Not you personally, of course. It is a job for agents of government.
The Noncoercion Principle in action.
That is correct. Responsive force is not coercive. The coercion is from the father and against the children.
Ok. So we now have, what? The guy must work or he is shot? First of all, this assumes he can get a job. But let’s assume that, just for the moment. It’s a rather naive assumption, but let’s go with it. Now, you’re going to garnish his wages, right? OK, so let’s say he’s at a minimum wage job - $6/hour. That’s $240 per week. No pay if he’s sick or absent, of course. Now, let’s say that $100 a week has been awarded in child support. This leaves the guy $140 week. Gross. Probably little in income taxes, but the fixed rate ones are gonna be a bitch - call it 10% off the top, so we’re down to $126. That’s assuming he’s never sick. $500/month. If he doesn’t live within walking distance of his job, he’s going to have problems, of course.
IF this guy is the type who becomes a deadbeat in the first place, how long before he discovers that he can work somplace under the table and keep it all? How do you prevent that, Lib? Gonna send a cop around with him? What do you do if he skips town? What do you do if he just goes limp on you, and how does that help the mother with kids? Shoot him, put him in jail - fine by me. But how does it help?
And what is this yoke of coercion I’m imposing on the poor? Did I miss the memo?
No, it doesn’t. Like I said, put him on hard labor if necessary. But in any case, you already said he has a job. He just wants to spend the money on himself rather than his children. If you catch him taking money for himself under the table, then put him on a rockpile and chain his legs together. Then publish what happened to him on the front page of every newspaper and make it clear that this will happen to all deadbeat dads. Why the fuck are you asking me what to do about this jackass? If you would bother half as much on behalf of the children as you do on behalf of him, you’d figure it all out.
And a perfect illustration of why this principle has nothing whatsoever to do with life on this planet. It’s unworkable. In this case, it leads to a government more repressive than what we’ve got now. State-sanctioned slavery, backed up by the threat of lethal force. Great idea.
It seems to boil down to this: “No coercion, unless coercion is what’s really needed.” Force is OK as long as it’s “responsive.” Trying to define what situations give rise to the need for “responsive” force, however, turns out to be like trying to nail jello to a wall.
It’s sad to think that anyone would devote more than a couple of weeks of his life to pursuing such twaddle.
But this is all a wild tangent from the OP. Getting back to it, I think this Administration is one of the worst in history simply because of the sheer breadth of its mendacity and incompetence. Some Presidents performed poorly on the home front, but scored some foreign policy victories, and vice-versa. Even a dangerous paranoid like Nixon had his shining moments (opening to China, creating the EPA, etc.).
The current Adminstration, by contrast, seems to have the startling ability to make the wrong decision at every turn. Start a pointless war under false pretenses, turn the U.S. into an international pariah, at a time when we had the sympathy and support of most of the nations of the world, pursue an energy policy that seems to consist solely of “Screw conservation. Let’s just drill for oil everywhere,” undo decades of progress on clean air and clean water issues, take a budget surplus and turn it into the biggest deficits in our history, relentlessly chip away at civil liberties, engineer tax breaks for the very same people who’ve been plundering their corporations and screwing their employees, and so on.
The list is almost endless, and I’m hard-pressed to come up with any examples of this Administration doing anything I can support. The closest I can come is to point to Afghanistan, where I believe the U.S. did the right thing by ousting the Taliban. Too bad we didn’t finish the job properly, by dedicating the needed resources to securing and rebuilding Afghanistan - it seems to be on the brink of sinking back into the slough of despond.
Liberal, where have I once expressed interest in or concern for the father? I’m trying to figure out how you, as a well-thought, intelligent, self-professed libertarian, reconcile the goals of less government, enforcement, and minimizing suffering of innocents. You’re pissed off because I’m not accepting simple answers. But you see, when you get into the guts of the issue, it’s not nearly as simple as it sounds. Less government, personal liberty, enforcement of responsibility, and elimination of suffering of innocents. These are not easily reconciled. But that’s quite easy to ignore if all you want to do is mouth platitudes and one-liners. I had hoped for some better thinking from you - that perhaps you had thought out some of the more complex implications of libertarianism, and were prepared to address some real issues. I’m not seeing any sign of it so far.
And, btw, I’ve put out some $12,000 on behalf of the mother and children over the past 2-3 years. I’d like to skin this guy and boil him in oil for what he’s done to them, and I’m not particularly enjoying the effect on me either. I’m asking you how to do it, not just in the case of my friend, but in all cases. You have not addressed the issues I’ve raised (he’s working, in so far as he’s working at all, under the table). If I try to raise taxes in order to support hard labor camps for deadbeats, are you going to vote for them?
For Pete’s sake, Liberal, think it through! I don’t expect you to solve my friend’s problems. But I do expect you to have thoroughly considered the implications of your espoused political philosophy.
