Psychology of Theft
Do you see these shiny goldbars? You want to steal them don't you? You can't resist the urge, that comes from within to steal and hoard it. It's a basic instinct to gather resources, and your instincts don't really care about the morality of it, it's just an instinct.
However you can use your brain to decide what is moral and what is not. It's a battle between your common sense, and your instincts. Instincts that are tens of thousands of years old, and come from a very primitive and barbaric age.
You know how the caveman used his club to beat up another caveman and steal his resources. It was no big deal back then, but those times have passed, and humanity has become more civilized, or has it?
Ooooooooh, so now that we have evolved brains, we now use our evolved intelligent brain to justify theft. I see, so basically nothing has changed. It's just that instead of using brute force for theft, people are now justifying it with their brains.
So it looks like the instincts are still controlling people's rational brains. I am sure that if you steal for the poor, or for free healthcare, or for free education then it is perfectly moral to steal.
Because it's the same logic, you see a shiny gold bar in front of you, and you don't steal it for your own selfish desires, you steal if for the poor. Oh that is absolute unquestionable morality right there.
Socialists
It is how these socialists talk, have you observed how these people talk, let me give you a few examples:
- "We have so much wealth in the world, and so many poor people, we must do something!"
- "Why can't we share the wealth with everyone?"
- "Wealth inequality is catastrophic, we must fix it!"
.... and other rhetoric.
Yes dumbass, there is a lot of wealth in the world:
AND IT'S NOT YOURS!
- Its not yours, pure and simple! What gives you the right to talk about other people's wealth as being your own?
- What gives you the right to redistribute other people's wealth?
- How can you be so arrogant to link other people's wealth as having anything to do with you?
You've got your paycheck, and that is exactly where your money ends. The workplace is not yours, the boss's wealth is not yours. You are just an employee there.
Listening to Marxists talking about making a factory worker's owned, is just outrageous. Don't these people see themselves in the mirror? It is lunacy.
So here is the gold bar, and you can't have it. It is not yours, and you should respect other people's property, the same way that other people respect your property.
sources: http://808english.blogspot.com/2013/02/a-slap-on-wrist.html
Upvote, ReSteem & 
Your entire article is based on knowledge from movies. Not science.
People don't just want to steal something if they see it. There is nothing "ingrained" in us. The caveman with a club is from the movies. Not a single club was ever discovered and it is a myth that cavemen were more violent.
Again, movies, not reality. You can't expect to be taken seriously against the other side when your hole argument is based on pop-culture knowledge.
it is rather sad.
That is the noble savage fallacy. No, cavemen were violent and primitive.
http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Noble_savage
People still are, despite all the laws, education, and societal influences, not to mention the lowered testosterone of males, since they are not performing extreme physical labor.
What makes you think that a wild savage human living 30,000 years ago, that was in constant danger, surrounded by hostile animals, has the hunting instinct perfected in him, but wasn't violent?
C'mon, that is he exact definition of violence.
yeah yeah didn't say anything about noble savages , heres a wiki , http://www.thocp.net/timeline/0000.htm
just said people won't be insane, ok grunts and clubs and axes and wooden stuff and leather,fur and some vegetables, when did agriculture start
stop arguing , for no reasons
Wild grains were collected and eaten from at least 20,000 BC. From around 9500 BC, the eight Neolithic founder crops, emmer and einkorn wheat, hulled barley, peas, lentils, bitter vetch, chick peas and flax were cultivated in the Levant. Rice was domesticated in China between 11,500 and 6,200 BC, followed by mung, soy and azuki beans. Pigs were domesticated in Mesopotamia around 13,000 BC, followed by sheep between 11,000 and 9,000 BC.
You don't know better , dont argue for no sake , I haven't watched any of those movies to have a philosophy concerned with a time I didn't live in , all i know is what i think is logical and what i can "imagine" based on my own experience and some history,
So basicaly 20k BC yu had Granaries and society , noble my ass , but society , people grunting for grains. Counting bones and stones
Have to agree there , my experience was subjective , but I have to say living in the forest will make you gay :D
in the uncorrupted word way , ie as in happy , at least during the summers , some got fed up with the fact they have to daily prepare and have to hunt which is not always secure as a method of providing valuable resources and started preying on other people , while others through millenials gathered , knowledge ad then civilizations were formed , destroyed ,reowned , Rome stole everything from Carthage and soiled their name and so did the "barbarians" after hundreds of years of slavery from forced conflicts from the expansion of Roman "culture" .
There are many points of view, I have to agree with the leftist perspective and personal property , looking up others success doesn't make you a part of it and wishing you were successful for a "moral" standpoint is immoral and as @profitgenerator said ,sometimes completely disregards reality.
But there is hope, just not in regressive self centered ideology , where one wishes , but doesn't move forward and sure enough if you do you will see that past world views are sometimes skewed.
Taxation is theft , but spoils of war aren't the way to go , they soil all of our mind with greed , because some are starving and others see fallacy try to change it and see that people living in the "system" don't have to be as strong as someone willing to inovate.
Am i stealing , when my country decides to draw in loans and sell my "soul" ie, whole , devaluing and putting the future at risk to have more cars that later get taxed with lame policies , should I start a movement , who would care :D , why would fe fight amongst ourselfs , when we can stop the divide of left and right and go straight to the point, is there so little we have to divide , are we so lazy to try and make a world worth being alive in.
So how is someone entitled to profit and sometimes since they are born with wealth have no value in anything, spend it all on drugs and quick fixes for themselves , when I for one try to not support false claims, they get supported because they pray on your small brain: , pharmacy , media and cars and joints , partys and no point.
