# Think Tank > Political Philosophy & Government Policy >  Sorry Libertarian Anarchists, Free Markets Require Government

## Matt Collins

The government's only job is to secure individual rights, uphold justice, and enforce contracts. It doesn't do any of these very well, and typically fails at anything it tries. But it is guaranteed to fail at anything outside of the scope of those 3 points.

And anarchism is as bad as democracy is; the group with the most guns win. The only ideal government is a republic where the primacy of the individual is respected.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/harrybinswanger/2014/01/24/sorry-libertarian-anarchists-capitalism-requires-government-2/

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## Occam's Banana

David Gordon >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Harry Binswanger

*Binswanger on Anarchism*
http://bastiat.mises.org/2014/01/bin...-on-anarchism/
_ David Gordon (26 January 2014)_

Harry Binswanger, a leading Objectivist philosopher, advances a  simple argument that he thinks suffices to undermine libertarian  anarchism. The argument is found in his article of January 24 for _Forbes,_ “Sorry, Libertarian Anarchists, Capitalism Requires Government.”

Binswanger’s argument starts from a correct premise. In a free market  exchange, each party to the exchange expects to benefit. In Objectivist  language, a trade is an exchange of value for value. But force is not a  value — it is the negation of value. Therefore, protective services are  not a proper subject for market competition. They must be provided by a  government monopoly.

As Binswanger puts his argument:

_Production is the creation of value, and trade is the  voluntary exchange of value for value, to mutual benefit. Force is  destruction, or the threat of it. It may be the destruction of a value,  as when a hoodlum throws a rock through a store window. Or it may be the  destruction of destruction, as when a policeman pulls a gun on that  hoodlum and hauls him off to jail. But in either case, it is the  opposite of wealth-creation and voluntary trade.

Force properly employed is used only in retaliation, but even when  retaliatory, force merely eliminates a negative, it cannot create value.  The threat of force is used to make someone obey, to thwart his will.  The only moral use of force is in self-defense, to protect one’s rights.  . . . The wielding of force is not a business function. In fact, force  is outside the realm of economics. Economics concerns production and trade, not destruction and seizure.

Ask yourself what it means to have a “competition” in governmental  services. It’s a “competition” in wielding force, a “competition” in  subjugating others, a “competition” in making people obey commands.  That’s not “competition,” it’s violent conflict. On a large scale, it’s  war._
I’m surprised that Binswanger missed the obvious mistake in this argument. A policeman arresting a suspect is not engaged in an economic exchange with him. So far, Binswanger is entirely right. But someone who purchases defense services from a protection agency is not using force. He is exchanging money for the service of protection; and that is, contrary to Binswanger, an exchange of value — money — for value — protection. The fact that protection may involve the use of force on criminals does not change its status as an economically valued good. Binswanger, in brief, confuses, the economic transaction of purchasing protection with the use of force .

Binswanger falls into a related confusion in another passage of his article. He says:

_The anarchists object to the very idea of a monopoly on force. That only shows that they cannot grasp what force is. Force is monopoly. To use force is to attempt to monopolize. The cop or the gunman says: “We’ll do it my way, not your way–or else.” There is no such thing as force that allows dissenters to go their own way. If a man wants to have sex with a woman who doesn’t want it, only one of them can have their way. It’s either “Back off” or rape. Either way, it’s a monopoly._
This is not correct. Someone using force does not allow those whom the force is directed against to go their own way, true enough. But the user of force need not claim a monopoly. He need not claim that no one else is free to use force against his target. By the way, I would have thought that after The Fountainhead, Objectivists would stay away from examples that involve rape.

Binswanger’s article contains other mistakes as well. He says that a free market presupposes objective law, but he fails to show that objective law requires a government. But he devotes his principal attention to the argument that contrasts force with economic value.

As an Objectivist in good standing, Binswanger had better hope that this argument fails. The sort of government that Ayn Rand and her followers favor does not extract resources from people through taxation. It depends on voluntary funding, e.g, user-fees for its protective and judicial services. If Binswanger were right, such services could not be the object of market purchase. Because they involve the use of force, they are not a value. How then can they be offered for sale? Or does Binswanger think that it is all right to purchase protection from a monopoly, but not from a competitive enterprise?

By the way, readers who come across philosophical arguments that try to refute Austrian economics or libertarianism are invited to send them to me.

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## Christian Liberty

Good stuff, OB.  I hate the fact that I can't access resources like this in most face to face conversations, so I usually sort of fail, which leads people (note: non-voluntarists) to question whether I "Really" believe in voluntarism or not.  

The argument that police departments might shoot at each other used to bother me, until I learned the obvious, that this can really happen anyway.  And the fact that, more often than not, the monopoly-gang are the ones who DESERVE to get shot at, yet are untouchable.

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## Christian Liberty

I'd technically agree with the statement "Free markets require government" but I'd define "government" in a way that is radically different than the status quo.  For instance, competing courts and police departments could justifiably be called "governments."  They are not, however, States.  States are not necessary in a free society.

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## Travlyr

The word "govern" is very important. Governments come from governing documents. Standards are governing documents. A pound is a pound the world around. A mile is 5280 feet. A foot is 12 inches. An acre is 43,560 square feet. If someone sells an acre of land, then the buyer can expect to own 43,560 square feet of land.

Contracts are governing documents. When two parties agree to a contract, then that contract governs the action between two parties.

Governments are necessary for markets. The question is what kind of government is the best?

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## Occam's Banana

> The argument that police departments might shoot at each other used to bother me, until I learned the obvious, that this can really happen anyway.


What I have never understood is the weird & bizarre assertion that competing security/enforcement providers would automatically and inevitably end up "shooting at each other" - apparently for no particular reason, but merely "just because." (Note how Binswanger is quoted in the OP as saying, "anarchism is as bad as democracy is; the group with the most guns win[s]." I mean, WTF?)

Why would they be any more inclined to "shoot at each other" than, say, competing pizza delivery businesses? Just becasue they have guns? That makes NO sense whatsoever - since in a free society, anyone can and would have guns (including pizza delivery people). The security/enforcement providers would not be any different from anyone else in this regard. Yet we are expected to believe that such agencies will (for some unspecified reason) go on "take over" rampages while everyone else just stands around with their thumbs up their asses ...

The application of coercion (including shooting at people - especially people who can and will shoot back) is NOT costless. Even the Mafia understands that "mob wars" are bad for business. Critics of anarchism who imagine that it's simply a matter of "the group with the most guns wins" are apparently unable to grasp this simple concept.

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## Christian Liberty

I think the idea is that pizza deliverymen would go to jail if they kill each other, but that private police companies would really have nobody to hold them accountable if they start killing each other.  Of course, the private police companies would still lose money and/or subscribers if they solved their disputes by shooting each other.  There's also the fact that, say Person A robs Person B.  Person A's police department would, most likely, want to protect its customer, while Person B's department would want to bring Person A to justice.  Of course, again, the most reasonable way of solving this is going to a neutral arbitrator, which is MUCH more cost efficient than a shooting war. So, as you say, the argument doesn't work.

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## eduardo89

> A mile is 5280 feet. A foot is 12 inches. An acre is 43,560 square feet. If someone sells an acre of land, then the buyer can expect to own 43,560 square feet of land.


Those standards make absolutely no sense at all. When will America finally wake up and switch to metric?!?

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## Travlyr

> Those standards make absolutely no sense at all. When will America finally wake up and switch to metric?!?


That misunderstanding of what I wrote completely misses the point of the post.

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## Occam's Banana

> I think the idea is that pizza deliverymen would go to jail if they kill each other, but that private police companies would really have nobody to hold them accountable if they start killing each other.


I am aware of what the "idea" behind the criticism is supposed to be. My point is that, on the face of it, the "idea" makes no sense to begin with. It's an entirely unsupported assertion that we are apparently just supposed to accept as being "obvious" (for some unspecified reason that seems to have something to do with the fact that competing security providers would have guns - despite the fact that anyone & everyone else might have them, too).

There is no more reason to think that competing security/enforcement agencies would "start killing each other" (or their competitors' customers) than there is to think that competing pizza delivery agencies would "start killing each other" (or their competitors' customers). It's a complete & utter _non sequitur_ - but it's presented & passed off as if it were an "obvious" given needing no further explanation. (And as noted before, even the sociopathic thugs of the Mafia recognized that that sort of thing was "bad" - though for practical rather than moral reasons - and tried to avoid it by engaging in negotiations, like so-called "sit downs" ...)

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## Icymudpuppy

The problem with using the American system of measurement is that is does require government to define the standards.  The metric system, however, does not because it is based on scientific measurements of water.

1cubic centimeter of water = 1 gram of water= 1mL of water at 1 degree centigrade at 1 atmosphere of pressure (sea level).

It requires 1 calorie of energy to raise the temperature of 1 cc of water 1 degree centigrade.  Water freezes at 0 degrees, and boils at 100 degrees.

That takes care of distance, weight, volume, temperature, pressure, and energy, all in easy base ten numerics, and based on the most common molecule on Earth.

