To truly pay for the stuff you use, you'd have to calculate the amount of money that is spent on all the infrastructure and shared resources you consume, all the investment that went into raising you, and then find some way to earn enough money to pay for it all. Unless you have a very good job, I suspect that you wouldn't be able to do it even if you could find a way of objectively measuring those things.
Heck, you're here, right now, browsing a website paid for by companies you buy products from through advertising, and operating on an infrastructure built up over decades at great expense. So, start writing checks.
This type of hypocrisy disgusts me.
Back on topic, there's a long history of activism prompted by leaks; many regulatory prosecutions of big business wouldn't be possible without whistle blowers who, while violating the rules they agreed to under their terms of employment/laws of their country or whatever, divulge this information in pursuit of a higher social good. If a business is doing things that are outright illegal, or willingly abetting people who wish to commit crimes, then blowing the whistle on it is seen as a net social good.
edited 20th Jan '11 6:38:36 AM by Fighteer
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"Yes, because the world isn't perfect, and everyone hates a tattletale.
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"I'm not sure why it's hypocrisy though. Are you suggesting that an individual is responsible for the entire cost of building an infrastructure?
Fight smart, not fair.I'm referring to your claim to wish not to be bound by the social contract. If that's true, then TAANSTAFL applies. You now owe society for all the benefits you receive by being a part of it. If you are consuming social resources but not actively paying for them, then you are a hypocrite.
edited 20th Jan '11 7:56:49 AM by Fighteer
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"I'm paying for them. I don't steal services or property, ergo I am paying for all of them. Education is a benefit the same way an ad supported television program is a benefit of a company, it's provided in the hope (and well founded statistic) that shoving an education down everyone's throat will make them useful tools later in life, the same way that an ad will encourage purchase of the product, even if it never happens on an individual base.
Fight smart, not fair.So why all the misanthropy?
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"Not arguing "everyone should do this" or "I should be allowed to do this", arguing "people should have the right to do this, regardless of what everyone else wants them to do". I'm honestly relatively satisfied with my variant of the social contract.
Fight smart, not fair.@Barkey, that's kind of the point. If only the people who need a service pay for it, you end up with a massive disproportion of haves to have-nots. That's the whole reason we have social services in the first place. It's the reason why health care reform was set up to mandate coverage - because we can't afford to insure people if only sick people get insurance. It's why taxes exist. Taxes are a means of reapportioning money. You take it from some people and give it to others.
Related to the original topic, rich people have enormous privilege within the social contract. It is therefore their obligation to contribute to the welfare of those not as well off as they, whether it be involuntarily through taxes or voluntarily through charities. If they attempt to welch on that duty by concealing income from taxation, they should be penalized. The system breaks down otherwise.
edited 20th Jan '11 8:33:49 AM by Fighteer
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"Well the real problem is shared resources and I think you guys seem to be confusing how that works. You can pay for say, having your kid go to a private school, or say family medical insurance, but how are you going to calculate the cost of the electric grid, roads, environmental cleanups etc etc. You can't just split that up evenly or any way accurately. That's the point of taxes. As for the rest of it, you're paying taxes to live in a better society, like with respect to education, everybody pays taxes into it even if they don't necessarily use it, so that you all enjoy a better standard of living from the side-effects of having it. If you had purely privatised education, your GDP would be far lower than it is today, and your life would suck. You can then be happy that, relative to other poor americans, you get to have more money but relative to non-americans, your standard of living is horrid.
Anyway, as far as the OP goes, whistleblowers are punished because otherwise powerful entities can't get away with crime. It's how authoritarian government works and generally how oppression operates. You control people through fear. This banker was told to commit crimes and he refused and released the information. He should be applauded for his heroic actions. I dislike the opinion that one cannot speak up if crimes are occurring because somehow it is "dishonourable". He was unable to change the criminal actions by his bank in a non-public fashion so he is forced into this situation.
re: social contracts - The other thing is that even if you don't depend on the services, other people you depend on do. Do you work for or own a business? How many of your customers rely on services you may not use to remain in a stable economic state where they can purchase your products or services?
re: whistleblowers - I would really like to see a government, somewhere, that comes out with strong protection laws for whistleblowers, promising protection from prosecution and media anonymity and all that stuff if the case against their employers is proven.