I have to agree with all of you some less , since you draw a conclusion too quick , others just as much since you diluted a bit :D
But without context @kyriacos is right , and @ocrdu is too and so far the most close to rality view is from @darth-azrael , just keep in mind I got here from the first two , so be thankful if you find some gems in my posting of the brains :D https://steemit.com/poetry/@kyriacos/a-motivational-poem
Teach that to entitled kids with no goals or sight above their feet , or other that have "made" it big and bought into the sold philosophy that life is what you own and what you eat. If you eat meat you are a winner , if you get cancer its no wonder there , but others don't agree, too bad we are putting in live in conflict with reality.
yeah so many topics so little time , I should do some posts based on my comments , since posting is all that gave me any return so far :D , what would you say to this newly added point(I hope) @ocrdu @kyriacos @profitgenerator @darth-azrael
I know exactly what you mean by that. I wrote an article in the past where I have tried to unite left and right and take certain good ideas from here and there, to kind of form a 3rd ideology.
However the left is fundamentally flawed, because the concept of equality is impossible to realize without excessive force. The path of least resistance that is the easiest to maintain.
But distorting nature with equalization projects is like ading pressure to pipe, and eventually that pipe will break and the pressure will be released violently.
Force, and the initiation of force is hard to maintain, and anarchy is the default system. Whenever excessive authority and force builds up in society, it will be released in a massive violent event, some war or entire societal collapse.
We didn't had a massive collapse since WW2, and I hope we can release the "pressure" now slowly and steadily. Deconstruct the welfare system, slowly phase everyone into cryptocurrencies.
That is the only peaceful way. Either that or global nuclear war. Which one is better?
went on some "lessons" so when I get some good examples I will be back
"Cavemen" actually cooperated to get food for the whole group they lived in.
I'm surprised to see that the endless rehashing of the "taxation is theft" theme still does so well on Steemit. I'm not necessarily disagreeing, but if you insist on posting about this after the zillion rehashes of the same theme, isn't it time for some original thought by now?
BTW:
Is stealing bread to prevent your children from starving immoral if the one you steal from has plenty and will be throwing the bread away the next day anyway?
Is taxation still theft when the money comes from ill-gotten gains?
Is taxation still theft when it is voluntary?
If a group of people decides to create a common stash of money to feed the poor to keep them from starving, and decide to pay into that stash every year, each as much as he can reasonably spare, is that also taxation?
Just curiuos.
His answer is based on pop-culture and movies. Not science. check my response
Oooh, I'll answer!
Maybe. But less immoral than letting your children starve. I do wonder how often this example comes up in real life though.
Yes.
If it's voluntary it isn't a tax (or not what is being referred to when taxation is referred to as theft).
See 3.
That comes eerily close to defining taxation as theft as opposed to proving taxation is theft. A lot seems to hinge on the definition of taxation.
A few centuries ago in my home country, people that lived in a polder all paid a percentage of their income for maintenance of the dykes, which was a good thing, as it prevented dying and other unpleasantness.
If you didn't pay, there was a sanction: you were banned from living in that polder and you were forced to go elsewhere, so the payment wasn't voluntary; it had to be made to be allowed to live in that polder, even when you were born there. This payment would seem to qualify as taxation, if I understand you correctly.
But was it theft?
If something is taken from you by force then it is theft. Generally speaking, taxes are taken by force (i.e. if you don't pay your taxes, they are seized anyway and you may go to jail as well).
Oxford defines a tax as "a compulsory contribution to state revenue". This is theft as much as if I held a gun to your head and told you to make a compulsory contribution to my revenue.
And I'm not saying taxes aren't necessary in the world we live in today. That doesn't mean they aren't theft though and thinking about them in such a way is a good way to look at it when considering new taxes for anything.
In your specific example, I would need more information. Did he own property in that polder and then was denied the use of it if he didn't pay? Did he rent property from someone else? Some other arrangement? If he is denied the use of his property if he doesn't pay the tax then theft is being committed. Or perhaps extortion if he pays "voluntarily" under threat. If you are paying taxes because of the force that will be used against you if you don't then it isn't voluntary. I suppose you could make an argument that extortion is a better word in that case.
The taxes to maintain the dykes applied to all land owners, some of whom collected it from their tenants. When someone was banned for not paying, he would not forfeit his property but was given time to sell it or rent it to someone who would pay.
If some taxes are necessary and theft at the same time, are we dealing with moral theft? Or an immoral necessity? You can't take away a necessity, and moral theft is a strange concept. Can necessary taxes be immoral? If they can't, then there is little point in saying "taxation is theft"; it is then no longer the judgement it sounds like, but a rather empty statement, unless you have a good chance of arriving at a society that doesn't even require the sort of taxes I describe in my polder-dykes example.
Do the people who buy property there sign a contract with someone that they will pay for dike upkeep (this would be sort of like a homeowner's association fee then...not a tax)? If not, than forcibly taking it is theft. What happens if the person who is the property owner doesn't pay and refuses to move?
Whether it's moral or immoral is somewhat of a judgement call as morals are not absolute...everybody doesn't work from the exact same set even though they may be mostly similar. I'm not really saying any particular tax is necessary (and who gets to make that decision anyway?), just that our whole system of government is based around the idea of taxation and I don't see a pathway to fundamentally change it, whether you think it is moral or not.
It can't be stressed enough. Otherwise people will never change. You have to repeat it to people in case they forget.
Repeating something over and over again without adding any new thought or using proper reasoning adds nothing. You are just preaching to the choir without convincing anyone outside of your belief system while asserting your position within it. Endless repetition is not an argument, it is noise.
I have wrote many articles about this where I have detailed my points. This particular article was more of a way to show the irony in ideologies.
Beautifully put! Excellent and clear! THANK YOU!
Up-Voted and Re-Steemed! 😄😇😄