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## eduardo89

> The problem with using the American system of measurement is that is does require government to define the standards.  The metric system, however, does not because it is based on scientific measurements of water.
> 
> 1cubic centimeter of water = 1 gram of water= 1mL of water at 1 degree centigrade at 1 atmosphere of pressure (sea level).
> 
> It requires 1 calorie of energy to raise the temperature of 1 cc of water 1 degree centigrade.
> 
> That takes care of distance, weight, volume, temperature, pressure, and energy, all in easy base ten numerics, and based on the most common molecule on earth.


+rep

But I think it's more logical to say it takes 0.7376 ft·lb to raise the temperature of 0.033814 fluid ounces (or 0.061 cubic inches) of water 1.8 degrees fahrenheit.

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## Christian Liberty

I still like Fahrenheit for temperature.  Not for any logical reason, but I'm used to it.

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## Travlyr

> The problem with using the American system of measurement is that is does require government to define the standards.  The metric system, however, does not because it is based on scientific measurements of water.
> 
> 1cubic centimeter of water = 1 gram of water= 1mL of water at 1 degree centigrade at 1 atmosphere of pressure (sea level).
> 
> It requires 1 calorie of energy to raise the temperature of 1 cc of water 1 degree centigrade.  Water freezes at 0 degrees, and boils at 100 degrees.
> 
> That takes care of distance, weight, volume, temperature, pressure, and energy, all in easy base ten numerics, and based on the most common molecule on Earth.


While all this is true, it makes no difference to the point of standards being governing documents. A kilo's a kilo the world around doesn't even rhyme. Standards and Contracts are governing documents no matter what language.

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## eduardo89

> I still like Fahrenheit for temperature.  Not for any logical reason, but I'm used to it.


Fahrenheit makes no sense to me.

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## GunnyFreedom

> Fahrenheit makes no sense to me.


Yeah, I cannot possibly comprehend how anybody can be *hot* at 35°!  At that temperature I'm bundling up in my wool trench and wondering what the frell is wrong with the planet.

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## silverhandorder

Eh all I ever hear is how anarchism can not work but no evidence ever given. But in the words of delusional minarchists first they ignore you then they attack you then you win .

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## fisharmor

> Fahrenheit makes no sense to me.


It makes perfect sense.
If it's 0 degrees, it's really frickin cold.
If it's 100 degrees, it's really frickin hot.

It makes much more sense than saying "Oh look, it's minus 10, bundle up!" And likewise "Gee, it's actually 30 today!  What a scorcher!"

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## Travlyr

> Eh all I ever hear is how anarchism can not work but no evidence ever given. But in the words of delusional minarchists first they ignore you then they attack you then you win .


The problem anarchists have is the word "govern." Explain that one. A contract is a governing document. A standard is a governing document. Do anarchists not want standards or contracts?

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## eduardo89

> It makes perfect sense.
> If it's 0 degrees, it's really frickin cold.
> If it's 100 degrees, it's really frickin hot.
> 
> It makes much more sense than saying "Oh look, it's minus 10, bundle up!" And likewise "Gee, it's actually 30 today!  What a scorcher!"


Freezing point = 32
Boiling point = I have no clue


That does not make sense.

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## GunnyFreedom

> Freezing point = 32
> Boiling point = I have no clue
> 
> 
> That does not make sense.


Boiling point of water is 212°

Celsius makes more sense if you are a body of water.  0° freezing 100° boiling.

Fahrenheit makes more sense if you are a human being though.  0° is the bottom of the human range of tolerance, 100° is the top range of human tolerance.

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## Neil Desmond

> Freezing point = 32
> Boiling point = I have no clue
> 
> 
> That does not make sense.


Boiling point in Fahrenheit is 212 degrees.

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## Travlyr

> Boiling point in Fahrenheit is 212 degrees.


At sea level.

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## GunnyFreedom

> At sea level.


At atmospheric pressure that are typical at sea level.

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## silverhandorder

> The problem anarchists have is the word "govern." Explain that one. A contract is a governing document. A standard is a governing document. Do anarchists not want standards or contracts?


All anarchist are is without rulers. Contracts is perfectly compatible with this philosophy. Contracts can be enforced without violence or coercion. I find reputation as the greatest tool in this regard. People who break contracts or treat them in bad faith will never rise in a society that embraces free associations.

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## Travlyr

> At atmospheric pressure that are typical at sea level.


True. Which typically occur at sea level.

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## Travlyr

> All anarchist are is without rulers. Contracts is perfectly compatible with this philosophy. Contracts can be enforced without violence or coercion. I find reputation as the greatest tool in this regard. People who break contracts or treat them in bad faith will never rise in a society that embraces free associations.


Do anarchists embrace the ruling effects of contracts and standards? It is not a rhetorical question. Do they?

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## fisharmor

> Fahrenheit makes more sense if you are a human being though. 0° is the bottom of the human range of tolerance, 100° is the top range of human tolerance.


Exactly - nobody cares what the boiling point of water is if they're trying to determine whether to wear a coat or not.
Fahrenheit is a system designed for people.
I'm a person.  I'm not a pot of water.





> The problem anarchists have is the word "govern." Explain that one. A contract is a governing document. A standard is a governing document. Do anarchists not want standards or contracts?


Haha, well, I've had a few tonight so I'll ignore the irrefutable fact that you've had this explained to you ad nauseum already and that you're either a troll or should seriously, _seriously_ get checked for Alzheimer's.... but for the benefit of everyone else, no, no anarchist here has ever said we are against standards or contracts.

In direct contrast, we believe that a system that routinely $#@!s up everything it touches (the state) is completely ill suited to taking care of something as important as standards or contracts.

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## silverhandorder

> Do anarchists embrace the ruling effects of contracts and standards? It is not a rhetorical question. Do they?



Give me an example?

For example let's say there is a standard for language. We speak English. Is anyone ruling over you?

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## Travlyr

> Exactly - nobody cares what the boiling point of water is if they're trying to determine whether to wear a coat or not.
> Fahrenheit is a system designed for people.
> I'm a person.  I'm not a pot of water.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Haha, well, I've had a few tonight so I'll ignore the irrefutable fact that you've had this explained to you ad nauseum already and that you're either a troll or should seriously, _seriously_ get checked for Alzheimer's.... but for the benefit of everyone else, no, *no anarchist here has ever said we are against standards or contracts.*
> 
> In direct contrast, we believe that a system that routinely $#@!s up everything it touches (the state) is completely ill suited to taking care of something as important as standards or contracts.


Standards and Contracts are rulers.

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## Christian Liberty

> Yeah, I cannot possibly comprehend how anybody can be *hot* at 35°!  At that temperature I'm bundling up in my wool trench and wondering what the frell is wrong with the planet.


I'm actually OK at 35 (F) if the sun's out.  I usually wouldn't bother with a jacket at that temperature if I'm just walking to the car of something.  

That said, I live in NYS.  I'm sure you're used to warmer weather than we are.



> The problem anarchists have is the word "govern." Explain that one. A contract is a governing document. A standard is a governing document. Do anarchists not want standards or contracts?


I don't personally choose the word "anarchist" anymore for this reason, but no, we have no problem with standards or contracts.  The ancap/voluntarist system would still have laws, but those laws would be binding on every person equally, and based on the NAP.  Taxation, and thus, the monopoly-state would not be permissible under such a system.





> Boiling point of water is 212°
> 
> Celsius makes more sense if you are a body of water.  0° freezing 100° boiling.
> 
> Fahrenheit makes more sense if you are a human being though.  0° is the bottom of the human range of tolerance, 100° is the top range of human tolerance.


I really hate either 0 orr 100 degree weather.  But people do tolerate lower/higher.

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## Icymudpuppy

> Fahrenheit makes more sense if you are a human being though.  0° is the bottom of the human range of tolerance, 100° is the top range of human tolerance.


Seems kind of Ethnocentric.  That is the tolerance of a fat man of German Descent, like Mr. Fahrenheit, but a thin man of Saharan descent would disagree.

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## Travlyr

> Give me an example?
> 
> For example let's say there is a standard for language. We speak English. Is anyone ruling over you?


I'll dumb it down for Edward89. A meter is 100 centimeters, etc. That is a standard. All governing documents demand a finite agreed upon length, weight, or volume. Standards are governing documents which can be taken to an independent judge in case of dispute to determine who cheated whom. If I buy 16 ounces of flour at the store, then I expect it to weigh a pound. If the store owner claims that 15 ounces is a pound, then I have legal recourse against the store. Standards rule.

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## GunnyFreedom

> True. Which typically occur at sea level.


Aye, but may not.  Atmospheric pressure at sea level have been recorded to vary as much as 21kPa; similar to an altitude change of as much as 2000 meters!

Mind you, that is _HIGHLY_ atypical.  

Nevertheless, a high pressure area on the coast of the Sea of Okhotsk (108.5 kPa) vs the eye of a hurricane off of Bermuda (87 kPa) is a pretty dramatic difference, and would significantly affect the temperature at which water boils at sea level.

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## Occam's Banana

> But I think it's more logical to say it takes 0.7376 ft·lb to raise the temperature of 0.033814 fluid ounces (or 0.061 cubic inches) of water 1.8 degrees fahrenheit.


