Sorry to tell you, but there are a wide range of policies all fitting under the broad umbrella of the consitution. You can't hide behind the document and avoid the debate on merit.
Sorry to tell you, but there are a wide range of policies all fitting under the broad umbrella of the consitution. You can't hide behind the document and avoid the debate on merit.
You mean the tax hikes where they pledge not to raise taxes on anyone making under $200K a year, which is probably 98% of the public?
So, you want to repeat the mistake of every right-winger who predicted the doom of the economy, the plummeting of growth, the huge increases in deficits that would occur if Bill Clinton's tax hike on the top 2% passed in 1993 - the one which did pass, and after which the opposite of what they all said was absolutely going to happen, happened, and the economy improved with the deficit reduced?
Suit yourself, and get it wrong. But at least be honest about who they're raising taxes on.
Vic
Elite Member
- Jun 12, 2001
- 50,422
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Dissipate:
Suppose I hire a contractor to do work on my house. I pick one based on referrals. Before beginning work, he says he needs a large portion of the cost upfront in order to purchase materials for the job -- a typical and reasonable request. Little do I know though, that he has recently fallen upon hard times, and he uses that money to pay off his creditors. I'm out my money and the work on my house never even got started. I approach the contractor, and he tells me tough luck. In your anarchic utopia, with no courts of law, what are my options short of violence?
Or another... my neighbor builds a new fence that encroaches across my property line. He says, thanks sucker for the free property. What we do besides play Hatfield-and-McCoy?
Or suppose I lend my wife's brother some money, and he puts up his car as collateral. He doesn't pay me back and he skips off with the car. What is my recourse in your world? Hunt him down?
And who says science isn't a religion? I say it is. Just one that is not particularly dogmatic compared to traditional religions.
And why shouldn't politics stir up the emotion side of the brain? The purpose of the law is harmony and justice. You seem to miss the point. No wonder you hate government, you have no clue what it does.
Suppose I hire a contractor to do work on my house. I pick one based on referrals. Before beginning work, he says he needs a large portion of the cost upfront in order to purchase materials for the job -- a typical and reasonable request. Little do I know though, that he has recently fallen upon hard times, and he uses that money to pay off his creditors. I'm out my money and the work on my house never even got started. I approach the contractor, and he tells me tough luck. In your anarchic utopia, with no courts of law, what are my options short of violence?
Or another... my neighbor builds a new fence that encroaches across my property line. He says, thanks sucker for the free property. What we do besides play Hatfield-and-McCoy?
Or suppose I lend my wife's brother some money, and he puts up his car as collateral. He doesn't pay me back and he skips off with the car. What is my recourse in your world? Hunt him down?
And who says science isn't a religion? I say it is. Just one that is not particularly dogmatic compared to traditional religions.
And why shouldn't politics stir up the emotion side of the brain? The purpose of the law is harmony and justice. You seem to miss the point. No wonder you hate government, you have no clue what it does.
"People may continue to play political games and continue to obey buffoons who dress up in nice suits and military costumes with a variety of symbolic adornments, but I reserve the option of putting those same buffoons permanently out of business if they disrupt what I choose to do with my time & energy. Of course I will take into account the probability of getting caught. The difference with you of course is that since you believe in the sanctity of the political process, you will continue to worship and obey those who wave papers around that they claim is the 'law,' because they passed a political 'test' of popularity, or whatever the current flavor of criteria is for ruling other people. It used to be that the king's reign was supposedly ordained by god, and now the current flavor of this huge pile of bullsh!t is that the president's reign is supposedly ordained by the 'people.'
Due in part to 'minarchists' like yourself who continue to engage in these childish displays of mudslinging, arrogance, incompetence and whoredom, the individual is dead. We have now all been replaced by the 'mass mind' of public opinion, to be fleeced and controlled at every turn."
This sounds very emotional to me. It sounds like a person who is trapped in the prison of brainwashing and control fighting against brainwashing and control but in a wrong direction and unsuccessfully. It is looks like somebody who has been screwed over boasting and snorting and stamping his feet that he won't be screwed over again which, of course, is just the shell shock and post traumatic ravings of having been screwed in the first place. It seems like war against war which is just more war. I hear ego protection and self bolstering rather than letting go of it. Charles Bronsonish.
Due in part to 'minarchists' like yourself who continue to engage in these childish displays of mudslinging, arrogance, incompetence and whoredom, the individual is dead. We have now all been replaced by the 'mass mind' of public opinion, to be fleeced and controlled at every turn."
