Hi @Krupo, you raise interesting points, I'm not sure I can address all of them, even though I think a few issues are worth talking about. I'm sorry you felt I was unfair towards @dag, I can assure you that wasn't my intention, because even after reading your post, I'm not sure I see much difference between taxing individuals and mining companies (at least for the point I was trying to make, IIRC).

I wonder what is it about a natural resource that is underground (and that is mostly useless unless extracted), that makes it such a crime to extract and sell it without some additional taxation. It's not like removing oil or minerals is damaging anybody, and it wasn't actually available until someone extracted it. Sure, if there's pollution, or destruction of property, they should pay. However, just paying because it's a "natural resource", when they're the ones making the resource available to society, seems wrong to me, but I guess those who benefit from taking other people's money can always come up with rationalizations to collect a tax.

If we do charge more taxes for mining, though, won't the company just transfer the taxes to the final product, taxing consumers and other industries? More importantly, will raising taxes contribute in any way to better wealth distribution?

Remember, taxation doesn't mean giving money back to society as we often like to think, it just means giving money to government. That's a big difference. Government uses money not just for operation, but as a tool to further its own political agenda, one that sometimes involves corruption, and the added power that comes with it. Why is it best for society to give government more power? Why is society better off by giving government more fuel for waste or corruption?

The reason I mention corruption is because I believe it's an important contributing factor to wealth inequality. I also happen to think corruption plays a significant part in how a government operates, even in the fairest of democracies.

@newtboy my bad, no need to be rude. You could take into consideration that, with time, conditions change. An environment where people enjoy freedom also gives them more incentive to come up with solutions to problems that arise.

You say freedom is not a good teacher, ok, it's not entirely unreasonable to assume you're right. So, what would be a better teacher, then? Making decisions for people while they learn to mature and become more responsible, then give them freedom afterwards. You know, like we do with children?

It's not a bad idea, but it's kind of condescending considering that we're talking about adults here.

@VoodooV Like I've been saying all along, your posts are mostly attempts at intimidation. I enjoy answering some of your questions, because it helps me question my beliefs, something I think is constructive and that you seriously shouldn't be afraid of. We are all supposedly looking for the truth anyways. All this could be settled by answering my simple question, whether you'd agree or not, it wouldn't even necessarily be an argument against gun control. I was pointing out the apparent conflict between wanting people to be more responsible by taking their freedoms away, when taking their freedoms away might not contribute to making them responsible people in the long run. An unpresumptuous suggestion meant to be taken as food for thought.

Instead, you resort to being juvenile and making fun of me, while writing huge posts with my entire posts quoted afterwards as an attempt at making me turn away in horror at the sight of a huge wall of text. Sure, it takes me time to sift through all of it to see what really matters. You're trying to muscle your way through, and it's a waste of everyone's time. I actually take the time to make my posts short and to the point, did you notice that? I happen to think it's a good habit to have some consideration for the reader, why am I not surprised you have none for me?

So, instead of appreciating that I don't waste your time by making an effort at being succinct, you accuse me of avoiding some of your arguments. It's true, I avoid a few of them because I think they're irrelevant, it's called being selective. Now I know that was a bad idea. I'm terribly sorry. I won't do it anymore. I will take the time to answer the most points I can to the best of my ability, and if that my makes my posts tiresomely long and wastes my time, so be it.

I bet you're trying to flood me with words because this isn't about any truth, is it? It's about discouraging and distracting me from something. Ever heard of picking your fights? It's about being reasonable about yours and other people's times. After all, I do assume you have a life outside of this internet topic on videosift, don't you? Anyway, let's get to it:

- About emotional manipulation, you FAILED to prove it, and here's why:

When you obey traffic laws, you are being coerced if there is coercion as consequence for not obeying them. Will you get arrested? Will you get your car, which is your property, impounded if you disobey? Then yes, they are coercive laws.

When you decide not kill someone because the law will coerce you if you do, you're being coerced into not killing, even if you freely decide not to kill out of good morals and empathy for fellow human beings, the option of killing is always there in reality (you can always kill anyone if you really want to), but not legally. If you kill, you're under the threat of going to prison. The positive or negative language seems completely irrelevant, what matters is what happens when you disobey the law. If coercion ensues, the law is coercive, or, more accurately, its enforcement. I'm not actually making the distinction right now if it's a rule related to coercion itself (a rule that makes coercion more or less likely to happen), just pointing out the irrelevance of your distinction between negative and positive language.

