They don't do it now. They would do it if a new organized boycott popped up because that's what they were invented to do. Plus Trump will surely utilize it if he ever feels the desire
Assuming law-following (which I realize the current administration doesn't care about), that agency's authority doesn't apply:
"These authorities discourage, and in some circumstances, prohibit U.S. companies from taking certain actions in furtherance or support of a boycott maintained by a foreign country against a country friendly to the United States (unsanctioned foreign boycott)."
So it's about US companies and foreign governments, not individual consumers purchase decisions
Yes I'm talking about in the context of companies, gov'ts, police departments, etc. I know it's not about personal decisions.
One of the biggest hammers to the hypothetical boycott is this office which effectively criminalizes any company from partaking (going so far as to have to prove they considered the boycotted party for all deals / contracts / purchases / etc.)
Property didn't just appear in your hands out of thin air. Unless maybe you appeared naked on a deserted island and made everything yourself from scratch. It's only "your" property because of the social structures that make it so.
If you want to know what Nussbaum has to say about it, you should probably read them yourself.
You sound like someone who appreciates the costly systems that protect their property, but finds those “collective” efforts inconvenient to acknowledge.
“Property” is most definitely a social aspect of reality. It does not water down its usefulness, or moral rationale, to recognize that any view of property beyond “things you can physically defend without help from others” involves social agreements and efforts.
I don’t think dismissing others good points out of hand is the best way to communicate your own ideas.
Human beings benefit so much from social agreements it is profound. This is not news to game theorists, but some people seem to find it to be a bitter instead of sweet pill.
The question for the animal which creates exponentially more value for itself via many and varied social constructs, than any other animal, is to optimize positive sum social structures (in form and depth), and avoid and mitigate negative sums. Not deny their obvious existence or that our own existence (and freedom) as individuals and a species would be significantly curbed without them.
I do appreciate property and property rights (which I fund to be defended by my taxes). They are my only material means (aside from my bare hands) for achieving my values for myself and people I love.
If you have "collective efforts" you want funded or built, you're free to ask people voluntarily to put their lives, children, families etc. on hold for whatever cause you think is important that I don't see that you have insight into.
But at some level, people who live together have to be able to make some decisions together.
The top level of that is what we call “government”.
It complicates things that governments are as prone to dysfunction as any other structure. And that governments are often weakest at the job of improving themselves.
This is getting a bit abstract.
The specifics of what a government taxes and for what matter. The line would be only to tax for things that generate a net positive expected sum for all citizens, and only in cases where the positive sum is significant and only achievable as an agreement at the top level of society. And these systems are monitored and adapted or cancelled based on their actual, not envisioned, impact.
There isn’t going to be a general answer to the question of whether taxation is good or bad. Only cases where the net benefits are positive and negative. Real or imagined.
I share the view that blind redistribution does not deliver positive returns in reality or in any sober theory.
But the societal level returns we get, from real (not unmeasured, not just imagined or ideologically assumed) surpluses of common efforts, are a legitimate source for funding those efforts.
> If you have "collective efforts" you want funded or built, you're free to ask people voluntarily to put their lives, children, families etc. on hold for whatever cause you think is important that I don't see that you have insight into.
Such collective efforts are already underway. One is called the United States, a system where the legal construct property is bounded and compatible with taxation for public provision. The US is a club of people who have banded together for common goals and with democracy as a tool for updating the system. If you don't want to be part of that club then leave.
I don’t think you will find any disagreement on either point.
“Democracy” is often used as a general term for governments that in some sense are a delegation of citizen power. Even though a pure democracy would remove the delegation.
As a practical matter, the US model has devolved into a party-duocracy. Power at all levels has nearly completely centralized at the national level of each majority party. Of which there are only two. The extreme minimum of choice even for a Republic.
Incorrect, it was founded with more goals than that. It also has the mechanism of democracy for updating over time, and such updates have added prosperity producing things like taxation for public provision of education, infrastructure and much more. Which means that the initial version of the technology called the United States have long since gotten various updates.
There is certainly an emotional reaction that happens when something you consider yours is lost. We have all felt it at some point. But consider: everything you have was either stolen from somebody else at some point in the past, or created from resources that were stolen from somebody else, probably before you were born.
For me the starkest contrast is that Christianity introduced the idea of thoughtcrime, though they didn't call it that. In Christianity it is important that you believe the correct things, whereas the pagan religions only cared if you performed the rituals.
Well Trump just pardoned Ross Ulbricht who sold unapproved injectable drugs, so you can at least get away with shipping them into the United States, as long as you're not Mexican or Canadian.
I'm not entirely sure it would be worse than the status quo. If all the free sites were the ones run for the love of it, and all the paid sites were commercial garbage, that might actually be better.
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