Is self-interest on taxes moral?
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  Is self-interest on taxes moral?
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Author Topic: Is self-interest on taxes moral?  (Read 3395 times)
RINO Tom
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« Reply #25 on: May 13, 2017, 08:55:20 AM »

Is voting the way that will most positively affect your loved ones considered to be "self-interest"?

I echo this question from a strictly curious standpoint.
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parochial boy
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« Reply #26 on: May 13, 2017, 09:35:37 AM »

Oh and it can be more complicated. What if you feel government does a poor job and would rather use your tax money to directly help others? I do not see how anyone coulf say that is immoral.

Because the right to decide how the common good is best served belongs to all the people, and letting the rich usurp this right and make these decisions themselves would be an affront to democratic principles.

But that is not the question. It is whether it is immoral to desire lower taxation so that you can use said money for causes you believe in. On the flip side is it moral to desire more taxes on someone when that increased taxation may just go to pay for more military spending when they would have otherwise used it to fund an oephanage? I am not arguing against taxation. I am just saying it is not necessarily immoral to seek lower taxation since there could be many reasons why one does.

Yes it is, because it is saying that only you have the ability to determine what is a just cause or not - and in doing so, you are prioritising your own ego as the justification for decision making
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Antonio the Sixth
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« Reply #27 on: May 13, 2017, 09:12:04 PM »

Is voting the way that will most positively affect your loved ones considered to be "self-interest"?

I echo this question from a strictly curious standpoint.

Insofar as your loved ones tend to come prevalently from a specific social group with its own set of interests distinct from that of society as a whole, yes.
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shua
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« Reply #28 on: November 11, 2017, 04:43:19 PM »

Do you similarly consider self defense and related activities to lack a moral character?

I don't see how that's a relevant question. Self-defense and other activity can be easily justified on the basis of a universal right to life.

Hm. I contemplated self-preservation as perhaps the most immediate act of self-interest. You are framing self-preservation (or in this case stated "self defense"), it is moral for the act of defense, having little to do with it be oneself or someone else. Hm.

Exactly.

And I thought I'd become collectivist recently. Tongue

I mean when discussing morality, how is it even possible not to be collectivist? Morality only makes sense with reference to a collective. If I'm the only person in the universe (or if I somehow manage to never have any interaction with anyone of any kind) then nothing can be right or wrong.

It is very possible for something to be right or wrong in such a circumstance if one believes a person or thing can have inherent value. 

Does a person only have value if they consider themselves as having such?
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Antonio the Sixth
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« Reply #29 on: November 11, 2017, 04:53:44 PM »

Do you similarly consider self defense and related activities to lack a moral character?

I don't see how that's a relevant question. Self-defense and other activity can be easily justified on the basis of a universal right to life.

Hm. I contemplated self-preservation as perhaps the most immediate act of self-interest. You are framing self-preservation (or in this case stated "self defense"), it is moral for the act of defense, having little to do with it be oneself or someone else. Hm.

Exactly.

And I thought I'd become collectivist recently. Tongue

I mean when discussing morality, how is it even possible not to be collectivist? Morality only makes sense with reference to a collective. If I'm the only person in the universe (or if I somehow manage to never have any interaction with anyone of any kind) then nothing can be right or wrong.

It is very possible for something to be right or wrong in such a circumstance if one believes a person or thing can have inherent value. 

Does a person only have value if they consider themselves as having such?

Of course not, human beings are inherently valuable.

I'm not sure I understand how this relates to my point.
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shua
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« Reply #30 on: November 12, 2017, 12:01:10 AM »

If a person is inherently valuable, then they have a duty to themselves to act accordingly, such as not to harm or destroy themselves without good reason. That is a moral issue which exists regardless of the presence of others.
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Antonio the Sixth
Antonio V
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« Reply #31 on: November 12, 2017, 02:17:18 AM »

If a person is inherently valuable, then they have a duty to themselves to act accordingly, such as not to harm or destroy themselves without good reason. That is a moral issue which exists regardless of the presence of others.

You're right, that's a very good point. I am not entirely sure if I would say that people have a moral duty to care for themselves per se, but I do believe that people have a duty to care for one another whether others want their care or not, and conversely, if by neglecting themselves a person ends up failing in their duty toward others, then they have a duty to take care of themselves.

What I'm not sure is whether, if there was only a single person on Earth, the very idea of morality would make any sense, or whether whatever that person wanted would be inherently "moral". I'd have to give it more thought, but I'm not sure it's worthwhile, since this is such a convoluted scenario.
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Beet
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« Reply #32 on: November 12, 2017, 12:54:19 PM »

shua raises an interesting point. Value is ultimately determined by what one values, so yes, it is possible to have a legitimate reason for self-harm, if that reason is well thought out. However, that doesn't make it unselfish or immoral necessarily, since self-harm can also harm others. An obvious example is an airplane pilot who commits suicide by crashing into a mountain with passengers onboard, but even mundane cases of suicide can have the same harmful effects. e.g., you are depriving someone of a person that they love.
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True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)
Ernest
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« Reply #33 on: November 19, 2017, 11:17:20 PM »

Depends on how far you take it.  Unalloyed self-interest is immoral, just as unalloyed societal-interest is immoral.  Where to find the optimal balance between those two extremes is what makes up both politics and ethics.
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vanguard96
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« Reply #34 on: November 21, 2017, 07:48:40 PM »

Self interest absolutely fine as taxation is theft...

“The fact is that libertarianism is not and does not pretend to be a complete moral or aesthetic theory; it is only a political theory, that is, the important subset of moral theory that deals with the proper role of violence in social life.

Political theory deals with what is proper or improper for government to do, and government is distinguished from every other group in society as being the institution of organized violence. Libertarianism holds that the only proper role of violence is to defend person and property against violence, that any use of violence that goes beyond such just defense is itself aggressive, unjust, and criminal. Libertarianism, therefore, is a theory which states that everyone should be free of violent invasion, should be free to do as he sees fit, except invade the person or property of another. What a person does with his or her life is vital and important, but is simply irrelevant to libertarianism.

It should not be surprising, therefore, that there are libertarians who are indeed hedonists and devotees of alternative lifestyles, and that there are also libertarians who are firm adherents of "bourgeois" conventional or religious morality. There are libertarian libertines and there are libertarians who cleave firmly to the disciplines of natural or religious law. There are other libertarians who have no moral theory at all apart from the imperative of non-violation of rights. That is because libertarianism per se has no general or personal moral theory.

Libertarianism does not offer a way of life; it offers liberty, so that each person is free to adopt and act upon his own values and moral principles. Libertarians agree with Lord Acton that "liberty is the highest political end" — not necessarily the highest end on everyone's personal scale of values.”
― Murray N. Rothbard
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Pennsylvania Deplorable
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« Reply #35 on: November 22, 2017, 07:01:06 PM »

It certainly isn't immoral, but I've long said to tax cut obsessed republicans "Your grandchildren won't give a damn what the tax rate was, but they will care if you allow America to be transformed by immigration or the environment to be destroyed to appease corporations."
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