[burntsushi]

> Have people changed significantly since then?

I don't know. Your question is sufficiently general that a plausible answer could be given to support either "yes" or "no" answers. It is very dependent on what you mean by "change". And therein lay my answer: I don't know what you mean by "change".

The poster in this case was touching on a point that going out and taking a farmer's property (or generally anyone for that matter) explicitly was very unlikely to happen, but taking it from a bank is considered something else entirely. I think that's fairly reasonable in the first world. Could a scenario arise in the future where that isn't reasonable? Sure. But, that's kind of beside the point here I think.

If you extend your reasoning to the extreme, you could pretty much say to anything, "Well, humans have done it before so what's stopping them from doing it again?" The answer is nothing, but it's a red herring: it ignores the possibility that the chance of some Event X has gone down with the passage of time. Perhaps it has gone down so much, that it is no longer reasonable to address it if one want to maintain a modicum of concision.

[ameister14]

Yeah, except you don't need to take the reasoning to the extreme. Physical property redistribution happens in countries all around the world all the time. Why do you think the founders of the US decided only property owners could vote?

I don't think of the government taking people's savings out of a bank and the government taking people's land as very different. It's a small and easy step to take from one to the other, and it's a step that has been taken many, many times before.

As to your last paragraph; it is foolish to assume social changes or governmental behaviors are more or less likely because of technological advances.

[burntsushi]

> Physical property redistribution happens in countries all around the world all the time.

We're not talking about the entire world.

> I don't think of the government taking people's savings out of a bank and the government taking people's land as very different.

Yes. I don't either, and neither does the top parent. That's the point.

> As to your last paragraph; it is foolish to assume social changes or governmental behaviors are more or less likely because of technological advances.

If you say so.

[ameister14]

You're only talking about Western European and North American governments? They're not all that different from governments elsewhere.

See the interesting thing for me is that the taking of physical property is actually just as likely as taking savings from banks. You and the op seemed to disagree with this, but I don't know what you could use to back that opinion up.

If you believe that the discovery of electricity makes me a better person, or even a different one, I don't know what to say to you.

[burntsushi]

> You're only talking about Western European and North American governments?

The top parent is.

> They're not all that different from governments elsewhere.

This statement is content free. "Different" is sufficiently general in this context as to be completely useless.

> See the interesting thing for me is that the taking of physical property is actually just as likely as taking savings from banks. You and the op seemed to disagree with this, but I don't know what you could use to back that opinion up.

The top parent said

> They would have never gone to a farmer and taken 10% of their grain.

Which is true by observation. Governments in first world countries are demonstrably not doing this.

> If you believe that the discovery of electricity makes me a better person, or even a different one, I don't know what to say to you.

I don't understand the point you're trying to make here. This conversation has nothing to do with electricity or what defines a person to be "better".

[ameister14]

>This statement is content free. "Different" is sufficiently general in this context as to be completely useless.

Please allow me to be more specific. Western European and North American governments are not, in terms of quality of leadership or structure of administration, tangibly different from many governments not present in those regions. Further, seizure of land is not unknown in the US.

If the government isn't particularly different, is it some quality of the people present in those countries that makes you so confident that they wouldn't take physical property?

>Which is true by observation. Governments in first world countries are demonstrably not doing this.

That's an interesting point to make because prior to this instance, governments in the developed world didn't take 10% of deposits, either.

>I don't understand the point you're trying to make here. This conversation has nothing to do with electricity or what defines a person to be "better".

Well, your response to my prior statement about the assumption that social and governmental changes are brought about along with technological changes was "if you say so."

This is generally something people say when they don't agree, but can't or don't want to prove their point. It's a tactic used to undermine the argument of the opposition without presenting a defined counter. I was responding to that.

[burntsushi]

> Please allow me to be more specific. Western European and North American governments are not, in terms of quality of leadership or structure of administration, tangibly different from many governments not present in those regions.

There are despots and tyrants all over the world. They are very tangibly different from Western European and North American governments in terms of quality of leadership or structure of administration.

> Further, seizure of land is not unknown in the US.

We're talking about grain, not land. The specifics of the example are particularly relevant.

> If the government isn't particularly different, is it some quality of the people present in those countries that makes you so confident that they wouldn't take physical property?

I'm not confident at all that they wouldn't take physical property. Once again, this is irrelevant. We aren't talking about probability, or chance, or anything of the sort.

Once again, the top parent is a commentary on cognitive dissonance using factual observations about the world. Governments are not taking grain from farmers, but governments are taking money from banks.

> That's an interesting point to make because prior to this instance, governments in the developed world didn't take 10% of deposits, either.

Well, yes... The top parent was contrasting this with something the top parent believed was morally equivalent, but was not practiced.

> "if you say so." ... This is generally something people say when they don't agree, but can't or don't want to prove their point.

Actually, I meant it as, "I don't care to argue that point because it's irrelevant to the topic of conversation."