aminok

>An ad-hoc process controlled by an individual? Of course I'd complain.

Morally there's no difference. You just want the armed robbery to be done in a more organized and deliberative process. That doesn't change the moral quality of threatening you with violence to deprive you of your property, when you have not committed any offence to warrant such a violation of your rights.

>Actions on behalf of a democratic system are different to actions of an individual, because they have the consent of a majority of the governed.

Violating people's rights with the "consent of the majority" is just two wolves and a sheep voting on whats for dinner. The justification is just an ideological cover for violating others rights.

>How do you intend that property rights be enforced? Who decides who owns what, and what gives them the right to make that decision?

Property rights would ideally be enforced by the government, with common law, which is based on protecting people's human rights (including the right to not be robbed to provide for the poor), determining who owns what.

>Would it be acceptable for an individual who disagrees (i.e. doesn't consent) to take action on their own to reallocate property as they see fit?

I don't know, because there are many factors to consider. If the judgment is unjust, but resisting it with force leads to far more violence against the innocent, then it could wrong to resist in such a manner. The best course of action in my opinion is to strongly argue for what one believes is justice as long as the freedom of speech exists.

>Yes, I'd prefer people be thrown in prison for refusing to feed the starving, rather than them starving to death.

So I guess you won't complain when some self-righteous modern-day Robin Hood engages in armed robbery against you to feed children in an orphanage in Africa. And if you resist? Well, the consequences fall on you. Who are you to deny others who are in need your income.

That actions that are unconscionable by any normal moral standard suddenly become socially acceptable to endorse when done through the political process shows how detached political ideology has become from humanity/morality. The political ideology you endorse is sociopathic and narcissistic to the extreme.

>Why should I bother, if you're just going to change the way I was using a word and then tell me I'm sheeple?

It doesn't really matter how you define it. What matters is that they have not improved much from the position they were at when they adopted social democracy, and the reason is because their rate of economic growth has stagnated.

The way to measure the success of a policy is to see how much a country has improved from the position it was at when it adopted the policy relative to other countries.

>And since you like statistics so much, population growth,

Gee why would anyone base their views on large-scale phenomena on statistical evidence!? Why don't I just base my ideas on what's culturally popular and which notions give me warming feelings!?

>If the population stagnates, then of course you expect growth to stagnate.

You're taking an amateur approach to this, in missing all sorts of facts to arrive at your predetermined conclusion. The fact is that per capita GDP growth has slowed, not just GDP growth. Moreover, wage growth has slowed, and wages are a per-capita measure.

>Likewise this crazy expectation that human lifespans just linearly expand with improved circumstances

There's no indication that it's a "crazy expectation". The point I was making is that there is no evidence that social democracy has actually made anything better in the countries where it has been adopted. The trends in place before the adoption of social democracy were superior to the trends that came into effect after its adoption. So there is no objective evidence to support your ideological inclinations.

>but what would you expect when you're citing data from a source whose raison d'etre is specifically promoting the free market?

There's absolutely no evidence that the source's raison d'etre is to promote the free market. It's entirely possible that they want to further public welfare, and have concluded, based on empirical evidence, that the free market is the best way to do that.

>But I will leave you with this: economic growth isn't everything. That's the point of quality-of-life measures. People have a high quality of life in Sweden. Whereas China has recently had a rapidly-growing economy, and life sucks there.

More bullshit logic indicative of an amateur approach to economics and society.

China is still extremely poor relative to the West. But people in China are FAR better off now than they were 30 years ago, and that's primarily down to the massive economic development the country has experienced. Wages growing by a factor of 4-5X is hugely important to quality of life.

The proliferation of smartphones doesn't lead to everyone getting "propaganda from a central server". A smartphone is a personal computing device that enables far more peer-to-peer communication and interactive engagement with the world than the previous mass-media paradigm of the pre-internet age (where a small number of broadcast networks, newspapers and radio stations controlled the minds of the vast majority of the population through passive one-way communication).

I agree that the loss of privacy is a huge concern, but like I said, there are positive trends as well that you are simply hand-waving away.

>But, again, as you stated previously, not horses?

Horses as well!

> Seriously, you are moving the goalposts all over the place.

I directly addressed your argument and then I also made an additional argument that your premise is not necessarily true. That's not defined as moving the goalposts.

>We are about to face a few individuals with technology will hold massive power over everyone else.

There are plenty of counterindications to that. For instance, many forms of technology are becoming increasingly widely adopted, at a rapid pace. I gave the adoption of smartphones as one example.

>Why not include mice, they have 97.5% of our genes, as being successful? Why not all mammals? Oh, except horses, of course, because you said in a previous comment we are different from them.

I would say the success of human beings is by some metrics a success for mice, mammals etc as well..