Are you planning to vote in the 2012 election

Quag · July 5, 2011

A. Its not that I want a monopoly on roads it is that while you are living inside the municipal limits the municipality has a virtual monopoly on roads. You can leave if you want and have private roads if you want i dont care. But you seem to believe that despite the fact the municipality is there you shouldnt have to pay because it is a form of slavery. That is insane you can leave, like i have said umpteen times. Your bit about the private highway is as usual completely off the mark. If you HAVE to use the private highway to get to your home you have 2 choices pay up or move. It has nothing to do with being near your home, it has to do with having to use it to get to/construct your home.

B. I am sorry i forgot i was dealing with an ideologue. Ok govt monopolies (we are talking democracies here) are there to provide a service to all. Private monoplies are there to make as much $$ as possible. There is a huge difference but you being ideologically blind cannot and will not see the difference. One is there to help all, the other is there to take all.

past monoplies that govts tried to break up for the benefit of all.

1. microsoft, internet explorer specifically

2. rockafeller http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_D._Rockefeller please note the underselling to kill competition bit.

3. the vend (a collusion type of monopoly)

4. Brisitsh east india company

5. dutch east india company

6. western union

7. United aircaft and transport corporation.

however your statement on them forcing you to buy their products leads me to believe that you have no clue what a monoply actually is. A monoply doesnt force you to do anything they just reduce the choices to buy from them or dont buy.

C.Hmm Somalia again Ok lets go there. First I never said somalia was a paradise when it was governed. Dictatorships are never a good form of govt even "benevolent" dictatorships. However since you think it has gotten so great since then. let me ask you where you got this information? I can only guess from FDR as all your arguements come from there. However it doesnt take much to get some actual info on somalia as opposed to propoganda from FDR

http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0107979.html?pageno=4

http://www.indexmundi.com/somalia/gdp_per_capita_(ppp).html

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

https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/so.html

Please not that the per capita income hasnt really changed, that somalis though not the very bottom is darn close to it on all the charts.

So how is your Somalia doing?

Stop reding FDR and look for actual facts before you spout off on things you know nothing about

And I suppose your misreports to me about the happenings in Somalia on this thread is reason for me to be highly skeptical about any facts of history that you have mentioned or will that I don't already have a lot of knowledge about.

if i dont know something I will inform myself and I will look at all the information I can find, not just look at sites that are ideologically aligned with me. I suggest you do the same it might open your eyes a little bit.

D. I apologize i misread something you typed 20 pages ago. However you do seem to ignore the fact that humans will take advantage of other humans escpecially if there is no fear of consequences. Ie a private security firm will not chase a con man who has left their geographical area as it is a waste of $ for them, the chances of capture/reimbursement being practially 0. neither will they chase a killer who changes location. changing human societal values will not change this.

E.

Of course you can't change human nature; of course the fact that if I declared ownership of a person with black skin then the reason why people would reject my claim today vs 200 years ago is because of social change, NOT a change in human nature. But, you seemed to be determined to argue with a straw man.

Again there is still slavery in the USA. It is illegal now, but that hasn't stopped bad people from turning other less fortunate people into slaves. mostly they are illegal immigrants but the color of their skin or country of origin changes nothing slavery is wrong and is rightfully illegal. How would it be stopped in an anarchy? There is no govt. Poor citizens/immigrants cannot afford a private security firm/DRO( like it would make any difference if they could) nor would they even have access to them. The slavery that exists does so out of sight so don't tell me the people in an anrchy would not permit it as it would be even easier to hide it if no one is looking. 200 years ago slavery was illegal in Canada FYI. I am not arguing with a straw man you are pretending societal values eliminated slavery in the USA. they didnt Lincoln made it illegal with an unpopular act, yet slavery still exists. You have the straw man arguement as your premise, societal values elimenating slavery is just wrong.

So I guess you're one of the people who 200 years ago would have argued that enslavement of Africans was moral because black people aren't people? Well guess what, black people are people and I do own my property including the the land that my house is on, my house, and the things that I produce.

absolutely no correlation to anything I have said and just plain insulting.

F.

Basically UTF you are too invested in this insane idea to see any reason. I will still participate but only to point out that you are so far off the mark in a historical/political/economic/psychological/rational perspective that there is no point in others to waste their time listening to you

Seems despite this I am still debating with you, but you challenged my intelectual integrity with the somalia bit without even trying to find actual proof of your assertions, so i felt that I had to reply. Please understand FDR is not a site to get actual information, it is an ideological site set up to fan Molyneux's ego, nothign more. Interesting to see some lines of thought but He himself is so far out there his ideas are based only on emotion with a rather pathetic attempt at hiding them behind fallacious logic.

Edited July 5, 2011 by Quag

July 5, 2011

Since we all have differences in knowledge and experience, it is possible for us to look at the same facts and come to different conclusions, using internal information not available to all parties. None of us are omniscient or omnipresent, so none of us have complete knowledge of all things or complete experience of all things. Therefore, it's possible for two people to disagree on purely rational bases, simply because they have different starting points. All decision-making we do is based on heuristics (even if we don't recognize it explicitly).

Some of the work in AI research is focused on decision-making. Given incomplete knowledge of the world, how can the agent choose an action? I think that some of the decision-making methods employed in AI research can apply to this situation as well. With the limited information available to the agents at the beginning, they have to try to come to the best choice they can see, given their sensory data, plus their internal knowledge of the world. An analogy that I've come up with is as follows:

Trapped on a volcanic island covered in mist and steam, agents are trying to reach the highest point on the island to be safe from the lava flows. But the mist limits your ability to see the entire island, so you have to make the best decision as quickly as you can or you will likely get stuck by the lava.

In my analogy, the highest point on the island represents the best solution for the problem, while the mist represents lack of knowledge (or experience), limiting the agent's awareness of the world. With those constraints, it's possible for two agents starting from similar places to reach different locations based on their different sight-ranges. Consider the following grid of numbers, where the higher numbers represent higher elevation:


1 1 1 1 1 1

1 2 1 2 1 1

1 3 2 1 4 1

1 1 1 1 2 1

1 2 1 1 3 1

1 1 1 1 1 1

Since we can see the whole grid, we can see that the best spot is the 4 at (4, 3) if we treat the bottom left corner as (0, 0). However, if we start with two agents at (0, 0), one which has line-of-sight (LOS) of 1 and the other with LOS of 2, the first agent will see the 2 at (1, 1) and decide that that is the best spot, while the second agent will move to (1, 1) and then see the 3 at (1, 3) and move there instead. Neither agent will find their way to the best position, but they both find the local maxima within their sight. Both followed the same logical process to get there, but they reached different conclusions because they had different ability to see the world around them. I know this has been a long tangent, but I'm trying to explain why I think it's possible for two people to reach different conclusions based on the same input data. Both agents came to completely valid results based on the information available to them at the time. UtF is reaching one local maxima based on his knowledge and experience of the world, while each of the rest of us are reaching our own local maxima based upon our own experiences. Of course, one variable that isn't being examined in my example is the starting location. If the first agent had started (5, 2) instead of (0, 0), it would have found the best spot on the island, even though it had less insight than the second agent. So it is possible for someone with less knowledge and experience to reach the right answer when someone more knowledgeable fails to do so, but it's statistically not as likely. To get back to the topic at hand, I think that Game Theory, and the Prisoner's Dilemma(PD) in particular, demonstrate my primary objection to applying the NAP to the current world. In the Prisoner's Dilemma:

Two suspects are arrested by the police. The police have insufficient evidence for a conviction, and, having separated the prisoners, visit each of them to offer the same deal. If one testifies for the prosecution against the other (defects) and the other remains silent (cooperates), the defector goes free and the silent accomplice receives the full one-year sentence. If both remain silent, both prisoners are sentenced to only one month in jail for a minor charge. If each betrays the other, each receives a three-month sentence. Each prisoner must choose to betray the other or to remain silent. Each one is assured that the other would not know about the betrayal before the end of the investigation. How should the prisoners act?

I would view using NAP as "cooperating" and not using NAP as "defecting." Without the total conviction that the other prisoner is going to cooperate, the PD dictates that the rational decision is to defect. It's the only way to guarantee the chance to minimize your punishment.* As I see it, the NAP and cooperation are the naive choices. It only remains stable as long as both sides are equal and committed to cooperation (and NAP). As soon as one side breaks the unwritten compact, your best chance is to defect (abandon NAP). Say I'm buying a product that advertizes itself as "Lead-free." Under NAP, I would expect that they are being truthful in their ads. If it turns out, that they're not actually abiding by NAP, they could be building their product with lead without telling anyone and most people aren't going to be able to tell for several years, when lead-based diseases begin to present symptoms. The expectation that people are going to do the right thing, just because its "the right thing," is naive. :dry:

The PD is interesting because it presents two equilibrium points, but one is unstable, while the other is stable. The both cooperate point (A) is unstable. If either agent deviates from cooperate, the rational choice is for the other to swap to defect for all future choices (assuming that you somehow manage to start at the unstable equilibrium). Both defect (B) is stable because the each agent cannot do worse by defecting, no matter what the other one does:


    |coop|def |

coop|  A |  C |

def |  D |  B |

   A       A

  / \     /

D/   \C D/

/     \ /

B      B

If you treat the position of the graph as a particle and the line has having a downward gravitational pull, then the particle will remain at A as long as nothing pulls it toward C or D, but as soon as some force pulls it off A, it can't get back and it will instead settle at B as the stable alternative.

Bernie Madoff made off like a bandit with other people's money with his gigantic Ponzi scheme. He seemed so legitimate for so long that a lot of smart people invested their money with him. Since it was all a scheme, he clearly wasn't using NAP principles, but most people who gave their money to him were using NAP (on a very informal basis). It's their "fault" that they took the investment advice of so many intelligent financial advisers, but since no one is expecting such a blatant disregard of human decency, it's not really their fault at all (in my opinion). Even if they had had a "Ponzi scheme" clause, it wouldn't have helped, since Madoff didn't have the money. No one can recover their money from Madoff because he spent it all. And who would think they need to buy "Ponzi Scheme Insurance" to protect themselves from the Madoffs of the world, if everyone is expecting the others to use NAP? :huh:

In actuality, applying insurance to anything outside of natural disasters (or accidents), implies that you don't actually expect the NAP is going to be followed. If everyone's following NAP, there wouldn't be the need for something like "Ponzi Scheme Insurance," since everyone would be cooperating. You would only buy such insurance if you expected that someone wasn't going to abide by NAP. (I know UtF has never suggested using PSI specifically, but I'm sure that somewhere on the thread, he's suggested some insurance equivalent for one of my numerous objections to his proposal. I don't feel like digging through the thread at this point to find an instance, but I'm pretty sure that it exists.)

Finally, to go back to property: What authority says that you own your land, UtF? :unsure: If I come along and insist that you are squatting on land that belongs to me, what basis can you (or I) provide to prove our case? If the government doesn't control the plots of land, what basis is there for deciding control? If it's purely based on possession, then I can simply wait until you go on a two-week vacation, move into "your" house and then invoke my current possession as my "right" to the property. Some entity larger than either of us needs to have the final say. If there's a land-parceling company, how did it get the original control of the land? Someone must have taken command of the land and some point and created a land-deed for it. Whatever entity created that deed is the original owner.

And since I assume that they land you currently live on existed for a lot longer than you have, I assume that someone else owned that land before you. Unless your family has been living on that some spot of land for the past 500 years, chances are some part of the U.S. government "owned" it at some point (whether Federal or municipal doesn't matter). The deed you might possess giving the right to build your house and live on your property would have been written up originally by some entity of the State and sold to the current owner through some number of proxy owners (could be 0).

