it is kind of ironic that people are arguing for the state to protect our property rights even though the state violates people's property rights through taxation.
Taxation is not a violation of property rights.
Nobody has agreed to pay tax. If you don't pay it 'they' will come after you. If you don't want to go with them 'they' will assault you and kidnap you. If you try and self defend yourself 'they' will kill you. Tax is theft with the threat of death. It is a direct violation of property rights!!!
It's not theft- you owe the state dues for services rendered. You get automatic benefits- you make automatic payments.
it is kind of ironic that people are arguing for the state to protect our property rights even though the state violates people's property rights through taxation.
Taxation is not a violation of property rights.
Nobody has agreed to pay tax. If you don't pay it 'they' will come after you. If you don't want to go with them 'they' will assault you and kidnap you. If you try and self defend yourself 'they' will kill you. Tax is theft with the threat of death. It is a direct violation of property rights!!!
Libertarians love to talk about rights, especially property rights, as some sort of magical, naturally existing thing. Rights are nothing more than a societal contract. If I'm alone on a deserted island with a man with a gun, I have no "rights". The gazelle being chased by a lion has no rights to life and property. At the end of the day as long as I'm in a society, I'm going to be giving up some of my property to someone else. I can either give up some of my property to a government that enforces laws and give me some measure of protection or I'll have to be ready to give up all my property to the local strongman with more guns than me.
The only way to not give up property is if I'm the one with the most guns. In that case, I'm not naive enough to believe that I'm going to be a saint to everyone around me. Coz the best way to demonstrate that I'm strong and not to be messed with is to violate other people's "rights".
I also find Libertarians' tendency to look on force and threats with disdain and as something unnatural to be naive. Force is the first virtue. People are selfish and short sighted, without the threat of punishment and overwhelming force, there can be no peace, no justice. This threat of punishment could be equally applied to everybody in a society, or it can be applied unequally. One option is much better than the other, and a government at least makes the first option possible. So the pragmatic approach as members of a society should be to make the government work better, fairer and be more accountable to the people. Not dismantle it and hope the ensuing chaos and anarchy will magically lead to some sort of post-government utopia due to the people's innate selfishness and love of fair play....
Property itself is one of the most absurd arguments for an inherent right. In order for property ownership to exist, someone at some point had to say "I'm going to decide what happens here and I'll hurt anyone that says otherwise." Thou shalt honor the sacred tradition of 'dibs'.
It's hard to get more arbitrary than that. Being kicked out of your home is bad for clear reasons, none of which having to do with a sacred right of dibs being violated.
Libertarians love to talk about rights, especially property rights, as some sort of magical, naturally existing thing. Rights are nothing more than a societal contract. If I'm alone on a deserted island with a man with a gun, I have no "rights".
Common misunderstanding of social contract theory. Give Hobbes and Locke another look -- especially Hobbes. Rights aren't just any old social contract; they are the optimizing contract. Think of human society as a math problem and rights as the solution. Now, whether or not you want to say that solutions to math problems "naturally exist" is a bit of a semantic question. Certainly they don't possess material existence in the same way you and I do. But whatever you call it, they do have some sort of real and objective status beyond the arbitrary. As with other truths about nature, they are something to be discovered, rather than invented: you can't just guess an answer and expect it to be correct. It is for this reason that Hobbes calls his system "natural law". It is the social contract that a sufficiently intelligent rational actor would agree to, not necessarily the social contract that we do agree to -- just as the solution to a math problem is the one that a sufficiently intelligent rational actor would find, not necessarily what you scribble down in your homework.
Libertarians love to talk about rights, especially property rights, as some sort of magical, naturally existing thing. Rights are nothing more than a societal contract. If I'm alone on a deserted island with a man with a gun, I have no "rights".
Common misunderstanding of social contract theory. Give Hobbes and Locke another look -- especially Hobbes. Rights aren't just any old social contract; they are the optimizing contract. Think of human society as a math problem and rights as the solution. Now, whether or not you want to say that solutions to math problems "naturally exist" is a bit of a semantic question. Certainly they don't possess material existence in the same way you and I do. But whatever you call it, they do have some sort of real and objective status beyond the arbitrary. As with other truths about nature, they are something to be discovered, rather than invented: you can't just guess an answer and expect it to be correct. It is for this reason that Hobbes calls his system "natural law". It is the social contract that a sufficiently intelligent rational actor would agree to, not necessarily the social contract that we do agree to -- just as the solution to a math problem is the one that a sufficiently intelligent rational actor would find, not necessarily what you scribble down in your homework.
