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691
General / Re: Christian Anarchy is the only sensible answer...
« on: October 27, 2009, 03:22:51 AM »
There are certainly parts of the Bible that are inscrutable to me; part of it is that I haven't grown up in the culture where the Law was given. The Law which forms the basis for the Old Covenant had a specific purpose; while theoretically by following the Law one could get into a right relationship with God, we learn from Paul that it is impossible for anyone to please God by keeping the Law, because it is our nature to fail in the attempt. The Law's purpose, therefore, was to instruct us in how incapable we are in living up to God's standards. (an aside: it's not that God is some white shoe prude that averts His eyes at even the mention of evil. His nature is such that evil is automatically banished from his presence. That makes it hard for Him to have a relationship with the creature he loves (man). So He had to develop a way to reach man without man being destroyed in the process. His solution was to become a man and, as man's new Representative, pay the fine, so to speak, that He Himself levied against man for irreparably marring the universe God created.)
So the Old Testament Law, and especially the rituals, does not apply to the Church Age believer. The rituals were for making one physically and psychologically clean in preparation for worship in the temple. Because of Christ's sacrifice, the Christian's body is the temple of God, and he can worship at anytime. Bringing this rather rambling post around to the original thread question by Christian Anarchist, it is this direct access to God that should make all Christians prefer anarchism (absence of government, not chaos), because they no longer have to prove themselves faithful to God. There is no mandate for Christians to take over a government and run it according to "Biblical principles"; the only mandate we have is to share the gospel and make disciples (and I may be splitting hairs, here, but I notice that it does not command us to make converts, just to disciple those who come to belief).
I like that last verse about illegal aliens; I could never really get worked up, angry, about illegal immigration, mostly because every immigrant I have ever met seems to work three times harder than natural-born Americans.
So the Old Testament Law, and especially the rituals, does not apply to the Church Age believer. The rituals were for making one physically and psychologically clean in preparation for worship in the temple. Because of Christ's sacrifice, the Christian's body is the temple of God, and he can worship at anytime. Bringing this rather rambling post around to the original thread question by Christian Anarchist, it is this direct access to God that should make all Christians prefer anarchism (absence of government, not chaos), because they no longer have to prove themselves faithful to God. There is no mandate for Christians to take over a government and run it according to "Biblical principles"; the only mandate we have is to share the gospel and make disciples (and I may be splitting hairs, here, but I notice that it does not command us to make converts, just to disciple those who come to belief).
I like that last verse about illegal aliens; I could never really get worked up, angry, about illegal immigration, mostly because every immigrant I have ever met seems to work three times harder than natural-born Americans.
692
General / Re: A Tax Proposal
« on: October 26, 2009, 07:55:23 PM »Quote
But all in all, once the funding goes voluntary, it is no longer a government.
Stop giving away the ending, dude.
693
General / Re: A Tax Proposal
« on: October 26, 2009, 07:25:09 PM »
My intention is not to argue the merits of the Fair Tax; that is the purpose of the Fair Tax website. But what of my idea of a voluntary lottery that acts in place of taxation as a source of funding for government projects that the electorate demands (until the time that we have persuaded enough people to reject government projects altogether)?
694
General / Re: A Tax Proposal
« on: October 26, 2009, 07:00:19 PM »
mikehz: of course, the name was picked to appeal to a broad spectrum of ill-informed people. Of course, the tax is still non-voluntary (as all taxes are). Would you say that the proposed Fair Tax is better or worse than the current system?
Put another way, if you won an election to the state senate, or were appointed to the state senate, and the Fair Tax proposal has passed every other hurdle, and your state was the last one to vote whether to ratify the Fair Tax (which includes the repeal of the 16th amendment), would you vote for it or against it?
Put another way, if you won an election to the state senate, or were appointed to the state senate, and the Fair Tax proposal has passed every other hurdle, and your state was the last one to vote whether to ratify the Fair Tax (which includes the repeal of the 16th amendment), would you vote for it or against it?
695
General / Re: A Tax Proposal
« on: October 26, 2009, 06:53:54 PM »How about not taxing people?
I'm all for it; and while we work toward that goal, I argue for anything to alleviate the current situation.
The situation in MS is that we have a state government that is funded by taxes. Right now, if one doesn't pay his taxes, his property and liberty are confiscated. I offer this proposal to allow people to not pay taxes and have no fear of reprisal (by making the tax voluntary), as well as limit the amount of government spending (by making the tax ad-hoc). The idea of making it a lottery is to provide incentive for people to pay the tax who otherwise wouldn't. Presumably, certain people would pay the tax voluntarily from a sense of civic duty; I doubt enough of these people exist to fully fund government projects. While I would just as soon have no government projects at all, the collective at large believe in their efficacy, and are willing to impose that belief on their fellow citizens through government coercion. While I engage in my feeble attempts to educate them otherwise, I hope to improve their lot at the same time by offering alternative ideas to forced taxation.