But that's really all beside the point. Without a social contract to decide how property rights should be managed, how can we make any definitive decisions regarding who should own something? If you have a vase in your house and I like it, what right do you have to keep that vase if I want to take it, barring some social contract dictating that what you "own" I have no right to take without proper compensation? In the end, even your NAP is a Social Contract, dictating how members of society should behave in regard to each other. The SC is the fundamental relationship that holds modern societies together. The rules of ours is currently enumerated in the U.S. Constitution, providing us with the baseline for which all other agreements are made between fellow citizens (and legal residents).

So my closing question is: On what basis can you invoke "property rights" without some governmental entity to enforce them? :huh:

* As one more aside, the PD has already been argued extensively on BD and

July 5, 2011

Me:

after thoroughly researching Somalia in the past few weeks I have learned that Somalia has actually done better after the collapse of its state in 1991 than it was going before.

Note the "thoroughly" part...

C.Hmm Somalia again Ok lets go there. First I never said somalia was a paradise when it was governed. Dictatorships are never a good form of govt even "benevolent" dictatorships. However since you think it has gotten so great since then. let me ask you where you got this information? I can only guess from FDR as all your arguements come from there. However it doesnt take much to get some actual info on somalia as opposed to propoganda from FDR
http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0107979.html?pageno=4
http://www.indexmundi.com/somalia/gdp_per_capita_(ppp).html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Somalia
https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/so.html

Please not that the per capita income hasnt really changed, that somalis though not the very bottom is darn close to it on all the charts.

Some of what I read:

http://www.observatori.org/paises/pais_74/documentos/64_somalia.pdf (all)

http://www.peterleeson.com/better_off_stateless.pdf (all)

http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&cd=6&ved=0CFMQFjAF&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.daviddfriedman.com%2FAcademic%2FCourse_Pages%2Flegal_systems_very_different_10%2FPapersToDiscuss%2FSomalia_Paper.doc&rct=j&q=The%20Law%20of%20the%20Somalis&ei=u4UTTv6jOILL0QHe0uWmDg&usg=AFQjCNEp48e6IO-KnTs7CGKCa0NEMDt3_w&cad=rja (all)

Then some random articles like:

http://mises.org/daily/5418/Anarchy-in-Somalia (all)

http://www.antiwar.com/bock/b042903.html (all except "Lessons for Iraq" at end)

http://mises.org/daily/2066 (all)

http://explorersfoundation.org/glyphery/139.html (I didn't read the actual book for this one, just some of the preface and first chapter)

The ~BBC series of a half dozen articles (all) and a bunch of other bits of random articles on Somalia from several sources that I found through the internet and by clicking on links to sources from articles that I read.

The only information I got from FDR was watching this video and looking up some of his quotes to make sure he wasn't taking them out of context:

ttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qtGkTRnocZI

Also, your claim that I get all my arguments from FDR is absurd. Just because I have linked to FDR and Stefan Molyneux for his clear and concise arguments that argue the same points I've been arguing (e.g. that taxation is blatantly coercive) doesn't make Molyneux my "source" even, but just another person to express arguments for the positions I have been advocating on this thread in an attempt to help you all understand them better.

Your claim that the bit of info I got from FDR is propaganda is also absurd and perhaps an attempt to ignore looking into the sources for the information he presented perhaps as well, as the bulk of his presentation was just a summary of other information you can find on the internet from other sources including many you wouldn't dispute the credibility of such as the United Nations Development Program.

Anyways, if you remember, the whole reason why you brought up Somalia was to, "Hey look, a society without a state! Look how poor they are!" Having not known much about Somalia at the time I didn't know how best to react, but now after researching Somalia's history some I see that your attempt to point at Somalia as an argument for why a voluntary society wouldn't function is complete and utter bogus. It's not even an argument at all; it's just another attempt to throw out a cheap objection to anarchism rather than actually try to argue that state coercion is necessary for a society to function well.

So how is your Somalia doing?

Somalia isn't mine, but I would say, based on the 150+ pages of papers, articles, charts, etc that I have read on it in the past few weeks that it is most likely better off since the collapse of its state in 1991.

Stop reding FDR and look for actual facts before you spout off on things you know nothing about

The FDR video I saw on Somalia simply quoted many actual facts with some commentary on them.

You stop falsely assuming that I didn't learn anything about Somalia when I said that I "thoroughly researched" Somalia and decided that the perspective that you gave me that Somalia has been in chaos ever since the collapse of its state (implying it wasn't in (as much) chaos when it still had a state) was untrue, or at the very least, false enough that pointing at Somalia does not qualify as an argument against the idea of a stateless society.

UtF quote:

And I suppose your misreports to me about the happenings in Somalia on this thread is reason for me to be highly skeptical about any facts of history that you have mentioned or will that I don't already have a lot of knowledge about.

if i dont know something I will inform myself and I will look at all the information I can find, not just look at sites that are ideologically aligned with me. I suggest you do the same it might open your eyes a little bit.

Clearly you didn't do this with regard to Somalia or else you wouldn't have thought that pointing at Somalia would qualify as an argument against the idea of a stateless society.

I in fact did look at sources that are NOT ideologically aligned with me, such as the whole BBC series on Somalia. When I read some of the criticisms of those articles I found that I though the BBC was bias in its portrayal of Somalia as a place of "anarchy" (in the derogatory sense meaning chaos) ever since its state collapsed.

Seems despite this I am still debating with you, but you challenged my intelectual integrity with the somalia bit without even trying to find actual proof of your assertions, so i felt that I had to reply. Please understand FDR is not a site to get actual information, it is an ideological site set up to fan Molyneux's ego, nothign more. Interesting to see some lines of thought but He himself is so far out there his ideas are based only on emotion with a rather pathetic attempt at hiding them behind fallacious logic.

Again, the FDR video mainly just provided sources to others' information on Somalia.

Also, note that you didn't provide any proof of your assertions with regard to Somalia being worse now without a state than it was when it had a state. As that was apparently your argument against the idea of a free society that I have been arguing for in this thread, I would say that the burden of proof is thus on you.

Also, the United Nations information and statistics that Molyneux quoted cited in his video were not based on emotion.

And what's the "fallacious logic" you speak of? Or is saying that just another attempt to convince yourself that you don't have to provide any genuine arguments against the idea of a voluntary society to justify the existence of coercive states?

Edited July 5, 2011 by Use the Force

Quag · July 6, 2011

Again UTF you claim to have "thouroghly" investigated Somalia, what a farce! Somalia sucks. It sucked under a dicatorship it sucked even more in civil war. There has been 0 nada nil no development of infrastructure in somalia since the fall of govt except what was done by so called "provisional" govts. Again I never claimed Somalia was great only that warlords now control various parts of it. It is what happens to anarchies, some form of govt usually steps in, that form is almost always a dictatorship of sorts. That is what exists now in somalia various groups controlling various areas. the civizal war has basically stopped, which has helped the people but that is about it. BTW All your posts are merely articles that look at some of the data but not all if you look at all the data you see some improvements in soem areas and some decreases in others. The big factor seems more to be is there actual war going on or not not is ther a govt or not.

I claim your arguements are from FDR as because I can see 0 difference between what you say and whaty Molyneux says, you just seem to parrot him.

I will ask you again why can you not move outside your municipality limits? It is the question I have asked over and over again please answer if you can. the only answer i seem to get is that well no you dont want to.

DAWH I agree, however UTF is refusing to accept any facts. I disagree with gvg on the tax rate thing but at least we can agree on the facts we do have yet we come to different conclusions. UTF and I disagree on every single point. Which is actually rather strange as I am closer to him than gvg is.

July 6, 2011

Again UTF you claim to have "thouroghly" investigated Somalia, what a farce! Somalia sucks. It sucked under a dicatorship it sucked even more in civil war. There has been 0 nada nil no development of infrastructure in somalia since the fall of govt except what was done by so called "provisional" govts. Again I never claimed Somalia was great only that warlords now control various parts of it. It is what happens to anarchies, some form of govt usually steps in, that form is almost always a dictatorship of sorts. That is what exists now in somalia various groups controlling various areas.

Of course I don't pretend to be an expert on Somalia--I just started learning about it a couple weeks ago. On the other hand though, I have certainly read and learned enough about Somalia by now to see that you are misrepresenting the reality of what is happening there to the extent that you think Somalia is a historical reason why states are necessary when in reality the evidence better supports the position that Somalis in general are actually doing better now than they were under their tyrannical vampire state.

So first you say in the above quote that Somalia sucked under its dictatorship that collapsed in 1991--I agree. But then you say that there are now various "provisional" governments which are also dictatorships as they are run by warlords--what governments are you talking about? I presume that you're not talking about the UN-backed government in Mogadishu as I don't think you would call the UN warlords and you certainly can't be talking about Xeer either as Xeer does not fit the bill of being run by warlords or being dictatorial at all ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xeer , the first paper and many of the articles I gave the links to earlier, for more info on Somali customary law). (Fun fact: under Xeer, taxation is illegal... if you didn't know that already though then you can't pretend that you've researched Somalia in much detail at all as Xeer and the customary/common/natural law "legal" system of the Somali clans has popped up many times in my brief research.)

Here is another informative article you should read:

http://www.independent.org/publications/article.asp?id=126

Also, if you didn't read the first two papers I linked to then you should. Here they are again:

http://www.observatori.org/paises/pais_74/documentos/64_somalia.pdf

http://www.peterleeson.com/better_off_stateless.pdf

(Note: I'm posting them again only because based on your post I'm doubting you actually read them. Although I'm surprised if you haven't as it would seem hypocritical of you to say "Again UTF you claim to have "thouroghly" investigated Somalia, what a farce!" without actually reading some what I have read on Somalia yourself. So maybe you have read them then, but if so what are your objections? You claim "BTW All your posts are merely articles that look at some of the data but not all if you look at all the data you see some improvements in some areas and some decreases in others" (italics added). What data would you say those papers are missing and in what way would that data lend credibility to your position that Somalia as a whole is worse off (i.e. what are the "decreases in other" parts of Somalia?) as the result of the collapse of its state in 1991? Note that I'm aware that "While there is a modicum of fighting and disorder in some areas, most notably in the south," I believe based on my research that "the overall picture is far different" (different from the fighting and disorder in the south meaning better) (quoted from the article that I suggested you read above: http://www.independent.org/publications/article.asp?id=126 ). In other words, by just pointing out that there is some violence happening in some areas that doesn't mean that the net benefit of the state's collapse in 1991 is negative. On the contrary, I would say that the net benefit of the state's collapse is definitely positive despite some violence that has occurred due to the fact that most Somalis have been able to return to their traditional Xeer which they prefer over a coercive central state.)

The big factor seems more to be is there actual war going on or not not is ther a govt or not.

What do you mean by this sentence? Are you saying that the conditions under which Somalia would be deemed worse now than it was before 1991 would be if there is war now but not before? If so, I would certainly disagree with those conditions because, for example, an extremely tyrannical, totalitarian, dictatorship could possibly be installed in Somalia (for a hefty price of course, but it is conceivable) and this would certainly end all wars between different factions in Somalia that are attempting to gain power over a centralized coercive state, but I would by no means say that Somalia would be better off as a result of the existence of such a totalitarian dictatorship.

I claim your arguements are from FDR as because I can see 0 difference between what you say and whaty Molyneux says, you just seem to parrot him.

