2020 US Presidential Election

@alephy I think it is important to delineate between emotional perspectives and rational argument. Because emotional responses can sometimes be based on an incorrect view of facts. While I respect that indeed many people are motivated out of some combination between rational and emotional drives, I feel that taking stock of another's emotional state only really applies with regard to rhetoric, and obviously not the validity of arguments. Of course, that being said, one does not need emotional arguments to explain how there are systemic flaws in policing as an institution and how, ultimately, they enforce private property rights (as distinct from personal property; I quite like personal property but hate private property) from which capitalists disproportionately benefit relative to everybody else, by using it to expropriate a proportion of the wealth generated from the socially-necessary labour of their employees. You speak of analogies to cows and things being paramount to theft, but in actual fact, the real *theft* is in private property, which allows a small number of people in society to accumulate a vast and unimaginable quantity of wealth that they didn't even actually contribute to, at the expense of everybody else's hard work. And with this wealth and monopoly they crush their competition. I.E. In basic principle, the police do not directly enforce a redistribution of wealth themselves (ignoring of course the instances of evidence that goes 'missing'), but through violence and coercive force they prop up a system that by its very nature causes wealth to be concentrated in the hands of very few. It is understandable that one would think that 'law and order' in the abstract is a nice principle; however, this becomes a little bit muddied when the laws are written by politicians who are generally speaking beholden to the interests of the capitalist ruling class (which, for example, explains what allowed healthcare in the US to become the basket case that it is). The very laws that the police enforce are to the benefit of the capitalist, but not necessarily as much to everyone else. To use a cow analogy: Farmer A has no cows. Farmer B has 5 cows. Farmer A needs milk to survive. Farmer B then offers Farmer A a deal, that if Farmer A works in Farmer B's fields for 8 hours every day, Farmer B will give Farmer A just enough milk from one of Farmer B's cows in order to survive. Farmer A asks why he can't just milk one of Farmer B's cows without the need for a transaction. Farmer B introduces Farmer A to his friend, Guard B, who will beat Farmer A if he tries to touch one of Farmer B's cows.

So many points I could respond too. I'll just address a few. You stated that "in actual fact, the real *theft* is in private property." No, in your actual opinion. You think private property is theft. You are redefining what theft is. Theft is the crime of stealing. Theft is the act of forced used to deprive someone else of their own personal belongings. If someone has a lot of wealth to buy property. It is not theft to buy property. It is a simple business transaction. The wealthy concentrating more wealth. You can call it greedy. You can call it unjust. You can call them scumbags. You can call it an unfair advantage of the capitalist system. But it is not theft. As the wealthy are not utilizing force to deprive someone else of their own personal belongings. The wealthy are utilizing money to buy up property. It is a willful business transaction between two parties. Willful transactions of wealth is not theft. Unwilful transactions of wealth is theft. Private property is personal property. Why is private property not personal property? Only because you think it is unfair. Hence because it is unfair. It is thus deemed not property. Redefining personal property on what is and what is not fair is a socialist principle. I reject such a principle. Healthcare is not really enforced by police. That was a bad example. Healthcare is mostly enforced by the federal government. Local police through out the county is not the federal government. The federal government has federal police. But federal police do not really patrol the lives of everyday citizens. That is mostly done by state and local police. But assuming you got pulled over by a federal police officer. The federal police are not really checking what type of health insurance you have. You are conflating the roles of the federal government and the local police. Though those roles often overlap. The federal government and local police are not one and the same. I was refencing the jobs of everyday local cops. The job of everyday local cops is to provide basic law and order. You stated that "the very laws that the police enforce are to the benefit of the capitalist, but not necessarily as much to everyone else." Sure there are laws that benefit the wealthy. That it is true. Without a doubt . But on a day to day operations. The job of police is not to solely protect capitalist. If that were true, than police would only protect capitalist. Again, how does going after murders, thieves, rapist, and every other vile creature in society only benefit capitalist and not everyone else? Riddle me that. @songofsisyphus

@alephy "Theft is the crime of stealing" is tautological. Do you mean theft as the concept of taking something that does not belong to oneself in a manner of which the owning party disapproves, or do you mean the legal construct of theft, which I have already noted is constructed in the particular manner in which it is because that works to the benefit of the capitalist, and those who own private property. I am not actually making a moral claim. The labour of the worker belongs to the worker, that is the basis upon which exchanges of the worker's labour must begin. I would like you to explain precisely how there can be a "Willful transaction of wealth", when the person involved who is actually generating the wealth must do so on pain of destitution and starvation. There can be no truly voluntary transaction when such violence is implicit in the exchange. Similarly, I think there were many classical liberal economists who would imagine that if we had person A and person B who had a transaction, and person B threatened person A with a club in order to get them to participate, that would not be a voluntary transaction. Obviously the effect is more subtle in this economy, because the vast majority of people in society do not have to serve one *particular* boss, like an old feudal lord, but they *do* have to work for *a* boss, whoever that boss ends up being (and no, not everybody can run their own business and be self-employed, because that simply isn't the way the market works). The point being that implicit violence and explicit violence achieve functionally the same thing, and so should be viewed in quite similar ways. As such a coerced exchange is invalid, I hold that the commodities produced by workers, if we were being truly consistent with the principles of voluntary exchange, would belong to the workers (EDIT: well, okay, it'd technically be joint ownership between the worker and the person who owned the thing that the worker transformed through their labour into a commodity). No, I think it's pretty apparent what the difference between a toothbrush (personal property) and a factory (private property, other examples include vast swathes of land) is, and to assert that they're the same construct is rather odd to me. A toothbrush, for example, is a commodity that fulfils a useful purpose, and can be exchanged on the basis of fulfilling a human need. A factory is a means to produce commodities, and its useful purpose can only exist for as long as there is labour to operate it. Now I will most certainly grant you that I use socialist principles, but it is not based in half-hearted desires for "fairness" and "equality" as political maxims. Rather I would prefer that people were free to work in the way they see fit, free of coercive relations and the threat of death through an inability to meet their needs were they to pursue what work they wish to undertake. I never made any claim about police being involved in healthcare, I was making an offhand comment about how politicians serve the interests of capitalists (and I think the structure of American healthcare is a pretty good indication on where its politicians lie). Did I specifically say that the job of police was solely to protect the interests of capitalists? I don't believe I did. I believe the word I used was 'ultimately', which has some different nuance. Police certainly do other things that are not always directly related to capitalists, and I don't think that anybody made this claim (though I could be wrong, I haven't read very far up since last I posted before this)

@momoichi , I don't know about that, I've seen some of your posts here and there and you seem to be good at debate, as well as picking out effective arguments; you seem plenty smart to me, already. Oh, also, I forgot to add to the previous post: "The function of police is not to redistribute wealth." -- except when it is, such as in cases of obvious tax evasion. In fact, so much as returning a stolen item would count as a redistribution of wealth. Didn't mention it as it struck me as a minor point all things considered, but if we bear in mind also the distinction between tax evasion and tax avoidance I think that points pretty well to my earlier point on politicians being beholden to the interests of capitalists; those who are wealthy enough to do so are permitted to exploit loopholes in the tax code. Everybody else has no such recourse, and so live by effectively a different set of rules.