Rock the non-vote

[imported_tss4]

Originally posted by: Dissipate

Originally posted by: tss4

Originally posted by: Dissipate

Originally posted by: tss4

Originally posted by: Dissipate
Do you have any examples of a prosperous society under anarchists capitolism?

I would if you showed me an example of a society where people reject organizing society through political means.

Nice cop out.

Ok, tell me where I can apply for my 'national defense' permit, I want to start an insurance company here in the U.S. to compete with the U.S. military. What's that you say? I'm not allowed to own machine guns, missles and bombs? Well then so much for having the chance to give you an example.

Would you support allowing competition with the U.S. government in terms of national defense? Or even competition in law enforcement? i.e. private police and prisons?

I asked you to give me any example of a prosperous anarchacist capitalist society.

The U.S.

lol, well then you should be thrilled! You live in your dream government. Seems odd, though, considering most of the actvitities you advocate should be private are in fact publicly run in the US (and always have been).

So now its, the wild west, a 10 year community in PA, somalia, and the us are examples of Anarchacist capitolism.

You're right in that people don't want to be taxed, but they do want the services government provides more than they dislike the taxes. If they felt otherwise, there are places they could go to live with no taxes.

This is my last post on this topic dissipate. Please, don't think I'm actually criticising you. I disagree with you, but I think its great that you think out side the box. It keeps it interesting.

 

[Dissipate]

Originally posted by: Train
Do you ever really get out of theory?

Of course. I live anarchy every day.

 

[sandorski]

I said this before, but will say it again: The problem with Anarchy is the same problem that Communism had. Everybody to the last Person has to agree to it. If there isn't this agreement, people will organize into groups that will try to assert their Power over Others. This has happened throughout history and is inevitable. You Home Owners Association will run into problems with someone elses Home Owners Association. One or the other will attempt to solve the problem through force. Other Home Owners Associations will choose sides creating a larger Association. Other people will form organizations based around Religions, Others around Economics, Others around this or that. Centuries will pass where War will be the norm until a few Associations grow so powerful as to defeat most of the others. Eventually the World will end up pretty much like it is today, tired of senseless violence and just wanting to improve their lives.

Democracy is the best form of Association ever conceived and it is for the very fact that it provides the greatest amount of Freedom, Security, and stability towards handling future challenges.

 

[Dissipate]

Originally posted by: sandorski
I said this before, but will say it again: The problem with Anarchy is the same problem that Communism had. Everybody to the last Person has to agree to it. If there isn't this agreement, people will organize into groups that will try to assert their Power over Others. This has happened throughout history and is inevitable. You Home Owners Association will run into problems with someone elses Home Owners Association. One or the other will attempt to solve the problem through force. Other Home Owners Associations will choose sides creating a larger Association. Other people will form organizations based around Religions, Others around Economics, Others around this or that. Centuries will pass where War will be the norm until a few Associations grow so powerful as to defeat most of the others.

I don't see home owner's associations going to war, but I see states going to war all the time. War is expensive, and only a state that has the power to tax and has a strong authoritarian base of supporters can sustain a prolonged war.

Eventually the World will end up pretty much like it is today, tired of senseless violence and just wanting to improve their lives.

Democracy is the best form of Association ever conceived and it is for the very fact that it provides the greatest amount of Freedom, Security, and stability towards handling future challenges.

The war on drugs/terror is security and social 'security' is stability? The IRS and all the other megalomaniac federal bureaucracies represent freedom? I've said it before and I'll say it again. Democracy is not what people believe it to be. It is not some egalitarian system where everyone gets to control their own lives. Democracy is a system in which megalomaniacs use 'debate' and 'voting' as a means of an excuse to institute their control over anything and everything they can.

Once 'the people' have spoken, the politicians have signed their pieces of paper and the edict is issued, no matter how insane or depraved the edict is, we are led to believe that it is the 'rule of law.' The politicians use this to then perform actions that no single individual would likely commit. A lot of my libertarian friends rail against the state on a daily basis, and the people within the state. They don't realize or don't often appear to realize that these megalomaniacs have always been around. All that has happened is that over the past century the populace has allowed them to entrench themselves deeper and deeper into our lives. Authoritarians are literally masochists. My parents not excluded. My dad ran for office one time (a long time Republican/conservative authoritarian) but lost. A couple of years ago he had some major tax problems. He was complaining about his taxes and talking about how we had lost so much freedom in this country etc. I reminded him that he had voted in almost every election for the past 30 years and supported politicians who are now looting the country hand over fist. I think it was a harsh reminder.