Okay, well I'm not "parroting" Molyneux for sure. If you think I am just because Molyneux and I happen to share the view that Somalia is doing better now that its state has collapsed, then I ask you, am I also parroting Peter T. Leeson, Benjamin Powell, Ryan Ford, Alex Nowrasteh, Spencer Heath MacCallum, Mohamed Mohamed Sheikh, Robert P. Murphy, and many others too simply because I share their positions and because I have cited them to you and because I agree with their arguments and believe that the evidence and information that they have provided and published supports the position that Somalia is indeed better off stateless? Anyways, if I am parroting these people, then it would be a better use of our time if you rebutted their evidence, arguments, and positions that you claim I parrot rather than just saying that I'm parroting them.

I will ask you again why can you not move outside your municipality limits? It is the question I have asked over and over again please answer if you can. the only answer i seem to get is that well no you dont want to.

Well putting aside issues like it being expensive and me not wanting to leave all my friends and family behind and not wanting to move to another country that will tax me just the same as the US does and not wanting to move to one of the few places left on land on Earth where no government claims the right to tax productive people due to the fact that these places like Somalia are either poor or simply in the middle of no where, I can of course move. But, the thing is that I shouldn't have to move. Yes, I don't want to move, but also I shouldn't have to move in the same way that if I were to come to your house and knock on your door and then take out a gun and say...

"Okay, I'm claiming all of your property. If you don't let me take your things I will use force against you; if you don't let me drive out of your garage with your car I will use force against you so I can; if you don't let me camp out in your living room I will use force against you so I can. By the way, I'm justifying my actions now by saying that if you're not okay with this then you can leave--I won't stop you"

... then you would also say that you shouldn't have to leave. So would you leave? I'm saying you're free to leave if you're unhappy with me claiming your land and your other property. You can even take your money with you. I'll even let you sell your house. You could even demolish your house if you didn't want me camping in your living room. You're free to move. But, are you really going to move or would you stay and protest my violent claim to your land and your property? Don't you see? Nobody has the right to tax me. If I were to hold a gun to you and say, "Give me all your money," (a form of taxation) that's wrong of me even if I say, "Give me all your money or sell your house and move somewhere else." Even if I give you that option--even if I say you're free to move--even if I say I won't take any of your money or any of your other property if you move outside your municipality limits, the fact is that you shouldn't have to move. Sure you could move and I would stop taking your property from you with force, but my giving you that option to leave to escape my tyranny doesn't justify my tyranny.

It would be the same thing if 200 years ago the southern states said that all slaves were free to leave to the north. Even if they said, "Hey all you black people, you're free to all move north and we will no longer enslave you, but we are going to retain our right to violently force any person with black skin to work for us white men like slaves as long as you remain in these southern states." Even if they allowed the African Americans to freely move north, the white people saying this would still be immoral for giving the black man the option to move north does not justify tyrannically forcing the black man who chooses to stay in the south to work for the white man against his will.

Now, given that both of these hypothetical examples (me being a tyrant to you and white people being tyrants to black people in the south) are more extreme than the tyranny you are supporting against me, but the principle remains exactly the same: You shouldn't have to move to another house, the black man shouldn't have to move north, and I shouldn't have to move outside my municipality limits to use your phrase. My hypothetical threat of/use of force against you to camp in your living room against your will, the white man's hypothetical use of force to make the black man in the south work for him against his will, and the state's use of force to make me pay taxes, are all wrong for the same reason despite the fact that I say you're free to move to another house, the white man says the black man is free to move north, and you say I'm free to move outside of my municipality limits.

July 6, 2011

Dawh, first off I want to say that I loved your change of pace with the discussion.

I would view using NAP as "cooperating" and not using NAP as "defecting." Without the total conviction that the other prisoner is going to cooperate, the PD dictates that the rational decision is to defect. It's the only way to guarantee the chance to minimize your punishment.*

With regard to saying that NAP is cooperating while defecting is initiating force, I think the analogy doesn't accurately represent reality, because in reality if the other person defects by initiating force against you, then you can use force to defend yourself and still abide by NAP. So if someone else initiates force against me in real life (defects) then I can still use violent force against that person in self defense to prevent myself from being harmed (cooperate). In the PD analogy, however, if I cooperate while the other player defects then that is the worst possible outcome for me. This doesn't reflect NAP in real life because NAP only prohibits the initiation of force, not the use of force in defense against a forceful act of aggression.

I'll explain this criticism now with regard to your following example:

As I see it, the NAP and cooperation are the naive choices. It only remains stable as long as both sides are equal and committed to cooperation (and NAP).

So here I say the same thing that I said above. In reality you could be an evil person who initiates force against people all the time (defect, non-follower of NAP) and my life as a cooperator/NAPer would still be fine because I could use force to defend against your initiations of force. So I don't think your claim that my life of non-aggression remains stable only so long as other people in my life also abide by the NAP due to the fact that if other people in my life do break the non-aggression principle by using force against me, then I can use force back against them. In other words, in real life by cooperating against a defector I wouldn't receive the longer three month sentence.

As soon as one side breaks the unwritten compact, your best chance is to defect (abandon NAP). Say I'm buying a product that advertizes itself as "Lead-free." Under NAP, I would expect that they are being truthful in their ads. If it turns out, that they're not actually abiding by NAP, they could be building their product with lead without telling anyone and most people aren't going to be able to tell for several years, when lead-based diseases begin to present symptoms. The expectation that people are going to do the right thing, just because its "the right thing," is naive.

First note that just because I believe in libertarian philosophy does not mean that I always expect others to be honest. Although I advocate honesty and non-aggression I wouldn't say that "under NAP" I would expect others to be truthful in their adds.

Also, I don't quite understand this lead-product analogy. I'm guessing that you're saying that some sort of state program (that violates NAP) is needed to regulate this company to make sure that when they say that they are selling lead-free products that they aren't lying. If this is the case, I would say that consumers can non-aggressively "regulate" such a company to make sure that they are honest in a free market by other means. If a consumer is doubtful about a company's assertion that their product is lead-free then that consumer can choose not to buy the product until he is satisfied that the company submits their production to inspections that confirm that their products are indeed lead-free as they claim for one example.

And who would think they need to buy "Ponzi Scheme Insurance" to protect themselves from the Madoffs of the world, if everyone is expecting the others to use NAP?

Hey you never know. If you're investing your money in something having some sort of insurance just in case the investment doesn't go as planned or as said may not be a bad idea.

I don't really see what you mean by this Bernie Madoff example though. Do you mean the same thing as my guess on what you meant with the lead-product example? In other words, do you mean to say that you think it is better to violate NAP in order to tax people to fund a judicial system that will punish people like Bernie Madoff should they commit such acts of fraud? If so, I would once again hold the position that better methods of "justice" than what our state provides exist in the voluntary world of a free society. I won't make any more guesses here on what the free market of "justice"-serving people will come up with for the sake of shortening up my responses, except to say that it is my view that the "justice" services of a stateless society would more likely focus on retribution to those who fall victim to fraud more than on punishment of those who commit fraud, like Somali's system of Xeer rather than our current state's conception of justice. Think about it: If you were the victim of Bernie Madoff's Ponzi scheme would you rather have Madoff locked up in cage for the rest of his life or would you rather receive some compensation for your financial losses? (Note: This is not to say that in a stateless society all such commiters of fraud would walk free so that they could just go commit fraud again. Surely that would not be the case; I was just pointing out that I would rather receive retribution for my loss than just have the criminal locked up which doesn't really help my loss at all).

In actuality, applying insurance to anything outside of natural disasters (or accidents), implies that you don't actually expect the NAP is going to be followed. If everyone's following NAP, there wouldn't be the need for something like "Ponzi Scheme Insurance," since everyone would be cooperating. You would only buy such insurance if you expected that someone wasn't going to abide by NAP. (I know UtF has never suggested using PSI specifically, but I'm sure that somewhere on the thread, he's suggested some insurance equivalent for one of my numerous objections to his proposal. I don't feel like digging through the thread at this point to find an instance, but I'm pretty sure that it exists.)

Oh, I'm glad you didn't bother digging through the thread--PSI sounds like a great idea if you're someone whose making a significant investment and are worried that all might not go as planned.

In a stateless society, also known as a free society or an anarchic society, I wouldn't expect everyone to follow the NAP. I would expect many people to commit fraud if they thought they could get away with it and benefit from it; I would expect many people to steal if they thought they could benefit from it and get away with it. It's in their nature to do so and for the most part I think a lot of people would break their principles if they thought they could gain from it.

Finally, to go back to property: What authority says that you own your land, UtF?

No one as far as I know. If this is a problem to you though, what authority says that you own a part (the part that you can affect by voting) of my land? I would say no one to that as well (unless of course by "authority" you mean "people with guns who can overpower UtF", but I take it we're having a more civilized conversation).

If I come along and insist that you are squatting on land that belongs to me, what basis can you (or I) provide to prove our case? If the government doesn't control the plots of land, what basis is there for deciding control? If it's purely based on possession, then I can simply wait until you go on a two-week vacation, move into "your" house and then invoke my current possession as my "right" to the property. Some entity larger than either of us needs to have the final say. If there's a land-parceling company, how did it get the original control of the land? Someone must have taken command of the land and some point and created a land-deed for it. Whatever entity created that deed is the original owner.

I'm wishing that I had someone else on this thread to help me try to answer these questions . We're starting at your position that since property rights aren't intrinsic to reality (I agree) then we need a coercive government to say, "This person owns this and that person owns that and we'll use force against anyone who tries to dispute this with their actions." I don't happen to think that such an institution of force is necessary to deal with this problem (in fact I think the problem could be better dealt with in a voluntary manner), but then I'm not very confident that I'll be able to convince you of this either. As I'm not ashamed to admit my lack of knowledge or answers, I'll defer this topic for later now as it is late if you don't mind. I just hope that you don't take my choice to decline your challenge to debate you on this at the moment as a reason to more firmly believe that your current position is best.

For now I'll just quickly say that I think the same objections can be raised to the "government solution" to this problem of property. If I say I own my land and the government says I don't, what basis can I or the government provide to prove our case? Answer: The government will use force against me. You can see that this "solution" surely isn't satisfactory if you look at the idea of ownership over things other than land, such as some extreme things like people. If I say I own myself and the people in the government say they own me, what basis can I or the people in the government provide to prove our case? Answer: Uh oh, force! Ahh! Anyways, hopefully we can have some good discussion on this later, but for now I'm just going to finish replying to your post.

But that's really all beside the point. Without a social contract to decide how property rights should be managed, how can we make any definitive decisions regarding who should own something? If you have a vase in your house and I like it, what right do you have to keep that vase if I want to take it, barring some social contract dictating that what you "own" I have no right to take without proper compensation? In the end, even your NAP is a Social Contract, dictating how members of society should behave in regard to each other. The SC is the fundamental relationship that holds modern societies together. The rules of ours is currently enumerated in the U.S. Constitution, providing us with the baseline for which all other agreements are made between fellow citizens (and legal residents).

Okay, here I'll say that I'm not particularly liking (and maybe understanding entirely) your use of the term "social contract." I tend not to like it because of the contractual part of the phrase which is often used to imply some sort of consent in instances where you certainly do not have an individual's consent. In the way you use it here though I don't believe you're talking about consent. I'll just say though that if NAP is a social contract and if the U.S. Government / Constitution represents a social contract, then I much prefer NAP. One reason is because NAP doesn't change whereas the "law" under the government does change quite regularly. One moment one act may be okay and the next moment it may be a crime or vice versa simply because a group of people voted to make it so. And notably these "crimes" aren't terrible things like murder, rape, theft, or fraud, but instead are things like "if you're selling this type of product then you must put this label on it saying this or else we are going to begin to fine you and use force against you to criminalize you if you resist our fines."