No, no, no! It is far more logical to say:

It takes 1.242 x 10-5 furlong-firkins to raise the temperature of 7.7 x 10-6 cubic furlongs of water by 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit.

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## Neil Desmond

> Give me an example?
> 
> For example let's say there is a standard for language. We speak English. Is anyone ruling over you?


Who is we?

US citizens (or people who are born in and live in the US) are forced by the government to go to school and learn "English", which is ironic because the US (original 13 colonies) declared independence from England, which is where people speak English; and at the same time, I'm not aware of anything in our legal system that establishes English as the official language of the US or does anything to explain what the protocol for communication is (e.g., written and spoken grammar, pronunciation, alphabet, lexicon, reading/writing direction, etc.).

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## silverhandorder

> I'll dumb it down for Edward89. A meter is 100 centimeters, etc. That is a standard. All governing documents demand a finite agreed upon length, weight, or volume. Standards are governing documents which can be taken to an independent judge in case of dispute to determine who cheated whom. If I buy 16 ounces of flour at the store, then I expect it to weigh a pound. If the store owner claims that 15 ounces is a pound, then I have legal recourse against the store. Standards rule.


How is that ruling? You have to agree on a standard. That means there is an input from you and from the store owner. Ruling has one party only.

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## Christian Liberty

> I'll dumb it down for Edward89. A meter is 100 centimeters, etc. That is a standard. All governing documents demand a finite agreed upon length, weight, or volume. Standards are governing documents which can be taken to an independent judge in case of dispute to determine who cheated whom. If I buy 16 ounces of flour at the store, then I expect it to weigh a pound. If the store owner claims that 15 ounces is a pound, then I have legal recourse against the store. Standards rule.


I don't see any rational reason why a private arbitrator would rule something clearly culturally wrong, like 15 ounces = a pound.

But let's say he does.  The disputants wouldn't have to abide by his ruling.  Whereas if the State says such a thing, you have no choice but to accept it.

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## Travlyr

> Aye, but may not.  Atmospheric pressure at sea level have been recorded to vary as much as 21kPa; similar to an altitude change of as much as 2000 meters!
> 
> Mind you, that is _HIGHLY_ atypical.  
> 
> Nevertheless, a high pressure area on the coast of the Sea of Okhotsk (108.5 kPa) vs the eye of a hurricane off of Bermuda (87 kPa) is a pretty dramatic difference, and would significantly affect the temperature at which water boils at sea level.


I'll give you that. Yet, typically at 5280' above sea level I have a hard time boiling water at 212° F.

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## eduardo89

> Who is we?
> 
> US citizens (or people who are born in and live in the US) are forced by the government to go to school and learn "English", which is ironic because the US (original 13 colonies) declared independence from England, which is where people speak English; and at the same time, I'm not aware of anything in our legal system that establishes English as the official language of the US or does anything to explain what the protocol for communication is (e.g., written and spoken grammar, pronunciation, alphabet, lexicon, reading/writing direction, etc.).


That's not accurate. The colonies declared independence from the Kingdom of Great Britain. England ceased to be a country in 1707.

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## silverhandorder

> Who is we?
> 
> US citizens (or people who are born in and live in the US) are forced by the government to go to school and learn "English", which is ironic because the US (original 13 colonies) declared independence from England, which is where people speak English; and at the same time, I'm not aware of anything in our legal system that establishes English as the official language of the US or does anything to explain what the protocol for communication is (e.g., written and spoken grammar, pronunciation, alphabet, lexicon, reading/writing direction, etc.).


On this forum... That is who I mean by "we". I speak English. I also know Russian but I don't type in Russian because I would not find many people here who would understand me.

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## Travlyr

> I don't see any rational reason why a private arbitrator would rule something clearly culturally wrong, like 15 ounces = a pound.
> 
> But let's say he does.  The disputants wouldn't have to abide by his ruling.  Whereas if the State says such a thing, you have no choice but to accept it.


Huh?

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## eduardo89

> I'll give you that. Yet, typically at 5280' above sea level I have a hard time boiling water at 212° F.


I live at 8300 feet above sea level and I've noticed that water takes longer time to boil than at sea level. Also, planes take way too much runway to take off, the first time I took off from that elevation I was scared we were running out of runway.

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## GunnyFreedom

> No, no, no! It is far more logical to say:
> It takes 1.242 x 10-5 furlong-firkins to raise the temperature of 7.7 x 10-6 cubic furlongs of water by 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit.


How many metric ounces of water is that?

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## Travlyr

> I live at 8300 feet above sea level and I've noticed that water takes longer to boil than at sea level. Also, planes take way too much runway to take off, the first time I took off from that elevation I was scared we were running out of runway.


Yeah.

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## GunnyFreedom

> I live at 8300 feet above sea level and I've noticed that water takes less time to boil than at sea level. Also, planes take way too much runway to take off, the first time I took off from that elevation I was scared we were running out of runway.


Pretty sure it takes water _less_ time to boil at altitude, but that you will have to boil something _longer_ to cook it properly, given the lower boiling point.

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## Travlyr

> I don't see any rational reason why a private arbitrator would rule something clearly culturally wrong, like 15 ounces = a pound.
> 
> But let's say he does.  The disputants wouldn't have to abide by his ruling.  Whereas if the State says such a thing, you have no choice but to accept it.


The point is that *standards are rules* which *demand rulers* if a *dispute* is *brought to a judge or arbitrator*. Standards and Contracts destroy anarchist philosophy.

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## silverhandorder

> The point is that *standards are rules* which *demand rulers* if a *dispute* is *brought to a judge or arbitrator*. Standards and Contracts destroy anarchist philosophy.


There are rules on this forum. Does this forum have rulers?

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## Travlyr

> There are rules on this forum. Does this forum have rulers?


Yes. Moderators and Bryan.

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## Christian Liberty

> The point is that *standards are rules* which *demand rulers* if a *dispute* is *brought to a judge or arbitrator*. Standards and Contracts destroy anarchist philosophy.


I guess if you want to define "rulers" in that way, that's fine.  But no anarcho-capitalist defines rulers the way you do.

I use the term voluntarist because I support voluntary contracts and voluntarily accepted rules and, if necessary, rulers.

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## Neil Desmond

> That's not accurate. The colonies declared independence from the Kingdom of Great Britain. England ceased to be a country in 1707.


It may not be accurate if you speak English; but is it accurate if you don't speak English?  What if I speak American, not "English", and in American translated to English, England can mean "Kingdom of Great Britain"?

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## Matt Collins

> I don't see any rational reason why a private arbitrator would rule something clearly culturally wrong, like 15 ounces = a pound.
> 
> But let's say he does.  The disputants wouldn't have to abide by his ruling.


Then what is the point of going to an arbiter if you don't follow their decision?

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## Neil Desmond

> On this forum... That is who I mean by "we". I speak English. I also know Russian but I don't type in Russian because I would not find many people here who would understand me.


On this forum?  What if I were to say that I don't speak English on this forum - that I speak American on this forum?

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## Occam's Banana

> The problem anarchists have is the word "govern." Explain that one. A contract is a governing document. A standard is a governing document. Do anarchists not want standards or contracts?


Anarchists have no problem with the "governance" or enforcement of rules, standards, contracts, etc.

What anarchists have a problem with is the idea that a small group of limited-membership elites should be allowed to wield sole & exclusive authority to use of force in order to compel everyone else to submit to their creation, adjudgement and enforcement of rules, standards, contracts, etc.

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## silverhandorder

> Yes. Moderators and Bryan.


Then we need to define ruler. I define rulers as person who owns you. He can make unilateral decisions about any aspect of your life.

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## GunnyFreedom

> That's not accurate. The colonies declared independence from the Kingdom of Great Britain. England ceased to be a country in 1707.


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

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## eduardo89

> Pretty sure it takes water _less_ time to boil at altitude, but that you will have to boil something _longer_ to cook it properly, given the lower boiling point.


Yes, that's what I meant. Water boils quicker, but food takes noticeably longer to cook. For example pasta takes a good 5-7 minutes longer to cook in Bogota than it did for me when I lived in Vancouver.

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## silverhandorder

> On this forum?  What if I were to say that I don't speak English on this forum - that I speak American on this forum?


That is what I am talking about. If you choose to speak gibberish then I will not understand you and we will cease to communicate. However seeing as you still typing in English it proves my point.

I sense you have some problem with people saying they speak English. Want to tell us why?

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## Christian Liberty

> Then what is the point of going to an arbiter if you don't follow their decision?


Robert Murphy has an article on this.  I'm going to look it up soon...

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## Travlyr

> I guess if you want to define "rulers" in that way, that's fine.


A ruler is anyone who enforces the rules.




> But no anarcho-capitalist defines rulers the way you do.


That is the problem anarcho-capitalists have. They redefine words to fit their philosophy.




> I use the term voluntarist because I support voluntary contracts and voluntarily accepted rules and, if necessary, rulers.


Voluntarist is fine. Everyone should embrace voluntarism IMO. However, that does not change the fact that everyone should embrace the rules of life as well.

----------


## eduardo89

> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/England


England is a 'constituent country' of the United Kingdom, but ceased to be a country under international law in 1707 when the Kingdoms of England and Scotland were merged into the Kingdom of Great Britain (the United Kingdom was later created in 1801 when Ireland was also formally annexed). 

