Voting and the Coercive Reality it Perpetuates

[fskimospy]

Originally posted by: Dissipate

Originally posted by: eskimospy
It has been explained to you. It's called implied consent. If you accept money or services from someone, knowing full well that there is a cost for these, then you have implicitly accepted the stated cost.

How can I stop 'accepting' these services? The government has monopolized all infrastructure necessary for survival.

It is not like walking into a restaurant asking for a meal and then not paying the bill. It is much more like having a pie crammed down my throat and then being charged for the pie.

By leaving where those services are supplied. We talked about this before, there are still many places on this planet where you can exist without any governmental control or taxation whatsoever. You are right that the cost of moving is not zero, but it is low enough that any reasonably employed American could save to afford it in a relatively short period of time. You cannot place the burden on us of policing you 24/7 to be sure that you aren't using the roads, police, fire departments, etc that you have 'opted out' of.

You of course mentioned links to your friends and family, but that doesn't really fly. If they share your ideals then they can move with you, and if they don't it seems that they like our society just fine. Why force change upon them?

 

[ModerateRepZero]

tacit consent and social contract

doesn't seem to me that Dissipate understands (much less see how widespread and accepted they are) these concepts

 

[First]

Originally posted by: Dissipate

You talk as if the U.S. is some monolithic entity that is A. immoral or B. moral. When in reality there are individual people within the geographic region known as the U.S. which are moral and there are individuals which are immoral. Why should I cease interacting with those who I consider to be moral just because there exists an immoral gang around the corner? Unless you think a piece of land mass can possess the quality of being immoral....

You are implying that the government as a whole is universally immoral or even mostly immoral even though the government cannot possibly weed out every single person who is immoral with a high degree of certainty. So your whole premise in based on some fantasy-land world where all government is bad and are inherently immoral for asking you to pay what you use. Reality is that you use public services, and are perfectly free not to pay taxes if you simply leave the country. The government doesn't force you to do anything other than pay for what you use on the whole.

Once again you are implying two things:

A. The government and what it does is legitimate.

B. There is 0 cost of moving.

This is the classic begging the question fallacy. Clearly if I went to your home and did things to you without your consent and I said: you can just move away, you wouldn't agree with this situation.

The mafia goes into a neighborhood and shakes down some shopkeepers for money. The shopkeepers can move away but they don't. Why not? They already have established lives/businesses in that neighborhood and leaving that neighborhood has a bigger cost than staying. This says NOTHING about the legitimacy of the mafia, which is clearly illegitimate.

Similarly, those who oppose the government have voluntary relationships with businesses, families, friends in this geographic location known as the U.S. Therefore, they consider the cost of moving higher than staying. This says NOTHING about the legitimacy of the government.

You don't get it; the government was created by private citizens as a means to enforce laws. Congress is there to pass legislation which officials in government are forced to execute to the best of their abilities. The phenomenon whereby gov't officials stray from adequately enforcing those law is called bureaucratic drift and is a major issue, so this is nothing like your absurd example of a private citizen going into someone's home and forcing services on them and asking for compensation. The fact that you cannot see the difference tells all of us how poorly informed and educated you have been. Government is the best option for keeping a semblance of order and rule of law. Without it you have anarchy, which has proven to be an utter disaster.

There is a superior alternative, it is called unbridled competition in a free market. When anyone can compete in any industry without any red tape the total share of income will be much more evenly distributed.

Please cite examples for this completely made up utter bullshit. I'll be waiting to see you wimp out as usual.

 

[Dissipate]

Originally posted by: ModerateRepZero
tacit consent and social contract

doesn't seem to me that Dissipate understands (much less see how widespread and accepted they are) these concepts

Tacit consent is a joke of a concept, it practically refutes itself because it is based on the fallacy of begging the question. As for the social contract, I already refuted that above in this thread.

 

[First]

Originally posted by: Evan

Please cite examples for this completely made up utter bullshit. I'll be waiting to see you wimp out as usual.

:laugh:

As predicted, freaking kid.

 

[Dissipate]

Originally posted by: Evan
You are implying that the government as a whole is universally immoral or even mostly immoral even though the government cannot possibly weed out every single person who is immoral with a high degree of certainty.