We are told that this is just how the 'system' has to be. That unjust laws are a evil but necessary byproduct of the 'system.' A good book on how crazy the laws have gotten

I used to believe this not more than 4 years ago myself. I always had inkling and a bad feeling about democracy because I had seen some of the outrageous results, but I never even considered anything like anarcho-capitalism. I thought up schemes for limiting government, but really didn't think about politics all that much. I was a supporter of the Republican party and when I was 18 I voted all the way down the line for Republicans. I even wrote a paper in my political science class at the community college about how the U.S. military should build a missle defense system.

Everything changed after I read Murray Rothbard. Rothbard explained in clear and concise language that we don't need a government, and why we don't need a government. He showed me that a stateless society is not only possible, but desirable. It was the missing link to my deep seated qualms with collective decision making.

But it didn't happen all at once. I went from a conservative Republican to a minarchist libertarian to finally an anarcho-capitalist/market anarchist/anarchist libertarian. My view of the state went from a 'necessary evil,' to a 'less necessary evil' to what I now know is what it really is: a depraved religion. I finally came to this conclusion after reading the refutations of Locke and Rousseau and realizing that there is no a priori reason for having a state.

I think that if society reaches its demise, it will most likely be because of the state. All I can do now is stay out of the state apparatus as much as possible, graduate from college and start some kind of career. I honestly think that unbridled capitalism and private enterprise is our last hope for humanity because politics will drive us either to insanity, death, slavery or all three.

Oh yeah, and go see V for Vendetta

 

[3chordcharlie]

Originally posted by: Dissipate
Well I'll be damned. I guess it really was government that got us out of the Stone Age and invented all these standard of living improving technologies. Where did you get those models from? Let me guess, straight out of your neo-Keynesian textbooks?

Nope, but it was trade unions that got us out of Industrial Revolution poverty and servitude.It's all about market power, and in freer times than these, there have been bigger corporations.

Psst, the wealthy use the state to steal from the poor every day.

That's called corruption.

Despite moments of individual compassion, the human race is not altruistic, and never has been.

But the state is??

No, but the state isn't motivated by profit; corporations, for example, aren't evil, they are amoral, meaning they will do anything to make a profit, needing no other justification. Without laws, you get things like the world's diamond and gold mining industries.

I see fair exchange between the weak and strong through capitalism every day.

Only in places with laws to help ensure this. How are working conditions in China these days?

Oh, I get it. I'm an 'idealogue' because I don't believe in the tenets of your depraved authoritarian religion. :roll:

No, you're an ideologue because you think a few words on a piece of paper can tell you everything you need to know about how the world works, and you conveniently ignore anything that makes it appear otherwise. I don't think government can solve all the world's problems, but I think it's the best way to solve some of them.

Take a look at what the 'status quo' has gotten us. It has gotten us nothing but a government that has spiraled out of control over the past century. The state is no one's friend, it takes what it wants for itself and forces us to bow to the whims of megalomaniacs(i.e. Bush and his regime of shameless liars) and fraud artists (central banks).

So take back control of the state. Maybe the American founding fathers made it too easy for government to control more things; maybe some programs need to end, and others are run poorly. Beaurocracy is self-perpetuating, and there is a tendency to needless growth; capitalism has an analogous problem; mergers create size and market bulk, and eventually being 'big' is more beneficial than being innovative. The market doesn't have amechanism for correcting this short of an absolutely revolutionary idea that brings down the dinosaurs, and government self-regulation is similarly rare. The people need to take control of things like this, afterall, people are real, and neither governments nor corporations can make such a claim.

 

[Dissipate]

Originally posted by: 3chordcharlie

Originally posted by: Dissipate
Well I'll be damned. I guess it really was government that got us out of the Stone Age and invented all these standard of living improving technologies. Where did you get those models from? Let me guess, straight out of your neo-Keynesian textbooks?

Nope, but it was trade unions that got us out of Industrial Revolution poverty and servitude.It's all about market power, and in freer times than these, there have been bigger corporations.

Psst, the wealthy use the state to steal from the poor every day.

That's called corruption.

Despite moments of individual compassion, the human race is not altruistic, and never has been.

But the state is??

No, but the state isn't motivated by profit; corporations, for example, aren't evil, they are amoral, meaning they will do anything to make a profit, needing no other justification. Without laws, you get things like the world's diamond and gold mining industries.

I see fair exchange between the weak and strong through capitalism every day.

Only in places with laws to help ensure this. How are working conditions in China these days?