Also, if you've been following what I've been saying to quag recently regarding Somalia, I think you might find it interesting to read up on the Somalia clan common law system, "Xeer," both for the subject of property and ownership as well as what is right and what is wrong (social contract).

So my closing question is: On what basis can you invoke "property rights" without some governmental entity to enforce them?

Well if you're saying that the idea of property ownership is pretty meaningless unless you have someone to physically* enforce who owns what, then I would say that you don't necessarily need a state to provide this physical force. The Xeer example might be an example of this as I highly highly doubt that every time there is a land ownership dispute the Somali clans turn to violent force. Sure, they might some of the time, just as it's possible you and I might possibly turn to violence if we have a dispute about whether you or I own something, but I think that the vast majority of the time violent force is avoided as a means of "resolving" such disputes (if you can honestly call it resolving) simply because the parties concerned would very rarely rather dive into civil war than agree on a compromise of some sort. Also at this time I'll note that I think that if no party in the dispute has much more power than any other party (i.e. if one party is not the almighty powerful government) then one party is less likely to force their will or view on who owns what on others, as it would be more difficult for them to do it without going into a costly and detrimental civil war or fist fight. Thus, without having such a "monopoly" of force institution, I think such disputes would be more likely to be resolved peacefully with some sort of agreement or compromise rather than with force which I would say is clearly a plus not only due to the lack of violence, but because the lack of force means that no party becomes a victim of the other party's use of force against them to enforce their ownership resulting in less harm to parties involved in such disputes.

For clarification, let's say I have a dollar and you have a dollar. Now I claim that I own both dollars and you claim that you own both dollars. If one of the two of us were to have significant physical power over the other one then as the selfish beings that we are it is possible that that person would use their force to seize both dollars for the benefit of having both dollars without fear of any other party having enough force to be able to practically dispute that the powerful person actually owns both dollars. Thus, I don't think it makes sense to give one organization per geographic region such a strong amount of force as surely that organization composed of selfish individuals is bound to take advantage of their large amount of force for their own benefit. On a related note regarding Somalia, I read in a few places that a significant reason for all of the "civil war" and violence that has occurred in Somalia since 1991 between various factions of people has been due to the fact that foreign groups (i.e. the UN) has been trying to install a single central coercive government over all of Somalia again and all of these factions are fighting for control over that powerful institution. As the customary law of the Somali clans rejects such centralized governments / states (remembering that according to Xeer taxation is "illegal" = one major reason why these Somalis reject the idea of a state (for what is a state if it is not allowed to tax?)), I have read in multiple places by different sources that this results in a conflict of interest between the Somalis in their clans living under Xeer and the UN wanting to impose a state. For the source, at least one mention of this was in the first paper I posted about Somalia after state collapse if memory serves me correctly.

Edited July 6, 2011 by Use the Force

Quag · July 6, 2011

Well putting aside issues like it being expensive and me not wanting to leave all my friends and family behind and not wanting to move to another country that will tax me just the same as the US does and not wanting to move to one of the few places left on land on Earth where no government claims the right to tax productive people due to the fact that these places like Somalia are either poor or simply in the middle of no where, I can of course move. But, the thing is that I shouldn't have to move. Yes, I don't want to move, but also I shouldn't have to move in the same way that if I were to come to your house and knock on your door and then take out a gun and say...

This thread is pointless, you will never admit that taxes arent theft/violence/slavery, even though this last quote, despite the fact you think you have to leave the USA is total BS, you admitted you can avoid taxes. Therefore they are not theft/violence/slavery.

gvg · July 6, 2011

First off, I do have to say that Dawh is probably the most reasonable one here =) So, yeah, keep going. Much better than us yelling at each other like we've been doing.

Now, UtF: I only have time to answer this part:

If I say I own myself and the people in the government say they own me, what basis can I or the people in the government provide to prove our case? Answer: Uh oh, force! Ahh!

Now, I'm pretty sure the answer to this question is that in actuality, the gov. own laws say you own yourself; after all, slavery is illegal, and to me, someone claiming they own you is kind of a form of slavery (note: This has nothing to do with whether taxes are slavery/violence/whatever or not, so leave me out of that one ^_^ ) So in actuality,since the gov. is very much at the mercy of its own laws, you are safe in this regard. So, yeah. Just thought I'd add that, although I'm sure that was just an example.

Also, I highly disagree (as you'd expect) with the idea that

If this is the case, I would say that consumers can non-aggressively "regulate" such a company to make sure that they are honest in a free market by other means.

I will use a historical example: During the age of Rockefeller, there was no regulation. look what happened. There wasn't a regulation of companies (mostly because at the time you could really only purchase certain things, like oil, from the monopoly (ie Standard oil)) by consumers. Even now, look at this: http://stlbeacon.org/voices/blogs/political-blogs/dc-backroom/111122-ftc-probing-possible-oil-market-gasoline-price-manipulation

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/03/07/airline-price-fixing-fine_n_832133.html (I know, huffington post, I'll find something else if you want)

It took gov. investigators to discover this type of stuff. People don't care. Yesterday I went shopping for stuff for my Dad's birthday. We came across a GAP. My Mom wanted to buy clothes, and when I didn't want to (because as I explained, GAP is one of those slave-labor companies), she only didn't do it because I kept badgering her about it. Most people aren't badgered by me (and boy can I badger =)) and many don't care. Michael Vick was recently sponsored by Nike. This caused people to not want to buy Nike anymore (perfectly reasonable due to some people's love of dogs). But what I find ironic: the same people who no longer wnated to buy stuff WERE buying Nike's before even though they also use slave labor (note: I'm guilty of buying Nike's because I forgot the last couple of times. Next time I'm not buying the shoes with the check mark =)). NOBODY CARES. Its horrible, but that's the truth. the free markt works best with an educated consumer base. Americans are NOT educated consumers (most of us anyway). You have to admit that. These types of regulations ALLOW for an educated consumer. The 'regulations' you talk about cannot happen without the regulations provided by the fedral government. Such things are aimed at making sure big businesses cannot get around 'regulation' by educating consumers on their actions and such through regulations.

So anyway, in conclusion, in order to get 'regulations' you need regulations.

I also want to add to the Somalia debate: http://somalidiasporanews.com/index.php/2011/04/somalis-in-no-win-state/

There is apparently some sort of provincial gov.

http://www.somaliareport.com/index.php/post/76/4_May_2011_Daily_Media_Roundup?PHPSESSID=f98e742c31ee378ef9bc121164cdef4f They even have a president ("Somali president Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed...") That implies a government.

http://www.mpumalanga.gov.za/media/statements/safety/18042011_.htm

So unless I'm completely misreading this stuff, there is a gov. of sorts in Somalia that the Somalis accept and want as a help.

And Dawh, please do explain the social contract b/c I am also slightly confused.

July 6, 2011

despite the fact you think you have to leave the USA is total BS, you admitted you can avoid taxes. Therefore they are not theft/violence/slavery.

I shouldn't even have to leave my house. In the example I gave in my earlier post, if I said that I would stop camping in your living room if you simply just moved across the street it would still be unjust of me. You shouldn't have to move at all and similarly I shouldn't have to move to another part of the United States, even if it is near as across the street from my current house, to avoid the state's forceful collection of money from me. I shouldn't have to move at all, but you're failing to see this just as the hypothetical white man I mentioned earlier would fail to see that it is still wrong to tyrannical seize the product of the black man's labor even if he said the black man was free to move north.

gvg · July 6, 2011

I shouldn't even have to leave my house. In the example I gave in my earlier post, if I said that I would stop camping in your living room if you simply just moved across the street it would still be unjust of me. You shouldn't have to move at all and similarly I shouldn't have to move to another part of the United States, even if it is near as across the street from my current house, to avoid the state's forceful collection of money from me. I shouldn't have to move at all, but you're failing to see this just as the hypothetical white man I mentioned earlier would fail to see that it is still wrong to tyrannical seize the product of the black man's labor even if he said the black man was free to move north.

I believe what Quag is trying to point out is this:

You currently live in an area in which, I assume, you receive some gov. benefits, state, local, or otherwise, like your roads, Schools (though you are in college now, I assume you went to public school). Therefore, you should pay for them. it is wrong to receive these benefits and not pay. If you don't want to pay, you have to move to an area where you receive no benefits.

If this is wrong Quag please correct, but I think this is the jist (gist?) of it.

gvg · July 6, 2011

Quag: TO add to our earlier debate, I found that the 400 richest Americqans (avg. 270 mil. dollars a year in income) paid 18.2% taxes. Yeah. Don't you think that's too low? http://www.cnn.com/video/flashLive/live.html?stream=stream1?hpt=hp_c2 By the time you look at this it might be down, it's live footage right now (3:31 pm EST)

Edited July 6, 2011 by gvg

July 6, 2011

Also, I highly disagree (as you'd expect) with the idea that "If this is the case, I would say that consumers can non-aggressively "regulate" such a company to make sure that they are honest in a free market by other means."-UtF

Actually, I didn't expect you to disagree with me. It is absurd to hold the position that the only way to get someone to be more honest is to threaten them with violent force. Surely, as I said, there are non-violent, voluntary, peaceful ways of getting people to be more honest and non-violent ways of holding them responsible when they're dishonest. When you say you highly disagree with this it's actually quite scary.

I will use a historical example: During the age of Rockefeller, there was no regulation. look what happened. There wasn't a regulation of companies (mostly because at the time you could really only purchase certain things, like oil, from the monopoly (ie Standard oil)) by consumers. Even now, look at this: http://stlbeacon.org/voices/blogs/political-blogs/dc-backroom/111122-ftc-probing-possible-oil-market-gasoline-price-manipulation

With regard to the oil price manipulation article, I would certainly not use physical force (violence) against people just for joining together and agreeing to raise the price of the gasoline they sell in order to make more money. Certainly I don't support people attempting to exploit consumers in this way by pretending that the higher prices of gasoline are caused by other factors, but I certainly wouldn't initiate violence against these people. They're perfectly in their right to charge whatever fees for their products and services they want. If a lot of people representing a large portion of the market come together and agree to all raise their prices, forming a cartel, they all still have the same right to do this--they all have the right to raise their prices to whatever they want. So if you want to deal with issues like this (as a lot of us do), realize that raising the gun is not the answer.

Gvg: " http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/03/07/airline-price-fixing-fine_n_832133.html (I know, huffington post, I'll find something else if you want) "

Same goes for this: Raising prices, even in cooperation with other people in your industry, is not a crime and it would thus be wrong of you to support using violence against such people raising prices. Having said that, competition is a great thing and if you want to take non-violent action against these people who you believe are attempting to scam consumers by forming a cartel, then you're quite free to do so. Don't buy their gas or flights if you don't want to. Raise public awareness that their higher prices are not due to shortages in demand or anything like that, but instead are due to people in the industry coming together and agreeing to raise prices, so that consumers are more likely to choose other airlines that don't partake in cartels instead. Don't sell your products or services to the people in charge of the airline's decision to join a cartel either if you don't want. There are a lot of ways where you can show that you don't support what these people are doing, but it would be wrong of you to initiate violence against them simply because they charge a higher price than you think is fair.

Gvg: " It took gov. investigators to discover this type of stuff. People don't care. "

Well if they don't care that the gas prices or airline prices are higher, then that's okay; they're free to buy the gas and airline services if they want. What are you saying is the problem? If people don't care then why do you care so much about wanting to point guns at the people who price-fix in cartels to get them to lower their prices?