The government is universally immoral because all of the resources it expends is plundered from free market interactions.

So your whole premise in based on some fantasy-land world where all government is bad and are inherently immoral for asking you to pay what you use. Reality is that you use public services, and are perfectly free not to pay taxes if you simply leave the country. The government doesn't force you to do anything other than pay for what you use on the whole.

The government is not just asking me to pay for what I use, it monopolized services necessary for living and survival. You are talking as if the government is like a restaurant and I walked into the restaurant and ordered a meal and refused to pay. This is completely absurd because you have not even once attempted to explain where the government originally acquired the right to monopolize and exclude others from provision of these services. I can't start up a road company and then issue people notices of eminent domain to people, then start bulldozing their houses after offering them 'fair value.' But the government gets away with doing this. You have yet to explain where these powers came from. You are once again implicitly assuming the government owns the country (the land mass that we reside in). You have not established how or why it owns this area at all, you just keep repeating the same 'you can move away' B.S. The fact that you cannot see the logical fallacy inherent in your argument is telling of your lack of critical thinking skills.

You don't get it; the government was created by private citizens as a means to enforce laws. Congress is there to pass legislation which officials in government are forced to execute to the best of their abilities. The phenomenon whereby gov't officials stray from adequately enforcing those law is called bureaucratic drift and is a major issue, so this is nothing like your absurd example of a private citizen going into someone's home and forcing services on them and asking for compensation.

Government was created by private citizens, that much is true, but you have not established the necessity of the government or its laws. I see rules built into products that people use every day that passively enforce certain behaviors with no overarching monolithic bureaucracy needed.

Furthermore, how would we really know if this so-called 'bureaucratic' drift was actually occurring? Interpretation of law is entirely subjective because it is based on written language which is subject to individual interpretation. And if there was bureaucratic drift, what branch of government has any incentive to do anything about it? They are all on the gravy train. The idea that the branches of government have any incentive whatsoever to impose 'checks or balances' on each other is pure myth. Evidence of this can be seen in Supreme Court case after Supreme Court case, in which the court expanded the powers of the federal government at the expense of citizens and states.

The fact that you cannot see the difference tells all of us how poorly informed and educated you have been. Government is the best option for keeping a semblance of order and rule of law. Without it you have anarchy, which has proven to be an utter disaster.

If anarchy was an utter disaster then the government would have never been able to form in the first place because the government always exists as a parasite on voluntary free market interactions. If no one got out of their bed in the morning to go to work to pay taxes there wouldn't be any point in having a government because there wouldn't be any resources to extract and divert. So at best the government was formed on an utter disaster.

Please cite examples for this completely made up utter bullshit. I'll be waiting to see you wimp out as usual.

Wealth distribution is much more top heavy now than it was during the Gilded Age and the time of the so-called robber barons. It doesn't take a PhD to see that professional trade organizations, licenses and entry barriers to professions restricts supply in those fields and artificially inflates wages. It chokes off mobility of the lower classes.

 

[ModerateRepZero]

The government is universally immoral because all of the resources it expends is plundered from free market interactions.

The government is not just asking me to pay for what I use, it monopolized services necessary for living and survival. You are talking as if the government is like a restaurant and I walked into the restaurant and ordered a meal and refused to pay. This is completely absurd because you have not even once attempted to explain where the government originally acquired the right to monopolize and exclude others from provision of these services. I can't start up a road company and then issue people notices of eminent domain to people, then start bulldozing their houses after offering them 'fair value.' But the government gets away with doing this. You have yet to explain where these powers came from. You are once again implicitly assuming the government owns the country (the land mass that we reside in). You have not established how or why it owns this area at all, you just keep repeating the same 'you can move away' B.S. The fact that you cannot see the logical fallacy inherent in your argument is telling of your lack of critical thinking skills.

Government was created by private citizens, that much is true, but you have not established the necessity of the government or its laws. I see rules built into products that people use every day that passively enforce certain behaviors with no overarching monolithic bureaucracy needed.

Furthermore, how would we really know if this so-called 'bureaucratic' drift was actually occurring? Interpretation of law is entirely subjective because it is based on written language which is subject to individual interpretation. And if there was bureaucratic drift, what branch of government has any incentive to do anything about it? They are all on the gravy train. The idea that the branches of government have any incentive whatsoever to impose 'checks or balances' on each other is pure myth. Evidence of this can be seen in Supreme Court case after Supreme Court case, in which the court expanded the powers of the federal government at the expense of citizens and states.

