I somehow suspect your reasoning was more about that the Pirate bay was made for piracy.

It's a factor. The clue is in the name. But it's not only that. You can use Google to find torrents just as easily. The difference is, if you tell Google about it, they'll remove the link. If you told The Pirate Bay about it they'd send a smug response insisting that it's legal in Sweden. They did nothing to try and encourage legitimate torrents, or discourage the illegal ones. LegalTorrents.info seems to manage.

It's hard for me to believe that they had any intention to provide anything except a site for illegal material. I'd actually think less of them if they did. I can respect opposition to current IP laws. If they didn't have an anti-copyright agenda, then we're assuming that they're simply stupid.

If you can sell the gun someone is shot with and that's not a crime why would making a torrent tracker be one? :D

If you sell someone a gun for the purpose of shooting someone with it, then that would be a crime. You'd probably be charged as an accessory.

If your gun shop was used primarily for criminals toi acquire firearms, I imagine the police would inform you of this and urge you to do something about it. If you don't do anythng about it I could imagine that being used as evidence that you are specifically selling to criminals. If you called your gun shop "Bank Robbers Bay" or something that suggests the gund are good for crimes, I also imagine that this would be taken as evidence of criminal intent.

Crime is typically made up of two parts - actus rea and mens rea; the guilty act and the guilty mind (intent). It may be different in Sweden but probably not substantially. If you genuinely have no intention of committing the crime, then you are usually considered innocent. A large part of a typical prosecution is proving intent. Sometimes mere recklessness is sufficient - if you know that the act will very probably result from your actions.

It was an analogy to illustrate relative morality. There are some people who would have no trouble eating dog food, but we consider it unpalatable. Non-vegans have no trouble eating meat but vegans consider that unpalatable.

There's no particular reason the Swedish prison system can't cater for dietary preferences.

Really? And how is that working out?

Givn that Sweden has a 30-40% reoffending rate, I'd say it's doing okay.

Okay - there are plenty of segments of Wall still around if people want to see them. Many exactly where they were built. These aren't part of that. They're just collectables. Google has no interest in these colectables and doesn't want to store them for someone else. It's up to the owners to put them somewhere they are wanted

I think there is a certain efficiency argument. A GPU may be able to run a C compiler but nobody would consider using it for that. A CPU can run an OpenGL implementation and it would be slow but you'd at least be able to do it without any fiddly hacks, and there could be a reason to do so.

The article seems to be trying to find a hard and fast rule as to what "general purpose" means and then realising that that doesn't actually apply to general purpose processors.

Jesus helped the poor â" and encouraged followers to do so as well â" but he never called for Caesar to raise taxes and give free food to anyone...

This seems a bad example. Jesus broke the Sabbath law - a law that was seen as exactly the same level of morality as "though shalt not steal". while he didn't say the government has an obligation, to the poor, he did accept that the government has the right to our money which would seem to contradict your earlier point., and he had absolutely no qualms about stealing a donkey for his own benefit, and was willing to destroy a whole herd of pigs to help another man. He also said that it is practically impossible for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven, so obviously he felt that wealth, or at least greed should be punished.

Many philosophers have argued against property being a natural right. Hume argues that there is no possession except that established by laws of society.

Once again, if you are so "sure", why do you need the tax authorities to force Pauls into paying for Peters? Not encourage, mind you, but force? Why can't Paul voluntarily give Peter the extra monies for whatever service Peter goes to work to do? Perhaps, you aren't quite as sure as you claim to be...

For the most part, Paul is paying voluntarily. And Peter is voluntarily accepting that Paul has the right to most of the money he's acquired. If either of these people break this social agreement then they are punished.

There you go â" this one phrase is the tell-tale. You find selfishness unacceptable, and therefor it is Ok â" in your opinion â" to crush the "selfish" into obedience by force of arms... That's moral?

Yes. I consider murder as unacceptable as well. Also theft - as defined by society - to be unacceptable. Some people think you don't deserve your possessions. You are willing to crush these people with force of arms.

Big enough to be comfortable. Until you've had a chance to compare 5 or more German showers to that many American ones, you wouldn't understand. And I have â" perhaps, on this one you can just take my word...

