Some of you that have been following me know I have a big problem with the term "collateral damage". For me "collateral damage" should be "We made a mistake, and we're going to make changes to make sure it doesn't happen again". Yet in reality it is used as an excuse with no effort made to see that it doesn't happen again. They might as well throw in a shrug while they use that label. This is another example of what I would call evil. Casual and callous disregard for life as long as the objective was achieved.

That was not to be the focus of this particular post, but I do think it is a good intro for the same type of thinking that lead me to this post.

At what number of murders does a person become a really bad person?

I wrote a post about Communism today and I mentioned how Stalin and Mao killed more of their own people than Hitler by a large margin, but people call Hitler evil and rarely mention Stalin or Mao. If it were a video game it'd be like the high score board (you young people may not know these) having Stalin and Mao in 1st and 2nd place and instead everyone is talking about the 3rd player. It's a little strange.

Now one person did come back with an argument I've heard before and it actually inspired this post. He stated that Stalin and Mao actually only killed hundreds of thousands of people and that the other millions of deaths were due to stupid actions by people that lead to things like starvation. Okay, I've heard this before.

Yet that kind of kicked in the "collateral damage" type thinking. Let's say what he said was true. So those hundreds of thousands of their own people killed to implement their version of "communism" is not noteworthy?

At what number of deaths does it become noteworthy and significant?

Now this isn't the only thing that lead me to the point of this post. It was just the latest along this type of thinking.

Socialism

I have a problem with socialism as well. Why? I am a voluntaryist. I don't believe in being able to FORCE people to support your favorite charity, or program. I see that as stealing so the government can turn around and mismanage the money they stole from you.

I've asked people simply this. If you see a person a couple blocks over that has a struggling family and you give him $100, or if you push for a government program to help him that takes $100 in taxes which do you think would actually get more money to the person needing it? I consider that a no brainer. $100 from my hand to his, or $100 that goes through the government bureaucracy and he'll be lucky if he sees $20 of it... yet even that is me digressing from the point.

I don't believe the government should be able to force you to support socialist programs.

This is where the NUMBER questions come in.

At what number does theft stop being theft?

If I come and take money from you against your will and then do things with it that is theft right? I believe the answer is yes.

If my entire house full of people comes and takes money from you against your will that is still theft right? As far as I know it is still yes.

We can go up to my entire neighborhood and I still think it is theft.

How about my entire town? I still think yes.

Yet somewhere there must be some magic number that suddenly makes it okay for people to take your money against your will to spend on things you may not even support because some NUMBER of people voted for it.

So somehow voting makes it not theft? As far as I know it still is.

Yet if the government does it, it is not. I think it still is. They just use force and threat of force much like mafia and extortion rackets that we don't have any way to resist.

I know my tax money is spent on many things I am very much against and would never support in my life. So I can only view it as theft.

Anyway that concept of NUMBER making the difference between right and wrong, good and evil was the gist of this post.

As to socialism. A lot of people will justify the taxation and creation of services as though it is a compassionate thing. Some people would call this virtue signalling this day and age, and initially I disliked that term because it is used too heavily, but it is starting to grow on me.

If you are forced to do something and the end result is that it helped someone that has ZERO to do with compassion. You had to make no decision to help them, it was done for you. A robot is compassionate too by that logic, and a computer that was used.

Compassion occurs when a person chooses to do something voluntarily as a choice in a situation where they did not need to, and were under no threat or coercive force.

Socialism is not compassionate. Create a crowd sourcing movement for your neighborhood rather than giving the taxes to the government and you'd likely actually help more people, and the funds wouldn't end up being spent on things you do not support.

Socialism is about force. OH THERE IS A PROBLEM. "Great let's create a program to help solve the problem and steal money from all of the people to fund it".

Asking the government for help and granting them more powers is NOT a good thing. It is certainly not a compassionate thing.