No, I don't. We're talking about the effort put into your book. As such, I only need to prove I expended no effort on your book. That proof can either be in the fact that I've never seen your book, it can also be found in the fact that I'll probably receive no credit for having expended effort on your book (demonstrated by your lack to include me as one of the people entitled to compensation).
Then I expect compensation.
I didn't help you survive, I helped me survive. If that somehow spilled over into your survival, count yourself lucky that I don't make you pay for it. I expended no effort for you, I expended it for myself. Again, you'll have to find some way to distinquish between goal-directed effort (like writing your book), effort traded for part of your wealth, and effort which is incidental and has nothing to do with your book, or your wealth. As much as you want to admit you're incapable of accomplishing anything on your own, I'm not going to let you do it. You wrote the book.
I'm a little confused. The first sentence in what you quoted is, "Doesn't address the point." Since the last sentence in your reply is, "Point addressed." I have to assume you're replying because you believe the first sentence to be true (else, why would you bother to affirm you've addressed the point?), but your reply states, "First sentence is false."
Then not all of your wealth was a group effort. That one original thought is part and parcel of every other thought you've taken from others. As such, it is part and parcel of all the wealth you've created. Therefore, part of all that wealth owes its creation to that one original thought.
Really? You can't wake up in the morning without someone else's effort? You can't move your body without the effort of someone else? You can't think without someone else expending their effort?
Absolutely.
Is that all? Is that the complete criteria for owning someone? If so, would exhibiting this criteria, or ability to exhibit this criteria, indicate someone is owned? If so, if this owned person is subsequently forced to work would that constitute slavery?
I know many vegetarians who don't cook their food. Does this mean they're not human?
In what sense?
Adaptability? Is that the word you meant to use? Does it mean - "changing easily: able to adjust easily to changes and new conditions?"

Basically, our economy would take a dive. Wed end up with more people, less wealth, which equals third world country. The US is the wealthiest country in the world because people have an incentive to be wealthy. Take that away and we become any other socialist country for the short amount of time it takes to collapse.

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http://www.fairtax.org

Elminate all taxes on income and replace with a national sales tax.

Yep.

Now if we could get some of those idiot libs to realize that, maybe we won't go to Hell in a handbasket...

You're really going to have to back that up. It seems nonsense to suggest that there are no private clinics in Cananda or that Hillary would want to close all of them in the USA.

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When WW2 had ended everyone joined the resistance.

If your only tactics are calling me a nazi and a communist I'd rather not have this discussion with you.

I think that people would be a lot less healthy and educated if it wasn't for the efforts of the governement.

If you stretch it to the extremes, then you are correct.

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When WW2 had ended everyone joined the resistance.

I didnt claim any of that, only that private healthcare was illegal in canada (some parts), and Hillary would make private health insurance illegal here. She was well on her way making it a crime to not have health insurance.

http://www.cmaj.ca/cgi/reprint/164/6/825

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clinton_health_care_plan

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http://www.fairtax.org

Elminate all taxes on income and replace with a national sales tax.

Huh? I don't recall ever calling you a Nazi. If you're not a communist, I would like to know what other philosophy espouses that all wealth is owned in common.
Ignoring the facts that a) the government isn't nearly involved in health as it is in education, and b) the US education system is the laughing stock of the world, let's just focus on your point. Would there be no healthy or educated people unless business (or government, if you prefer) paid for their health and education?
Well, if we're dealing with principles, they have to be stretched to extremes. If you're going to categorically claim that what is good for society is advantageous to "all of us", then I have to take you at your word.

I believe you know what my point is. If it wasn't for the rest of you people I myself would not have the things I have (A job, a computer, housing, food). Doesn't that mean I owe something to the rest of society and also have an interest in organizing that society efficiently?

Again, you're stretching it to the extreme. There certainly would be less healthy and educated people.

For me this is not about principles. This is about pragmatism and thinking about an efficient and humane way to organise our society.

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When WW2 had ended everyone joined the resistance.

Don't worry, I'll pay my taxes on it, which will go to services that help support you. The law says that's the compensation you're entitled to.