Share it so that people can get into this conversation, 'cause we're not the only ones who think like this.Hypothetically speaking, suppose there is a law, an official estimate, by the Government, of how much you owe society. Termination on the contract can happen once you can pay thaat "bail". Once you do, you are free from all obligations and rights. You are under a special law. You will have to personally pay for every service you use, Including the walkway, the water, and the air,
Have fun.
'''YOU SEE THIS DOG I'M PETTING? THAT WAS COURAGE WOLF.Cute, isn't he?Well too bad. You don't get to choose everything in your life, because you are born a squalling puking lump of flesh and remain so for many years, and 100% total freedom is nothing more than an illusion. In the meantime, all sorts of different people will be doing all sorts of different things to support you until you have the capacity to make decisions, and therefore you will end up with not only a debt to society but a language, culture, basic value system, social class, birthplace, family, childhood experience and possibly religion that you never asked for, and may potentially be awful, but they're yours anyway.
Meanwhile, the vast and complex engines of social support, public order, and civilization continue to turn and consume money and resources that must be supplied from somewhere.
This reminds me of privileged people bitching about how they didn't ask for X privilege when a disadvantaged person calls them out on waving around said privilege. No one cares if you didn't ask for it. The fact of the matter is that you have it and you have always had it. You will never be able to have infinite choices and control every aspect of your life. Even in complete isolation away from human society, you will not—in fact, you will have almost no freedom or choice in that situation because virtually every action you take will be based around immediate survival ("starving to death" is not a legitimate choice, nor is "predation by mountain lion", and even the most anarchic types, when push comes to shove, will do pretty much anything to avoid them).
edited 20th Jan '11 4:33:53 PM by WoolieWool
Out of Context Theater: Mike K "'Bloody Pussies' cracked me up"Walkway and water make sense, air doesn't. Unless you're suggesting that they provide it?
Fight smart, not fair.This reminds me of an amusing bumper sticker.
"Work harder! Millions of people on welfare depend on you!"
re: Social contracts.
They are still avoidable. For example I know the mountains well enough in Colorado that if I say wanted to get away from the social contract and vanish forever never to be seen again by government, I could do so. Seriously, I know the mountains well enough that once I step into the forests on them, you'll never be able to find me again assuming I don't want you to find me. Once there I'm effectively free to do as I see fit and nobody would be around to tell me otherwise.
Well, I'd like to not pay taxes in the sense that I like having more money, and I assume most people would agree with that sentiment. Sales tax is different than income tax in that way, as you're specifically saddling those who use it more with a greater portion of the burden.
Fight smart, not fair.I prefer having a functioning first world government and some form of welfare state, even a welfare state as pathetic and atrophied as America's, to not paying taxes. It reminds me of a quote I once heard from some Tanzanian politician I forgot the name of a long time ago:
"Everyone wants to go to heaven, but nobody wants to die."
Also sales tax is a horrible tax in that it is regressive—it targets the people who have less wealth and are less able to pay taxes and keep a country running than the people who have more wealth and are more able to pay. For this reason progressive income taxes and things like capital gains and inheritance taxes are the best ways of collecting tax money. The poor have enough problems as it is, they don't need to shoulder a greater proportion of the taxes. Making all taxes direct consumption taxes would literally price the poor out of America, and when the poor get priced out of life they tend to respond by taking up arms and overthrowing the government. You just can't run a modern country without redistribution of wealth. It's not possible.
And this is not even getting into the moral issue of actual human beings actually suffering from total destitution and squalor because you don't want to pay your income tax. The poor are human beings and you're not intrinsically any more valuable than they are. You are not better than them. You do not deserve to live a comfortable life while they suffer and perhaps even die.
edited 20th Jan '11 9:40:27 PM by WoolieWool
Out of Context Theater: Mike K "'Bloody Pussies' cracked me up"It places the burden on those who use it.
Being a human being adds nothing to their value. So equally valuable in the sense of equally worthless. The value of a human being is a rather simple function
edited 20th Jan '11 9:49:02 PM by Deboss
Fight smart, not fair.

Sure you can, just pay for the stuff you use and go on your way.
Fight smart, not fair.