It’s a Red Queen’s Race.

Well, in our country," said Alice, still panting a little, “you’d generally get to somewhere else—if you run very fast for a long time, as we’ve been doing.”

“A slow sort of country!” said the Queen. “Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!”

They’re actually going after all of them at the same time. They’re just at different stages in each case.

In the long term, no. It’s a temporary measure. It’s like fighting against entropy.

Oh definitely. That’s the argument from pragmatism which I wholeheartedly support. At the end of the day, we need to feed and shelter ourselves and keep ourselves safe from aggression and violence.

The moral argument is a much more difficult one to tackle. Much has been written on this topic: consent of the governed, responsibility of the individual towards society and vice versa.

The whole libertarian argument is that the government is just the most powerful gang who goes around extorting everyone to pay taxes. If we’re not morally obligated to pay up when it’s a small gang, why does morality change when it’s a large gang?

Tropical regions? Look at the guy! This is clearly somewhere in Eastern Europe!