Oh, I get it. I'm an 'idealogue' because I don't believe in the tenets of your depraved authoritarian religion. :roll:

No, you're an ideologue because you think a few words on a piece of paper can tell you everything you need to know about how the world works, and you conveniently ignore anything that makes it appear otherwise. I don't think government can solve all the world's problems, but I think it's the best way to solve some of them.

Take a look at what the 'status quo' has gotten us. It has gotten us nothing but a government that has spiraled out of control over the past century. The state is no one's friend, it takes what it wants for itself and forces us to bow to the whims of megalomaniacs(i.e. Bush and his regime of shameless liars) and fraud artists (central banks).

So take back control of the state. Maybe the American founding fathers made it too easy for government to control more things; maybe some programs need to end, and others are run poorly. Beaurocracy is self-perpetuating, and there is a tendency to needless growth; capitalism has an analogous problem; mergers create size and market bulk, and eventually being 'big' is more beneficial than being innovative. The market doesn't have amechanism for correcting this short of an absolutely revolutionary idea that brings down the dinosaurs, and government self-regulation is similarly rare. The people need to take control of things like this, afterall, people are real, and neither governments nor corporations can make such a claim.

I've read the refutations of the sacred cow reasons for having a state and I have come to the conclusion that none of them are real reasons i.e. they don't hold water. Yes, a lot of the stuff that I have proposed is theoretical, but so what? A lot of the stuff that physicists believe in is theoretical too, and that is a hard science. What I am offering is a chance to escape the insanity of the state. Anarchy and anarcho-capitalism needs to be given a chance. Would you support allowing private communities to have their own police force, just as an experiment? It is one thing to disagree with someone's theories and then another thing altogether to disagree with their theories and then never even allow them to be tried. This is like telling a scientist that his theories are all wrong and then burning down his laboratory before he has a chance to test them.

Assuming that what you are talking about (i.e. market failure) is a public goods problem. The problem with your whole outlook is that you view the state as a knight in shining armor which has come to rescue us from these public goods problems (nevermind the fact that somehow this knight has emerged from such world in which you are so pessimistic about). But in reality the state itself is a public goods problem. This is a classic example of exempting the state from your analysis of other phenomenon. If you are going to give the state so much power (military power, police power & economic power) you have to have some mechanism for limiting that power, othwerwise you just have a total state. When I mean a mechanism for limiting that power I don't mean something like the Constitution (that truly is a joke). I mean a real mechanism i.e. something that is going to keep the state within some kind of sane boundaries. Aside from the fact that I disagree with the nobel winning public choice pioneer James Buchanan on some issues, I do have to give him credit for showing that voting and democracy are not real mechanisms for limiting the state.

What happens with the state is that it becomes the worst kind of public goods problem you could imagine. You basically have an entity that has almost unlimited power at its disposal that is literally interpreting its own laws. This entity tends to grow and grow after each 'crisis' (this has been well documented by Robert Higgs in his book Crisis and Leviathan). After the state has grown in size, an enormous public goods problem must be overcome in order to roll it back. I may be a staunch defender of liberty, but why would I waste my own resources in order to try to limit the state? In reality I will probably do the opposite. It is much more rational to try to get the state to give me something as a special interest, than try to limit the state in order to get freedom for all. For instance, if I am in the car business I am going to want to get tariffs on foreign imports. It is going to cost me some money to lobby politicians to get this for me, but in the long run I am going to benefit tremendously because I have reduced the competitiveness in the industry. Now, me as a consumer who wants lower prices is going to pay for that. Would it be rational for me as a car buyer to lobby the state to roll back these tariffs? Not by a long shot. I may lose $1,000 as a result of the legislation, but it would cost me ten times more to lobby Congress to get rid of the tariffs.

My challenge to you is show me how the public goods problem of the state doesn't outweigh all the supposed public goods problems it 'solves.' My other challenge for you is to show me how the public goods problem of the state could be solved otherwise.

I wouldn't be so 'up in arms' about the state if we could roll it back to pre-WWI levels. I can live with road socialism and collectivized security. But I challenge you to show me how we could possibly get there, or even a little bit more freedom from where we are at now.

The other question I have for you is why do you not see authoritarianism as a dangerous religion? Even if we could get back to pre-WWI levels of government, the danger would always be just around the corner as the next 'crisis' occurs. Authoritarianism has created the most brutal regimes the world has ever seen, for thousands of years. Once you believe that someone has the 'authority' to do what they do as far as I'm concerned all bets are off. When you believe someone has absolute authority, your own faculties for moral decision making are shut down. You have then given them the power to do things that you would otherwise not support if they didn't have the 'authority.'

 

[sandorski]

ok, good luck with that.