If anarchy was an utter disaster then the government would have never been able to form in the first place because the government always exists as a parasite on voluntary free market interactions. If no one got out of their bed in the morning to go to work to pay taxes there wouldn't be any point in having a government because there wouldn't be any resources to extract and divert. So at best the government was formed on an utter disaster.

Wealth distribution is much more top heavy now than it was during the Gilded Age and the time of the so-called robber barons. It doesn't take a PhD to see that professional trade organizations, licenses and entry barriers to professions restricts supply in those fields and artificially inflates wages. It chokes off mobility of the lower classes.

Govt. needs money to run. Unless you live in the stone age where there's no such thing as a currency, much less fiscal budget, people expect to be compensated for their services in government as well as business. Exactly how do they get money? It doesn't come from nowhere, and unless you go to war and plunder or find something, government needs revenue. Ergo, taxation. And given that voluntary donations are a failure (read about the Articles of Confederation), government has to enforce taxation. Taxes were enacted by duly elected representatives of the government, and tax evaders / charlatans notwithstanding, people accept the principle of taxation, although they might grumble about the extent of taxation and their share of the burden. So there is no "immorality" except by your very extreme and narrow interpretation.

Again, when our govt. was created the people by virtue of our elected representatives gave them powers by virtue of either the Constitution and Bill of Rights (see 10th amendment for state powers), or subsequent election by legislatiors. This process is alot better than before....The Articles of Confederation had jealous and suspicious states giving little power to a "central government" that had to practically beg states for revenue and authority.

Simple reason why you lack power and authority: the current system of rules means that you're an ordinary citizen and not the government or an agent/agency acting on its behalf. To use your restaurant example, what you are saying in essence is that you walked into a restaurant and complained about the prices, ignoring the fact that it was created and operates by the same rules that other restaurants have done so (which were passed by a legislature of duly elected representatives), and that the government doesn't regulate prices but trusts the "free market" (competition and individual preferences) to dictate survival.

If govt. is so parasitic as you claim, then surely any reasonable person would want limited/no govt. since government cannot function and survive without revenue, which tends to come from taxation. And yet people DO accept government in the vast majority of areas, both because govt promises security, and because govt. protects property rights, contracts, etc. which allows a free market to flourish.

While I can make no educated response about the wealth distribution comparison, I'd think there would be a large wealth gap then as well, considering that labor unions were much tightly regulated then, lots of cheap labor with immigrants such as the Chinese railroad workers, and the generally lax attitude about sweatshops, monopolies etc. On the other hand, fewer people went to college and there was no flourishing middle class or large numbers of managers in companies. I disagree with you however, about the lack of mobility on the lower class....education today is more accessible than it was a century ago, and a bright child can certainly open and run a startup in the US. For all its faults, the US still has a high worker productivity AND an enviable higher education system. This isn't India's caste system.

 

[First]

Originally posted by: Dissipate

The government is universally immoral because all of the resources it expends is plundered from free market interactions.

Sorry, you'll have to be more specific because you have not yet referenced any evidence that a completely free market, anarchy-based society can function.

The government is not just asking me to pay for what I use, it monopolized services necessary for living and survival. You are talking as if the government is like a restaurant and I walked into the restaurant and ordered a meal and refused to pay. This is completely absurd because you have not even once attempted to explain where the government originally acquired the right to monopolize and exclude others from provision of these services.

It has been explained to you as if you were a child. Social contract is an idea that has centuries of precedent and you have yet to argue for a superior alternative, except to say "free market". This is the crux of your argument and it's total BS because you can't source successful examples and then draw reasonable conclusions from that analysis.

I can't start up a road company and then issue people notices of eminent domain to people, then start bulldozing their houses after offering them 'fair value.' But the government gets away with doing this. You have yet to explain where these powers came from. You are once again implicitly assuming the government owns the country (the land mass that we reside in). You have not established how or why it owns this area at all, you just keep repeating the same 'you can move away' B.S. The fact that you cannot see the logical fallacy inherent in your argument is telling of your lack of critical thinking skills.

