CDZ Produce, mooch, or loot.

[usfan]

Now the actual exchange is no longer a distant memory that may be confused with another exchange. Your employment of the viewpoint offered by Frederic Bastiat can be summed up as a restatement of a contentious viewpoint whereby the contentious part of the viewpoint of Frederic Bastiat is summed up as the Zero Sum Game viewpoint. If you don't want to discuss Frederic Bastiat, then you can refrain from referring to, and quoting, Frederic Bastiat. If you do want to discuss Frederic Bastiat, and you do quote from Frederic Bastiat, then it would not be justified to ignore the contention surrounding the Zero Sum Game viewpoint offered by Frederic Bastiat, unless you prefer to remain ignorant about it, or unless you too have, and hold dear, this Zero Sum Game viewpoint; which you may, or may not, recognize as a Zero Sum Game viewpoint.

*sigh*
yes, i quoted Bastiat. But it was not about 'zero sum game' or any such undefined concepts. It was about the perversion of Law into an instrument of plunder. That was the extent of my quote of Bastiat. If you want to bring new concepts into the discussion, the burden is on you to define your terms & apply them to the discussion, not yell at me for not following your scattered thought processes.

Has Law been used as an instrument of plunder? Are there those who pervert the Law for selfish reasons, instead of its proper function of protecting life, liberty, & property? Those were my points, which you did not address nor refute, but only deflected with some tangent about another topic.

 

[usfan]

If you use the word "producer" and your intent is to identify a producer, then there is at least two very opposing categories of producers that tend to destroy each other. If you are objective about identifying a producer then you can see both sides, not just one side. If you are subjective about identifying a producer, where you only see one side, and you refuse to see the other side, then you can easily misidentify a producer.

I defined my terms, & the way i was using them. You have dismissed & demeaned my posts, without a rebuttal. YOU define what YOU mean by 'producer' if you don't like mine.

There are NOT 'opposing categories of producers that tend to destroy each other', as you assert. There are those who work & produce needed goods & services, & those who mooch off of the producers, & those who loot what the producers have created.

I can see this 'side' because i have clearly defined the terms, & offered examples. You scoff at my posts, & ridicule my reasoning, without offering a single example or explanation as to what you even mean.

I'm beginning to think i am not dealing with a rational person... if this vein of discussion continues, i will probably bow out. Flame wars & hysterics are of no interest to me.

 

[Josf]

"This has been the obvious fact for all of human history."

Individuals are often incapable of seeing obvious facts; a fact even if it is not seen.

"...your scattered thought processes..."

There may be more than myself, all alone, guilty of such wrongdoing.

"Has Law been used as an instrument of plunder?"

If it is law, then it is law, not plunder. If it is plunder, then it is plunder, and if the plunder is hidden (not seen) by some people, individuals all of them, one or two, or three, or millions, or billions, then it remains to be plunder, not law, so a useful few words is "under the color of law" for those who may begin to see the counterfeiters busy counterfeiting law.

 

[Josf]

" Are there those who pervert the Law for selfish reasons, instead of its proper function of protecting life, liberty, & property?"

If there are those who perpetrate fraud, malfeasance, treason, and other specific crimes, then there is a process by which facts are found in any case where an individual has, in fact, perpetrated said crime, which is an action that is acted out outside of the law. As offered already: plunder is outside the law.

"Those were my points, which you did not address nor refute, but only deflected with some tangent about another topic."

That above is a viewpoint you alone see (or someone else may agree with your individual viewpoint) and from my viewpoint there is no way to agree to the meaning of the words that express your individual viewpoint. I did address each of your viewpoints, in turn, after I first quoted the viewpoint quoted. As to what is or is not the intended meaning of "refute" I cannot know unless you tell me what you mean when you use the word "refute" as my intention is not to "refute" (as far as I know) my intention is to understand better. If there is a lack of understanding, in my view, or in the view I see in someone else, then I can agree to offer my view, as my view exists, which may not be your version of my view, it is my version of may view. I can state my version of my view. I can read your version of my view. Which is my view? Is my view my view, or is my view your version of my view?

