Humanist Ethics

[MikeNovack]

What about a PETA secularist?

You are detecting something important, I think: that ultimately, they don't have the grounds, either.

That's because IF they are attributing some spiritual value to animals, they need to be able to say what that spiritual value is. I suspect that most cannot. There are some Gaia worshippers among them who probably can, and have an elaborate justificatory worldview they can explain.

Might be a can of worms you don't want to open, IC. A discussion better taking part under "religion" but I see you making a distinction between the more vaguely "spiritual" and the "Gaia worshipers" (you are able to recognize those as theistic). I'm less sure so easy to draw a hard line. In other words, what do we mean by "secular", what bounds/limits.

They might say they EXPERIENCE "spiritual value" in Nature. Experience awe, etc. At issue is what you would allow within the range "humanist" and if you limit/restrict humanism, what are you going to call the excluded middle ground.

[Immanuel Can]

"Gaia worshipers" (you are able to recognize those as theistic).

Not quite. They don't believe in God per se, but rather in a kind of mystical "world-god," in which the environment is given precedence over people. It's pretty nutty.

They might say they EXPERIENCE "spiritual value" in Nature. Experience awe, etc.

If "spiritual" meant "awe," then a new video game or an Apple release party would be spiritual events. I think that sort of conflation is a little too much, don't you?

At issue is what you would allow within the range "humanist"

I've been going by the Humanist Manifesto, for the purposes of present discussion. But I take your point, in that Humanism is a kind of big thing. Renaissance Humanism, for example, bears little resemblance to Modern or Postmodern Humanisms, except for the religious reverence for humans as a species, perhaps.

But what we're going to encounter today is pretty much captured by the three manifestos, I would say. And if you're content with that, then we can talk about it in a coordinated way.

[Gary Childress]

@IC: What "three manifestos" would you say "capture" the ideas of the Left?

[Immanuel Can]

@IC: What "three manifestos" would you say "capture" the ideas of the Left?

No, Gary. My question.

How would you go about...or ask us to go about...getting Elon's money from him? Be specific. We need an actual process to do it.

Would you create a law? Break in and steal? Have a mob attack his house? You have to have something, because if you don't, what's the point of criticizing Elon for having too much money? What good does it do, if you have no way of making it right?

So fire away. What's the right plan?

P.S. -- the three Humanist Manifestos, of course. And we were talking about Humanism, not Leftism.

[Gary Childress]

@IC: What "three manifestos" would you say "capture" the ideas of the Left?

No, Gary. My question.

How would you go about...or ask us to go about...getting Elon's money from him? Be specific. We need an actual process to do it.

Would you create a law? Break in and steal? Have a mob attack his house? You have to have something, because if you don't, what's the point of criticizing Elon for having too much money? What good does it do, if you have no way of making it right?

So fire away. What's the right plan?

P.S. -- the three Humanist Manifestos, of course. And we were talking about Humanism, not Leftism.

Why not enact a law where any income or wealth over a certain threshold is heavily taxed and the money used to keep social services going? Is there something wrong with that?

[phyllo]

@IC: What "three manifestos" would you say "capture" the ideas of the Left?

He is on about this:
https://americanhumanist.org/what-is-hu ... anifesto1/

https://americanhumanist.org/what-is-hu ... anifesto2/

https://americanhumanist.org/what-is-hu ... anifesto3/

Less than 10 pages of text.

[Gary Childress]

@IC: What "three manifestos" would you say "capture" the ideas of the Left?

He is on about this:
https://americanhumanist.org/what-is-hu ... anifesto1/

https://americanhumanist.org/what-is-hu ... anifesto2/

https://americanhumanist.org/what-is-hu ... anifesto3/

Less than 10 pages of text.

My bad.

[Immanuel Can]

@IC: What "three manifestos" would you say "capture" the ideas of the Left?

No, Gary. My question.

How would you go about...or ask us to go about...getting Elon's money from him? Be specific. We need an actual process to do it.

Would you create a law? Break in and steal? Have a mob attack his house? You have to have something, because if you don't, what's the point of criticizing Elon for having too much money? What good does it do, if you have no way of making it right?

So fire away. What's the right plan?

P.S. -- the three Humanist Manifestos, of course. And we were talking about Humanism, not Leftism.

Why not enact a law where any income or wealth over a certain threshold is heavily taxed and the money used to keep social services going? Is there something wrong with that?

Actually, yeah, there is. It won't work.