Going about yelling that your optimal solution to an idealized math problem is being violated sounds a lot less catchy...
And I somewhat question the universal applicability of an optimal solution to a problem that assumes spherical, frictionless cows (sufficiently intelligent rational actors).
Oh I am sorry, I did not know the american goverment consisted of one singular man during the nixon days, I missed that memo.
Really? You're doubling down on this? If the American government had decided that it was legal for men working for the president to break into the premises of and surveil political opponents, then there would have been nothing wrong with what Nixon did?
And I somewhat question the universal applicability of an optimal solution to a problem that assumes spherical, frictionless cows (sufficiently intelligent rational actors).
Sufficiently intelligent rational actors aren't part of the problem or the solution. They're a philosophical fiction used to illustrate that the solution objectively exists. The solution for x2 - 2x + 1 = 0 is x = 1. Any sufficiently intelligent rational actor is going to come to that solution. But the take-home point is that, even if there are no sufficiently intelligent rational actors around, that's still the solution. If that problem comes up when you're trying to build a bridge or fly a plane or whatever, and you use a different value of x, you're not going to do very well. Reality -- nature -- is going to disagree with you. Hence "natural law".
If you're skeptical about whether this concept applies to human society, fine. We can talk about that. But you're the one who first brought out the term "social contract", so it's important that you understand what that theory actually entails.
it is kind of ironic that people are arguing for the state to protect our property rights even though the state violates people's property rights through taxation.
Taxation is not a violation of property rights.
Nobody has agreed to pay tax. If you don't pay it 'they' will come after you. If you don't want to go with them 'they' will assault you and kidnap you. If you try and self defend yourself 'they' will kill you. Tax is theft with the threat of death. It is a direct violation of property rights!!!
If you disagree with it you can avoid paying such taxes by leaving.
it is kind of ironic that people are arguing for the state to protect our property rights even though the state violates people's property rights through taxation.
Taxation is not a violation of property rights.
Nobody has agreed to pay tax. If you don't pay it 'they' will come after you. If you don't want to go with them 'they' will assault you and kidnap you. If you try and self defend yourself 'they' will kill you. Tax is theft with the threat of death. It is a direct violation of property rights!!!
List the number of people that have been executed in America for failing to pay taxes please.
Are really counting revolutions and insurrections that came from refusing to pay?
Are really counting revolutions and insurrections that came from refusing to pay?
Nope. We're counting people executed by the government in modern times for tax evasion. Not people that chose on their own to wage rebellion because of (insert reason here). Environmental terrorists that are killed during their own attacks aren't executed for supporting the environment. They're killed in action, or executed in places with the death penalty, because they're trying to murder people.
If you tell someone to come to work on time, or else they'll be fired... And they retaliate by coming in with a gun and trying to kill you, but security takes them down first... They weren't threatened with *death* for failing to come in late. They were threatened with being fired.
So yes, I'm looking for a list of the executions the government has carried out as punishment for tax evasion.
Are really counting revolutions and insurrections that came from refusing to pay?
Nope. We're counting people executed by the government in modern times for tax evasion. Not people that chose on their own to wage rebellion because of (insert reason here). Environmental terrorists that are killed during their own attacks aren't executed for supporting the environment. They're killed in action, or executed in places with the death penalty, because they're trying to murder people.
If you tell someone to come to work on time, or else they'll be fired... And they retaliate by coming in with a gun and trying to kill you, but security takes them down first... They weren't threatened with *death* for failing to come in late. They were threatened with being fired.
So yes, I'm looking for a list of the executions the government has carried out as punishment for tax evasion.
We've been there with typho0nn. He considers be killed for violently resisting punishments as meaning the offence for the original punishment is under threat of death.
Are really counting revolutions and insurrections that came from refusing to pay?
Nope. We're counting people executed by the government in modern times for tax evasion. Not people that chose on their own to wage rebellion because of (insert reason here). Environmental terrorists that are killed during their own attacks aren't executed for supporting the environment. They're killed in action, or executed in places with the death penalty, because they're trying to murder people.
