"Go dig, otherwise I'll shoot you" (Public health) "How can you believe that taxation is inherently immoral? E 'immoral that the State may compel a rich to pay a few euro to feed a child who is dying of hunger, or to treat a patient who has no money for treatment and otherwise die? "
- Mario Rossi, a typical citizen
This sentence reflects the thinking of the vast majority of people around the world, and is probably the reason why there is so-called welfare state.
And as you might think of even remotely disagree? Who could be so heartless, so selfish, to try to express a contrary opinion?
Eppure, basta rendere esplicito quello che Mario Rossi sta dicendo, e immediatamente la sua posizione assume un aspetto diverso.
Prima di tutto notiamo che, se Mario Rossi, invece di parlare, desse da mangiare all'affamato, non ci sarebbe bisogno di tassare qualcun altro per farlo. Quindi, la posizione di Mario Rossi si può riscrivere così: "
Io non voglio sfamare il bambino che muore di fame, ma
qualcun altro deve essere costretto con la forza a farlo".
Già così, si inizia ad intuire che c'è qualcosa che non va nella posizione di Mario Rossi. Quello che sembrava ovviamente giusto ed innegabile sembra adesso discutibile.
Ma continuiamo to spell out what John Doe is saying, let's concentrate now on the phrase "someone must be forced to feed him by force." Forcing someone to feed the baby means
take a gun, pointing it at the head of a stranger and say, "Now take this shovel and go into the fields to cultivate the land, otherwise I'll shoot you." As you see, once you deliver the words of John Smith in a more explicit, it becomes obvious immorality and horror contained in it.
Mario Rossi is supporting the aggression against the innocent. But not only is supporting slavery. What does Mario Rossi (take the gun and forcing a stranger to farm the land under minaccia di morte) è la forma più pura di schiavitù. E' schiavitù in senso letterale, non per modo di dire. (Tra l'altro, dato che Mario Rossi nega di sostenere la schiavitù, è ridotto in contraddizione.)
(Notate anche che il fatto che l'estraneo sia ricco non cambia niente dal punto di vista morale; costringere qualcuno a coltivare la terra sotto minaccia di violenza non diviene lecito se costui è ricco; i ricchi non hanno meno diritti degli altri.)
Riflettete sul fatto che non c'è trucco e non c'è inganno: Mario Rossi sta dicendo
esattamente questo, quando dice che "qualcuno deve essere costretto a sfamare gli affamati". Eppure, mediante artifici retorici as the use of passive and impersonal, he had managed to hide the violent and invasive nature of his ideas. Only once has anyone had the patience to explain the true meaning of his words, that nature has come to light.
So, this is a technique that you need to master if you want to fight evil. We could call it the "technique of the other-you-shot" or the "technical dell'esplicitazione the unspoken," or the "technique of reduction to slavery." The ironic thing is that the technique is to simply make explicit what the speaker is really saying. ___
clarify a possible misunderstanding: there is no
stating that the child should be hungry die. None
you from feeding the hungry. All are free to do so. And since most people care about the hungry, it is statistically certain that someone will give him something to eat, so the coercion is not necessary. And if you do not have the economic capacity to reach the hungry and feed you want (for example, because he is at the other end of the world), even in this case no one's stopping you from
finance charitable association aiming to feed the hungry . And if that's still not enough, nobody's stopping you from
enter freely in a community where you are forced to feed the hungry, and all the others are forced to do so. (In other words, no one's stopping you from entering a community where all are slaves to the others. Just do not pretend to force an unwilling to enter.) The only thing that
not have the right to do is compel a stranger to do what you do not want or do not know. This would be slavery.
Public health another example and apply the technique to a topic that occurs more frequently: the public health
. The Socialists (right and left) often say things like "must never happen that someone will die because they do not have the money for treatment or because it has no insurance. "This seems the most reasonable thing in the world, who would be so ruthless and selfish to think otherwise?
But we apply the" methods of dell'esplicitazione not said "to this statement. What the Socialist is saying is tantamount to saying that if Tom does not have the money to pay for treatment, and no one wants to treat for free, then someone must be forced
with the strength to heal. But what exactly does this ? "Forcing someone to take care of Tom" means: take the gun, pointing it at the head of a doctor and tell him
"Now you curerai Tom, otherwise I'll shoot you." This is like dire che i medici devono essere schiavizzati.
Ovviamente non è così semplice: il socialista, quando gli fai notare questo, risponderà che c'è stato un malinteso: "Io non sostengo niente del genere; non voglio certo schiavizzare nessuno, per carità. I medici devono curare i malati solo se lo vogliono, o perché sono generosi o perché attratti dal denaro che viene offerto loro in cambio. Soltanto, dico che, se uno non ha i soldi per pagare il medico, deve essere lo Stato a farlo."
Ma, così facendo, il socialista non ha eliminato la schiavitù: ha solo
trasferito la schiavitù dal medico a qualcun altro. Infatti, lo Stato ottiene le proprie entrate con la forza, not by voluntary exchange. So if your doctor is not to be enslaved, there must necessarily be
someone else who has been the gun to his temple, and to whom it was said:
"Now you take this shovel, go to the camps, the hoe soil, plant the seeds, watering, mowing, and continues to do this until they have enough food to get some doctor to share his services with this food . If you do not, I'll shoot you in the head. " This is what the socialist is proposing. Literally. And this, of course, is morally equivalent to forcing the doctor to
cure the sick. Only the mechanism exploitation is more indirect
: instead of directly forcing the doctor to do something, to compel production of X and Y
swap it with the medical service. But immorality is not diminished: the first victim of this was the doctor, now is another worker. The victim was made
less obvious, because the exploitation is more indirect and less visible, but there is always a victim.
___
PS: reply to some comments in the common objections.