England is not a sovereign entity, Great Britain (and it's successor state the United Kingdom) was the sovereign entity which the colonies declared independence from. Since the United Kingdom is a unitary state, the sub-national entity of England and Wales could be abolished at any moment by the Parliament in Westminster.

----------


## GunnyFreedom

> Yes, that's what I meant. Water boils quicker, but food takes noticeably longer to cook. For example pasta takes a good 5-7 minutes longer to cook in Bogota than it did for me when I lived in Vancouver.


Indeed, that observation accords with the accepted scientific consensus.

----------


## Travlyr

> Then we need to define ruler. I define rulers as person who owns you. He can make unilateral decisions about any aspect of your life.


Yet, your definition is not a dictionary definition. If a rule is made (12 inches is a foot) then that rule should stand in a court of law or an arbitrator. The judge or arbitrator is the ruler. They do not own you. They simply "rule" on the rule everyone agreed to prior to any dispute.

----------


## silverhandorder

> Then what is the point of going to an arbiter if you don't follow their decision?


Where does he say that?

----------


## eduardo89

> Indeed, that observation accords with the accepted scientific consensus.


I actually had edited my post to say longer, then edited back when I confused myself for a second thinking "wait a second, but I take so much longer to cook pasta." Then when you posted I thought "Duh! It takes longer to cook because the temperature is lower!"

----------


## GunnyFreedom

> Then we need to define ruler. I define rulers as person who owns you. He can make unilateral decisions about any aspect of your life.

----------


## Travlyr

> Anarchists have no problem with the "governance" or enforcement of rules, standards, contracts, etc.
> 
> What anarchists have a problem with is the idea that a small group of limited-membership elites should be allowed to wield sole & exclusive authority to use of force in order to compel everyone else to submit to their creation, adjudgement and enforcement of rules, standards, contracts, etc.


I am not an anarchist and I agree with everything you claim. However, I have a problem with the anarchists definition of "govern" which is the root word of government.

----------


## Travlyr

> 


Most excellent! That is a ruler.

----------


## silverhandorder

> Yet, your definition is not a dictionary definition. If a rule is made (12 inches is a foot) then that rule should stand in a court of law or an arbitrator. The judge or arbitrator is the ruler. They do not own you. They simply "rule" on the rule everyone agreed to prior to any dispute.


Ok then use my definition when you hear me say without rulers. Because that is the way I mean it. I am sorry that we do not have the same definitions for words. That does not mean that I am wrong just because we use different definitions. 

So by your definition anarchists have no problems with rules. We have a problem with people who try to own us.

----------


## Travlyr

> Ok then use my definition when you hear me say without rulers. Because that is the way I mean it. I am sorry that we do not have the same definitions for words. That does not mean that I am wrong just because we use different definitions. 
> 
> So by your definition anarchists have no problems with rules. We have a problem with people who try to own us.


That's fine. Yet, making up the meaning of words does not further understanding. Using the dictionary definition of words facilitates understanding. Rhetoric, the 4th R, is important.

----------


## GunnyFreedom

> England is a 'constituent country' of the United Kingdom, but ceased to be a country under international law in 1707 when the Kingdoms of England and Scotland were merged into the Kingdom of Great Britain (the United Kingdom was later created in 1801 when Ireland was also formally annexed). 
> 
> England is not a sovereign entity, Great Britain (and it's successor state the United Kingdom) was the sovereign entity which the colonies declared independence from. Since the United Kingdom is a unitary state, the sub-national entity of England and Wales could be abolished at any moment by the Parliament in Westminster.


So it's technically a country, it's simply no longer sovereign, having ceded sovereignty first to Great Britain and then ultimately to the United Kingdom.  Hey, at least they got to put St George's Cross into the Union Jack!

----------


## Neil Desmond

> That is what I am talking about. If you choose to speak gibberish then I will not understand you and we will cease to communicate. However seeing as you still typing in English it proves my point.


I think I'm typing in American; what makes you say that I'm typing in English?




> I sense you have some problem with people saying they speak English. Want to tell us why?


I don't necessarily have a problem with anyone saying that they speak English.  For example, I think Slutter McGee, who is a member on this forum, might be someone who says that he speaks English & he may be accurate to say so, because he abides by the rules of that language.  In at least a case such as that one I don't have a problem with him sayinhg he speaks English.  I'm mainly trying to make and illustrate some points, and I'm employing crafty ways of doing so (at least I'm trying to, anyways).  It has to do with things such as the principle behind really being independent of a foreign "kingdom" and the fact that although there are a lot of similarities between how Americans and people from England speak, they are different.

----------


## silverhandorder

Mine definition is very close to dictionary.com definition. Can you say voluntary arbitrators rule. Yes we can. Is that what comes to your mind when you first hear it? Because it does not to me. But I have not had an argument where every definition was identical between two people arguing. So to say people make up definitions is not correct. It is simply the imperfect world we live in. Not everyone commits to grammar and dictionaries for their communication. I have no problem communicating 99% of the time and even now we were able to come to an understanding.

----------


## eduardo89

> So it's technically a country, it's simply no longer sovereign, having ceded sovereignty first to Great Britain and then ultimately to the United Kingdom.  Hey, at least they got to put St George's Cross into the Union Jack!


It's historically a country, yes.

But the 13 colonies never declared independence from England. Which is what my nitpicking was about!

----------


## GunnyFreedom

> It's historically a country, yes.
> 
> But the 13 colonies never declared independence from England. Which is what my nitpicking was about!


Correct, we declared independence from Great Britain, which was an entirely different animal.  The 13 colonies we not colonies of England at that time, but colonies of Great Britain.  That would be like saying Puerto Rico is a territory of Florida.

----------


## GunnyFreedom

> Mine definition is very close to dictionary.com definition. Can you say voluntary arbitrators rule. Yes we can. Is that what comes to your mind when you first hear it? Because it does not to me. But I have not had an argument where every definition was identical between two people arguing. So to say people make up definitions is not correct. It is simply the imperfect world we live in. Not everyone commits to grammar and dictionaries for their communication. I have no problem communicating 99% of the time and even now we were able to come to an understanding.


When I hear the word "ruler" I either think of a measuring stick or an arbiter.  I've never thought of a "ruler" as some person who controls other people.  To me, that hideous beast is called a "master."  I've always had to torture the syntax inside my head whenever I hear people on RPF's talk about "rulers" like they were "masters."

----------


## silverhandorder

> I think I'm typing in American; what makes you say that I'm typing in English?
> 
> 
> I don't necessarily have a problem with anyone saying that they speak English.  For example, I think Slutter McGee, who is a member on this forum, might be someone who says that he speaks English & he may be accurate to say so, because he abides by the rules of that language.  In at least a case such as that one I don't have a problem with him sayinhg he speaks English.  I'm mainly trying to make and illustrate some points, and I'm employing crafty ways of doing so (at least I'm trying to, anyways).  It has to do with things such as the principle behind really being independent of a foreign "kingdom" and the fact that although there are a lot of similarities between how Americans and people from England speak, they are different.


Ok well I think that is interesting but off topic .




> When I hear the word "ruler" I either think of a measuring stick or an arbiter.  I've never thought of a "ruler" as some person who controls other people.  To me, that hideous beast is called a "master."  I've always had to torture the syntax inside my head whenever I hear people on RPF's talk about "rulers" like they were "masters."


Well I am glad all of this is getting clarified.

----------


## Neil Desmond

> When I hear the word "ruler" I either think of a measuring stick or an arbiter.  I've never thought of a "ruler" as some person who controls other people.  To me, that hideous beast is called a "master."  I've always had to torture the syntax inside my head whenever I hear people on RPF's talk about "rulers" like they were "masters."


Hmm, then there's "public servant" and "authorities."  Seems like there are some Orwellian things at play here.

----------


## Neil Desmond

> Ok well I think that is interesting but off topic .


I understand what you mean; but if I got into the notion of the US declaring independence from a monarchy or kingdom, and to me monarchies or kingdoms are really nothing more than examples of what free market anarchism would inevitably decay into, I'm not so sure that it really does go off topic.

----------


## Neil Desmond

> Correct, we declared independence from Great Britain, which was an entirely different animal.  The 13 colonies we not colonies of England at that time, but colonies of Great Britain.  That would be like saying Puerto Rico is a territory of Florida.


Well, one of the problems to say what I wanted to say, when it came to picking a name to refer to that which the US declared independence from when it comes to "Great Britain", is that this is actually just the name of the island where England can be found.  I guess one of the problems I have is that I find the very concept of monarchies about as repugnant as making chattel out of the descendants of slaves.  I suppose I could've said something like the US declared independence from the Kingdom of Great Britain, but I suppose I have a problem with giving monarchies or kingdoms any kind of recognition in any manner, when I speak about them incidentally or peripherally (as I was).

----------


## Occam's Banana

> I am not an anarchist and I agree with everything you claim. However, I have a problem with the anarchists definition of "govern" which is the root word of government.


This comes down to what is essentially a semantic distinction.