Yesterday I went shopping for stuff for my Dad's birthday. We came across a GAP. My Mom wanted to buy clothes, and when I didn't want to (because as I explained, GAP is one of those slave-labor companies), she only didn't do it because I kept badgering her about it. Most people aren't badgered by me (and boy can I badger =)) and many don't care. Michael Vick was recently sponsored by Nike. This caused people to not want to buy Nike anymore (perfectly reasonable due to some people's love of dogs). But what I find ironic: the same people who no longer wnated to buy stuff WERE buying Nike's before even though they also use slave labor (note: I'm guilty of buying Nike's because I forgot the last couple of times. Next time I'm not buying the shoes with the check mark =)). NOBODY CARES.

With regard to companies that you say are actually committing crimes by enslaving their workers, forcing them to work against their will or not paying them what they agreed to pay them for their work, etc, I would agree that it is wrong to buy such a company's products or services as that company did not produce their products honestly. Having said that, it is also thus wrong for any government employee, from a cop to the president, to accept pay from the government, as the government does not get its money through voluntary trades but instead gets it by forcefully taxing people against their wills. Thus, while I applaud you for boycotting companies like Walmart, GAP, and Nike that you think produce their products immorally by coercing their workers, I think you should apply your principle to all people who make their money and products illegitimately. Just as you would say it's wrong to work for a company like GAP because that company would pay you with money that it made by selling "slave-produced" goods (assuming you're information is accurate, which I'd bet it is to some extent), you should also say that it's wrong to work for or support the government which gets its money by forcefully taxing people in order to be consistent with your principles.

Its horrible, but that's the truth. the free markt works best with an educated consumer base.

Every society is better the more educated the people are, not just free societies.

Americans are NOT educated consumers (most of us anyway). You have to admit that. These types of regulations ALLOW for an educated consumer. The 'regulations' you talk about cannot happen without the regulations provided by the fedral government. Such things are aimed at making sure big businesses cannot get around 'regulation' by educating consumers on their actions and such through regulations.

No, the "regulations" that I mentioned are things like economically ostracizing companies that do things you consider immoral or just don't support by not working for them and not buying any of their products or services. You could also go the extra step of ostracizing those people who choose to continue buying such a companies' products despite the immoral actions of the company. If your ostracism and attempts at increasing awareness of the companies wrongdoings are not sufficient to result in the company's changing their ways, then you can always use force against the force-initiating company (and still be consistent with NAP) to defend the poor workers who are being coerced like slaves to work against their will, etc.

Remember that there are two main violation-of-NAP-objections to what the state does. One objection is of course that the state initiates force against people by regulating them, and criminalizing them for price-fixing, etc, yes, but I would say the more significant violation of NAP is when the state initiates force against non-criminals like you and I to force us to pay taxes to fund their forceful services. If you were to point at a private (i.e. voluntary) company or organization of people that funded itself through voluntary payments rather than taxation, then I wouldn't mind nearly as much if that organization used force against companies like Walmart, Nike, or GAP, to combat the slave labor that they use (again, assuming they actually do use such coercion). So that is certainly not my main objection. My main objection is not that the state forcefully regulates the gas prices and airline prices, but that it forces people like me to pay for those coercive regulations services against our will. While I would say that the state definitely initiates force in many immoral ways (to try to get businessmen to lower their airline prices, for example), the main objection once against is that the state initiates force against taxpayers to get them to fund their "services" against their will. Thus, even if we were to say for the sake of argument that every regulation and war and imprisonment of non-criminal-marijuana-smokers, etc was moral, the fact that the state funds these things by forcefully taxing people would in fact make the state an immoral institution anyways. In other words, if someone from the Salvation Army were to go up to you and aim a gun at you and say, "Donate all the money you have on you right now or else I'll shoot you," that would still be immoral despite the fact that the money would go to a good and moral Salvation Army cause.

So anyway, in conclusion, in order to get 'regulations' you need regulations.

Again, no you don't. Consumers regulate what companies produce and sell by choosing what to buy and what not to buy. If people stopped shopping at Walmart then Walmart would go out of business. Period. That's a very strong regulation and I would say that it is sufficient to have a prosperous society, i.e. no forceful regulations in violation of NAP are necessary.

I also want to add to the Somalia debate: http://somalidiasporanews.com/index.php/2011/04/somalis-in-no-win-state/

So this article is saying that there are some Somalis who are asking for government services to provide banks and security. Okay... There are also plenty of people in the United States (such as yourself) who ask for the government to provide services to them, but this doesn't mean that the United States or Somalia is thus better off with a state than without a state (and it certainly doesn't make it moral for the people in the state to point guns at people and demand taxes, although this isn't the central question to the Somalia debate we're having).

There is apparently some sort of provincial gov.

The provincial government (from your posted article above: http://somalidiasporanews.com/index.php/2011/04/somalis-in-no-win-state/ ) is in South Africa...

See: http://www.mpumalanga.gov.za/about/history.htm

Note the wording in the article:

"Another group of foreigners living in the province have asked authorities to provide them with the required security that would ensure their wellbeing in the country.

Somalis living in Mpumalanga have requested the provincial government to follow up on pending criminal cases involving attacks on them."

The Somalis are the foreigners as they are from Somalia but are living in South Africa.

Note: To avoid confusion, quag said earlier that there were "'provisional' govts" (bold added) anyways, not a single provincial government. So I still I have no idea what "provisional" governments he may have been referring to in Somalia. As far as I know such governments don't actually exist in Somalia. All I'm aware of is the government in Mogadishu that the UN is backing and the very decentralized method of "government" that is the customary law called Xeer that the many clans of extended families of Somalis have been following for years. There are a few factions of people who are fighting, but they don't qualify as governments, even "provisional" governments.

http://www.somaliareport.com/index.php/post/76/4_May_2011_Daily_Media_Roundup?PHPSESSID=f98e742c31ee378ef9bc121164cdef4f They even have a president ("Somali president Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed...") That implies a government.

This is the president of the government in Mogadishu (the capital of Somalia) that the UN has pored millions of dollars into to back. The government there only has a small range of power in that it really only has any affect in Mogadishu--it can't be considered a government of Somalia as a whole, thus why even the mainstream media says that Somalia is in "anarchy". The UN-backed government in Mogadishu has not been able to gain much power.

http://www.mpumalanga.gov.za/media/statements/safety/18042011_.htm

So unless I'm completely misreading this stuff, there is a gov. of sorts in Somalia that the Somalis accept and want as a help.

Haha, funny. I googled Mpumalanga to confirm that it was in South Africa and found this website and then you posted this link to the article without realizing that the government mentioned in the article is a South African government, not a Somalian government. The Province of Mpumalanga is in South Africa, not Somalia.

It wasn't very clear in the article that the government was in South Africa if you presumed it was in Somalia so don't feel bad for completely missing this important fact. You weren't completely misreading it, you just were completely not checking to see where the government that was being talked about was located.

July 6, 2011

I believe what Quag is trying to point out is this:

You currently live in an area in which, I assume, you receive some gov. benefits, state, local, or otherwise, like your roads, Schools (though you are in college now, I assume you went to public school). Therefore, you should pay for them. it is wrong to receive these benefits and not pay. If you don't want to pay, you have to move to an area where you receive no benefits.

If this is wrong Quag please correct, but I think this is the jist (gist?) of it.

Quag went over this "benefit" argument and I rebutted it with several examples where you would clearly agree with me that it would be wrong of me to force you to pay for a service that I provide on the basis that you benefit from the service due to the fact that you never wanted the service in the first place.

For example, if I give out free food (welfare) to people in your town or city or give these homeless people free houses to live on to take them off the street, that doesn't give me the right to point a gun at you and take your money to pay for these things just because you benefited from my welfare of taking these paupers off the streets of your town or city.

Another example that I provided was if I went and fought a war for the sake of the defending your home from potential terrorists overseas, this would not give me the right to forcefully charge you for the war despite the fact that I claimed that the war was fought for your safety, security, and protection. The fact is that I never went up to you and said, "Hey, if I go fight this war will you pay me X?" and you never replied, "Sure, I'll agree to pay you X for that service." Thus, even though my service benefits you ("actively or passively" to use quag's phrase of how I benefit from the government) I still don't have to pay for it because I never asked for the government to provide those services (that welfare, those wars, and everything else) for me and I never agreed on a price for the services.

I'm sure you can come up with endless examples yourself where someone can provide a service that someone else either directly or indirectly benefits from and yet it would clearly be wrong of the service-providing person to then go up the person and demand money in payment for the services. After thinking up a ton of examples it will become clear to you that the reason why it is unjust to charge them for the services is because they never asked for the services or agreed to a price.

Edit: Also, to comment on your public school example, I'm forced to pay taxes for the public school whether or not I go to it or a private school or home school or no school.

Edited July 6, 2011 by Use the Force

July 6, 2011

Oh quag, while I stand by what I said in my previous arguments regarding how I shouldn't have to move from my house to not have to pay taxes, I just learned that here in New England where I live local governments work differently than elsewhere in the US and Canada which may explain why you thought it was so unreasonable of me to not just move "outside [my] municipality limits." What you were saying wouldn't apply to allowing me to avoid federal taxes (unless I leave the country, right?), but as for local property taxes I see why you said that I could easily avoid them just by moving "outside my municipality limits." In New England where I live, however, this is not as easy as it apparently is elsewhere in the US or Canada.

Some quotes with bold added:

From Wikipedia ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/City_limits ):

"In the United States, such limits are usually formally described in a state, provincial, or territorial law (or an appropriate regulation) as being under the control of the municipal corporation or agency that constitutes the city government. It is customary to indicate city limits with the posting of signs on major freeways, highways, and arterial roads. Note that New England states have a unique concept of "towns", which are similar in size to the civil townships in other States, but empowered with the authority exercised by municipalities in other States. ... Property which within city limits is subject to city taxation and city regulation, and expects city services."

From Wikipedia ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_England_town ):

"Towns are laid out so that all land within the boundaries of a state is allocated to a town or other corporate municipality. Except in some very sparsely populated areas of the three northern New England states (primarily in the interior of Maine) [note: not where UtF lives], the concept of unincorporated territory, even in rural areas, is unknown. With the exception of those very sparsely populated areas, all land in New England is within the boundaries of a town or other incorporated municipality."

So apparently here in New England people can't just move "outside their municipality limits" like they can apparently elsewhere in the US and Canada. Having said that, I could move to another part of the country in order to avoid paying property taxes, but as I said before, I shouldn't even have to move across the street--I should be able to stay in my current house on my property and not have to pay taxes.

gvg · July 6, 2011

Raise public awareness that their higher prices are not due to shortages in demand or anything like that, but instead are due to people in the industry coming together and agreeing to raise prices, so that consumers are more likely to choose other airlines that don't partake in cartels instead.

But that was my point: NO ONE knew about those things I pointed out without the government investigators finding out. What I forgot to ask was how do you think such things will be discovered without such organizations? (Right now, as I'm sure you've realized, I'm just trying to get you to accept some sort of liberterian gov. so that we can work from there). Private investigator companies are very easy to pay off, and I personally wouldn't trust them. Now, I'm sure you would. But let's assume you don't. How would it work then? I'm curious.

And the regulations prevent cartels and monopolies from developing (since consumers would not care to stop it) so that competition, in my view the biggest piece of capitalism along with supply and demand stuff, can exist. So yes, you need these to exist to have consumer 'regulations,' because without them consumers have too little information to 'regulate.' (Think of this: Important pieces of information, such as food labels and the internet, were created either by laws upheld by the government or by government investment (which was a HUGE part of the creation of a free (as in uncensored) internet. There may have been private companies, but I'm pretty sure it was mostly government investment.)

Just because consumers don't care doesn't mean I shouldn't. Should the abolitionists have cared since nobody else did? I want to make sure consumers do care about what companies they buy from.