Now, I have to admit that there is divergence when it comes to defining coercion, but there is no emotional content here as far as I can tell. I'm using it in the sense that people have a right to their life, property and freedoms, and when you take or threaten to take away any of those things (and have the power to do so), THAT is coercion. There is no emotion here, I am offended that you would think that I would resort to that, because I don't even have to. Coercion has a meaning to me, I'm just using the concept as it is. If there is an emotional content, SHOW ME what emotion that is. Up until now, you have FAILED to do so.

- About requiring things before freedoms are granted, I think you FAILED to make your point, here's why:

To type boring senseless posts on the internet, you require a keyboard. Maybe, if you could type with voice recognition, like I do, you wouldn't need a keyboard, but what matters is that you use something to type or produce characters that will be submitted to the videosift website and become a useless post. So, for the sake of argument, let's call this an "actual physical requirement".

Now, with a gun to your head, if I require that you, VoodooV, jump through actual flaming hula-hoops positioned vertically on an intricate obstacle course before typing in your videosift comments, the world would be a better place (at least videosift would). However, my requirements would be arbitrary in the sense that it imposes something not actually physically necessary to enjoy the hypothetical "freedom to post inane ramblings on videosift" (we are assuming it's a right), can you spot the difference?

So, requiring things that are not necessary to enjoy a freedom is not something that makes the freedom better or is in any way justifiable just because history is littered with the precedent of assholes like kings and despots requiring stupid things before we can enjoy freedoms that we supposedly already have. When it comes to guns, a law says we have a right to bear them. Any laws that restrict that supposed right are infringing on the freedom that comes from having that right.

- About the claim that people will be less responsible if they have less freedom:

"If I made decisions for you, I could make you act more responsibly, but that's not the same thing as making you a more responsible person."

"Over time, when we take people's freedoms away, they tend to be less responsible about the decisions we're not letting them make. There's no way they can learn about any different (good or bad) outcomes related to decisions they couldn't make, and they can't be held responsible for them either, so they can hardly become more responsible."

- About your reduction to absurdity claim that removing all the rules would make us "SUPER-Responsible":

"I don't think rules inevitably destroys our freedoms, let's make a more refined distinction:

- If a rule is meant to stop people from infringing on each other's freedoms, if it's a rule that makes people less likely to coerce each other, it's a good rule because we end up with less coercion happening (even counting the coercion necessary to enforce the rule), we end up with a more civilized society. There are not many of those kinds of rules around.

- If it's a rule that imposes some regulation because we don't trust that people will be responsible enough to do what's best for them regarding something unrelated to coercion, we not only restrict their freedom by coercion (in this case, coercion by the government), it doesn't make coercion less likely, so it's likely a bad rule."

The problem with removing all rules is that, without rules related to coercion, people would be too subjected to the threat or actual coercion from other people around them, society would be less civilized. Would that make them more responsible? That's a good question. On one side, they would have a lot more responsibilities if they had to worry about their own lives and safety every frickin' day, and all the terrible worries that comes with the unstable chaos of anarchy. However, given that they would enjoy less freedoms due to the constant coercion of others, they would likely end up being a lot less responsible, because they would have far less choices.

That's why I took the time to explain the difference between rules related to coercion and rules that just infringe on freedoms.

- About your examples of requirements before freedoms and rights are granted, here's a list of your "numerous examples" and my reply to each of them:

VoodooV: "You have the freedom to go to college..."
VoodooV: "You have the freedom to have a certain job..."

"Going to college or getting a job are not things people are entitled to (supposedly), there are no rights involved, so no freedom is being denied."

VoodooV: "You have the freedom to imbibe alcohol....IF you are a certain age and can demonstrate that you can use it safely"

I don't know about using it safely (what does that mean?), but regarding age restriction, I don't agree with those laws. I know, very "liberal" of me, but I think children are the responsibility of their parents, so it's a law that steps into parenting territory.

VoodooV: "And according to the right, you have the freedom to vote..."

About voting, I don't know, I guess being registered is a requirement for the voting process? Like the right to life requires... being alive?

"The voting process, on the other hand, seems to be something that requires registration (again, I'm not an expert on voting, so forgive me if I'm wrong), otherwise we end up just shouting to ourselves, "I vote for X"!"

VoodooV: "And having a gun, or a car, has a significant risk to infringe upon other's freedoms so it's not unreasonable to ask that you demonstrate proficiency and safety before using said items."

A driver's license is not about owning or using a car, but about driving in public venues. I could be wrong, but we don't need a license to drive a car in our own backyards, do we?

Simply owning a gun, on the other hand, not only isn't a violation of anything, it supposedly provides protection against these violations.