If you tell someone to come to work on time, or else they'll be fired... And they retaliate by coming in with a gun and trying to kill you, but security takes them down first... They weren't threatened with *death* for failing to come in late. They were threatened with being fired.
So yes, I'm looking for a list of the executions the government has carried out as punishment for tax evasion.
We've been there with typho0nn. He considers be killed for violently resisting punishments as meaning the offence for the original punishment is under threat of death.
Is that true Typho0nn? In that case, if I choose to violently resist your argument and am killed because of it - you're threatening my disagreement with DEATH?! That makes you sound like quite the big brother police state dictator. Sure you want to stick to that argument?
Sufficiently intelligent rational actors aren't part of the problem or the solution. They're a philosophical fiction used to illustrate that the solution objectively exists. The solution for x2 - 2x + 1 = 0 is x = 1. Any sufficiently intelligent rational actor is going to come to that solution. But the take-home point is that, even if there are no sufficiently intelligent rational actors around, that's still the solution. If that problem comes up when you're trying to build a bridge or fly a plane or whatever, and you use a different value of x, you're not going to do very well. Reality -- nature -- is going to disagree with you. Hence "natural law".
Ah...I see the disagreement here. You meant the rational actor as the outside context entity solving the problem. I had read that as part of Hobbe's "men are reasonable and rational" assumption which seemed to me to be part of the word problem in the same way as "You want to shoot a cow out of a cannon over the wall. Just to make the problem tractable, we'll assume the cow is a frictionless sphere."
If you're skeptical about whether this concept applies to human society, fine. We can talk about that. But you're the one who first brought out the term "social contract", so it's important that you understand what that theory actually entails.
It seems I may have used the wrong term in my first post. Perhaps social construct would be better? The point I was trying to make was that rights are an idea and something that only exists and affects the world only insofar as both parties agree it exists and should affect a person's behaviour, but some people seems to treat it as something tangible, instinctively recognizable and respected by all, the same way I would respect the claws on a tiger.
Ah...I see the disagreement here. You meant the rational actor as the outside context entity solving the problem. I had read that as part of Hobbe's "men are reasonable and rational" assumption which seemed to me to be part of the word problem in the same way as "You want to shoot a cow out of a cannon over the wall. Just to make the problem tractable, we'll assume the cow is a frictionless sphere."
Hobbes emphatically does not make that assumption. Hobbes thinks people are terrible. That's part of the problem.
It seems I may have used the wrong term in my first post. Perhaps social construct would be better? The point I was trying to make was that rights are an idea and something that only exists and affects the world only insofar as both parties agree it exists and should affect a person's behaviour, but some people seems to treat it as something tangible, instinctively recognizable and respected by all, the same way I would respect the claws on a tiger.
Fair enough. I will say that we do have some instinctive recognition for human rights in the form of our moral sense, because evolution has been chugging away at this same problem for millions of years. But it's lacking in detail, and easily overridden by other concerns.
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Yep. Evolution's got to do at least some of it, because any species with a murder rate higher than its birth rate is going to do pretty poorly in the Darwin sweepstakes.
Yep. Evolution's got to do at least some of it, because any species with a murder rate higher than its birth rate is going to do pretty poorly in the Darwin sweepstakes.
And there's social evolution as well as biological evolution. Cultures with norms that promote their members' well-being tend to survive and expand; cultures with other norms tend to collapse and disappear.
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Yep. Evolution's got to do at least some of it, because any species with a murder rate higher than its birth rate is going to do pretty poorly in the Darwin sweepstakes.
And there's social evolution as well as biological evolution. Cultures with norms that promote their members' well-being tend to survive and expand; cultures with other norms tend to collapse and disappear.
Cultures that promote their members well-being, through communism or socialism tend to collapse, or many deaths involved. Look at USSR, Venezuela, Nazi-Germany, Mao China. The freer the culture the better they tend to expand and survive and improvements in overall quality of life; USA, Australia, S Korea, Today China. You have no reference or examples... for your 'argument'.
Yep. Evolution's got to do at least some of it, because any species with a murder rate higher than its birth rate is going to do pretty poorly in the Darwin sweepstakes.
