AC0 wrote:You know, I hesitated for just a second on that line, thinking, "Do I need to put something like 'or comparable resources' or 'of equivalent value' or something. And then I thought, no, they'll get it, they're sharp.
My suggestion is that after someone has just taken you to the rhetorical woodshed for seeming to imply that you believe in a zero sum world that you should not
confirm that you think you live in a zero sum world. Because that's embarrassing and I'm embarrassed for you.
The resources I have to give up for my share of everyone getting water on demand from the tap are not 'comparable' or 'equivalent value' to everyone getting drinkable water from the tap. They aren't remotely on the same field.
If you don't get clean water on a daily basis, you will die. That's not hyperbole or speculation, it's a cold fact: you will
die. Your daily drinking water is worth more to you than all your X-Box games or even your house. But the actual resources required to secure sufficient water for everyone are extremely manageable. The involuntary utility contribution of every home owner is a
trivial expense compared to the bleak life and death reality of not having assured access to safe drinking water.
We
could go all reddened tooth and claw and have contests and bidding for remaining water resources like we were in a Mad Max movie. Or we could solve it all with mandatory contributions to collective action and solve the problem without anyone dying of thirst or cholera. The costs are not equivalent. The downsides are not comparable. The choice is very clear, and that is why almost the entire planet has chosen to go with the socialist answer to that particular problem.
There exist some things which are genuinely zero sum, or where the unit cost
rises rather than falls as production increases. And for those things we might possibly be willing to have an ethics discussion about whether robbing Peter to pay Paul is a good idea in those particular cases. But water isn't like that. Even Peter gets more out of being robbed than if he was left with his own resources and an unfulfilled need for hydration. And the fact that there are
any cases like this means that the Libertarian worldview is simply wrong. The example of 'tap water' is so clear and unambiguous that it demolishes the entire Libertarian worldview.
Which is impressive. Like, most socialists don't really mind that there are examples of successful cafes or movie franchises that demonstrate advantages for competition. Because socialists don't normally claim that we literally have to socialize
everything. But Libertarians
do claim that we can't socialize
anything, which means that even a single counter example shoots down the entire theory.
-Username17