This is a bizarre means of measuring quality of life. How many people in Europe can't afford basic health care? How many people go without basic food?

The entire Europe (population over 700 mln) would not be able to resist a Russian (population under 150 mln) invasion... Because you don't spend enough money on equipment and training. And not just that, unfortunately...

The solution to this would be to increase taxation and spend it on the military. What would you propose, given that you apparently consider taxation to be a crime? Hell, the soviet union had a massive army and that was a society that essentially rejected the concept of private ownership!

I pay taxes to a general taxation fund administered by the government, of which a small amount goes to the running of the government. I don't pay taxes to the government any more than I pay taxes to my accountant.

The largest sections of income tax in my home country go to welfare, health and education. Add state pensions, criminal justice, and transport and that's the bulk of spending (probably 75% or so), all of which are beneficial to society. Administration is about 2% or this.

Welfare actually allows my fellow man not to starve.

It is simply immoral to force Peter to pay for a bus line, which will help Paul get to work... And it is outright outrageous to force Peter to pay for Paul's food and housing.

Why is it immoral to force Peter to pay for Paul's food and housing? It's immoral to let Paul starve. I'm sure Paul will agree that he'd pay for Peter's food and housing if their situations were reversed, and Peter would accept rather than starve. You almost seem to be presenting selfishness as a virtue. I consider selfishness as unacceptable.

Having visited Europe many times, I can "clearly" see, you live in poverty. Your cars are too small for comfort, as are your showers. Your food is expensive â" and so are most other goods and services. And, despite all those taxes upping the every-day prices, you are still too poor to maintain a military, that can credibly discourage Russian... Shrugs...

Your examples here are bizarre. You can buy large cars in Europe. And how big does a shower need to be!? Do you think that North Carolina could repel a Russian invasion without the military contribution of the rest of the US because that's pretty much the comparison you're making. Russia is large. Sweden is small. The reason we're not spending a lot on the military though, is because we find that cooperation and social reforms have reduced the need.

Pretty certain society exists. As far as I can tell, I have interpersonal relationships with lots of other people and they have interpersonal relationships with more people forming a web that includes everyone in the society.

Unless you can find a way to live your life without affecting anybody in the world then you are part of that society.

The exact amount we have the responsibility to pay is a matter of consensus. I think I should pay a certain amount. If society thinks I should pay less, I'll happily agree. If society thinks I should pay more, then it would be rather hypocritical to disagree. If you made an offer of $100 to buy an item from me and I said "No! It's only worth $50" are you going to haggle over the price and insist on paying the extra?

Our means of establishing this consensus sin't all that good, but it's a lot better than "everyone pays what they think".

As for not robbing banks, certainly I wouldn't want someone to steal from me. I also don't want other people to rob from banks, or the banks to rob from other people. I think a society where people don't rob banks is better for everyone, not just the banks.

I don't pay taxes to "the government". The government is an elected team of administrators. It's odd to anthropomorphise the insttution considering the actual people change frequently.

I do live in a country driven by certain socialist priniples, (but not Confucianism). It's pretty nice. We have an efficient public transport system throughout the country, affordable health care, a safety net if I lose my job, and mandatory paid vacation. We also have a government that we select through a process of democracy, that I can become a member of if I think they're not working for the betterment of society as a whole.

Clearly there's a problem in the US where apparently there's a ruling class that you have no say about, and taxes that are spent only on the ruling class and not on the betterment of society.

You already have done so by spying. If you place limits on it then you're legitimising the spying that is already being done.

would be pointless, since the point of the spying is supposedly to catch enemies of the state and people etc and to prosecute them in court.

If you know who did something and what they did you can probably find the legally admissable evidence afterwards. As a crude example, if I know when someone will commit a crime, I can catch them in the act. The fact that I caught them in the act is evidence even if my prior knowledg would not have been admissible.

No. I pay taxes because it's my duty to society.

I also don't rob banks, because I consider it an obligation to society not to do so.

Perhaps you are a sociopath, and we need threats of violence to control people like you but not all of us are that way.

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