But now, we come to what I see as the biggest difference in viewpoint between you and me:

the fact that the state funds these things by forcefully taxing people would in fact make the state an immoral institution anyways.

This is where subjective morality kicks in. I disagree. I find it moral as long as it serves to help as many people as it can. I'm quite the utilitarian, and I'm a big believer (generally with a few exceptions) in consequentialist morality. As Dawh said, I aim to be as utilitarian as I should be without being as utilitarian as I could be. This government, as of now, does not aim to serve the few (though you better believe the oligarchists/plutocrats of the Republican party aim for this), but the majority, the essence of democracy (or in our case our republic). We the People. Our founding principle.

Obviously, if we cannot agree on such an issue of 'morality,' we will never be able to agree. Prove to me that unregulated, unmolested, untaxed, anarcho-capitalism doesn't hurt the many while serving the few rich and powerful, doesn't lead to monopolies that will abuse the populace, doesn't lead to any such similar thing, and I will be with you. To this point, in my view, you have not. Do it, and you have my support.

And I screwed up the Somalia stuff. I'm removing myself from that debate =)

Edit: Just noticed your other comments. I may get to them later.

Only thing I'll say is that for the public school thing, it is because without everyone, it couldn't be funded, putting at risk the poor and needy who wouldn't be able to afford private schools.

Edited July 6, 2011 by gvg

curr3nt · July 6, 2011

Has censorship been brought up?

Without regulation what is there to prevent corporations from buying up TV, cable and the internet and only allowing access to information that they want you to have?

July 6, 2011

So apparently here in New England people can't just move "outside their municipality limits" like they can apparently elsewhere in the US and Canada. Having said that, I could move to another part of the country in order to avoid paying property taxes, but as I said before, I shouldn't even have to move across the street--I should be able to stay in my current house on my property and not have to pay taxes.

The problem is that at some level (municipal, state, federal), the house you live in was created by the government. Maybe not directly and maybe it wasn't sold to you by the State, but at some point in the proceedings, the government owned your property. That is one reason why you pay taxes on that property. If you lived on land that wasn't previously owned by the State, then you would have a valid complaint, but as it is, it's just sour grapes. Until you become an adult, you don't have the self-determination to decide the place in which you live. Once you gain that mobility, you are free to change your circumstances such that you can live tax-free if you find them so appalling. :rolleyes:

Yes, you personally didn't agree to this system, but that's where the Social Contract comes into play. I'm sort of defining it in my own words, so some people might disagree with my definitions, but I would say that the Constitution of the United States isn't the Social Contract under which we live, so much as it is the embodiment of the Social Contract. It is the instantiation of the idea of the Social Contract. The contract is laid out in the Preamble:

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

By living in the geographic United States, we agree to abide by the rules and laws enumerated in the Constitution. The agreement is implicit (now, generations after it was written), but making it that way provides a common base to allow society to function. It's not possible to tailor laws to every single person's wants or needs, so the best we can do is to create a system that caters to the needs of the most. The Social Contract permits this arrangement.

I agree with all of the philosophers on the subject that the State of Nature is not desirable. You disagree. I don't really know where this part of the discussion can continue because you tend to avoid any of my more salient points and generally just slip into another rehashed diatribe of the arguments you have already made. We don't have a problem understanding your arguments, it's just that we disagree with them.

The Social Contract establishes the legitimacy of the government. The government, as created by the Constitution, is more than the sum of its parts. It is not a person. It is not a collection of people. It is, itself, an entity; granted authority by the people who ratified the Constitution and the world into which you were born. If you don't like the system, you are free to leave, but it doesn't lose legitimacy just because you don't like it.

I think of the government like a computer. A computer consists of circuit boards, wires, transistors and what not. Individually, the parts don't do anything, but when you stick them together, they are suddenly something else entirely. They become more than the sum of their parts. I hope you can agree with me on that. The government is the same way. It's a conglomeration of people and rules that individually have no authority or real significance, but when you put them all together, you create something more: a government.

When you pay taxes, it's not Bob the Taxpayer that's receiving your money, it's the government itself. The government is collector. So even if a government is "just a collection of people," when you put them together, they become something more. And under the Constitution, it is supposed to be operating on the behalf of the people. It is beholden to the needs of the people and it is accountable to the people. If we don't like something the government is doing, we have the power to change it. That is the power of our social contract with each other that forms our government.

curr3nt's comment on censorship:

Has censorship been brought up?

Without regulation what is there to prevent corporations from buying up TV, cable and the internet and only allowing access to information that they want you to have?

goes hand-in-hand with what I wanted to say about this paragraph from UtF:

Same goes for this: Raising prices, even in cooperation with other people in your industry, is not a crime and it would thus be wrong of you to support using violence against such people raising prices. Having said that, competition is a great thing and if you want to take non-violent action against these people who you believe are attempting to scam consumers by forming a cartel, then you're quite free to do so. Don't buy their gas or flights if you don't want to. Raise public awareness that their higher prices are not due to shortages in demand or anything like that, but instead are due to people in the industry coming together and agreeing to raise prices, so that consumers are more likely to choose other airlines that don't partake in cartels instead. Don't sell your products or services to the people in charge of the airline's decision to join a cartel either if you don't want. There are a lot of ways where you can show that you don't support what these people are doing, but it would be wrong of you to initiate violence against them simply because they charge a higher price than you think is fair.

(Emphasis added)

If you are one person, trying to raise awareness about the abuses of a powerful, profitable industry, without regulation you are likely to be stifled before any significant number of people hear your plea. Censorship is half of the argument, but I wouldn't be surprised if companies didn't go further. Not only would they deny you a voice, they would start a campaign against you: "Did you hear about the things that UtF does to goats? :blink: Don't let him near you! He's evil incarnate!"

If they feel the need, what's to stop them from libeling and slandering you if you try to speak out against them? You can object, but without regulation, they have the best lawyers money can buy and chances are, you don't. Who would win that argument? My money's on the entity with the money. I call NAP naive because in a situation where one person will not initiate aggression and the other one will, the aggressor has the natural advantage. NAP won't help you if someone pulls out a knife and stabs you in the back. That's why it's naive. From a game theory perspective, it's a non-optimal place when you cannot rely on the behavior of the other agents in the system.

July 6, 2011

This is where subjective morality kicks in. I disagree. I find it moral as long as it serves to help as many people as it can. I'm quite the utilitarian, and I'm a big believer (generally with a few exceptions) in consequentialist morality.

If you really were that much of a utilitarian you wouldn't be wasting your time with such luxuries as this BrainDen discussion, but instead would be donating the majority of your time and effort to help others less fortunate than yourself. Until you adopt that sort of lifestyle there's no way I could possibly even begin to think about tolerating you using violence violence against people to force them to give up their things to your "utilitarian" cause.

Also, on the subject of utilitarianism, I think the effects of such things as taxing the rich to redistribute their wealth to the poor are far too difficult to calculate to be sure that you're actually helping as many people as possible to be as happy as possible. For all you know despite the superficial fact that some poor person now lives in a decent house or some pauper has food stamps to buy ice cream, you could in fact be subsidizing the lower class to perpetuate the presence of poverty in this society. You say you would murder an innocent person just because you thought redistributing that person's wealth to poor people would result in a better world. Not only would I say that you were wrong, that your actions of forceful redistribution of wealth do NOT result in more people being happier in the long run, but also you should never have even thought to commit such evil in the first place even if you thought it would make the world a better place. Violence doesn't solve problems. You might think that pointing a gun at someone and threatening to use violence against them if they don't follow your regulations results in a better society, but it doesn't.

Also you say you're a consequentialist. You might be guessing that I'm a deontologist? Well the truth is that I used to think of myself as a consequentialist because after all, all that really matters is what happens in the world, right? Well, if you're trying to figure out how to live an ethical and moral life, how to achieve the most "good," does it help to call yourself a consequentialist? I realized it didn't really. I didn't become a deontologist. Instead I realized that it's good to have some basic principles that you'll always follow unless the evidence of the situation makes you very strongly think that you ought to break your principle. If you always go just based on the evidence of the situation without having any principles then I don't think you'll do as well. It's good to have principles like "Don't murder," "Don't steal," etc. I think NAP just about sums up those principles for me. I can't think of a time when it would be good to break NAP, so I stand by NAP as a good principle to follow. If you forget having these basic moral principles then before you know it you'll end up murdering Mr. Koch just because you think that will result in a better world. How will murdering someone result in a better world? It seems absurd and yet your lack of moral principles has made you go to the conclusion that you would murder Mr. Koch if he refused to give in to your coercion and insisted on holding on to his money. You thought you were just a consequentialist looking for the greater good to make more people happy, but your lack of principles results in you making decisions that clearly do not support the utility principle.

Obviously, if we cannot agree on such an issue of 'morality,' we will never be able to agree. Prove to me that unregulated, unmolested, untaxed, anarcho-capitalism doesn't hurt the many while serving the few rich and powerful

What power do I have over you if I don't point any guns at you to force you to do anything? It's your system that serves the interests of some while harming others, not mine. You're the one who implied you would murder an innocent person for the sake of the utility principle. If you think murdering a non-murderer could possibly support the utility principle then it is your concept or morality that hurts many while benefiting only those who are allowed to initiate violence like parasites.

Only thing I'll say is that for the public school thing, it is because without everyone, it couldn't be funded, putting at risk the poor and needy who wouldn't be able to afford private schools.

Again, you think that you need to commit murder in order to prevent society from collapsing. That's not true.

gvg · July 7, 2011

You say you would murder an innocent person just because you thought redistributing that person's wealth to poor people would result in a better world.

I... never said this. That's rediculous. When have I said this? And when have I said I wanted to actively encourage a redistribution of wealth? If such a thing happens in the process, fine. But I'm not a full on socialist.

And I just said utilitarian and consequentialist generally. i don't follow them exclusively. To be honest, I learned about the terms recently and may have used them wrong. I don't mean to imply what you said. Hell, I don't even know what a deontologist is. Forget I said such things.

Again, you think that you need to commit murder in order to prevent society from collapsing. That's not true.

No. I never said this. I'm sure you're taking this out of context. That's a ridiculous statement.

What power do I have over you if I don't point any guns at you to force you to do anything? It's your system that serves the interests of some while harming others, not mine. You're the one who implied you would murder an innocent person for the sake of the utility principle. If you think murdering a non-murderer could possibly support the utility principle then it is your concept or morality that hurts many while benefiting only those who are allowed to initiate violence like parasites.

Again, I NEVER SAID THE MURDERING PART. Good god. Taxing isn't murder. SHeesh.

And my ideas aim to help as many people as possible, helping the poor and middle class at the expense of some money from people who WOULD STILL BE RICH ANYWAY. I want to help more people. Your system allows untold amounts of corporate countral, a huge possibility of decaying into a fuedal system (which is FAR worse), and generally letting the rich get away with stuff. "Economic ostracization? HA! Come on darling, we'll take the private jet to Hawaii and live there." The rich will most certaintly be much better off in such a system. Prove me wrong. I'm waiting.

And don't take my stuff out of context, or I'm done arguing. I am interested in what you have to say, since there is no one with your opinions, to my knowledge, in my high school or community.

In fact, I think at this point you should just answer Dawh. He thinks as I do and is much better at showing what i mean.

July 7, 2011

And I just said utilitarian and consequentialist generally. i don't follow them exclusively. To be honest, I learned about the terms recently and may have used them wrong. I don't mean to imply what you said. Hell, I don't even know what a deontologist is. Forget I said such things.

...

In fact, I think at this point you should just answer Dawh. He thinks as I do and is much better at showing what i mean.