What anarchists have a problem with is NOT "governance" or "government" _per se_ - those things basically just mean "the creation and application of rules and standards." There's nothing wrong with that, in and of itself. In fact, it is absolutely necessary and critical for the existence of stable and civil human society.

What anarchists have a problem with is "governance" or "government" by the State (where "the State" is the group of elite monopolists I identified in my previous post). Unfortunately, in today's world of totalistic nation-states, the State is the only source of "governance" or "government" - and States, by their nature, do not tolerate or permit any other sources of governance to exist. Thus, the word "government" is very often used as a synonym for "the State." So an anarchist can say that he is against "government" (in the sense of "the State") - and he can also say that he supports "government" (in the sense of "the creation and application of rules and standards for society"). Although the former sense is far more common than the latter, both are valid uses of the term.

This is why I believe that if a truly voluntaryist society is ever actually achieved, many anarchists and non-anarchists will then start arguing with one another over whether what they are living under is "really" an anarchy or "really" something else - even though both groups approve of and support it, whatever it might be called. Quite a few of the arguments between anarchists and non-anarchists amount to just arguing over definitions and talking past one another - when they actually agree on just about everything that is of any real importance or significance ...

----------


## GunnyFreedom

> Well, one of the problems to say what I wanted to say, when it came to picking a name to refer to that which the US declared independence from when it comes to "Great Britain", is that this is actually just the name of the island where England can be found.  I guess one of the problems I have is that I find the very concept of monarchies about as repugnant as making chattel out of the descendants of slaves.  I suppose I could've said something like the US declared independence from the Kingdom of Great Britain, but I suppose I have a problem with giving monarchies or kingdoms any kind of recognition in any manner, when I speak about them incidentally or peripherally (as I was).


Just "Britain" works, and you'd neither be calling it "Great" or a "Kingdom."

----------


## Neil Desmond

> Just "Britain" works, and you'd neither be calling it "Great" or a "Kingdom."


Cool; works for me, then.

----------


## GunnyFreedom

I just want to point out how much better this thread went with Matt having actually posted some reference text in the OP instead of just a no-context link.

----------


## Anti Federalist

$#@! a bunch of cubic meters and "bar".

----------


## familydog

> [COLOR=#37404E][FONT=lucida grande]The government's only job is to secure individual rights, uphold justice, and enforce contracts.


How can the state exist without violating the same individual rights it claims to protect? 

It's the elephant in the room and ought to be addressed.

----------


## Travlyr

> How can the state exist without violating the same individual rights it claims to protect? 
> 
> It's the elephant in the room and ought to be addressed.


It can't. 

However, the state is the difference between a nomadic society and home ownership.

----------


## silverhandorder

> It can't. 
> 
> However, the state is the difference between a nomadic society and home ownership.


Correction. State is a form of predation on civilized aka rich societies.

----------


## Travlyr

> This comes down to what is essentially a semantic distinction.
> 
> What anarchists have a problem with is NOT "governance" or "government" _per se_ - those things basically just mean "the creation and application of rules and standards." There's nothing wrong with that, in and of itself. In fact, it is absolutely necessary and critical for the existence of stable and civil human society.
> 
> What anarchists have a problem with is "governance" or "government" by the State (where "the State" is the group of elite monopolists I identified in my previous post). Unfortunately, in today's world of totalistic nation-states, the State is the only source of "governance" or "government" - and States, by their nature, do not tolerate or permit any other sources of governance to exist. Thus, the word "government" is very often used as a synonym for "the State." So an anarchist can say that he is against "government" (in the sense of "the State") - and he can also say that he supports "government" (in the sense of "the creation and application of rules and standards for society"). Although the former sense is far more common than the latter, both are valid uses of the term.
> 
> This is why I believe that if a truly voluntaryist society is ever actually achieved, many anarchists and non-anarchists will then start arguing with one another over whether what they are living under is "really" an anarchy or "really" something else - even though both groups approve of and support it, whatever it might be called. Quite a few of the arguments between anarchists and non-anarchists amount to just arguing over definitions and talking past one another - when they actually agree on just about everything that is of any real importance or significance ...


Yet, the State in and of itself is benign. The State is simply an area of land with boundaries and rules ... necessary rules. Don't murder. If you do then we will hunt you down and stop you from murdering again. Don't steal. If you do then we will hunt you down and stop you from stealing what is not yours. Don't assault. If you do then we will hunt you down. Don't trespass, etc.

What I argue is that we ARE living in a state of ANARCHY. People were able to kill 3000 people on 9/11 and very few people are seeking to hunt them down to stop them from killing even more people. Those same people have gone around the world and killed perhaps another million people or more and nobody is doing anything to stop them. Those same people rob everyone they can every day of our lives. They assault us and they trespass with impunity. They have been successful in calling Anarchy the State while the State IS their true enemy.

----------


## Travlyr

> Correction. State is a form of predation on civilized aka rich societies.


I do not see it that way at all. Masters, slave masters, the MIC, is a form of predation on slaves. The legitimate State is their enemy. Masters want nothing to do with obeying the laws they force upon us.

----------


## Henry Rogue

> The government's only job is to secure individual rights, uphold justice, and enforce contracts. It doesn't do any of these very well, and typically fails at anything it tries. But it is guaranteed to fail at anything outside of the scope of those 3 points.
> 
> And anarchism is as bad as democracy is; the group with the most guns win. The only ideal government is a republic where the primacy of the individual is respected.
> 
> http://www.forbes.com/sites/harrybinswanger/2014/01/24/sorry-libertarian-anarchists-capitalism-requires-government-2/


Matt, you'll make a great republican/democrat shill someday.

----------


## silverhandorder

> I do not see it that way at all. Masters, slave masters, the MIC, is a form of predation on slaves. The legitimate State is their enemy. Masters want nothing to do with obeying the laws they force upon us.


This is the way Stefan explained it (I may be wrong on the source). Ancient societies had the state where wealth concentrated in order to capture the wealth that civilization brings. That is intuitive to me. If I was a parasite I would go where the wealth is. It also how it works in my experience. The greatest concentrations of wealth in society have to most rent seeking/state behavior. Rural vs Urban comes to mind.

----------


## silverhandorder

> Yet, the State in and of itself is benign. The State is simply an area of land with boundaries and rules ... necessary rules. Don't murder. If you do then we will hunt you down and stop you from murdering again. Don't steal. If you do then we will hunt you down and stop you from stealing what is not yours. Don't assault. If you do then we will hunt you down. Don't trespass, etc.
> 
> What I argue is that we ARE living in a state of ANARCHY. People were able to kill 3000 people on 9/11 and very few people are seeking to hunt them down to stop them from killing even more people. Those same people have gone around the world and killed perhaps another million people or more and nobody is doing anything to stop them. Those same people rob everyone they can every day of our lives. They assault us and they trespass with impunity. They have been successful in calling Anarchy the State while the State IS their true enemy.


We don't have same definitions for what the state is then. In our view the state is a group of people with monopoly on use of force in a geographic area.  Rules and imaginary boundaries is not what I or I am willing to bet Occam consider as the state.

Now as far as 9/11 let's not derail this and focus on something we agree.

----------


## Occam's Banana

> Yet, the State in and of itself is benign. The State is simply an area of land with boundaries and rules ... necessary rules. Don't murder. If you do then we will hunt you down and stop you from murdering again. Don't steal. If you do then we will hunt you down and stop you from stealing what is not yours. Don't assault. If you do then we will hunt you down. Don't trespass, etc.
> 
> What I argue is that we ARE living in a state of ANARCHY. People were able to kill 3000 people on 9/11 and very few people are seeking to hunt them down to stop them from killing even more people. Those same people have gone around the world and killed perhaps another million people or more and nobody is doing anything to stop them. Those same people rob everyone they can every day of our lives. They assault us and they trespass with impunity. They have been successful in calling Anarchy the State while the State IS their true enemy.


I use the term "anarchy" to mean nothing else than "the absence of the State." I identified exactly what I mean by "the State" earlier in this thread (which is NOT the same as what you mean by it). And what you refer to as "anarchy" I would instead call "lawlessness." (This last is a perfect example of there being two very different - but legitimate - senses or definitions of a word.)

So when I talk about "anarchy" and "the State," I mean very different things than you do. There's nothing wrong with that - in fact, it is inevitiable. Language is not a thing that can be applied mechanistically or robotically (which is what makes it so flexible and powerful - but also imprecise and "sloppy"). That just means that we all have to be careful to try to understand exactly what other people mean by the words that they use (and to make clear what we ourselves mean by the words that we use). Otherwise, we will just get hung up on "labels" and end up talking past one another (and often getting angry and pissed off at each other in the process) when we actually agree to a very great extent on everything that really matters ...

So wiith the exception of these semantic quibbles - and knowing the particular meanings that YOU are using for "anarchy" and "the State" in this case - I enthusiastically agree with everything you have said in the above quote.

----------


## Travlyr

> We don't have same definitions for what the state is then. In our view the state is a group of people with monopoly on use of force in a geographic area.  Rules and imaginary boundaries is not what I or I am willing to bet Occam consider as the state.
> 
> Now as far as 9/11 let's not derail this and focus on something we agree.