- About me supposedly contradicting myself, saying "there are no rules for us talking", then proposing a dare:

Did I shoot you in the face when you failed my dare? So I guess it's not the kind of rule in the sense that I didn't threaten to coerce you if you failed it. Do you understand what kind of rule I was talking about? Do you even understand what a contradiction means, or are you just taking advantage that not everyone that reads your posts knows exactly what you're referring to make yourself look smart even though you can't point out a contradiction if it rested flat in your deepest held political beliefs?

On the subject of contradictions, strictly speaking, there's no contradiction between calling you juvenile and being juvenile myself, even if I did so afterwards, and in retaliation, to give you a taste of it.

Ooooooooh... must be very embarrassing for you not to know what a contradiction stands for.

Here's your entire post quoted, because, why not?

@VoodooV as much as you'd like to fantasize about me being hurt and crying in a corner, I assure I'm just pointing out that you're wasting time trying to troll me instead of arguing like someone with the least bit of intellectual honesty, so you'll hopefully realize it doesn't work.

I guess you didn't, and now you're just being juvenile, even quoting my entire post after I asked you not to. This begs the question, why haven't you insulted my mom yet? Seriously, it's the logical next step. Why can't you be honest about being a troll? I already have the thumbnail, is this the best you can do?

There are no rules for us talking, you can do whatever you want, really, just troll like you've been doing since all this started, I won't be impressed. You think debating requires enforceable rules? Rules that involve some kind of coercion, like a fine, maybe prison time? Is that why you've been acting like a brat, to illustrate the need for what... censorship?

As much as I'd like to see you booted from the videosift community, I can't pull any strings around here, but that wouldn't be coercion if I did, because no one has a right to post on videosift. Censorship, on the other hand, would involve sending a police officer to your house and arresting you for excessive trolling. Can you see the difference? Does that example help illustrate what "coercion" means?

When I say no one cares about this internet argument, I'm hoping you'll stop trying to impress the huge crowd you think is reading this BS you've been posting. You do realize your antics are useless on me, right?

What emotional content am I resorting to when I use the words "freedom" and "coercion"? I dare you to prove to me how I'm being emotional about them. Prove it. PROVE IT. lmao

My initial question didn't involve gun control at all, it was broader, I was asking, "won't people be less inclined to be responsible if they have less freedom?", it's about how having less freedom makes people tend not to be so responsible.

Over time, when we take people's freedoms away, they tend to be less responsible about the decisions we're not letting them make. There's no way they can learn about any different (good or bad) outcomes related to decisions they couldn't make, and they can't be held responsible for them either, so they can hardly become more responsible.

You keep avoiding this simple explanation and shouting about everything else. What are you so afraid of?

P.S.: if you want to admit to trolling me, just quote my entire post again. I dare you.

@VoodooV don't be flattered when I call you a bully, it means your posts are mostly attempts at intimidation, you trying hard to come out on top of an internet argument no one cares about. Calling me names only convinces me you understand your own beliefs so poorly that you resort to personal attacks as substitute for critical thinking.

The way you counterargue is mostly by taking whatever I write out of context and poking fun at it, calling me names, or pointing out something completely irrelevant as reason to invalidate it.

Like, "if you steal a gun,...", you intently misinterpret me, then, of course, flip the tables (why not?), and accuse me of "changing the argument". Here's the argument: demanding registration for voting is not an impediment to voting if it's required for the actual process. It's unlike gun control, imposing arbitrary rules to own a gun are far removed from the basic requirements of owning an actual gun.

Now, do I need to define "requirements", "arbitrary", "gun" with some kind of measurable unit before we continue? Are you going to resort to shifting focus to the loaded words I use, as excuse not to deal with the arguments they form?

This all started with a simple question, "won't people be less inclined to be responsible if they have less freedom?", and you did everything from claiming not to understand it, to insist that I "prove" that assertion, only to incessantly bicker at my naive attempts to indulge you.

I don't know what's more disappointing, that no one ever showed you what a productive debate looks like, or that you're trying so hard to avoid one. It's pointless.

No one likes to watch this, I'm sure you and I are the only people reading this far into our own posts. So stop with the chest-thumping, everybody left by now, and I'm not the least bit impressed. Also, stop quoting my entire posts, it's annoying.

@newtboy again, the "freedom doesn't work unless perfect condition X". You don't need perfect circumstances for freedom to work. Many people abuse freedom of speech to say terrible things or spread the worst lies. Some are prosecuted, some aren't, big deal. Still, most americans believe in freedom of speech, in the sense that people tend to become more responsible when they have it, not only about what they say, but also not believing everything they hear, and heavily regulating each other much more wisely than any government censorship ever could.