Government was created by private citizens, that much is true, but you have not established the necessity of the government or its laws. I see rules built into products that people use every day that passively enforce certain behaviors with no overarching monolithic bureaucracy needed.

Furthermore, how would we really know if this so-called 'bureaucratic' drift was actually occurring? Interpretation of law is entirely subjective because it is based on written language which is subject to individual interpretation. And if there was bureaucratic drift, what branch of government has any incentive to do anything about it? They are all on the gravy train. The idea that the branches of government have any incentive whatsoever to impose 'checks or balances' on each other is pure myth. Evidence of this can be seen in Supreme Court case after Supreme Court case, in which the court expanded the powers of the federal government at the expense of citizens and states.

What's funny is that you actually think anyone here half-educated takes this nonsense seriously, especially since you have completely failed to site a single piece of evidence to support your notion that a free market alternative could do what Congress and gov't does, which is enforce laws. Your example of being able to buy products without "rules built in" completely obfiscates the reality that government laws regulate exactly how those products are sold and what standards they must meet. You truly are out to lunch if you don't think the federal gov't doesn't have an absolutely powerful hand in regulating and controlling vast aspects of nearly every private market in the U.S. including the most successful ones. A society without gov't to enforce laws has never succeeded in modern day society, and you have yet to answer how laws would be enforced or services provided except to imply we could fracture into 50 different country states and be run by a collection of random private citizens whom no one elected to represent their interests. It's utter nonsense and you're getting laughed at.

If anarchy was an utter disaster then the government would have never been able to form in the first place because the government always exists as a parasite on voluntary free market interactions. If no one got out of their bed in the morning to go to work to pay taxes there wouldn't be any point in having a government because there wouldn't be any resources to extract and divert. So at best the government was formed on an utter disaster.

Huh? This is grade school gobbledygook, it's not coherent.

Wealth distribution is much more top heavy now than it was during the Gilded Age and the time of the so-called robber barons. It doesn't take a PhD to see that professional trade organizations, licenses and entry barriers to professions restricts supply in those fields and artificially inflates wages. It chokes off mobility of the lower classes.

No, wealth distribution is not that bad, 1920's were worse, much worse. Over the last 30 years we have indeed started to go backwards in terms of wealth distribution, a recognized trend, but also a huge reason Obama and liberals have been elected to office this week over the last several years. This is exactly why voting for government to represent your interests is far superior to your bullshit and still unsourced claim we should allow private citizens to run things. As usual, you wimp out of providing any evidence or research to back up your claims.

 

[SleepWalkerX]

Originally posted by: ModerateRepZero
Govt. needs money to run. Unless you live in the stone age where there's no such thing as a currency, much less fiscal budget, people expect to be compensated for their services in government as well as business. Exactly how do they get money?

You've already the assumption that government needs to exist. The government should only exist to provide a service, and only if needed. And it should act on the same rules every individual is subject to.

Originally posted by: ModerateRepZero
It doesn't come from nowhere, and unless you go to war and plunder or find something, government needs revenue. Ergo, taxation.

Replace the italicized with the bolded.

Originally posted by: ModerateRepZero
And given that voluntary donations are a failure (read about the Articles of Confederation), government has to enforce taxation. Taxes were enacted by duly elected representatives of the government, and tax evaders / charlatans notwithstanding, people accept the principle of taxation, although they might grumble about the extent of taxation and their share of the burden. So there is no "immorality" except by your very extreme and narrow interpretation.

Right, because you believe that if I don't want the government's services then I should be forced to pay for them anyway. You are coercive.

Originally posted by: ModerateRepZero
Again, when our govt. was created the people by virtue of our elected representatives gave them powers by virtue of either the Constitution and Bill of Rights (see 10th amendment for state powers), or subsequent election by legislatiors. This process is alot better than before....The Articles of Confederation had jealous and suspicious states giving little power to a "central government" that had to practically beg states for revenue and authority.

If we're arguing that the government is the problem then why does your argument consist of explaining how our government works?