When I think of a State, I think of the State of Montana for example. It has land area, boundaries, laws, and enforcers of those laws. No matter what definition of state you and others want to promote, most people will think of a State as an area with boundaries and rules. Rhetoric, the 4th R, is important to facilitate discussion.

What could we possibly focus on? I was not aware of you and I agree on anything.

----------


## silverhandorder

> When I think of a State, I think of the State of Montana for example. It has land area, boundaries, laws, and enforcers of those laws. No matter what definition of state you and others want to promote, most people will think of a State as an area with boundaries and rules. Rhetoric, the 4th R, is important to facilitate discussion.
> 
> What could we possibly focus on? I was not aware of you and I agree on anything.


Read Occam's post above. You an I can have two different meanings for the same word. IT is important only that you know what I mean and I know what you mean. Otherwise we are not talking about the same thing.

----------


## Henry Rogue

> What I have never understood is the weird & bizarre assertion that competing security/enforcement providers would automatically and inevitably end up "shooting at each other" - apparently for no particular reason, but merely "just because." (Note how Binswanger is quoted in the OP as saying, "anarchism is as bad as democracy is; the group with the most guns win[s]." I mean, WTF?)
> 
> Why would they be any more inclined to "shoot at each other" than, say, competing pizza delivery businesses? Just becasue they have guns? That makes NO sense whatsoever - since in a free society, anyone can and would have guns (including pizza delivery people). The security/enforcement providers would not be any different from anyone else in this regard. Yet we are expected to believe that such agencies will (for some unspecified reason) go on "take over" rampages while everyone else just stands around with their thumbs up their asses ...
> 
> The application of coercion (including shooting at people - especially people who can and will shoot back) is NOT costless. Even the Mafia understands that "mob wars" are bad for business. Critics of anarchism who imagine that it's simply a matter of "the group with the most guns wins" are apparently unable to grasp this simple concept.


Apparently, they believe the employees will choose loyalty to their employer over the instinct of self preservation. To many movies/TV shows depicting this nonsense. Funny how the employees of "Spectre" (in James Bond films) were always so eager to sacrifice their lives even though their motives for crime were so filled with greed.

----------


## Neil Desmond

> We don't have same definitions for what the state is then. In our view the state is a group of people with monopoly on use of force in a geographic area.  Rules and imaginary boundaries is not what I or I am willing to bet Occam consider as the state.


I'm not sure who you're referring to when you say "in our view."  Who is this monopoly group of people you refer to, everyone who is either a resident in that state or a member of that state?  I guess I'm part of that monopoly then, because here in this geographic area where I'm a resident and member I can use force to defend myself or my home from intruders.  It seems like your implying that I am prohibited from defending myself, my home, etc. when there is a lack of the state.

----------


## Neil Desmond

> I use the term "anarchy" to mean nothing else than "the absence of the State." I identified exactly what I mean by "the State" earlier in this thread (which is NOT the same as what you mean by it). And what you refer to as "anarchy" I would instead call "lawlessness." (This last is a perfect example of there being two very different - but legitimate - senses or definitions of a word.)
> 
> So when I talk about "anarchy" and "the State," I mean very different things than you do. There's nothing wrong with that - in fact, it is inevitiable. Language is not a thing that can be applied mechanistically or robotically (which is what makes it so flexible and powerful). That just means that we all have to be careful to try to understand exactly what other people mean by the words they use (and to make clear what we ourselves mean by the words that we use). Otherwise, we will just get hung up on "labels" and end up talking past one another (and often getting angry and pissed off at each other in the process) when we actually agree to a very great extent on everything that really matters ...
> 
> So wiith the exception of these semantic quibbles - and knowing the particular meanings that YOU are using for "anarchy" and "the State" in this case - I enthusiastically agree with everything you have said in the above quote.


In that case the thing to do is to determine what the author in the OP story means when using the word state, anarchy, etc.  Right?

----------


## Henry Rogue

> Freezing point = 32
> Boiling point = I have no clue
> 
> 
> That does not make sense.


Celsius zeros at the point fresh water freezes. Fahrenheit zeros at the point salt water freezes. My guess is Fahrenheit's unit of scale determined the boiling point once zero was established.

----------


## Matt Collins

Anarchy is defined as absence of government

----------


## green73

> It can't. 
> 
> However, the state is the difference between a nomadic society and home ownership.


LOL

----------


## Matt Collins

> How can the state exist without violating the same individual rights it claims to protect? 
> 
> It's the elephant in the room and ought to be addressed.


Very valid point. The harsh reality is that no system is perfect, because no system is capable of being perfect. 

Any government will violate individual rights at some level, which is why it must be as small, limited, and restrained as possible.

----------


## Occam's Banana

> Rules and imaginary boundaries is not  what I or I am willing to bet Occam consider as the state.


Correct. The existence of rules & boundaries is NOT what I consider to be a State. The existence of a single monopolistic group of rules creators, judgers and enforcers (who unilaterally force their decisions upon everyone else with impunity) is what I consider to be a State.

In the absence of the State (i.e., under Anarchy), rules and boundaries are still absolutely essential and must exist if there is to be any kind of stable and civil social order. The argument of anarchists is that the existence of the State (as defined above) is NOT necessary in order for such rules, boundaries, etc. to exist or to be enforced.

----------


## familydog

> Very valid point. The harsh reality is that no system is perfect, because no system is capable of being perfect. 
> 
> Any government will violate individual rights at some level, which is why it must be as small, limited, and restrained as possible.


The state violates the same rights it claims to protect. It cannot be argued that the state exists to protect rights and enforce contracts. What, then, separates the state from the roving gangs of violence that are feared in a stateless society?

----------


## Travlyr

> Correct. The existence of rules & boundaries is NOT what I consider to be a State. The existence of a single monopolistic group of rules creators, judgers and enforcers (who unilaterally force their decisions upon everyone else with impunity) is what I consider to be a State.
> 
> *In the absence of the State (i.e., under Anarchy), rules and boundaries are still absolutely essential and must exist if there is to be any kind of stable and civil social order.* The argument of anarchists is that the existence of the State (as defined above) is NOT necessary in order for such rules, boundaries, etc. to exist or to be enforced.


Who (under Anarchy) determines those boundaries and enforces the rules?

----------


## green73

> Who (under Anarchy) determines those boundaries and enforces the rules?


Private property boundaries would be recognized by reputable courts.

----------


## Travlyr

> Private property boundaries would be recognized by reputable courts.


Just like under a State? And *Who* enforces the rules?

----------


## GunnyFreedom

> Private property boundaries would be recognized by reputable courts.





> Just like under a State? And *Who* enforces the rules?


Aye, at some point you are going to have a thief who doesn't give a snot what some court says, and if that thief can amass a bigger army than you, there goes your property rights out the window.  It can be somewhat difficult to earn a living when you have to hang out on your front porch all day and night with a rifle.

----------


## green73

> Just like under a State? And *Who* enforces the rules?


A judge who's earned a reputation for being just. If a party does not abide by the ruling their (the party's) reputation will be hurt and people will be less likely to do business with them.

----------


## Travlyr

> *A judge* who's earned a reputation for being just. If a party does not abide by the ruling their (the party's) reputation will be hurt and people will be less likely to do business with them.


A judge is master just like in a State.

----------


## Travlyr

> Aye, at some point you are going to have a thief who doesn't give a snot what some court says, and if that thief can amass a bigger army than you, there goes your property rights out the window.  It can be somewhat difficult to earn a living when you have to hang out on your front porch all day and night with a rifle.


This is it. Whoever has the biggest baddest weapon is master. That is why we have nuclear weapons and can not afford to let Iran get one.

----------


## green73

> A judge is master just like in a State.


His reputation is earned. If he makes bad decisions people will not use him.

----------


## ClydeCoulter

> His reputation is earned. If he makes bad decisions it will hurt his career.


Who decides which judge to use, then?  I want this judge, you want that one, in a dispute we have.

_edit: This assumes that each of us sees an advantage to using a particular judge, that might be more likely to rule in our own favor._

----------


## green73

> This is it. Whoever has the biggest baddest weapon is master. That is why we have nuclear weapons and can not afford to let Iran get one.


Let's say Cananda went stateless. Who the hell is going to nuke them and why, and how will the mass murder be justified?

----------


## Travlyr

> Let's say Cananda went stateless. *Who the hell is going to nuke them* and why, and *how will the mass murder be justified*?


People who do not believe that laws apply to them. 

Just like Vietnam and all the other mass murder in the last 100 years. War Is A Racket. It pays big bucks.

----------


## boneyard bill

> What I have never understood is the weird & bizarre assertion that competing security/enforcement providers would automatically and inevitably end up "shooting at each other" - apparently for no particular reason, but merely "just because." (Note how Binswanger is quoted in the OP as saying, "anarchism is as bad as democracy is; the group with the most guns win[s]." I mean, WTF?)
> 
> Why would they be any more inclined to "shoot at each other" than, say, competing pizza delivery businesses? Just becasue they have guns? That makes NO sense whatsoever - since in a free society, anyone can and would have guns (including pizza delivery people). The security/enforcement providers would not be any different from anyone else in this regard. Yet we are expected to believe that such agencies will (for some unspecified reason) go on "take over" rampages while everyone else just stands around with their thumbs up their asses ...
> 
> The application of coercion (including shooting at people - especially people who can and will shoot back) is NOT costless. Even the Mafia understands that "mob wars" are bad for business. Critics of anarchism who imagine that it's simply a matter of "the group with the most guns wins" are apparently unable to grasp this simple concept.