You shouldn't back off of what you say, just because someone violently accosts your words. If you mean them, you should stand by them. We all know someone who clearly does. :rolleyes:

You can bring up good ideas too. You're just still learning. And I doubt that we agree on absolutely every point, so at some point you'll have to speak for yourself.

UtF, you seriously need to get a sense of nuance. You completely missed the most important part of what gvg said:

This is where subjective morality kicks in. I disagree. I find it moral as long as it serves to help as many people as it can. I'm quite the utilitarian, and I'm a big believer (generally with a few exceptions) in consequentialist morality. As Dawh said, I aim to be as utilitarian as I should be without being as utilitarian as I could be. This government, as of now, does not aim to serve the few (though you better believe the oligarchists/plutocrats of the Republican party aim for this), but the majority, the essence of democracy (or in our case our republic). We the People. Our founding principle.

Obviously, if we cannot agree on such an issue of 'morality,' we will never be able to agree. Prove to me that unregulated, unmolested, untaxed, anarcho-capitalism doesn't hurt the many while serving the few rich and powerful, doesn't lead to monopolies that will abuse the populace, doesn't lead to any such similar thing, and I will be with you. To this point, in my view, you have not. Do it, and you have my support. (Emphasis added)

You got his quote up to the emphasized statement. But that's the most important part. He said he was being "as utilitarian as he should be" without being "as utilitarian as he could be." Yes, it would be Utilitarian to kill 1 person if it saved 100, but he never said or implied that he would be willing to do that. He never said he was an absolute utilitarian at all times, no matter what.

I agree that you're a deontologist based on this article on consequentialism, but I would say that I'm more of a follower of pragmatic ethics than a consequentialist myself.

And gvg's right, the government is never pointing a gun at your head when they collect taxes. The State is never going to kill you if you don't pay up. Whether you count something as violent or not doesn't matter as much the degree of the violence. I doubt you'd be as upset with someone who slapped you wrist every time you didn't pay a fine as you would if they stabbed you with a knife each time. Since you're never at threat of getting shot by the government (until you threaten your own gun violence), it's not a very strong argument for you to say that the government puts a gun to your head, because it doesn't. :dry:

Quag · July 7, 2011

I shouldn't even have to leave my house. In the example I gave in my earlier post, if I said that I would stop camping in your living room if you simply just moved across the street it would still be unjust of me. You shouldn't have to move at all and similarly I shouldn't have to move to another part of the United States, even if it is near as across the street from my current house, to avoid the state's forceful collection of money from me. I shouldn't have to move at all, but you're failing to see this just as the hypothetical white man I mentioned earlier would fail to see that it is still wrong to tyrannical seize the product of the black man's labor even if he said the black man was free to move north.

Why shouldnt you leave your house? was your house built in a municipality? The rules were in place when your built/bought your house, you knew that buying/building a house where it is means you have to pay taxes. Why do you think that you can change the rules becaue it suits you? This is part of the social contract people have been talking about. The living room example has nothing to do with it. If you move into my living room it would have to be by my consent and I would expect you to pay rent. Ie. You moving in, means you agree to the terms, just like you buying a house in a municipality means you agree to all that that implies, INCLUDING PAYING PROPERTY TAX. Again you bring up slavery why? How is it even remotely related to this discussion? you are not a slave, taxation is not violence/theft/slavery. You can move a slave cannot. You can change jobs a slave cannot. Stay in your house, move out, I dont care, but dont try and tell me you do not WANT to move and therefore taxes are THEFT/VIOELNCE/SLAVERY.

Edited July 7, 2011 by Quag

July 7, 2011

The problem is that at some level (municipal, state, federal), the house you live in was created by the government. Maybe not directly and maybe it wasn't sold to you by the State, but at some point in the proceedings, the government owned your property. That is one reason why you pay taxes on that property. If you lived on land that wasn't previously owned by the State, then you would have a valid complaint, but as it is, it's just sour grapes. Until you become an adult, you don't have the self-determination to decide the place in which you live. Once you gain that mobility, you are free to change your circumstances such that you can live tax-free if you find them so appalling.

Yes, you personally didn't agree to this system, but that's where the Social Contract comes into play. I'm sort of defining it in my own words, so some people might disagree with my definitions, but I would say that the Constitution of the United States isn't the Social Contract under which we live, so much as it is the embodiment of the Social Contract. It is the instantiation of the idea of the Social Contract. The contract is laid out in the Preamble:

"We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America."

By living in the geographic United States, we agree to abide by the rules and laws enumerated in the Constitution. The agreement is implicit (now, generations after it was written), but making it that way provides a common base to allow society to function. It's not possible to tailor laws to every single person's wants or needs, so the best we can do is to create a system that caters to the needs of the most. The Social Contract permits this arrangement.

I disagree. We have no obligation to follow the Constitution and we do not implicitly give our consent to abide by the Constitution by living in the U.S.

http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig4/spooner1.html is a good article on this subject, although note that I don't agree with everything that this author said, such as the part where it's okay to use the power of voting to coerce others as we are forced into a battle of coercion by the many other people around us who use force against us. While I'm being swayed slightly by the philosophical libertarians and anarchists who say that voting is okay as long as you vote only to abolish the government's powers, I would say that voting to coerce others as the author said is still wrong. Author: "He sees further, that, if he will but use the ballot himself, he has some chance of relieving himself from this tyranny of others, by subjecting them to his own." I think using the ballot to subject others to your own tyranny is immoral despite the fact that that these other people are tyrannical towards you. Perhaps using the ballot to vote to abolish government powers is okay though.

I agree with all of the philosophers on the subject that the State of Nature is not desirable. You disagree.

All the philosophers? What about the libertarian philosophers?

I don't really know where this part of the discussion can continue because you tend to avoid any of my more salient points and generally just slip into another rehashed diatribe of the arguments you have already made. We don't have a problem understanding your arguments, it's just that we disagree with them.

What salient points of yours am I avoiding? The only thing I can think of that I didn't answer was your last post on the idea of property, although I'd point out that you have no more argument than I do that you own my land or that the government owns my land or any of my other things. If you build a car, do you own the car? Didn't you steal the resources for the car or buy them from someone else who stole them? What makes them yours? You can say this about absolutely anyone who claims they own anything. I don't see it as an argument against the idea of a free society.

The Social Contract establishes the legitimacy of the government. The government, as created by the Constitution, is more than the sum of its parts. It is not a person. It is not a collection of people. It is, itself, an entity; granted authority by the people who ratified the Constitution and the world into which you were born. If you don't like the system, you are free to leave, but it doesn't lose legitimacy just because you don't like it.

What social contract? This is a bogus argument. If me and some other people were to write up a document outlining some sort of state and then declare our Independence from the United States you would reject our claims just as the British rejected the colonists' claim of independence. There's no authority behind the claims that there exists a "social contract" except the authority of force that says that if I try to secede or declare independence then the almighty US government will forcefully prevent me from doing so. But when you say there is a social contract as if I have a contract with society (whoever society is) it's completely not true.

I think of the government like a computer. A computer consists of circuit boards, wires, transistors and what not. Individually, the parts don't do anything, but when you stick them together, they are suddenly something else entirely. They become more than the sum of their parts. I hope you can agree with me on that. The government is the same way. It's a conglomeration of people and rules that individually have no authority or real significance, but when you put them all together, you create something more: a government.

No, that doesn't make sense to me. If it's wrong for individuals to steal then it's wrong for individuals working in the name of a piece of paper called the Constitution to steal from people, even if they declare that there is a "social contract."

When you pay taxes, it's not Bob the Taxpayer that's receiving your money, it's the government itself. The government is collector. So even if a government is "just a collection of people," when you put them together, they become something more.

You could say the same thing about the mafia so long as the mafia distributed the wealth that it stole to multiple people.

And under the Constitution, it is supposed to be operating on the behalf of the people. It is beholden to the needs of the people and it is accountable to the people. If we don't like something the government is doing, we have the power to change it. That is the power of our social contract with each other that forms our government.

I don't believe that the Constitution is operating on behalf of "the people." I think that it operates on behalf of some people in the US. I think society as a whole would be better if people didn't use the document as an excuse to initiate violence against others. The Constitution has no authority, even if a majority of people in a geographic region says it does. And again, I have no "social contract" with anyone.

curr3nt's comment on censorship:

goes hand-in-hand with what I wanted to say about this paragraph from UtF:
(Emphasis added)
If you are one person, trying to raise awareness about the abuses of a powerful, profitable industry, without regulation you are likely to be stifled before any significant number of people hear your plea. Censorship is half of the argument, but I wouldn't be surprised if companies didn't go further. Not only would they deny you a voice, they would start a campaign against you: "Did you hear about the things that UtF does to goats? Don't let him near you! He's evil incarnate!"

Something is wrong with your perception of reality. You seem to think that people are evil unless they carry the government's guns in which case they suddenly start operating for the good of society. That doesn't make any sense at all. The "powerful" people aren't businessmen, but rather are politicians. Businessmen don't use violence against you whereas it's a politician's job to use violence against you.

If they feel the need, what's to stop them from libeling and slandering you if you try to speak out against them? You can object, but without regulation, they have the best lawyers money can buy and chances are, you don't. Who would win that argument? My money's on the entity with the money. I call NAP naive because in a situation where one person will not initiate aggression and the other one will, the aggressor has the natural advantage. NAP won't help you if someone pulls out a knife and stabs you in the back. That's why it's naive. From a game theory perspective, it's a non-optimal place when you cannot rely on the behavior of the other agents in the system.

Nirvana fallacy again? Compare what you just wrote here regarding the voluntary private sector people to the public sector people with their big guns.

Some humor matched up with your last quoted paragraph:

If the government officials feel the need, what's to stop them from libeling and slandering you if you try to speak out against them? You can object, but if the state thugs don't regulate themselves what's to stop them from overpowering you? Who would win that conflict? My money's on the entity with the big guns, not the rich owner of Staples. I call not threatening people with violent force naive because in a situation where another person threatens you with violence, they have an advantage over you for the very odd reason that you didn't strike against them first despite the fact that under NAP you're perfectly welcome to use violence in self defense. Using violent force in self defense won't help you if someone pulls out a knife and stabs you in the back (but the state thugs who threaten you with violence if you don't fund their police services with taxes will protect you from that guy who pulls out a knife and stabs you in the back...? LOL, yeah right). From a game theory perspective, it's a non-optimal place to only use violent force in self defense to defend against aggressors (again, a very odd statement). The only way you can be safe against such aggressors if you strike out with violence first.

That last paragraph rant may be confusing because some sentences are sarcasm and others aren't, but hopefully you can see that some of what you said was absurd. Under NAP you can use violence in self defense. Just because there are people out there who will use violence aggressively does not at all mean that you have to go around initiating force against everyone yourself to stop them. That wouldn't even work unless you want a totalitarian dictatorship. Also you seem to be missing the point the NAP does not equal pacifism. You can use violence in defense and it's legitimate.

July 7, 2011

Me: "You say you would murder an innocent person just because you thought redistributing that person's wealth to poor people would result in a better world."

I... never said this. That's rediculous. When have I said this? And when have I said I wanted to actively encourage a redistribution of wealth? If such a thing happens in the process, fine. But I'm not a full on socialist.

Actually, that is exactly what you implied when a few pages ago you said that you would point your gun at Mr. Koch to force him to pay his taxes. Also note that the taxes are a redistribution of wealth from Mr. Koch to the poor people who you want to give his money to. You were saying that you thought Mr. Koch had more than enough money and the poor people didn't have enough so basically you wanted to tax him to redistribute some of his wealth to the poor. You didn't use the phrase "redistribution of wealth," but that is the same meaning of what you were saying.