Originally posted by: ModerateRepZero
Simple reason why you lack power and authority: the current system of rules means that you're an ordinary citizen and not the government or an agent/agency acting on its behalf. To use your restaurant example, what you are saying in essence is that you walked into a restaurant and complained about the prices, ignoring the fact that it was created and operates by the same rules that other restaurants have done so (which were passed by a legislature of duly elected representatives), and that the government doesn't regulate prices but trusts the "free market" (competition and individual preferences) to dictate survival.

A restaurant won't stick me in a box and point a gun at me if I don't agree with their prices or don't want to eat at its location.

Originally posted by: ModerateRepZero
If govt. is so parasitic as you claim, then surely any reasonable person would want limited/no govt. since government cannot function and survive without revenue, which tends to come from taxation. And yet people DO accept government in the vast majority of areas, both because govt promises security, and because govt. protects property rights, contracts, etc. which allows a free market to flourish.

Agreed with the italicized. I'm sure if the majority of people had a choice to stop paying their taxes they would choose that immediately.

 

[ModerateRepZero]

You've already the assumption that government needs to exist. The government should only exist to provide a service, and only if needed. And it should act on the same rules every individual is subject to.

Originally posted by: ModerateRepZero
It doesn't come from nowhere, and unless you go to war and plunder or find something, government needs revenue. Ergo, taxation.

Replace the italicized with the bolded.

Right, because you believe that if I don't want the government's services then I should be forced to pay for them anyway. You are coercive.

If we're arguing that the government is the problem then why does your argument consist of explaining how our government works?

A restaurant won't stick me in a box and point a gun at me if I don't agree with their prices or don't want to eat at its location.

Agreed with the italicized. I'm sure if the majority of people had a choice to stop paying their taxes they would choose that immediately.

_____________________
Read what I wrote earlier. *Most* people (with the exception of utopians/anarchists such as yourself) believe that govt. will protect property rights as well as lessen the need for self-defense. In order to let government do its job the citizens voluntarily gave up certain "freedoms" such as the ability to swindle/kidnap/beat/murder with impunity in exchange for security and legal protections / enforcement. You may not like the fact that you had no say in the formation of the government or that it's imperfect but that's the general theory. I believe anyone who's read Mills's On Liberty and Locke's Two Treatises of Government would understand that.

If a legitimate government created tax legislation by duly elected representatives, plunder is your interpretation, not the majority (much less the govt.).

You may not like the situation of selective choice, but as long as you are under the government's rules, you have to abide by them. As I pointed out earlier, a murderer has his "freedom" to murder curtailed since he cannot act without (the threat of) punishment, but society recognizes that any restrictions are outweighed by the benefits of prohibition/restriction. Similarly, as much as you may think the police, city hall, etc. are unnecessary you DO enjoy the benefits of their function. Government wouldn't be able to function if people were able to pick and choose what services to donate to (which would no doubt please you, but is impractical for the vast majority of us who tolerate govt)....and as a practical matter, exactly how are we to decide revenue and function (ok money can go here and here but not there; don't send police to X since Citizen Y doesn't pay taxes)...I stand by my "free rider" characterization.

Govt. is a necessary "evil", and my explanation is to remind you how our govt was created. Again, your opinions aren't shared by most people, and you don't seem to know the general theory or history.

You're right about the restaurant. Government is able to do so because its powers were granted to it by the legislature and ratified by the govt. While I happen to agree with you about the current excessiveness of eminent domain, the original rationale for it is quite sound....

I doubt most people would choose to stop paying taxes if they knew that schools, police, etc. wouldn't function. Ordinary citizens prefer order and stability; anarchy has no hope of assuring either.

 

[ruu]

To bring up something earlier in this thread:

Originally posted by: sandorski

Originally posted by: SleepWalkerX
...the next step is to think outside the box that our forefathers created because their experiment was a failed experiment. We need to start with the basics and see if we can imagine or create a better form of society.

Your idea of Freedom is an impossibility. Without a severe culling of Humanity anyway.

"a better form of society"? You mean "a better type of human being." Society is only as good as the people that comprise it; there isn't a system in the world that can account for all the "flaws" and "failures" and "shortcomings" of human beings. There isn't a system in the world that can permanently make a human being better than he is.

To have a better form of society, you either need to genetically engineer a new type of human that is completely rational and operates on pure logic, reason, evidence, and consequence, or you need to make your society 1) so small that you can control every aspect of it.

The first is impossible.