This sounds very emotional to me. It sounds like a person who is trapped in the prison of brainwashing and control fighting against brainwashing and control but in a wrong direction and unsuccessfully. It is looks like somebody who has been screwed over boasting and snorting and stamping his feet that he won't be screwed over again which, of course, is just the shell shock and post traumatic ravings of having been screwed in the first place. It seems like war against war which is just more war. I hear ego protection and self bolstering rather than letting go of it. Charles Bronsonish.
Voters aren't actually stupid, they are just ill informed. And yes, your statements very much will be found in a philosophy class. (okay, it might be 102.) To say that our structures are based upon myth and tradition is as old as it gets. The illusory nature of the legitimacy of government... etc. etc. Half of what you wrote is little more then the allegory of the cave.
As Vic pointed out a source of authority is incredibly useful, particularly in a society large enough that behavior is not regulated by familiarity.
You don't think the story of the cave is rather an allegory of the world seen by folk who have not been spiritually reborn, enlightened, died to their egos and awakened into a oceanic love, or any other such allegory to a rare psychological and fundamentally transformative experience, and about which the ordinary world knows almost nothing?
A Bedouin came to Mecca and discovered halva. Ah he said, this must be experience. My people have a saying: 'There are two things in life, dates and experience, and this in not dates.
When Mulla Nasrudin found a parrot that had gotten lose, he trimmed it's beak and cut it's claws and put on some brown paint. There, now, he said, you look more like a bird.
Well if the local and state and federal government already stole your tax dollars you have a right to use the services the tax dollars are paying for. You payed for it did you not? So it is not being hypocritical. It is getting your just reward for paying your taxes. If you have a car and buy gas you are paying for the roadwork. If you own property and pay property tax you are paying for local schools and services, and you should have a say as to how your money is spent.
I think it's more complicated.
There are 'good' connections with the social contract; if society wants to care for orphans instead of letting them starve, then everyone should pay a fair share.
There are also connections which are not 'good' but are needed for practical reasons, i.e., if we could avoid them, it'd be better, but practically we can't. An example of this might be being filmed by the government if we go to a public place, or having to register with social security for employment rights.
Of course, there's a third category of 'bad' social contract, when the requirements could be considered abusive/wrong/excessive.
I think it all comes out as a combination of these things, and the important thing is for people to try to 'do the right thing' both for society and their own interests.
This is a reason I've said provocatively that I 'like' paying taxes - because by my and others paying taxes, we're bringing about good things like the education of children; because it's a reason to celebrate that the taxes are determined by the public's elected representatives, rather than tyrants. If you view your taxes as 'making society function well', you can pay them with a smile, perhaps. Would things really be better if everyone didn't pay them?
None of that is to deny that there are all kinds of problems, wasteful or even harmful spending of tax money, for example. But some imperfection is going to be in the system.
That's another issue, to try to get the right people elected, to try to fix the system for that to happen, to try to get taxes at the right level with the right spending.
As far as 'the right to be left alone', I like to see that right preserved as much as possible. The very view that the government is a burden and intrusion seems healthy to me, even if I also cheer the government insofar as it represents a victory for the people to control it, *expanding* people's power and liberty over the incrusions that would happen without a democratic government. One of the great fallacies of libertarians is their failure to recognize the tyranny which occurs from other sources filling a vacuum of democracy.
Ask someone working 16x6 and living in a hovel during the gilded age for barely enough food to survive, how 'free' they felt. Libertarianism has no problem with that situation.
Libertarianism rests on the ignorance of the complexities of society; when labor wins a battle that strengthens the middle class, liberatrianism assumes it was automatic, and that no action was needed for it to happen, that government polices can't help it, they can only burden people. Power tends to centralize, for better or worse, and the important issue libertarianism treats casually is whether the power is in the hands of a few who are not elected, or the public has the right to vote for its leaders who have power.
Dissipate
Diamond Member
- Jan 17, 2004
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You wouldn't enter into such a business deal unless you knew there was a third party arbiter for disputes with the contractor.
You wouldn't live next to someone unless you knew there was a way to settle disputes with them.
You wouldn't do business with him without some method of dispute resolution prior to your deal.
Semantics.
