prejudice). I have two broad comments which are dots with no attempt to join them.

1. Those who planned the Russian Revolution failed to take into account something that Marx also failed to take into account – a class which is neither proletarian nor bourgeois and which grew to engulf the USSR, China and all the Communist satellites – the Central Political Bureaucracy. A guide to the nature and evolution of thus vile class from people at the sharp end of it can be found at https://www.marxists.org/history/etol/newspape/isj/1967/no028/kuron.htm . The same class in non-Communist society is the managerialist class including the securocrats. As an aside, the final paragraph of that article also describes the anti-science effect of the CAGW religion.

2. To be free of the contradictions canvassed in this thread, we must first consider the nature and source of wealth. Wealth consists simply of goods and services. It is created only by the hands-on creation of goods and services drawing on the bounty of nature. Capital is accumulated wealth, created by hands-on labour as noted in the preceding sentence which on investment into production is unpacked into appropriate goods and services. Those who invest capital do NOT create wealth, they merely ALLOCATE it, depending on the cheapest workforce, most deprived social and environmental welfare and most supine governments they can find and buy, in their increasingly globalised search to maximise the wealth they can pocket while personally creating diddly squat.

People concerned about the shape of society need to take all this into account in promoting social development which is sustainable, community-controlled, productively progressive and efficient. What to call it? Try “socialism”. Or “wheelbarrow” for that matter.

"I am openly critical of socialist authoritarianism."

No you're not, you're openly advocating it. Your entire ideology depends on forcing people to obey you, and the idea that the state has a right to unlimited power.

When confronted with this fact, you admit that you can't understand the difference between what is right and wrong, and that you don't believe in any limits on state power. You accept that robbery or rape or slavery might be okay, depending on a majority vote, it's not "clear-cut", you really can't say. This means you're operating at the moral and emotional level of an infant, and you need to grow up.

So then, faced with this, you pretend that you don't understand that the enforcement of something means it's going to be enforced. You try to pretend that all you advocate will be voluntary, even while ridiculing the idea. So you know you're talking self-contradictory nonsense, and for some reason think it's okay.

We have established by your agreement, that you are in favour of inequality, oppression and exploitation, and that you are in favour of the ruling class exploiting the working class and the vulnerable.

So that's why I asked you, why do you bother writing these articles when you openly admit that you are talking gibberish?

Tristan, you need to be quiet, go away, learn to *think*, learn to stop blindly worshipping state authority which is all your article is, and learn to stop squarking stupid slogans that ASSUME that we can have a perfect society by forcing people to obey your opinions.

You don't know better than everyone else, what their values should be, you fool.

EmperorJulian

In case you haven't noticed, you can't defend socialism without immediately contradicting yourself, and trying to squirm out of the fact that it depends on forcing the weak and vulnerable to submit to and obey the powerful.

Socialists are in favour of inequality, oppression and exploitation, not against it. That's why Tristan can't bring himself to actually explain what limits on the power of the ruling class he actually believes in. He believes in an unlimited power of the ruling class to exploit and expropriate its victims, and openly admits and advocates it. When I asked him how he would know what economic activity should not be a criminal offence punishable with imprisonment, he can't answer!

By the way, the value of something isn't congealed labour you fool. Why do you bother writing this gabble-yarp?

Why don't you socialists care that what you're saying is untrue? Why do you assume everyone else is as stupid or dishonest as you are?