And there's social evolution as well as biological evolution. Cultures with norms that promote their members' well-being tend to survive and expand; cultures with other norms tend to collapse and disappear.
Cultures that promote their members well-being, through communism or socialism tend to collapse, or many deaths involved. Look at USSR, Venezuela, Nazi-Germany, Mao China
These are country that really didn't promote their members well being. Nazi Germany, USSR and Mao China killed millions.
But look at the Nordic countries today, who use a social democracy model.
The freer the culture the better they tend to expand and survive and improvements in overall quality of life; USA, Australia, S Korea, Today China. You have no reference or examples... for your 'argument'.
Australia and China today are more socialist than Nazi Germany was.
The freer the culture the better they tend to expand and survive and improvements in overall quality of life; USA, Australia, S Korea, Today China. You have no reference or examples... for your 'argument'.
Australia and China today are more socialist than Nazi Germany was.
Yes, and we can see the decrease in living standards happening now with this government debt bubble recession soon to be a depression (2018). Australia n China (not Mao) have not gone to the lengths of killing off a race (Jews) to extract their gold and other assets(Nazis). And now with this shutting down of free speech, or calling it 'fake news' it has defiantly gone more socialist.
The freer the culture the better they tend to expand and survive and improvements in overall quality of life; USA, Australia, S Korea, Today China. You have no reference or examples... for your 'argument'.
Australia and China today are more socialist than Nazi Germany was.
Yes, and we can see the decrease in living standards happening now with this government debt bubble recession soon to be a depression (2018). Australia n China (not Mao) have not gone to the lengths of killing off a race (Jews) to extract their gold and other assets(Nazis).
And nobody is arguing anything that suggests killing of a race and taking the stuff to be good so I only see that supporting the idea that government control is (EDIT: not) harmful with such a reason to fall back on.
And Australian Living Standards have only declined by very small amount over the past few years (around 0.6%), especially compared to the more than 50% growth over the past few decades overall. It's mostly stagnating, not declining.
The freer the culture the better they tend to expand and survive and improvements in overall quality of life; USA, Australia, S Korea, Today China. You have no reference or examples... for your 'argument'.
Australia and China today are more socialist than Nazi Germany was.
Yes, and we can see the decrease in living standards happening now with this government debt bubble recession soon to be a depression (2018).
You mean the current reccession that could have been prevented/averted if assorted governments had taken a greater interest in what the fiancial industry was doing and perhaps had imposed a bit more regulation. Whilst the Government Debt bubble might of been shaken/collapsed in some places due it to blame it as the cause is taking blinkered revisionism to an extreme.
The Decrease in living standards in the UK is also caused by our current government abandoning the social democratic polices of previous governments in favor of their Free Market at all costs ideals. Highlighted by them freezing wages at 2008 levels and gradually selling off government services like the Prison and Probation Services off to the Private Sector. And then still Subsidising the private companies.
Edit: Also I think World War 2 had a bigger effect on the collapse of Nazi Germany than there supposed Welfare System. You might want to read about it should prove enlightening.
Cultures that promote their members well-being, through communism or socialism tend to collapse, or many deaths involved. Look at USSR, Venezuela, Nazi-Germany, Mao China. The freer the culture the better they tend to expand and survive and improvements in overall quality of life; USA, Australia, S Korea, Today China. You have no reference or examples... for your 'argument'.
You have no idea what my "argument" even was. Read the thread for context. I was not talking about socialism.
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@Typho0nn. I think I missed where you listed the number of people that have been executed in modern Australia as punishment for not paying taxes. I'll settle for just 3 examples.
It's not theft- you owe the state dues for services rendered. You get automatic benefits- you make automatic payments.
RUNIN: Norse mythology set (awaiting further playtesting)
FATE of ALARA: Multicolour factions (currently on hiatus)
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I'm here to tell you that all your set mechanics are bad
#Defundthepolice
Libertarians love to talk about rights, especially property rights, as some sort of magical, naturally existing thing. Rights are nothing more than a societal contract. If I'm alone on a deserted island with a man with a gun, I have no "rights". The gazelle being chased by a lion has no rights to life and property. At the end of the day as long as I'm in a society, I'm going to be giving up some of my property to someone else. I can either give up some of my property to a government that enforces laws and give me some measure of protection or I'll have to be ready to give up all my property to the local strongman with more guns than me.