@VoodooV Wow, why are you being such a bully? You're not actually stopping to think.

The question you say I'm avoiding is the one I'm trying my best to explain on every post, yet you're constantly avoiding it yourself (as if there's something inextricably cryptic about the relationship between freedom and responsibility), all the while accusing me of being a coward. Like saying it repeatedly will make me or anyone else believe it.

Are you also placing on me the burden of thinking for the both of us?

If you want to own a gun, you buy, steal or make your own gun, there, you have a gun. The gun won't stop working if you don't have a permit! Is that math too hard to understand, is being overly antagonistic and close-minded your "debate strategy"?

The voting process, on the other hand, seems to be something that requires registration (again, I'm not an expert on voting, so forgive me if I'm wrong), otherwise we end up just shouting to ourselves, "I vote for X"!

I don't think rules inevitably destroys our freedoms, let's make a more refined distinction:

- If a rule is meant to stop people from infringing on each other's freedoms, if it's a rule that makes people less likely to coerce each other, it's a good rule because we end up with less coercion happening (even counting the coercion necessary to enforce the rule), we end up with a more civilized society. There are not many of those kinds of rules around.

- If it's a rule that imposes some regulation because we don't trust that people will be responsible enough to do what's best for them regarding something unrelated to coercion, we not only restrict their freedom by coercion (in this case, coercion by the government), it doesn't make coercion less likely, so it's likely a bad rule.

If I impose stricter gun control, as a government, I'm coercing people to comply with more rules, that means a little more coercion ends up happening in society, from government towards the people. Not counting that kind of coercion (necessary to enforce any rule), stricter gun control doesn't seem to make people directly less likely to coerce each other, does it?

My question was, "won't people be less inclined to be responsible if they have less freedom?". Like I said, if I make decisions for someone, I can make them act responsibly, but that doesn't make them more responsible, because I'm still the one making their decisions.

Freedom is a good teacher. If I let someone make mistakes and pay for them, they'll most likely avoid them all by themselves, eventually. If I make decisions for them though, they end up with less freedom, and, therefore, tend to act less responsibly, wouldn't you agree?

@VoodooV Isn't responsibility about making your own decisions and accepting their consequences? I mean, if you're not making the decisions, doesn't make sense to be held responsible for them. Freedom goes hand in hand with responsibility, it's about the power to make your own decisions, being held responsible seems like a necessary consequence.

So, less freedom = less responsibility, wouldn't you agree?

I'm sorry, I don't know how else to put it, it seems quite obvious to me, I'm not sure what you want me to prove.

About voting, I don't know, I guess being registered is a requirement for the voting process? Like the right to life requires... being alive?

Gun control, on the other hand, doesn't seem like an actual requirement to owning a gun. Again, seems like apples and oranges.

You want someone else making stricter decisions as to whether someone can carry a gun. Not letting people make that decision for themselves takes freedom away from them.

If I made decisions for you, I could make you act more responsibly, but that's not the same thing as making you a more responsible person.

@VoodooV who's "you guys"? What happened to arguing ideas?

Your understanding of freedom is quite puzzling to me. I'm not even questioning whether gun control is right or wrong.

Going to college or getting a job are not things people are entitled to (supposedly), there are no rights involved, so no freedom is being denied. Apples and oranges.

A driver's license is not about owning or using a car, but about driving in public venues. I could be wrong, but we don't need a license to drive a car in our own backyards, do we?

In any case, I don't think it's reasonable to just use the existence of a law that infringes on a person's freedoms as justification for a proposed law that restricts it even more.

Crime is on a whole other level, because it's usually a violation of someone else's rights.

Simply owning a gun, on the other hand, not only isn't a violation of anything, it supposedly provides protection against these violations.

How is making it harder to acquire or own a gun going to make people more responsible using them? That's all I was asking.

@VoodooV Interesting point, but won't people be less inclined to be responsible if they have less freedom?

Rights and responsabilities go hand in hand, I agree. That means when you screw up, you're held responsible, you pay for your actions.

With gun control, you want to take people's freedom away to stop them from screwing up in the first place.

Doesn't seem to me like that would make people more responsible.

If the biker is injured in any way, he's at fault for his injuries.

The other guy at least had the good sense of surrounding his body with a rigid metal chassis.

A fairly uninteresting commercial by japanese standards.

I'm guessing she was promised a trip to Disneyland.

We need an open source decentralized and encrypted P2P network for IM and audio/video communications that we can safely run on encrypted devices.

Do we have one of those?

After the government takes all our money, hopefully our pockets will be left with some spare change we can believe in.