The second---as sandorski has alluded to---would require rejecting most of the human population from being a part of said society.

Government is not perfect. It never will be. You are assuming that this lack of perfection is a terrible flaw. But it's a flaw only if we assume that people are capable of being perfect, rational, living out pure philosophies, omniscient, omnipotent, benevolent, absolute beings. People are not so. They will never be. If you accept this, then you will see that government is the best way that we have to govern people as they are, not as they could be or will be.

Edit for misquote.

 

[Dissipate]

Originally posted by: Evan
Sorry, you'll have to be more specific because you have not yet referenced any evidence that a completely free market, anarchy-based society can function.

Medieval Iceland is a very well documented case of a completely free market anarchy based society. David Friedman has written about this here.

It has been explained to you as if you were a child. Social contract is an idea that has centuries of precedent and you have yet to argue for a superior alternative, except to say "free market". This is the crux of your argument and it's total BS because you can't source successful examples and then draw reasonable conclusions from that analysis.

Saying an idea has 'centuries of precedent' is not an argument. Monarchies had 'centuries of precedent' before mass franchise democracy became popular. I already wrote a devastating refutation of the social contract previously in this thread, no one so far has directly attempted to counter this argument. See above for a successful, documented example.

What's funny is that you actually think anyone here half-educated takes this nonsense seriously, especially since you have completely failed to site a single piece of evidence to support your notion that a free market alternative could do what Congress and gov't does, which is enforce laws.

Laws that Congress does not even read and that the vast majority of the population does not understand or even have knowledge of.

Your example of being able to buy products without "rules built in" completely obfiscates the reality that government laws regulate exactly how those products are sold and what standards they must meet.

For many products/services the rules are enforced by the firm that produces them. eBay has a feedback system, my cell phone company can turn off my service, the homeowner's association I live under regulates the place I live at. When I turn on my Xbox 360 and play on Xbox Live, there is a system that prevents me from cheating. If I take out loans that I don't pay back my credit rating goes way down and I can't borrow again in the future. Meanwhile, what does the state spend many of its law enforcement resources on? Tracking down and incarcerating drug dealers and users, wasting billions in the process and creating the largest prison population in the world.

You truly are out to lunch if you don't think the federal gov't doesn't have an absolutely powerful hand in regulating and controlling vast aspects of nearly every private market in the U.S.

The federal government has a big gun, that is empirically true. But might doesn't make right.

including the most successful ones.

Parasites thrive where there is wealth to be plundered.

A society without gov't to enforce laws has never succeeded in modern day society,

It has never really been tried in a modern day society.

and you have yet to answer how laws would be enforced or services provided except to imply we could fracture into 50 different country states and be run by a collection of random private citizens whom no one elected to represent their interests. It's utter nonsense and you're getting laughed at.

Your concept of laws is extremely out dated, going back thousands of years. In fact, your concept of laws was originally born out of myth. During the enlightenment many philosophers challenged the myth surrounding the king's right to rule, but because they were misguided and or corrupt, they just replaced it with a new myth. Rousseau and Locke actually read much more like religious texts than anything scientific or rational, and are filled with logical fallacies such as tacit consent. Your entire mode of thinking is wrapped around the idea that ancient myths have now become science.

States are invisible lines on a map. If you want to discuss matters in empirical physical reality, I am happy to do so. However, I don't really feel like arguing over imaginary lines.

Huh? This is grade school gobbledygook, it's not coherent.

I am going to make this very simple: Because the state exists as a parasite on free market interactions, the free market must have preceded the state.

No, wealth distribution is not that bad, 1920's were worse, much worse.

Right, wealth distribution was much much worse after the creation of the Federal Reserve and the institution of the income tax. Thanks for bolstering my argument.

Over the last 30 years we have indeed started to go backwards in terms of wealth distribution, a recognized trend, but also a huge reason Obama and liberals have been elected to office this week over the last several years. This is exactly why voting for government to represent your interests is far superior to your bullshit and still unsourced claim we should allow private citizens to run things.

Your thinking is very old and very tired. It is largely based on ancient myths and Platonic concepts that have nothing to do with material reality. Obama and the rest of the state are sentient actors who have ulterior motives involving power and wealth. Your entire theory rests on the idea that the actors in the state are exogenous from society and act in a manner that is wildly different from the manner in which others act. In reality, these people are power brokers out for their own gain.