"Those were my points, which you did not address nor refute, but only deflected with some tangent about another topic."

Your claim of my "deflected" act can be understood as your view. Do you claim that my intention was to "only" deflect, and therefore your claim is that I had no intention of reaching for greater understanding, and if so then we are probably at the end of the rope.

 

[usfan]

Your claim of my "deflected" act can be understood as your view. Do you claim that my intention was to "only" deflect, and therefore your claim is that I had no intention of reaching for greater understanding, and if so then we are probably at the end of the rope.

Agreed. We do not seem to have common usage of words, or any basis for communication. Thanks for the discussion, anyway.

 

[usfan]

Perhaps this revision of an old 1911 labor poster will help:

1. At the bottom are the producers. They do the work, & create all the goods & services.
2. The second level are the moochers. They live off the labors of others.
3. At the 3rd tier are the protective agencies.. police, justice systems, etc. Technically, they are moochers, but they are hired by the producers to accomplish a task.
4. The next tier are merely extensions of the 2nd one, but to make the revised chart work, these had to be defined. These are non productive elements of society, but the producers pay them for their input.. mostly for entertainment value.
5. At the top is govt.. which also can be a bit fuzzy, as the 3rd tier are also govt, & are all basically moochers. But this tier has the looters. They take what the producers create by force of law, & use it for their own sustenance. At least that is the way human governance has operated for millennia. They will say they are benefactors, & call themselves 'public servants' or other euphemistic terms, but at their fundamental core, they are looters, taking what they have not created for personal survival.

From time to time the producers revolt, when the oppression from the moochers & looters becomes too great. If a culture is civilized & wise, it can do this reform non violently, though the threat of violence is always lurking as a warning. But many times concessions are made that merely redistribute what some workers have created, to make more moochers. This only feed dependency, & makes the problems worse, in the long run. For a society to be healthy & sustainable, there has to be a large number of producers, & minimal dependents. Ideally, there would be few or at least tightly reined looters.. managed by Law to keep them in check.

 

[usfan]

BTW, this is NOT a zero sum game viewpoint. Producers CREATE things, they are not just there, magically, as a pie.

The Zero Sum Fallacy is just that, a fallacy. Economic history since the Industrial Revolution proves — be the rich however stinking rich — we ordinary people can make more of the good things in life. But we have to make them ourselves, with our knowledge, skills and hard work. Government can’t give us good things. Government doesn’t make things, it just redistributes them. This brings us back to fighting with each other. ~ P.J. O’Rourke

 

[Josf]

Basically telling me to buzz off and then respond to my writing as if I were still welcome in the discussion, or as if behind my back I am stabbed by your version of "refutation" is unbecoming - at least in my opinion.

The zero sum game concept can be exemplified by those claiming to be the government.

As in:
"Government doesn’t make things, it just redistributes them."

That appears to be a description of a crime in progress. If that is a description of a crime in progress, such as the crime of looting, then those people are working their zero sum game; their zero sum game is in fact one, their zero sum game can only remain a zero sum game so long as the looters maintain an equilibrium between the number of produces and the number of looters. If there is a proportionate number of looters looting the proportionate number of producers then the looters govern their crime spree in such a way as to zero the sum precisely at zero. If the looters govern in such a way as to allow too much production to be commanded by the producers, that will not do, since the producers then are powerful enough to defend themselves against the looters, and so the looters must return back to the zero sum game. On the other hand the looters cannot allow too many producers to be killed off from starvation of necessities, as too many looters grow in size, and needing more and more sustenance, as the end result there is total collapse of their zero sum game system, and they had better have invested elsewhere, gaining power over a new host, as their old host is destroyed when they err on the side of destroying their current interest in their current target population.

If instead of counterfeit government the idea is to actually account for what actual defensive, or productive, government produces, then that can be exemplified were anyone to care about such things; if not, then not.