Why couldn't it work, you ask?

Because Elon's not stupid. He's not what Sowell calls, "a chess piece," meaning, "something that can be moved around at will." He's an agent, a person in his own right, with goals purposes and ambitions that may have nothing to do with letting his money go to you. And that means, that when you start to form that law, he will act. He will do exactly what you would do, if I threatened to come over to your house and steal your computer; he will take what's his, and move it to where it can't be gotten at.

Where's that? Offshore, perhaps. Or just to a new state. Look at the flood of billionaires out of California right now, taking their businesses and running to Texas, Tennesee or Florida. By the time the new law is debated, passed and enforced, Elon has had tons of time to decide his own counter-move.

And he'll do it. You would, too.

So Elon will escape. So whom will you be able to tax? Only those who can't afford the Elon strategy. And what will happen is two things: first, your government will have LESS money, not more; and secondly, they will have to start draining the middle and lower classes, in order to try to pay for the programs you demanded be funded with Elon's money; because they know that if they do not deliver, you'll vote them out. They have to deliver, somehow.

Who will be taxed? Gary, and people like him. Not Elon. Elon will be safe, no matter what you do.

But there is one alternative, and I think you can see it now. You'll have to take Elon by surprise. There can be no public debate or even suspicion beforhand. You'll have to catch him "by night," so to speak, before he can offshore his accounts. You'll literally have to crash his door with troops, seize all his assets, his land, his bank accounts -- and him, lest he should cleverly have saved some of his money somewhere. You're going to have to suddenly and violently take everything he has, and redistribute it without his expectation.

Socialism has to resort to violence. It has to resort to robbery. Because people are not chess pieces, and the do not move around blindly. They do what is in their interest to do. They protect themselves. So you're going to have to advocate violence and robbery against Elon.

And now, do you wonder why some people think that's a bad idea?

[Gary Childress]

No, Gary. My question.

How would you go about...or ask us to go about...getting Elon's money from him? Be specific. We need an actual process to do it.

Would you create a law? Break in and steal? Have a mob attack his house? You have to have something, because if you don't, what's the point of criticizing Elon for having too much money? What good does it do, if you have no way of making it right?

So fire away. What's the right plan?

P.S. -- the three Humanist Manifestos, of course. And we were talking about Humanism, not Leftism.

Why not enact a law where any income or wealth over a certain threshold is heavily taxed and the money used to keep social services going? Is there something wrong with that?

Actually, yeah, there is. It won't work.

Why couldn't it work, you ask?

Because Elon's not stupid. He's not what Sowell calls, "a chess piece," meaning, "something that can be moved around at will." He's an agent, a person in his own right, with goals purposes and ambitions that may have nothing to do with letting his money go to you. And that means, that when you start to form that law, he will act. He will do exactly what you would do, if I threatened to come over to your house and steal your computer; he will take what's his, and move it to where it can't be gotten at.

Where's that? Offshore, perhaps. Or just to a new state. Look at the flood of billionaires out of California right now, taking their businesses and running to Texas, Tennesee or Florida. By the time the new law is debated, passed and enforced, Elon has had tons of time to decide his own counter-move.

And he'll do it. You would, too.

So Elon will escape. So whom will you be able to tax? Only those who can't afford the Elon strategy. And what will happen is two things: first, your government will have LESS money, not more; and secondly, they will have to start draining the middle and lower classes, in order to try to pay for the programs you demanded be funded with Elon's money; because they know that if they do not deliver, you'll vote them out. They have to deliver, somehow.

Who will be taxed? Gary, and people like him. Not Elon. Elon will be safe, no matter what you do.

But there is one alternative, and I think you can see it now. You'll have to take Elon by surprise. There can be no public debate or even suspicion beforhand. You'll have to catch him "by night," so to speak, before he can offshore his accounts. You'll literally have to crash his door with troops, seize all his assets, his land, his bank accounts -- and him, lest he should cleverly have saved some of his money somewhere. You're going to have to suddenly and violently take everything he has, and redistribute it without his expectation.

Socialism has to resort to violence. It has to resort to robbery. Because people are not chess pieces, and the do not move around blindly. They do what is in their interest to do. They protect themselves. So you're going to have to advocate violence and robbery against Elon.

And now, do you wonder why some people think that's a bad idea?

Well, I guess we just live in a society where the majority of us are exploited by the few who own everything around us, then. Does that rectify the problem for you?