The fact that you scorn this new way of thinking that I have presented to you means that you are either close minded and or corrupt. In any event you are what I call a socially encumbered person. This is the person who worries/frets about people and events that they have absolutely no control over. A much more rational approach to life is to care about the things you do have control over and mentally relinquish yourself from those things you have no control over. It appears to me that you are actually at the bottom of the pyramid. You are what is known as a 'tax cattle:' a citizen harvested for their tax dollar output. You are deluded if you really think you have any impact whatsoever on politicians and their dealings, or that they even are aware of your interests or desires.

I am presenting you with what is probably the most incredible discovery in history (the fact that society does not need a state). This is an extremely bleeding edge theory that some mainstream economists such as David Friedman are now picking up on. To me market anarchy is like sitting in a Ferrari while everyone else is cobbling along in a horse and buggy. I have radically and in no uncertain terms rid myself of appeal to platitudes, ancient modes of thought regarding law, and the idea that goals or achievements can exist outside of the individuals seeking those goals. There is no public good, there is no public man, or private man, or citizen.

On the other hand, anyone who thinks that something scientific or rational is going to come out a system where you have tax cattle waving signs around at a political rally after a politician belts out some platitudes, is seriously deluded.

 

[fskimospy]

As always Dissipate, it will seem like sitting in a Ferrari until your next door neighbor comes over, kills you, rapes your wife, eats your children, and takes your TV set. This is the absolute guaranteed result of what you propose, because for all of your appeals to rationality and self interest anarcho-capitalism is the most stunningly naive system ever to be thought of. That's right, it's even more naive than communism.

 

[Moonbeam]

Originally posted by: eskimospy
As always Dissipate, it will seem like sitting in a Ferrari until your next door neighbor comes over, kills you, rapes your wife, eats your children, and takes your TV set. This is the absolute guaranteed result of what you propose, because for all of your appeals to rationality and self interest anarcho-capitalism is the most stunningly naive system ever to be thought of. That's right, it's even more naive than communism.

Well, I don't even know what it is and every time I read up on it there are a million new terms to learn and they go round and round in circles. I have decided that if something is so difficult to say that it requires some invented new vocabulary is may be that it's just bull shit hiding that fact behind fancy complexity that is so far out there as to be meaningless in practical terms. I figure if a political movement is going anywhere it should be understandable to ones instinct and feeling.

 

[Dissipate]

Originally posted by: eskimospy
As always Dissipate, it will seem like sitting in a Ferrari until your next door neighbor comes over, kills you, rapes your wife, eats your children, and takes your TV set. This is the absolute guaranteed result of what you propose, because for all of your appeals to rationality and self interest anarcho-capitalism is the most stunningly naive system ever to be thought of. That's right, it's even more naive than communism.

And yet the system I propose lasted longer in Iceland than the U.S. has been in existence.

Oh and by the way, I have more information on how private fire departments work from my buddy who paid for one at his previous apartment.

A private fire department works as follow: A renter or home owner takes out homeowner's or renter's insurance. They pay a fee every month to have their place insured in case of fire/flood etc. The insurance provider, always looking to cut costs, realizes that they would save a lot of money if they could prevent buildings/units from burning down. If they can put out a fire before it spreads they save a lot on claims. So they set up a private fire department to perform this task. Here is the interesting part: the private fire department will put out fires at paying as well as non-paying customers. There are two reasons for this:

1. They don't want the fire to spread to other units causing more destruction and forcing them to pay out claims.

2. It makes the company look good in the eyes of the community, attracting more customers. If the company heroically puts out a big fire in the town people respond positively to that and it is a huge advertising opportunity for the firm.

The only difference between a paying and non-paying customer of the fire department is that the non-paying customer does not receive a payout if their place burns down. So, in theory someone living in an apartment could receive fire protection but they just wouldn't be insured. This is even better than under a tax based system because they pay nothing, not even taxes. This means that a poor person living in the town pays even less under the private system than the state-sponsored tax extortion system.

I hope this makes sense. This is only a slice of the fascinating theories of anarcho-capitalism that someone with an open mind can learn to appreciate.