I’m trying to actually do work here, so I gotta stop following for a while. But I’d really like to see some actual thinking on your part, Liberal. Read Early Out’s post too - i’m not the only one who sees what you’re apparently missing.
Nonsense. No one forced the deadbeat to abandon his children. Like AvhHines, you see everything from the point of view of the deadbeat, when you should be looking from the eyes of the children. Start with the children. What is necessary to secure their safety and happiness? Continue with the children. They did not ask to be born; they had no choice. End with the children. What action must government take on their behalf because they themselves are defenseless? Leftists are always paying lip-service, “Oh, why won’t someone think of the children?” But they do not think of the children except as some unfortunate ward of the state who fell out of trees while no one was watching. You call enforcement of responsibility unworkable, but I submit that an abandoned child might like for you at least to try.
Taxes? Why put in the hands of bureaucrats what entrepreneurs can do?
I have thought it through for more than twenty years. I call upon you to do the same.
No, I call enforcement of responsibility incompatible with libertarianism, and therefore label libertarianism bullshit, because we all understand that one of the essential functions of government is to enforce responsibility. Libertarianism is self-indulgent garbage.
Two decades down the tubes. What a waste.
Why, that’s absurd. Enforcement of responsiblity is the very soul of libertarianism. That’s what noncoercion is all about. You’ve committed a rather common fallacy: a pacifist is a libertarian, but a libertarian is not necessarily a pacifist. The whole purpose of ethical government is to secure the rights of people who cannot secure their own. In this case, it’s the children.
I seem to remember nasty “wag the dog” accusations during this time-- that the military actions were merely to “distract” the American people from the oh-so-important investigations into Clinton’s sex life. Now, I’m not saying that Clinton was reacting to the attacks in the media, but can you imagine what the criticism would have been if he had gone to all-out war at the time?
Christ, I couldn’t stay away. Liberal, I ask you again, how? How is this non-coercive, non-pacifism going to work? How do you enforce responsibility without violating individual rights, not of the deadbeat (nice ignoring of my request to show me where I’m support this guy), but of the rest of us?
You said:
And then:
OK, so entrepreneurs are going to run the hard labor camps? Don’t hold your breath. They’ll probably cost more than they’ll bring in, unless they don’t guard against escapes. And if they don’t, why would the deadbeats stay?
Liberal, I hate to say this, but right now you’re sounding a lot like milroyj. You want to provide simple answers to a complicated problem, and your method of dealing with it is to deny the complexity, by claiming that it is entirely due to consideration of the rights of the deadbeat. Bullshit. I have no interest in the deadbeat’s rights. I do have an interest in civil liberties in general. I have an interest in cost-effective government. I have an interest in realistic solutions. I have a serious interest in protecting the welfare of innocents. I thought maybe you were capable of getting past ideology to see weaknesses in either your own philosophy or mine. So far, you’re not getting anywhere. I’m very disappointed.
Actually you don’t have to do this because the government does it for you via Medicaid and welfare programs. A percentage of the income I earn is taken away from me and my children to support the children of people with no job skills who go out, get drunk and accidentally get knocked up. You don’t have to go rob milroyj’s fridge because Unca Sam has already made off with his Bud Lites and is “redistributing” them as we speak.
Cheers!
Note to Reeder: Repeating “idiot” again and again and again does nothing to bolster your assertion that milroyj is an idiot. In fact, it ultimately detracts from it. Idiot.
(See?)
Give Reeder a break. When it comes to milroyj, we’ve all run out of synonyms for “idiot.” The language doesn’t seem to have enough nouns or adjectives to describe the depths of his “non-smartness” adequately.
When you’ve dedicated 20 years of your life to an ideology that turns out to be a complete nonstarter, it’s tough to let go without losing a lot of self-respect. As a consequence, true believers in bankrupt ideas cling to them like grim death.
While there are a few who abuse the welfare system, this is not an accurate description of the people who benefit from welfare and medicaid.
I feel for your pain. Your desperate suffering breaks my heart, and your compassion brings tears of joyous admiration to my eyes.
Here, folks, we get down to it. You can talk about freedoms and smaller government and responsibility 'til the cows come home. What it really means is - keep your fucking hands out of my pocket. THe poor? Fuck 'em. I’ve got mine. They should have thought of this before they littered the landscape with their brats.
IMO, the things he did that made his presidency less good than it could have been are things I would expect the right wing to applaud him for: NAFTA and the revamping of welfare.
It beats me why the right wing hates Clinton so much. Clinton’s really not very far left of center. What did he do that set off all this hatred from the right?
He successfully co-opted their agenda (partially) without the word ‘Republican’ after his name, without blatantly using the power of government to further the interests of the very wealthy as the current administration has, and without attempting to force the values of the Christian extreme right down the throats of the country. But mostly the first.