[Impenitent]

Why not enact a law where any income or wealth over a certain threshold is heavily taxed and the money used to keep social services going? Is there something wrong with that?

they have more than you

you want their stuff

greed is good - theft is good

nothing wrong with that

-Imp

[Immanuel Can]

Why not enact a law where any income or wealth over a certain threshold is heavily taxed and the money used to keep social services going? Is there something wrong with that?

Actually, yeah, there is. It won't work.

Why couldn't it work, you ask?

Because Elon's not stupid. He's not what Sowell calls, "a chess piece," meaning, "something that can be moved around at will." He's an agent, a person in his own right, with goals purposes and ambitions that may have nothing to do with letting his money go to you. And that means, that when you start to form that law, he will act. He will do exactly what you would do, if I threatened to come over to your house and steal your computer; he will take what's his, and move it to where it can't be gotten at.

Where's that? Offshore, perhaps. Or just to a new state. Look at the flood of billionaires out of California right now, taking their businesses and running to Texas, Tennesee or Florida. By the time the new law is debated, passed and enforced, Elon has had tons of time to decide his own counter-move.

And he'll do it. You would, too.

So Elon will escape. So whom will you be able to tax? Only those who can't afford the Elon strategy. And what will happen is two things: first, your government will have LESS money, not more; and secondly, they will have to start draining the middle and lower classes, in order to try to pay for the programs you demanded be funded with Elon's money; because they know that if they do not deliver, you'll vote them out. They have to deliver, somehow.

Who will be taxed? Gary, and people like him. Not Elon. Elon will be safe, no matter what you do.

But there is one alternative, and I think you can see it now. You'll have to take Elon by surprise. There can be no public debate or even suspicion beforhand. You'll have to catch him "by night," so to speak, before he can offshore his accounts. You'll literally have to crash his door with troops, seize all his assets, his land, his bank accounts -- and him, lest he should cleverly have saved some of his money somewhere. You're going to have to suddenly and violently take everything he has, and redistribute it without his expectation.

Socialism has to resort to violence. It has to resort to robbery. Because people are not chess pieces, and the do not move around blindly. They do what is in their interest to do. They protect themselves. So you're going to have to advocate violence and robbery against Elon.

And now, do you wonder why some people think that's a bad idea?

Well, I guess we just live in a society where the majority of us are exploited by the few who own everything around us, then. Does that rectify the problem for you?

I haven't proposed a solution, Gary. I'll I've done is pointed out exactly what the Socialist solution is going to have to consist of.

But I think you're working in a wrong paradigm anyway. You're imagining, as do so many Socialists, that wealth is a zero-sum game. That is, they imagine that there is a fixed amount of wealth in the world, and thus that any amount anybody else, like an Elon, has, that amount must have been removed from the possibility of others. Furthermore, since Socialism knows no ways of generating wealth, only of stealing it, it assumes that Elon's wealth can only be acquired by the oppressing of workers and the stealing from them.

No idea could be dumber. No idea could be less true of how economics works. No dumb idea could be more popular than this one. But it's totally untrue.

Wealth is not zero-sum. New wealth is generated all the time. Not all wealth is stolen: some is, and some is earned. Before you hate a man for having money, you have to know exactly how he got it. Did he get it by theft, like Socialist would? Or did he get it by inventing a new product? Did he take a risk, and open a business in which he employed hundreds or thousands, to their enrichment? Did he get it through the entrepreneurial use of capital, risking his own money in the hopes of a better return when the stock market rose? Did he purchase a property or properties, the value of which went up and enriched him? Did he hit big in Vegas or get a winning lottery ticket? Was it an inheritance,that his forefathers legitimately held and passed on to him? Is he a celebrity, and people paid him to entertain them?

Until you know how Elon got what Elon got, on what basis do you propose to invade his home and strip him of his goods?

And, of course, do you know what will happen when you do? Jeff Bezos, Larry Fink, Bill Clinton and Bernie Saunders will take their millions and billions and leave, because they're not fools, and they don't want to be pillaged in the manner that has been done to Elon Musk. They're surely next, after all.

So once again, the solution is not to "eat the rich." It's to add value oneself. Socialism, if it's implemented, would have one short burst of raised income, followed by economic collapse for all. And what began as an alleged "compassionate" project "in the interests of the workers" will most certainly result in the devouring of the economy that sustains those very workers.

That's the reality. It may seem harsh to say that somebody has to add value to the world in order to get money, but that's the reality of things for all of us: Elon, you and me.