Glaivester wrote:

The likely end result is that people have to be forced to be productive, or society will collapse becasue people would rather get something for nothing than get nothing for something.

What makes you think that society isn’t already collapsing around us? There’s lots of evidence.

I’ll try to prepare a longer, thoughtful post on this stuff over the weekend. No promises.

(although I’m also a little against the worship of private property rights that this measure appeals to.

Isn’t this just a eupehmism for “I want to be able to take your stuff (or have the government do it for me) so I (or my proxies) can use it for the purposes for which I want it used?”

No, euphemism for that is “highly progressive taxation for government programs”.

And isn’t the debate against recognition of same-sex relationships simply a euphemism for “We don’t trust you to live your lives for yourselves, so we’re going to tell you how to do it right, and we are going to be the ones who define what is right”?

Face it. Whether it involves the economic (property rights) or interpersonal (domestic partnerships), government has no place to tell us what we can or cannot do. Only when we start to cause active harm to another person with our actions, whether physical or mental or economic, does government have the right to step in.

If there is no such harm, then it should be outside of the purview of the government. Period. Ad infinitum.

Isn’t this just a eupehmism for “I want to be able to take your stuff (or have the government do it for me) so I (or my proxies) can use it for the purposes for which I want it used?”

It seems to me that when you are against property rights, what you ultimately support (whether intentionally or not) is that unproductive people ought to be subsidized and productive people penalized. From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs reward need and punishes ability. The likely end result is that people have to be forced to be productive, or society will collapse becasue people would rather get something for nothing than get nothing for something.

Those numbers IMHO approach the upper limit of what is possible through direct democracy, and really go too far.