Well, it is actually not just that the emotional part that lights up, because in addition to that, the brain scans have shown that the rational part of the brain actually shuts down. The person's brain can actually be seen to reach a conclusion, then the reward center lights up after they have justified their own conclusion.
Your 'disproofs' of anarchy are the easy ones to counter because they all involve people who you already know. The 'supposedly' more challenging problem is running into complete strangers.
I know what governments do, they consume other people's resources for the most part, in addition to arbitrarily controlling them on many different levels.
The ultimate fallacy that you and other authoritarians make is that you believe that people's sole incentive would be to steal, and rob from their neighbors or strangers at every possible chance. This in fact, has not been the case in any society that has ever existed, including stateless ones. Systems of dispute resolutions, reputation and/or credit have existed in just about every civilization that has ever existed. Governments owe their entire existence to FUD, and that's about it.
Vic
Elite Member
- Jun 12, 2001
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Who is this third-party arbiter, what special powers will be granted him to resolve disputes, and what controls will be placed upon him to ensure his own honesty and impartiality? And given the obvious constant need for such arbiters, would not this work of arbitrage become an occupation, then a guild? And then wouldn't that guild establish its own rules for dispute resolution, based upon past examples, that it would expect all of its members to learn and abide by?
Congratulations, you just re-invented the lawyer and the law.
Humans are born good but taught their worth shit and the memory of the experiences we were taught that get deeply buried, but they continue to magnetize our lives because we unconsciously seek to go back to them both to express the rage we felt and the sorrow for the love we thought we had and lost. We get people who are more or less acculturated, conformistic, and willing to live by the rules, but plagued by all sorts of unconscious needs and urges, to which we yield to varying degrees. Innocent love gets perverted into regimented conformistic morality and an a need to do evil, to be free of the psychic split.
Because we live together and don't want to remember and do what it would really take to cure our problem, we have to manage this mess as best we can. Some want more and more authority and others want to be absolutely free. So give freedom those who don't act out and land on offenders, but not with a need to blame and punish, but to stop the behavior.
Instead we get those who want to oppress and hate and condemn the evil creating more creating more and more sick people and those who want to mindlessly forgive and say people aren't at fault. We live in a clown world that is up side down.
Because we live together and don't want to remember and do what it would really take to cure our problem, we have to manage this mess as best we can. Some want more and more authority and others want to be absolutely free. So give freedom those who don't act out and land on offenders, but not with a need to blame and punish, but to stop the behavior.
Instead we get those who want to oppress and hate and condemn the evil creating more creating more and more sick people and those who want to mindlessly forgive and say people aren't at fault. We live in a clown world that is up side down.
Dissipate
Diamond Member
- Jan 17, 2004
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Simple. He would be a man in a for profit business who had a reputation for peacefully resolving disputes. His 'power' would be derived from such reputation, and people's desire to select him as an arbiter prior to entering into a business transaction.
These are the same controls that control the quality of millions of products that are bought and sold every day. Also, they are the same controls that keep scams to a minimum on sites such as eBay, PayPal, and other third party e-commerce sites, which are really just entities that control and report on people's overall reputations in business. Of course, if you close your account on eBay because you think their system of reporting other people's reputations sucks, they probably aren't going to send the SWAT team to your house.
No, because anyone who was bound by the terms would have to explicitly agree to them. No 'social contract' involved, where you are simply in this particular geographic area and you are automatically bound by these politicians whose rule is ordained by other people who you have never met through a process called 'voting.' Arbitration would simply be a business like any other business.
Here is how I interpret your scenario:
McDonald's makes burgers that some people like and others do not. Wouldn't people who work at this mega corporation form a guild? Wouldn't that guild establish its own rules on how to make burgers based on past examples, that it expects everyone to abide by?
FUD
Lawyers whose 'power' is limited to that of only the parties involved in a dispute, as agreed before hand would be fine, as well as laws along the same lines. Laws should never be decided for anyone without their consent. Of course, many laws in many regions would probably look the same. But there would also be major differences. No one would be able to decide for 300 million people with a stroke of a pen.
I'm not being emotional about anything. You are an authoritarian because you believe that some people have the authority granted by some political process that gives them a mystical right to decide matters for other people in spite of them never have agreed to anything that person proposed. Or at least you believe that such authority could exist legitimately. This belief system of yours is indeed a mythological concept and it's 'theology' is what you call 'political science.' In reality no one has ever had any authority granted by any system. People just believe that they do, but simply believing something is true doesn't make it so. There is no objective reason to obey a politician anymore than there is any objective reason to obey anyone else you may encounter. Political philosophers have attempted to derive an objective reason for obeying rulers in certain situations, but in order to do that they had to create mythologies such as the 'social contract' and the 'state of nature.' These are intangible concepts made up entirely in their heads. And of course, those who desire power will manipulate such concepts to get more power for themselves.