Ah, I see. So what you're saying is, that the fact that I couldn't have written the book without the contributions of lots of other people, and certainly couldn't publish it without the contributions of more, means diddly-squat unless they were helping me on purpose?

That's a pretty convenient distinction for your purposes, dude. However, it's not one I'm willing to recognize. If someone's actions helped me to survive, or gave me ideas that I incorporated into my writing, the fact that they didn't do these things deliberately for my benefit or with my book in mind doesn't in any way change the fact that my book was not a completely individual effort undertaken in a vacuum.

I understand your confusion. Here are the two sentences I was referring to:

In making that response, I forgot that there were actually three sentences in what I quoted not just two. The first sentence above is false. The second sentence above is true, but the first does not follow from the second. I hope that is clearer.

You cannot atomize a work of art that way. For one thing, even my original thought wasn't completely original in the sense of being independent of the world around me. It was expressed in the English language, to start with, and I did not create the English language. I had read a great many works of English literature, as well as history, science, and so on, and held a large number of conversations with other people, before I wrote the first word. Can I truly say that even the most "original" of my thoughts was not influenced in any way by this earlier interaction with other persons living and dead? I don't think so.

All of these things are true. I could not wake up in the morning, not only without the contributions of other people, but also without the contributions of the entire planetary biosphere. Without those contributions, I would be dead, and so I would be unable to rise, move, or think.

Very well then. You have been in the position of having to work for the benefit of another. Or at least, a portion of the work you did went to the benefit of another, because if they were paying you the full value or your work in terms of revenue potential they would not have made any profit on what you did and so would not have hired you in the first place.

Being able to work the person in whatever way desired without legal limit, being able to sell them, being able to kill them. Add being able to do them physical harm short of death, too. Yes, I think that about sums it up.

It would constitute slavery whether the person is subsequently forced to work or not. After all, a slave owner is free to allow his slave to lie around and eat bonbons all day if that's what he wants to do.

I know some who would suggest that.

Let's just say that the cooking of food predated civilization and leave it at that.

I'd say so. We have certainly exhibited unusual ability along those lines in adjusting to the radically different conditions of civilized life compared to those of precivilized life, and of modern industrial civilization compared to classical agrarian civilization. Most biologists would agree that we are a highly adaptable species. Do you dispute that?

I don't know what your point is. If you're going to assert that my property belongs to everyone else, I don't see how that's any different from communist ideology.
I don't know. Did you steal these things? Are you not giving something to your employer in exchange for that job?
Okay, sounds like a good deal for those educated and healthy people, doesn't it? Depending on how many you believe would choose not to be educated, or choose not to maintain their health, the demand for those who did these things would push wages through the roof. Isn't that a good thing? And since there would be people doing these things, employers would gain no benefit from those who did not, would they?
Ahh, so you're willing to sacrifice your values for pragmatism?

Isn't your second statement a principle?

Not long ago, I travelled abroad, Australia. There I could see that the principle of a nation that doesnt only care about the upper crust, some things show that they are possible. A govt can easily reach out to the needy without spoiling economic growth, and education and heath are the basic basic things that a country must maintain, and USA fails drasticly in both. 300 mil people might be much, but the annual tax income is huge enaugh, and if people would have to pay more in taxes and less in HMO and collage and University, they would save themselves a lot of money that today goes to those company as profit, something that shouldn't be there in something so basic as health and education. I do not belive in communism, but knockle head capitalism, paranoid about anything remotely socialist, is just about the same.
As for food and shelter, that is more relative, but it is not imposible to prevent the lack of these two to city population. Many countries take care of these quite well.

I already pay for those services, I don't need you to. I want my compensation as I negotiate. After all, that's what your publisher and agent get to do, right? They've contributed, I've contributed, so I should get to negotiate. I want my name on the cover. Don't worry about any monetary renumeration.
Yes. If you truly couldn't have written the book without contributions from lots of other people then either you are stealing their ideas (plagiarism), or you are stealing their labor (by stealing the computer you wrote it on, the paper and ink you printed it with, the binding your publisher put on it, etc.) What do you call it when someone takes things without permission? Joint effort?
Then give them credit in your bibliography and pay them for their effort.
Much, thank you.

