[mothballed]

You shouldn't. But you are, and taxes ultimately are there to force via violence people to pay to help fund what they won't pay voluntarily. Now we're only left thinking about how we got here. You and I have next to nill say in this, particularly since the guy ordering it is a 'lame duck' with no further vote to worry about and has a nearly unilateral command of the military by congressional deadlock on any funding hiccups until at least midterms.

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Re: taxation is theft argument below regarding taxpayer monies used for justice (my comments throttled so I can't reply in thread)

Didn't say American taxpayers should have to help. I fully agree any self-help should be fully funded by the victim and not the taxpayers. I completely agree with your argument; simultaneously I'd argue they do have the right to fund an operation to seize their assets. I stated the US did this for this reason; I'd also agree if someone say steals my bike it is theft to try and use taxpayer funds to use the police to get it back, but I'd still acknowledge why the police did it and acknowledge the right of the person with the stolen bike to get it back even though I might not acknowledge they've done it in the right way.

>Your previous comment was saying that the US has the right to use force to get back assets that Venezuela seized

I did not. I said the person that has them seized has the right to get them back. You assumed I meant I supported the US doing it via violence of forcing taxpayers to do it.

The general populace is far more agreeable to theft of the general populace for justice of theft than you or I, though, our arguments fall completely flat in the face of that of an argument for a democratic republic. Generally taxation is considered an acceptable for the securement of the most basic tenants of life, liberty, and property under such political ideology.

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>Huh? You commented on an American military operation by saying that If someone steals from you then you have the right to use force to retrieve it.

Yes I commented that because that is the rational used why the US did it; they are wrongly doing proxy by justice under a principle that could be right if done correctly. I agreed with the underlying rational but not the US forces doing it by proxy via taxpayer expense. However under the popular argument that taxation isn't theft I think your argument falls flat.

I did not say the US had the right to retrieve it via violence against innocents, in fact I said exactly what you said, the person that has it done has the right to retrieve it, not that you could force someone else to do it at gunpoint as the US has done to its citizens.

I explicitly said * even if the method just used is not the right one* to reflect my agreement with your argument, but I did not say your argument out loud, because it is deeply unpopular and it would just get my comment ignored/flagged because that has happened everytime I've used your hardcore-libertarian type logic.

>Was that just a total non sequitur? Were you just saying the oil companies have the right to use force, unrelated to the US military, on a comment thread that is specifically about the US using military force?

It is not at all unrelated that the oil companies wanted something (that might be moral, if done correctly) and then the US went on to do something they wanted in an immoral way, have you been paying attention at all to politics in the US for the past 30+ years? It's baffling you could even come up with this conclusion.

Of course even if they limited the mission to getting back Exxon assets, they will be damned either way. Either for using private mercs at their own expense, people will say they're operating outside the law. If they use the sovereign state, then people will argue the taxation is theft argument about using military assets for misplaced justice and argue they should have just used mercs. They really cannot win either way.

[wat10000]

I don’t understand. Your previous comment was saying that the US has the right to use force to get back assets that Venezuela seized. Since I’m an American taxpayer, that means the US has the right to force me to help with this. Now you’re saying I shouldn’t be. That seems like the exact opposite of your previous statement.

I completely agree that this is happening regardless of what I think and all we can really do is consider how we got here. But that wasn’t at all the comment I was replying to.

> Didn't say American taxpayers should have to help. I fully agree any self-help should be fully funded by the victim and not the taxpayers. I completely agree with your argument; simultaneously I'd argue they do have the right to fund an operation to seize their assets.

Huh? You commented on an American military operation by saying that if someone steals from you then you have the right to use force to retrieve it.

Was that just a total non sequitur? Were you just saying the oil companies have the right to use force, unrelated to the US military, on a comment thread that is specifically about the US using military force?

[mothballed]

Sorry for the wonkiness, I now have an extra comment to reply in-sequence. Thank you for your grace in handling that and the inconvenience there.

I think the crux of your difficulty of understanding is not understanding the difference between a victim being able to fight back, a victim being able to fight back with the assistance of a willing proxy, and the wrongness to force 3rd parties to pay.

It is possible that Exxon has the right to fight back. And that Exxon can use a mercenary force to effect that effort. It is possible that the US military is a mercenary force. The wrong part would be that the mercenary force forced you to pay. Not that Exxon might get justice via proxy.

It can be simultaneously true that a mercenary force could act justly, while also being true they did not act justly, in part because they also used violence against uninvolved 3rd parties (in this case, taxation against you and perhaps also violence against some uninvolved Venezuelans). I think that is the case here.

[wat10000]

I’m not sure why you’re talking about hypotheticals where a different act could be just. I thought we were talking about what’s actually happening. In the context of a news story about US military actions that I help pay for, you stated that force is justifiable to recover stolen property. Either this describes what we’re actually discussing i.e. the actual events taking place, or it’s a confusing non sequitur.

[mothballed]

Let me be explicitly clear in the context, and take on good faith you're just not understanding.

In this particular, concrete event I believe Exxon had the right as a victim to take back their assets, and I believe that the funding of the US military by taxes is immoral, the very act of the people doing so is moral only so far as it does not affect innocent third parties such as yourself or go beyond compensation for the theft. I think I have been pretty clear about this, that in the concrete I think it's simultaneously true that recovery is justified but the funding method was not.

I do believe the US military actions insofar as they recover stolen property is justified, but not the funding mechanism by which they've done so. I'm not sure why this is hard to understand -- if say the police recover your stolen bicycle I can remark the police had a right to go get it even though the police have done it in the wrong way by using violence to tax 3rd parties to go get it. In this case two results -- the victim by proxy rightly recovered the stolen property but also wrongly used violence against third parties to achieve it, both simultaneously true. You are trying to muddy things by suggesting if I agree with one I must agree with the other.

[wat10000]

I think I see the disconnect. I thought you were saying that it’s ok for an entity to recover its own stolen property by force, and conflating the United States with US-based oil companies. But you actually meant that recovering anyone’s stolen property by force is right.

Suffice to say I don’t agree with this expanded version in all cases, especially when it’s the military doing it.

[mothballed]

Yes I would argue this is a fundamental aspect of property rights. Stolen property held with intent to deprive the owner of the assets, has no legitimate title to be held by the person holding it. Therefore you definitely do not do anything wrong to the thief by taking it.

Whether you do anything wrong to the real owner very much depends on the intent and actions taken after you take it from the thief. If the owner asked you to take it, then well you have clearly done nothing wrong. If the owner did not ask you, then it depends on your intent and your immediate disposition to the owner. If you did not intend to deprive the owner of the property from enjoying the property for any additional time, and you took all reasonable actions to return it immediately, then it definitely cannot be theft against the thief nor the owner. Therefore it is at the very least not wrong, and probably right.

I do very much doubt though that the US military will simply take the assets, immediately return them to Exxon et al, and that will be that. And the drug and machine gun charges against Maduro, are certainly not defensible in my opinion.