Internal vs. External control

"Men are qualified for civil liberty in exact proportion to their disposition to put moral chains on their own appetites. Society cannot exist unless a controlling power upon will and appetite be placed somewhere, and the less of it there is within, the more there is without. It is ordained in the eternal constitution of things that men of intemperate minds cannot be free. Their passions forge their fetters." --- Sir Edmund Burke.

Moral vs. Legal

There are two sets of behavior. The first set is the "Moral" set, those actions which are in accordance with a defined morality. The second is the "Legal" set, those actions which are allowed within a particular legal system. These two sets intersect in many areas, but in many areas, they do not.

For example, in Nazi Germany, it was illegal to hide Jews, but it was the moral action to take.

Conversely, it is currently legal in America to steal a large percentage of an individual's wealth without that individual's consent or any guarantee of delivery of service. This is called taxation. This is not moral.

Typically, a society maintains a military or police force to maintain general adherence to its law, and a set of religious beliefs to act as guarantor of its morality.

When presented with a conflict between satisfying a moral vs. a legal code, the ethical person will always choose in favor of morality.

Identifying the green-eyed monster

Envy is the source of every instance of human cruelty and failure in history.

The love of money is in vanishingly distant second place .
Desire, envy's beautiful cousin, is a drive to acquire or achieve beyond one's current situation.
Envy, in contrast to desire, is the drive to reduce another's possessions or achievements below their natural levels, even if that reduction lowers one's own situation.

Desire motivates one to ascend. Envy lowers and reduces.
The simplest metric for determining whether a proposition is motivated by envy or desire is to identify the target of the proposed action, and whether the target of the action will be increased, or decreased. If the target is one's self and the action is additive, the motivation is desire. If the target is another person and the action is reductive, it is envy.

If you want to be rich, and wish to do so by learning how rich people got rich and apply those methods to your own life, you desire wealth.

If you want to be rich, but want to take money from rich people in order to get rich yourself, you are envious of wealth. You may not even care if you get rich. What is important to you is that wealth is taken from the wealthy to make things "fair" or "even". You are envious.

Desire will built towers to the stars. Envy will murder hundreds of millions and grind castles into dust.

I won't fire unless I see the greens of your eyes.

Violence always solves everything

Whoever said "Violence never solved anything" was either a liar or a coward, or a lying coward.

A more astute observer would say "Violence never solved anything such that both conflicting parties were equally satisfied with the outcome". Violence creates two entities: A winner, and a loser. Losers don't like to engage in violence because it will make their plight both obvious and inescapable. Winners may avoid violence if there are less expensive ways to win, ie trade or psychological manipulation.

Violence has solved every conflict on every scale. From the virus violently hijacking a host's DNA to the hundreds of millions killed by governments in both war and domestic pacification attempts, violence has decidedly ended every conflict in which it has been employed.

The only conflicts that violence doesn't solve are those in which it is insufficiently applied.

Nobody owes me anything, everyone owes me nothing

I don't need you.

Even if I did, my need would not place any valid legal, ethical, or moral burden on you.

You never made a contract with me to give me anything.
There is no implied contract between us, because there can't be any such thing as an "implied contract". The concept is a non-sequitur. A contract is either explicit, or it is an assumption, and assumptions have no basis in morality or fact.

Just because one person assumes that another owes him something is no reason to take that assumption as anything more serious than it is: A fantasy. A dream. A wish.

If any party (individual or group) ever says to you "I need you to help me", that may be true, but it does not oblige you to do any such thing. It certainly doesn't give the other party any moral right to press you into service, or otherwise force you to contribute to its cause.