Additionally, by believing that such an authority could exist, you have now opened the box for just about everything that could be commanded of you. The state, once having this so-called authority will continually expand it (as it has), far far beyond dispute resolution. Welfare, 'national defense,' regulations, environmental protection, space exploration etc. etc. This 'dispute resolution' agency now consumes about 40%+ of the GDP, and has a tax code that is over a million words long. Your concept of authority has created insanity, because it really is an insane concept to begin with.
bamacre
Lifer
- Jul 1, 2004
- 21,029
- 2
- 81
Dissipate, a world without government cannot exist. Because mobs would just take their place, and become just that, government. As long as their are people with a will and a means to rule over others, there will be some form of government. Take a trip to Africa.
Libertarians are the product of decades and centuries of societies developing to the point that the libertarians take the functioning of society for granted.
They're living in a fantasyland of how things would work without the systems in place that prevent the feudalistic structures that existed for most of human history.
I'd really like to see them on a decent sized scale attempt to implement their system, so that we could have a reference for debunking it and stop wasting time on it.
But just do it somewhere else, because it's going to be a very ugly situation. There's a reason there are no libertarian societies that at nice to live in in human history.
They're living in a fantasyland of how things would work without the systems in place that prevent the feudalistic structures that existed for most of human history.
I'd really like to see them on a decent sized scale attempt to implement their system, so that we could have a reference for debunking it and stop wasting time on it.
But just do it somewhere else, because it's going to be a very ugly situation. There's a reason there are no libertarian societies that at nice to live in in human history.
Vic
Elite Member
- Jun 12, 2001
- 50,422
- 14,337
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Well sure, considering I don't see how anyone could possibly interpret it that way.
The proper interpretation (using your analogy) would be to say that the workers at McDonald's already did form a kind of guild a long time ago... and they named it McDonald's.
cKGunslinger
Lifer
- Nov 29, 1999
- 16,408
- 57
- 91
You appear to have missed the point.
The same could be said of Liberalism (OMG! Communism, FTL!) or Conservatism (Oh, noes! A dictatorship!)
You miss the whole idea of "everything in moderation," and rather, take the black-vs white view, so you can easily categorize extremes, which requires less thought and effort.
The idea of a multi-party system was a good one, it allows for debate and slow-growth of government. That has all been eroded since the two existing parties basically merged into a single entity, driving ahead full steam towards a bloated, over-reaching government.
It needs a counter-balance. And if you understand even the simplest concepts of physics, you know that you can't counter-balance something efficiently by adding weight to the middle, you have to drop a 500lb load at the far end to see a noticeable effect. You have to go to the extreme, not because you want the extreme, but because you know that at some point, only the extreme can start to counteract the opposite extreme.
Or, if you like chemistry better, you don't sweeten a solution by adding already perfectly-sweetened solution to it, but rather by adding pure sweetener in small quantities.
So, Libertarianism is like pure sugar. Or, like a 500lb load.
Either way, it's got what plants crave!
Dissipate
Diamond Member
- Jan 17, 2004
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Creating political games and believing in the mythology of authority & the state cannot save you from mobs. It is just a belief system, nothing more. It is like believing that having faith In Jesus can save you from Satan. It's just a story, or a fairy tale.
In any event, I encourage you and Vic to check out freedomain radio. It is a site run by an anarcho-capitalist philosopher named Stefan Molyneux. He has tons of podcasts, forums and a number of books he has written. He also has a number of videos on YouTube that deal with your objections, as well as Vic's, plus a number of other topics:
Text
Gunslinger08
Lifer
- Nov 18, 2001
- 13,234
- 2
- 81
1. Voting is important to remove and replace people who no longer fit our ideals of libertarianism. People who attempt to overextend the government's power have no place as my elected official.
2. Of course we have a right to privacy. Just because "common good" services such as military protection, transportation, and education are provided does not mean that they have free access to our lives. The power from these officials and agencies comes from and works for the people. They ultimately have no greater power than we allow them to have. I think this is the big thing a majority of Americans have forgotten.
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