The only way to not give up property is if I'm the one with the most guns. In that case, I'm not naive enough to believe that I'm going to be a saint to everyone around me. Coz the best way to demonstrate that I'm strong and not to be messed with is to violate other people's "rights".
I also find Libertarians' tendency to look on force and threats with disdain and as something unnatural to be naive. Force is the first virtue. People are selfish and short sighted, without the threat of punishment and overwhelming force, there can be no peace, no justice. This threat of punishment could be equally applied to everybody in a society, or it can be applied unequally. One option is much better than the other, and a government at least makes the first option possible. So the pragmatic approach as members of a society should be to make the government work better, fairer and be more accountable to the people. Not dismantle it and hope the ensuing chaos and anarchy will magically lead to some sort of post-government utopia due to the people's innate selfishness and love of fair play....
It's hard to get more arbitrary than that. Being kicked out of your home is bad for clear reasons, none of which having to do with a sacred right of dibs being violated.
Remaking Magic - A Podcast for those that love MTG and Game Design
The Dungeon Master's Guide - A Podcast for those that love RPGs and Game Design
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Common misunderstanding of social contract theory. Give Hobbes and Locke another look -- especially Hobbes. Rights aren't just any old social contract; they are the optimizing contract. Think of human society as a math problem and rights as the solution. Now, whether or not you want to say that solutions to math problems "naturally exist" is a bit of a semantic question. Certainly they don't possess material existence in the same way you and I do. But whatever you call it, they do have some sort of real and objective status beyond the arbitrary. As with other truths about nature, they are something to be discovered, rather than invented: you can't just guess an answer and expect it to be correct. It is for this reason that Hobbes calls his system "natural law". It is the social contract that a sufficiently intelligent rational actor would agree to, not necessarily the social contract that we do agree to -- just as the solution to a math problem is the one that a sufficiently intelligent rational actor would find, not necessarily what you scribble down in your homework.
candidus inperti; si nil, his utere mecum.
Going about yelling that your optimal solution to an idealized math problem is being violated sounds a lot less catchy...
And I somewhat question the universal applicability of an optimal solution to a problem that assumes spherical, frictionless cows (sufficiently intelligent rational actors).
That's how the sausage is made.
Sufficiently intelligent rational actors aren't part of the problem or the solution. They're a philosophical fiction used to illustrate that the solution objectively exists. The solution for x2 - 2x + 1 = 0 is x = 1. Any sufficiently intelligent rational actor is going to come to that solution. But the take-home point is that, even if there are no sufficiently intelligent rational actors around, that's still the solution. If that problem comes up when you're trying to build a bridge or fly a plane or whatever, and you use a different value of x, you're not going to do very well. Reality -- nature -- is going to disagree with you. Hence "natural law".
If you're skeptical about whether this concept applies to human society, fine. We can talk about that. But you're the one who first brought out the term "social contract", so it's important that you understand what that theory actually entails.
candidus inperti; si nil, his utere mecum.
candidus inperti; si nil, his utere mecum.
Nope. We're counting people executed by the government in modern times for tax evasion. Not people that chose on their own to wage rebellion because of (insert reason here). Environmental terrorists that are killed during their own attacks aren't executed for supporting the environment. They're killed in action, or executed in places with the death penalty, because they're trying to murder people.
If you tell someone to come to work on time, or else they'll be fired... And they retaliate by coming in with a gun and trying to kill you, but security takes them down first... They weren't threatened with *death* for failing to come in late. They were threatened with being fired.
So yes, I'm looking for a list of the executions the government has carried out as punishment for tax evasion.
Remaking Magic - A Podcast for those that love MTG and Game Design
The Dungeon Master's Guide - A Podcast for those that love RPGs and Game Design
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We've been there with typho0nn. He considers be killed for violently resisting punishments as meaning the offence for the original punishment is under threat of death.
RUNIN: Norse mythology set (awaiting further playtesting)
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I'm here to tell you that all your set mechanics are bad
#Defundthepolice
Is that true Typho0nn? In that case, if I choose to violently resist your argument and am killed because of it - you're threatening my disagreement with DEATH?! That makes you sound like quite the big brother police state dictator. Sure you want to stick to that argument?