696
General / A Tax Proposal
« on: October 26, 2009, 06:21:23 PM »
Here in MS, we have a combination of income and sales tax. I feel that the state would do better if a different tax system is put into place. I like the Fair Tax proposal, and MO is currently implementing something like the Fair Tax, so the rest of us can see how it works.
But for MS, I have a different idea for replacing the income/sales tax: a voluntary ad-hoc lottery tax.
For example, suppose the state wants to build a bridge; it would put the project out for bidding. They would add, say, 30% to whatever the winning bid amount was, which would be the lottery winnings. Then, everyone wanting to participate would be able to buy lottery tickets in hopes of winning the 30%. The lottery wouldn't pay off, and no money would be spent on the project, until all the money budgeted was collected from the lottery. If not enough money was collected to complete the project, then all the take would be paid out; or something like that.
But for MS, I have a different idea for replacing the income/sales tax: a voluntary ad-hoc lottery tax.
For example, suppose the state wants to build a bridge; it would put the project out for bidding. They would add, say, 30% to whatever the winning bid amount was, which would be the lottery winnings. Then, everyone wanting to participate would be able to buy lottery tickets in hopes of winning the 30%. The lottery wouldn't pay off, and no money would be spent on the project, until all the money budgeted was collected from the lottery. If not enough money was collected to complete the project, then all the take would be paid out; or something like that.
697
General / Re: Christian Anarchy is the only sensible answer...
« on: October 26, 2009, 04:39:47 PM »You should give me a little elevator pitch I can give to my girlfriend. She's Christian but not anarchist. Shes actually not really that into political philosophy much but I am. This is something she could perhaps like.
Some arguments may work better than others, depending on her denomination. You could argue from the Book of Judges and 1st Samuel that the entire era of the Judges is described as one in which "everyone did what was right in his own eyes", because there was no king in Israel. The phrase is one of opprobrium, and yet, when the people of Israel finally gather together to demand Samuel to appoint a king, God gets angry. He gives Samuel a list of horrible things that the children of Israel will bring on themselves by demanding a king. He tells Samuel that the demand for a king is a rejection of Himself. In short, He much prefers to deal with us as individuals, even with all our failings and foibles, than have a situation where people are pushed around by a strong central government.
Also, you could point out that, though Jesus never compromised Truth, He also never forced it on those unwilling to accept it.
698
General / Re: Christian Anarchy is the only sensible answer...
« on: October 26, 2009, 04:19:02 PM »
"You don't think blacks are as intelligent as asians, so if you had to hire a mathematician, you are going to look for an asian first, which is fucking stupid, because now you aren't giving a black person a chance, which is inherently racist."
According to Malcom Gladwell in his book Outliers, the reason asians are so good at math is that their language facilitates mental calculation. Their words for numbers are shorter than English equivalents, and follow along the lines of "3 tens 4, plus 4 tens 5, equals 7 tens 9", instead of our "Thirty-four plus forty-five equals seventy-nine." With asians having this advantage in the language of numbers, it makes sense to hire them for jobs requiring strong mathematical skills.
On the concept of anarchy in general, I would like to say that I leaned toward Mark (the show's host) and his ideas about anarcho-capitalism rather than Ian's. I would think that an-cap is a great idea--in theory--but practically unworkable. "Show me any examples of an-cap working" I would mentally argue with Ian. Now, I have purchased a book that almost makes Ian's argument for him. In "33 Questions You're Not Supposed to Ask about American History", by Tom Woods, it discusses the "Wild" West days, and how relatively tame those days were. Apparently, there are more crimes committed in a single year in a modern American city than there were in the whole Wild West Days, in the whole Wild West. What's further, many of the individuals who lived in that time and place did so without government supervision. They dealt with each other on a voluntary basis, setting up more-or-less private institutions to deal with establishing property boundries and for adjudicating crimes. As one scholar was quoted as saying, "When everyone has a gun, people tend to avoid confrontations."
According to Malcom Gladwell in his book Outliers, the reason asians are so good at math is that their language facilitates mental calculation. Their words for numbers are shorter than English equivalents, and follow along the lines of "3 tens 4, plus 4 tens 5, equals 7 tens 9", instead of our "Thirty-four plus forty-five equals seventy-nine." With asians having this advantage in the language of numbers, it makes sense to hire them for jobs requiring strong mathematical skills.
On the concept of anarchy in general, I would like to say that I leaned toward Mark (the show's host) and his ideas about anarcho-capitalism rather than Ian's. I would think that an-cap is a great idea--in theory--but practically unworkable. "Show me any examples of an-cap working" I would mentally argue with Ian. Now, I have purchased a book that almost makes Ian's argument for him. In "33 Questions You're Not Supposed to Ask about American History", by Tom Woods, it discusses the "Wild" West days, and how relatively tame those days were. Apparently, there are more crimes committed in a single year in a modern American city than there were in the whole Wild West Days, in the whole Wild West. What's further, many of the individuals who lived in that time and place did so without government supervision. They dealt with each other on a voluntary basis, setting up more-or-less private institutions to deal with establishing property boundries and for adjudicating crimes. As one scholar was quoted as saying, "When everyone has a gun, people tend to avoid confrontations."