From: Technotranscendence (neptune@mars.superlink.net)
Date: Thu Aug 29 2002 - 20:51:12 MDT
On Thursday, August 29, 2002 9:07 PM Charles Hixson
charleshixsn@earthlink.net wrote:
>>> Military personnal pay taxes too, subtract from
>>> both sides, your
>>> back to zero.
>>
>> I was going to try to stay off this thread...
>>
>> All government employees are paid out of taxes.
>> This includes Marines
>> and all other servicemen and women. I.e.,
>> they are net tax receivers. Since they are paid
>> out of taxes, they are receiving stolen goods. It
>> doesn't matter if the thief -- the government --
>> takes some of it back. That is no different than
>> a mob boss paying his enforcers, then charging
>> them for using his cars and guns and being
>> paid back out of the same monies he paid them
>> with. (Imagine if taxes were reduced to zero in
>> stages. The salaries of all government employees
>> would eventually also go to zero! The salaries of
>> net tax payers would rise.)
>
> To be fair, there is no equivalence between a tax payer
> paying a share of his federal reserve notes, and a
> soldier putting his life on the line. It just
> isn't commensurate.
I made no claims about them being conmensurate. Brian made the claim
that both soldiers and non-soldier citizens pay taxes, so that the
latter really were doing zilch -- hence his "back to zero." My claim is
that soldiers are paid out of taxes, so any taxes they do pay are merely
stolen goods being shifted around while citizens are just being robbed
period.
Also, right now, soldiering is voluntary, while paying taxes is not. If
paying for the government were voluntary (and competition for its
services were allowed, including competition in the field of security),
we would, I believe, find out the true market value for government
services.
> The soldier is working at a usually quite low paying
> job, and putting himself, sort-of willingly, into a position
> where his life is endangered.
See above. That is his or her choice.
> There are lots of easier ways to avoid starving,
> and lots of jobs that are both safer and better
> paying, for equivalent levels of skill. (And this
> is ignoring night watches, etc. and being on
> duty 24 hours a day ... only when on leave is
> a soldier nearly as free as a tech who is on-call
> to a beeper.) The investment level is just too
> much higher. But that very investment is what
> tends to cause a change in the perspectives
> adopted.
Perhaps, though Brian and Mike both seem to be making the claim that
they are morally superior to all others for their choice to join the
military. I disagree with that -- which is not to say that either is
morally inferior or at all lacking of character, but just that one does
not follow from the other.
> Right? Wrong? I can't say. But it sure happens! And
> just because it doesn't make sense to someone who
> hasn't made the investment doesn't mean that it isn't
> right. The problem is, it also doesn't mean that it is right,
> and *nobody* seems to be in a fair position to judge.
If you believe that, then what is the point of this thread? No one will
convince anyone. Also, there are ex-soldiers who think they made the
wrong choice.
I don't agree with the "you must walk a mile in someone shoes to judge
him" line, though only if it's taken to extremes. Obviously, being
there does help, but no one here, I would hope, would say you couldn't
judge a child-killer wrong just because you haven't killed any children.
> But one thing is reasonably obvious: If there
> had not been those people making that
> investment of their lives, we wouldn't be here now.
Again, when was the invasion of the US that the US military stopped or
turned back in the last fifty years? I don't recall the North Koreans,
the NVA, the Sandinistas, the Serbs, the Haitians, or the Somalis
threatening the borders. If the argument is just by keeping these
nations at bay and making sure conflicts don't get by intervening in
every single conflict, then the only solution is eventually to occupy
every place on the globe (and perhaps in space) and have a hand in every
last conflict. This appears the direction the US government has been
moving for about a century or more now. It's been having blowback
effects, since such a policy is not without costs. One of those costs
is terrorism on American soil.
Cheers!
Dan
http://uweb.superlink.net/neptune/
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