As for why I said that you would murder Mr. Koch in order to take his money to give it to poor people despite the fact that you didn't explicitly say this, it is implied that that is what you are willing to do when you raised your gun to him to demand his taxes. To see why, just ask yourself what would happen if Mr. Koch refused to give you his money despite the fact that you had a gun to his head. here's a sample conversation:

Gvg: Give me some of your money so that I can give it to the poor.

Koch: No, I don't want to.

*Gvg raises gun*

Gvg: "Give me some of your money now so I can give it to the poor or else I'll arrest you.

Koch: No. If you try to arrest me I'll resist your attempt to kidnap me.

Gvg: "Give these poor people some of your money, now."

*Gvg has his fun aimed right at Mr. Koch*

*Koch raises his own gun and closes his door on you, leaving you outside.*

Koch: "For the last time, no, I will not give you any of my money. If you come inside to try to take it from me or 'arrest' me then I'll defend myself and my money with this gun of my own."

Gvg: "Yeah well I have more guns than you and a big army to back me up. Give me your money."

Koch: "No."

Gvg: "Okay, you asked for it."

*Gvg breaks down door with several other armed men*

Koch: "No I didn't; you did."

*Gvg shoots and kills Koch as Koch tried to aim and shoot his gun at the men coming at him."

Unless you were planning on just backing off on your coercive demand of his money, thus allowing him to not pay you after all, then consequently by taxing him you would have to be prepared to kill him should he resist your attempts to take his money and arrest him. Note that while you personally may not actually go the whole way and kill Koch if he refused to pay you despite your initial gun raise, the state does go the whole way. Very few people actually choose to defend their property and resist the state kidnappers because they know that they would surely be doomed to die as it's a losing battle to fight the mighty government, but this is the government's threat when it taxes you. If it wasn't the government's threat then you could choose to not pay the taxes and the government would say, "Fine, we won't take your money." Note that this actually is the case some of the time, especially when people who don't make much money refuse to pay their taxes. It simply isn't worth the energy by the state to go kill a man for a couple thousand dollars of taxes. But, if it were someone wealthy like Mr. Koch then surely the state would think that it was worth going through all the trouble to attack him to seize his money.

So earlier you said that you would forcefully tax Mr. Koch because you thought it was for the good of society as a whole (utility principle). What I think you didn't understand is the implication of taxing him. You have to realize that if he says that you can't have his money and he won't let you lock him up in a cage, then either you have to back down on your initial threat or else you have to go attack him and quite possibly kill (murder) him.

"No. I never said this. I'm sure you're taking this out of context. That's a ridiculous statement."

I know you never explicitly ever said that you would kill Mr. Koch or anyone you want to tax, but that is the implication of demanding their money using violent force, is it not? What happens if he refuses to pay you and resists your guns with a gun of his own? You either have to back off your attack or else kill him. I think realizing this is another reason to see why NAP makes so much sense. I'm fine with using violence in self defense even if I have to kill the person attacking me, but if I ever accidentally let loose a threat of force (which would be necessarily NAP-violating) if I was angry or something, then surely I would back off it as soon as I regained my common sense as I would never actually want to physically initiate violent against anyone even if they stole my property or some other crime. Would you even shoot a petty thief? I wouldn't, let alone shoot a complete non-criminal who just doesn't want to give you his money. Thus you shouldn't threaten either person with violence, even if you think he's likely to be persuaded by your gun, simply due to the fact that if he does not submit to your threat, instead choosing to resist it, you might end up actually using the force against them when originally you said you never would. Threatening it is the same thing. Don't threaten the taxpayer with your gun unless you actually plan on shooting him, for if he refuses to give up his money and resists your threat of force, that is exactly what you'll end up having to do (unless of course you back down on your threat and don't take his money, in which case you shouldn't have threatened him in the first place).

"Again, I NEVER SAID THE MURDERING PART. Good god. Taxing isn't murder. SHeesh."

So if someone doesn't accept your taxation, how would you respond? Would you say, "Okay, I won't force you pay me your money," or will you commit the murder? Those are really your only two options when confronted with someone who does not wish to submit himself to the tyranny of your tax-collecting gun. As you just said you wouldn't commit the murder, then you should really rethink supporting the state because the state knows that it has the force necessary to overpower any person resisting their taxation and it is willing to go the full length to kill the person. It certainly doesn't always go the full length, in fact it more often backs off its threat than actually follow through with them and commit murder, but occasionally it does go commit the murder when it thinks it's worth it. It's not worth it when some poor person like me refuses to pay my income taxes, for example, but if it were someone with a lot of money like Mr. Koch, I highly doubt they would just let Mr. Koch not pay his taxes. He has too much money that they could steal. Also note that the state threatens violence for many more things than taxation and sometimes goes the full length with an army of "law enforcers" to kill multiple people who resist their kidnapping.

And I just said utilitarian and consequentialist generally. i don't follow them exclusively. To be honest, I learned about the terms recently and may have used them wrong. I don't mean to imply what you said. Hell, I don't even know what a deontologist is. Forget I said such things.

Like dawh said you shouldn't necessarily just back off what you said. Maybe my criticisms were off the mark. But, anyways, I was just saying that I don't really see in what way "consequentialism" helps you determine your actions. Does it just mean you try to calculate out the various affects of different choices to a certain point in time to see what future you like better? Because that seems like common sense almost. But, what if you're in a situation where the calculation is complex or you are under time pressure and you don't have enough time to think it all through? Would resorting to some basic principles like NAP be a good idea? I would say so. Surely not all of your principles have to be absolute (although after much thought NAP certainly is for me), but even if you're a consequentialist (as most all of us are I would say) I would think it a good idea to have some principles to follow so that if you even have to make a good decision you are more likely to make a decision that you are happy with. Anyways....

And my ideas aim to help as many people as possible, helping the poor and middle class at the expense of some money from people who WOULD STILL BE RICH ANYWAY. I want to help more people. Your system allows untold amounts of corporate countral, a huge possibility of decaying into a fuedal system (which is FAR worse), and generally letting the rich get away with stuff. "Economic ostracization? HA! Come on darling, we'll take the private jet to Hawaii and live there." The rich will most certaintly be much better off in such a system. Prove me wrong. I'm waiting.

The burden of proof is on you as you are the one who are saying that you are willing to threaten these rich folk with murder if they refuse to pay up their money to the poor and resist your arrest. If there is doubt which system is better, I would side on the system that doesn't threaten violence by default and then look for reasons why it might be better to threaten violence against wealthy people to force them to spend some of their wealth on poorer people.

And by the way, I like helping people too; I want to decrease poverty as well.

My ideas aim to help as many people as possible. Your system allows some people to use violence against other people to harm those people for their own benefit.

You said, "Your system allows untold amounts of corporate countral" but really it is your system that is bound to result in corporations taking control of the government's infrastructure of coercion by lobbying and influencing elections. I don't believe that anybody, corporations included, should be able to benefit by using force against others to harm them. When you have a state like ours that's what ends up happening. You don't like large companies not because large companies are evil but because they are big enough to lobby the state and benefit by coercing others through the state coercion apparatus. So if you don't like these wicked corporations you should think about stopping tolerating aggression because it is the state's legal right to aggression that corporations are bound to try to influence for their own benefit.

I am interested in what you have to say, since there is no one with your opinions, to my knowledge, in my high school or community.

Calling my views "opinions" seems pretty derogatory here just so you know. I only know a few people personally who are also philosophical libertarians (NAP) and thus anarchists. If you're interested in learning more though there are people and sources you can learn from for free on the internet far better or more efficiently than from me. I'm evidently doing quite a terrible job presenting arguments in defense of libertarian philosophy and in defense of how societies might achieve various functions in the absence of a state.

curr3nt · July 7, 2011

Something is wrong with your perception of reality. You seem to think that people are evil unless they carry the government's guns in which case they suddenly start operating for the good of society. That doesn't make any sense at all. The "powerful" people aren't businessmen, but rather are politicians. Businessmen don't use violence against you whereas it's a politician's job to use violence against you.

Do you know what a lobbyist is? Are you aware of the number of businesses that profit off of wars in general and some wars in particular?

July 7, 2011

UtF, you seriously need to get a sense of nuance. You completely missed the most important part of what gvg said:
...
"As Dawh said, I aim to be as utilitarian as I should be without being as utilitarian as I could be"
...
You got his quote up to the emphasized statement. But that's the most important part. He said he was being "as utilitarian as he should be" without being "as utilitarian as he could be." Yes, it would be Utilitarian to kill 1 person if it saved 100, but he never said or implied that he would be willing to do that. He never said he was an absolute utilitarian at all times, no matter what.

Interpreting that phrase, "utilitarian as I should be without being as utilitarian as I could be" I would take it to mean that if he really wants to he should live a life on a small budget and donate the rest of what he makes to charitable causes to help out poor people who are less fortunate than he is. He also could kill some rich man to take his money and give it to thousands of poor people, but surely he shouldn't do that. The thing is though, I presume that gvg isn't living such an altruistic, utilitarian, life just from the fact that he is participating in this luxury of Brainden discussion. On the other hand, his political views support what I said he should NOT do, which is threaten and use violence against richer people to steal their money and give it to poorer people. Ignoring the strong possibility that this does is not actually consistent with the utility principle, even if it is consistent with the utility principle he still shouldn't commit such initations of violence against these rich people. So I think I understood and agreed with your bold phrase exactly, I just thought that what gvg was doing was the opposite of what the phrase suggested, i.e. he supports violence at times because he claims the utility principle supports it and at other times where he could be voluntarily and peacefully giving up his time and effort to charitable cuases, he instead participates in the luxury of having this discussion here on Brainden while people in the world are starving. So really if anything "as utilitarian as I should be without being as utilitarian as I could be" should mean that he should not threaten rich people with violence to force them to give their wealth to poor people, but instead should (if he wants) just spend his own time, effort, and money, being charitable to these poor people himself. Note: I'm not saying gvg should give up every luxury to live such a charitable life. I'm only saying that if he wishes to support the utility principle he should support it first with his own actions (being very charitable and enjoying few luxuries) before considering the possibility of being violent to support the utility principle.

I agree that you're a deontologist based on this article on consequentialism, but I would say that I'm more of a follower of pragmatic ethics than a consequentialist myself.

If "pragmatism" is just "whatever I feel works" then I would say I'm a pragmatist too. I care about the consequences of things, but due to the fact that it is often very difficult, if not impossible, to predict the consequences of various possible courses of actions, I think it's helpful to have principles to follow. I think the Non-Aggression Principle is one of those principles that the more people follow (on an absolute basis... no exceptions for "charitable" theft) the better the world will be. So note that while it is just a deontological rule, the only reason why I follow it is because I think that following it will result in the best consequences.

And gvg's right, the government is never pointing a gun at your head when they collect taxes. The State is never going to kill you if you don't pay up. Whether you count something as violent or not doesn't matter as much the degree of the violence. I doubt you'd be as upset with someone who slapped you wrist every time you didn't pay a fine as you would if they stabbed you with a knife each time. Since you're never at threat of getting shot by the government (until you threaten your own gun violence), it's not a very strong argument for you to say that the government puts a gun to your head, because it doesn't.

I already replied to gvg about this after you posted this, so I'll allow you to read what I wrote there first. Basically the question is, what if the person refuses to pay taxes and resists the state trying to arrest them? Would the state just say "okay" or will it actually follow through with trying to make you pay up? Very rarely is the state faced with someone who actually refuses and resists all the way, but if someone does refuse to give in to the state's demands then this is the predicament that the state faces.

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