Did you wake up this morning? If so, did someone else bring your brain to consciousness?
Okay, so we're back to your incapability to arrive at an original thought?
Wow! It's amazing we even exist as a species.

When someone else thinks for you, what does that feel like? Is it strange to have them move your muscles?
Nope, I've been in the position of having to work for my own benefit. That I found someone else willing to trade for the work I do, who found value in paying for what I do, doesn't mean I was working for their benefit. I was working, and continue to work, for myself. My employers added their own effort on top of what I was doing, and were therefore able to make a profit, but they didn't do so for me - they did so for themselves. My employers weren't working for the benefit of those who chose to trade what they do for my employers products and services - they did so for their own benefit. And so on, and so forth.
Aren't these all things any government could do to its citizens?
Nah, too convenient. Let's try to arrive at what civilization means. You've argued eating cooked food is a characteristic of not just civilization, but a requirement of humanity. Yet we have entire populations which don't eat cooked food, yet would, by any measure, be considered civilized and their members human. That leaves us without a definition of "civilization."
Not at all. I'm just eager to read how adaptability - the cornerstone of evolution - doesn't mean evolution. We're highly adaptable, adapted enough to live in civilization, but haven't become that way because we've evolved. Interesting.

What, you mean you pay the entire budget for the U.S. military out of your own taxes? Seriously?

I am impressed. You must be one mega-rich dude.

Yes, I did, and yes, the entire planet did that.

Yes, it is that. We're the product of a whole lot of unlikely chances. Now, I personally believe that it is very likely indeed that some technologically intelligent species or other would have evolved in more or less the same time frame that we did, but humanity specifically? Very, very unlikely indeed.

No, I'm quite used to it. So are you.

Perhaps that's what you intended, and what you thought you were doing, but I assure you, your employer knew that you were working for their benefit, and they shared the scraps with you because otherwise they couldn't get you to do it. And you were forced to do it because, if you hadn't, you wouldn't have been able to survive.

So if that is the criterion for slavery, then you were a slave. However, your employer's ability to work you had legal limits, and he could not do you physical harm or kill you, and he could not sell you to someone else. So, by the criteria I proposed for slavery, you were not a slave. And I stand by those criteria -- you were not.

Certainly not. The U.S. government (for example) cannot work me without limit, cannot kill me or physically injure me (not legally anyway), and it absolutely cannot sell me. Nor can anyone else. I am not a slave.

I'm going to snip the stuff about people who choose to eat raw food because it's silly. Some things just aren't worth humoring you over.

When we speak of evolution, we are speaking the language of biology. In biological terms, evolution implies a genetic change over time, driven by the effects of natural selection, mutation, and genetic drift. (I'm assuming you understand these terms; if not, you may want to look them up. The information is readily available.) Genetically, our species is much the same now as it was when our ancestors lived by foraging and hunting. Thus, in biological terms, we have not evolved.

The same word has other meanings outside a biological context, and simply means "change over time." Obviously, human society has changed over time, and thus has "evolved" in that sense. However, that is using the word differently than I originally meant it.

Where did you get that idea? Were you planning on paying the entire Federal budget in my name from your (ooops!), I mean our book's sales? You have great expectations for our little effort.
Uh, nobody brought my brain to consciousness. That was entirely up to me. I'm not sure what you're hooked up to but... wait a tick! Are you one of those AI programs that's so advanced it's hard to tell whether or not you're a real person or not?
Nope, I've never had anyone think for me. Certainly never had anyone move my muscles. I got knocked out once, but muscles weren't moving for anyone then. Strike that, my autonomic muscles were still working - but I'm pretty sure no one else was manipulating those.

I remember in high school when we hooked up a dead frog to a battery and made his legs jump. Is it kinda' like that? 'Cuz I always felt bad for the frog - being unable to do anything about his legs goin' all jumpy. Have the people who control you found a way to make yo