You fail to consider the possibility that pizza delivery drivers do not shoot each other BECAUSE of government. If the Mafia understood that "mob wars" were bad for business, why do they fight them? They're only bad for the business of the loser. The winner gains the rewards of the losers business. We once had private fire-fighting companies and competitive companies were known to show up at the scene of a fire and fight (literally fist-fight) over who should be allowed to put out the fire and collect the fee. Meanwhile, the building burned to the ground.

True, violence is not costless, but it does have its rewards. Historically war has been regarded as a perfectly legitimate profit-making enterprise.

The security guards of the middle ages, the knights, were constantly making war against other knights to gain control of their retainers, the serfs. Once the serfs contracted with their security guards, they were not free to seek other security guards. If competition were the answer, why hasn't it won the battle for survival? We've had numerous political systems throughout history. Why hasn't anarcho-capitalism won out?

----------


## Neil Desmond

> His reputation is earned. If he makes bad decisions people will not use him.


So if some anarchist "judge" makes a ruling that goes against the interests of me or my business, and I can dismiss this "judge" as having made a bad decision and will not use him, then there never really was a judge or a ruling in the first place.

----------


## Neil Desmond

> Why hasn't anarcho-capitalism won out?


I think anarcho-capitalism may have existed somewhere at some point in the past, but inevitably they decay into something else (e.g, kingdom, empire, or some other authoritarian regime) because they cannot be stable.

----------


## boneyard bill

David Gordon writes:




> Binswangers article contains other mistakes as well. He says that a free market presupposes objective law, but he fails to show that objective law requires a government


But Gordon also fails to show that it is possible without one. Put another way, he fails to address Binswanger's claim that private, competitive entities must necessarily be subjective.

----------


## Travlyr

> Who decides which judge to use, then?  I want this judge, you want that one, in a dispute we have.
> 
> _edit: This assumes that each of us sees an advantage to using a particular judge, that might be more likely to rule in our own favor._


Which ever party pays the most wins.

----------


## GunnyFreedom

> A judge who's earned a reputation for being just. If a party does not abide by the ruling their (the party's) reputation will be hurt and people will be less likely to do business with them.


Pretty sure a group of thugs who go around raping robbing and killing don't give a damn if 'righteous people' want to do business with them.

----------


## green73

> Who decides which judge to use, then?  I want this judge, you want that one, in a dispute we have.


It's all speculation of course how that will be determined. After all these solutions arise out of markets with countless actors...but..

Presumably, an arbiter will be agreed upon in the original contract. 

If there is not a contract (say a man steals a television), the victim will go to a recognized judge. If the alleged thief doesn't agree to that judge, they will be able to counter with a judge of their own. If the two parties cannot agree on a judge (and that would probably be very rare...one judge would have to have a poor reputation) then there would mostly likely be a 3rd party to decide that. It's all speculation, after all, if one person could tell you exactly how the system would play out, central planners might actually work. So to keep speculating, people will probably have insurance for theft and violence and other non-contractual eventualities. The insurance companies will compensate them and then go after the offending parties to get their payout back. There may be such insurance policies as coverage from false accusations. If the TV thief has this (probably as part of an overall policy that covers many things) the two insurance companies would handle deciding the judge. They would probably have standing contracts about which judges to use in just such matters. Again, this is speculation; I am not a central planner.

----------


## ClydeCoulter

@green73,

You don't need to be a central planner to consider one of the most rudimentary requirements of a society.  Simple dispute resolution.

----------


## GunnyFreedom

> It's all speculation of course how that will be determined. After all these solutions arise out of markets with countless actors...but..
> 
> Presumably, an arbiter will be agreed upon in the original contract. 
> 
> If there is not a contract (say a man steals a television), the victim will go to a recognized judge. If the alleged thief doesn't agree to that judge, they will be able to counter with a judge of their own. If the two parties cannot agree on a judge (and that would probably be very rare...one judge would have to have a poor reputation) then there would mostly likely be a 3rd party to decide that. It's all speculation, after all, if one person could tell you exactly how the system would play out, central planners might actually work. So to keep speculating, people will probably have insurance for theft and violence and other non-contractual eventualities. The insurance companies will compensate them and then go after the offending parties to get their payout back. There may be such insurance policies as coverage from false accusations. If the TV thief has this (probably as part of an overall policy that covers many things) the two insurance companies would handle deciding the judge. They would probably have standing contracts about which judges to use in just such matters. Again, this is speculation; I am not a central planner.


Umm.  Why would a television thief want any kind of judge at all?  Most likely he'll just laugh in your face and walk away.

----------


## green73

> Pretty sure a group of thugs who go around raping robbing and killing don't give a damn if 'righteous people' want to do business with them.


Who is to say that there won't be security firms to address people like this? 

Anyway, check this out, if you really care.

 But Wouldn't Warlords Take Over? 
https://mises.org/daily/1855

 The Market for Security | Robert P. Murphy 



I'm sure Trav has had this presented to him more than once and I doubt he's ever taken the time to review it. Maybe you will.

----------


## ClydeCoulter

> Umm.  Why would a television thief want any kind of judge at all?  Most likely he'll just laugh in your face and walk away.


Exactly.  Even simple dispute resolution would require that the two parties will willingly enter into judgment, or else someone must "force" the unwilling party to do so.

----------


## green73

> Umm.  Why would a television thief want any kind of judge at all?  Most likely he'll just laugh in your face and walk away.


How good does it look that he didn't try to defend himself? Pretty piss poor. The victim's insurance company will make sure that the scoundrel has this on their record. They may indeed send collectors to get the TV back or something of equivalent value, or they may have him detained and forced to work off his debt.

----------


## Neil Desmond

> Umm.  Why would a television thief want any kind of judge at all?  Most likely he'll just laugh in your face and walk away.


In some cases yes; in other cases the person who's accused of being the television thief might claim that it's the person accusing them of being a television thief who's actually trying to rob him of a television that actually belongs to him.

The more I think about the concept of anarchism, there more it seems like it's impossible to own property in an anarchist society; and capitalism implies property ownership.

----------


## ClydeCoulter

> Who is to say that there won't be security firms to address people like this? 
> 
> Anyway, check this out, if you really care.
> 
>  But Wouldn't Warlords Take Over? 
> https://mises.org/daily/1855
> 
>  The Market for Security | Robert P. Murphy 
> _(Video removed to save space)_
> ...


I would rather see the arguments made in this thread, instead of arguing over someone's video.  It would make the flow better to follow.  Can you give the arguments from the video that you agree with here?

----------


## GunnyFreedom

> Who is to say that there won't be security firms to address people like this?


So, it still boils down to who has the biggest guns wins.




> Anyway, check this out, if you really care.
> 
>  But Wouldn't Warlords Take Over? 
> https://mises.org/daily/1855


Per this article it requires an 'enlightened' population to work.  You don't...actually...think these people are 'enlightened' do you?




> The Market for Security | Robert P. Murphy 
> 
> 
> 
> I'm sure Trav has had this presented to him more than once and I doubt he's ever taken the time to review it. Maybe you will.


If it takes an entire hour to explain why 'the guy with the biggest guns does not win' then he needs to re-examine his core premise.

----------


## GunnyFreedom

> How good does it look that he didn't try to defend himself? Pretty piss poor. The victim's insurance company will make sure that the scoundrel has this on their record. They may indeed send collectors to get the TV back or something of equivalent value, or they may have him detained and forced to work off his debt.


So again it boils down to who has the biggest guns wins.

----------


## green73

> I would rather see the arguments made in this thread, instead of arguing over someone's video.  It would make the flow better to follow.  Can you give the arguments from the video that you agree with here?


I am doing that. But there is no reason to not have this material covered if you are going to argue against it.

----------


## ClydeCoulter

As far as hiring someone to do something for you, you cannot give a right to someone else to exercise on your behalf that you do not yourself have.

In the case of a judge, I can judge for myself?  If so, then I can pass that right on to a judge to do on my behalf or execute the judgment myself?

----------


## green73

> So again it boils down to who has the biggest guns wins.


Are serious? Or can you just not read that well?

----------


## Occam's Banana

> You fail to consider the possibility that pizza delivery drivers do not shoot each other BECAUSE of government.


I have NOT failed to consider it. I quite explicitly consider the notion that pizza delivery agencies (or security/enforcement agencies) would just start "shooting each other" (merely due to the absence of a State, as I have defined it) to be cartoonishly ridiculous and grotesquely absurd. That was the whole point of my post.




> If the Mafia understood that "mob wars" were bad for business, why do they fight them? [...]


You have missed my point. I was NOT suggesting that the costs of employing violent coercion (by mobsters, fire-fighters or medieval knights) cannot be overcome or offset by net gains. I was explicity addressing the extremely common subtext upon which so many perfunctory dismissals of anarchism rest - specifically, the notion that wanton violence will be the immediate, automatic and/or inevitable result of an absence of force-monopolizing elites (i.e., the State). My sole purpose in invoking the example of the Mafia was to demonstrate that even sociopathic thugs (let alone peaceful producers) make cost-benefit calculations when it comes to the application of violent coercion.