Remaking Magic - A Podcast for those that love MTG and Game Design
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Ah...I see the disagreement here. You meant the rational actor as the outside context entity solving the problem. I had read that as part of Hobbe's "men are reasonable and rational" assumption which seemed to me to be part of the word problem in the same way as "You want to shoot a cow out of a cannon over the wall. Just to make the problem tractable, we'll assume the cow is a frictionless sphere."
It seems I may have used the wrong term in my first post. Perhaps social construct would be better? The point I was trying to make was that rights are an idea and something that only exists and affects the world only insofar as both parties agree it exists and should affect a person's behaviour, but some people seems to treat it as something tangible, instinctively recognizable and respected by all, the same way I would respect the claws on a tiger.
Fair enough. I will say that we do have some instinctive recognition for human rights in the form of our moral sense, because evolution has been chugging away at this same problem for millions of years. But it's lacking in detail, and easily overridden by other concerns.
candidus inperti; si nil, his utere mecum.
Remaking Magic - A Podcast for those that love MTG and Game Design
The Dungeon Master's Guide - A Podcast for those that love RPGs and Game Design
Sig-Heroes of the Plane
candidus inperti; si nil, his utere mecum.
When buying and selling are controlled by the legislation, the first things to be bought and sold are the legislators.
Cultures that promote their members well-being, through communism or socialism tend to collapse, or many deaths involved. Look at USSR, Venezuela, Nazi-Germany, Mao China. The freer the culture the better they tend to expand and survive and improvements in overall quality of life; USA, Australia, S Korea, Today China. You have no reference or examples... for your 'argument'.
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Vintage: Dark Depths, Grey Orge
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These are country that really didn't promote their members well being. Nazi Germany, USSR and Mao China killed millions.
But look at the Nordic countries today, who use a social democracy model.
Australia and China today are more socialist than Nazi Germany was.
RUNIN: Norse mythology set (awaiting further playtesting)
FATE of ALARA: Multicolour factions (currently on hiatus)
Contibutor to the Pyrulea community set
I'm here to tell you that all your set mechanics are bad
#Defundthepolice
Yes, and we can see the decrease in living standards happening now with this government debt bubble recession soon to be a depression (2018). Australia n China (not Mao) have not gone to the lengths of killing off a race (Jews) to extract their gold and other assets(Nazis). And now with this shutting down of free speech, or calling it 'fake news' it has defiantly gone more socialist.
Legacy: Dark Depths, Pox, Eldrazi Agro
Vintage: Dark Depths, Grey Orge
Pauper: Faerie Ninja
7pt Highlander: BW Combo
EDH: Horobi, (t)Toshiro, (t)Isamaru
And nobody is arguing anything that suggests killing of a race and taking the stuff to be good so I only see that supporting the idea that government control is (EDIT: not) harmful with such a reason to fall back on.
And Australian Living Standards have only declined by very small amount over the past few years (around 0.6%), especially compared to the more than 50% growth over the past few decades overall. It's mostly stagnating, not declining.
RUNIN: Norse mythology set (awaiting further playtesting)
FATE of ALARA: Multicolour factions (currently on hiatus)
Contibutor to the Pyrulea community set
I'm here to tell you that all your set mechanics are bad
#Defundthepolice
You mean the current reccession that could have been prevented/averted if assorted governments had taken a greater interest in what the fiancial industry was doing and perhaps had imposed a bit more regulation. Whilst the Government Debt bubble might of been shaken/collapsed in some places due it to blame it as the cause is taking blinkered revisionism to an extreme.
The Decrease in living standards in the UK is also caused by our current government abandoning the social democratic polices of previous governments in favor of their Free Market at all costs ideals. Highlighted by them freezing wages at 2008 levels and gradually selling off government services like the Prison and Probation Services off to the Private Sector. And then still Subsidising the private companies.
Edit: Also I think World War 2 had a bigger effect on the collapse of Nazi Germany than there supposed Welfare System. You might want to read about it should prove enlightening.
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I Became insane with long Intervals of horrible Sanity
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Remaking Magic - A Podcast for those that love MTG and Game Design
The Dungeon Master's Guide - A Podcast for those that love RPGs and Game Design
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