----------


## GunnyFreedom

> In some cases yes; in other cases the person who's accused of being the television thief might claim that it's the person accusing them of being a television thief who's actually trying to rob him of a television that actually belongs to him.
> 
> The more I think about the concept of anarchism, there more it seems like it's impossible to own property in an anarchist society; and capitalism implies property ownership.


See, this is my issue.  Philosophical anarchism is basically the state mankind was supposed to be in prior to the fall and the corruption.  After that, we descended into a kind of semi-anarchism (the time of the Judges) and as man became further and further corrupted we eventually fell into full-bore statism.  Philosophical anarchism is the ideal condition for a population that is not sinful.  Given a sinful population it is simply a utopian ideal that cannot be achieved.

----------


## GunnyFreedom

> Are serious? Or can you just not read that well?


I am serious as a heart attack, and I read it perfectly.  Maybe you are failing to consider the implication that the guy doesn't actually WANT to be dragged off by strangers and put into forced labor?

----------


## green73

> I am serious as a heart attack, and I read it perfectly.  Maybe you are failing to consider the implication that the guy doesn't actually WANT to be dragged off by strangers and put into forced labor?


Then he should have defended himself.

----------


## GunnyFreedom

"Yeah, we're here to capture and stick you into a forced labor camp to pay for that television you claim you didn't steal."

"Oh, OK.  Let's go then."

Yeah, I kind of doubt it.

----------


## GunnyFreedom

> Then he should have defended himself.


So, it boils down to who has the biggest guns wins.

----------


## ClydeCoulter

> "Yeah, we're here to capture and stick you into a forced labor camp to pay for that television you claim you didn't steal."
> 
> "Oh, OK.  Let's go then."
> 
> Yeah, I kind of doubt it.


And then, he calls his security team, and ....

----------


## green73

> "Yeah, we're here to capture and stick you into a forced labor camp to pay for that television you claim you didn't steal."
> 
> "Oh, OK.  Let's go then."
> 
> Yeah, I kind of doubt it.


Who is to say they would go to that expense over a television?

----------


## boneyard bill

> So again it boils down to who has the biggest guns wins.


Hasn't history shown this time and time again? We did not defeat the Germans in world war II because we were democratic, and certainly not because we employed democratic means to do it. We won because we had much greater productive power and because we had more powerful allies, particularly the Soviet Union which was definitely NOT democratic.

----------


## ClydeCoulter

> Who is to say they would go to that expense over a television?


To set an example, whether the real intent was a TV or something else.

----------


## Neil Desmond

> Then he should have defended himself.


It seems like almost everyone does this by creating and maintaining a state.

----------


## Travlyr

> So, it boils down to who has the biggest guns wins.


In the absence of a legitimate State.

----------


## GunnyFreedom

> Who is to say they would go to that expense over a television?


Well, you did:




> How good does it look that he didn't try to defend himself? Pretty piss poor. The victim's insurance company will make sure that the scoundrel has this on their record. They may indeed send collectors to get the TV back or something of equivalent value, _or they may have him detained and forced to work off his debt._


But the point isn't a TV or the value of it, but that ultimately every one of these solutions boils down to who has the biggest guns, wins.

And it may not be an individual, maybe it's a whole cartel of TV thieves 1000 strong, which at any given moment they have 500 or so hanging around with M2 .50 Cal machine guns, grenade launchers, mortars, and shoulder fired missiles.

----------


## Occam's Banana

> But Gordon also fails to show that it is possible without one. Put another way, he fails to address Binswanger's claim that private, competitive entities must necessarily be subjective.


*sigh* Gordon addresses this very point in the replies to his article.

Gordon was NOT trying to demonstrate or argue that "objective law" does not require "a government" (i.e., a State).

He was pointing out that Binswanger's criticism of anarchism depends upon "objective law" requiring "a government" (i.e., a State) - and that Binswanger had failed to show that this is actually the case.

IOW: It is NOT required that one show that "X is possible" in order to show that an argument that "X is NOT possible" is inadequate or flawed.

----------


## silverhandorder

This thread is moving to fast for me.

Anyways I will just leave the last thing here. It does not matter what we all think. Both sides are in the process of implementing their vision. We will see in the end what ends up working and what will be discarded. 

I find that I am happy and successful in my life and that I can attribute to listening to people like Stefan Moleneux and Peter Schiff when I was growing up.

----------


## green73

> To set an example, whether the real intent was a TV or something else.


In a case of the TV an insurance company would probably take the hit and be content with the thief having it on their record. Now if a person burns somebody's house down (for example), lost in court or failed to show up to court, didn't have insurance, his violence would be met with force, and he would have to work it off. But who knows? this is speculation. A free market may do it that way, tweek it, or find an even better way.

----------


## GunnyFreedom

> Hasn't history shown this time and time again? We did not defeat the Germans in world war II because we were democratic, and certainly not because we employed democratic means to do it. We won because we had much greater productive power and because we had more powerful allies, particularly the Soviet Union which was definitely NOT democratic.


Indeed, but at least with some kind of authority in place (certainly _not_ the monstrosity we have _now_) that burden does not fall to the individual.  If some poor impoverished guy has to hang out at home day and night defending his wife and kids from hellions, then he's not going to have much of an opportunity to go out and earn a living.  If he does not have money to spend, he is not going to be able to afford security services either so that he can leave his home and go out and work for a living.

----------


## green73

> Well, you did:
> 
> 
> 
> But the point isn't a TV or the value of it, but that ultimately every one of these solutions boils down to who has the biggest guns, wins.
> 
> And it may not be an individual, maybe it's a whole cartel of TV thieves 1000 strong, which at any given moment they have 500 or so hanging around with M2 .50 Cal machine guns, grenade launchers, mortars, and shoulder fired missiles.


I used the TV as just one example. I explained more above. 

If there is a group like you stated above, you don't think honest members of society, of whom there would be many, many times more, could put together the resources to defeat them?

----------


## silverhandorder

> Well, you did:
> 
> 
> 
> But the point isn't a TV or the value of it, but that ultimately every one of these solutions boils down to who has the biggest guns, wins.
> 
> And it may not be an individual, maybe it's a whole cartel of TV thieves 1000 strong, which at any given moment they have 500 or so hanging around with M2 .50 Cal machine guns, grenade launchers, mortars, and shoulder fired missiles.


Ofcourse you need to have bigger guns. Bigger guns don't necessarily mean actually more people and better guns. It could mean being organized or implementing a strategy. How is it working out for the empire being bogged down in middle east? Now ofcourse I don't want fighting and predation. What we have now is fighting and predation. I can't imagine anarchy being worse then what we have now.

----------


## GunnyFreedom

> In a case of the TV an insurance company would probably take the hit and be content with the thief having it on their record. Now if a person burns somebody's house down (for example), lost in court or failed to show up to court, didn't have insurance, his violence would be met with force, and he would have to work it off. But who knows? this is speculation. A free market may do it that way, tweek it, or find an even better way.


Thieves are not going to carry insurance to cover their thefts, and a black market cartel 1000 strong are going to steal things far more valuable than televisions.  In your model, the victims insurance companies will either end up spending hundreds of thousands of dollars raising armies (costing the victims MORE than the value of the items stolen), charge victims an amount at least equivalent to the material being stolen to compensate them (at which point why bother with insurance at all?), or instantly go out of business for taking a constant loss.

----------


## GunnyFreedom

> I used the TV as just one example. I explained more above. 
> 
> If there is a group like you stated above, you don't think honest members of society, of whom there would be many, many times more, could put together the resources to defeat them?


Well, if they are all independently wealthy and don't need to go to work to earn money for food, maybe.  Or maybe they don't want to dodge mortars for other people's televisions.

----------


## Neil Desmond

> This thread is moving to fast for me.
> 
> Anyways I will just leave the last thing here. It does not matter what we all think. Both sides are in the process of implementing their vision. We will see in the end what ends up working and what will be discarded. 
> 
> I find that I am happy and successful in my life and that I can attribute to listening to people like Stefan Moleneux and Peter Schiff when I was growing up.


That's the good thing about freedom of speech.  We're free to debate, argue, disagree; we can criticize, condemn, or even say the state is invalid.  If we didn't have freedom of speech, I'd probably be a political prisoner or dead.  Live free or die!

----------


## GunnyFreedom

> Ofcourse you need to have bigger guns. Bigger guns don't necessarily mean actually more people and better guns. It could mean being organized or implementing a strategy. How is it working out for the empire being bogged down in middle east? Now ofcourse I don't want fighting and predation. What we have now is fighting and predation. I can't imagine anarchy being worse then what we have now.


The difference is that the lowly impoverished schlep can still go out and earn a paycheck without worrying that his house will be cleaned out when he gets home.  And clearly none of us want the government we have today, so that is a strawman.

----------


## Occam's Banana

> I can't imagine anarchy being worse then what we have now.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RILDjo4EXV8







> The debate between statists and anti-statists is in my judgement not evenly matched. *Defending the continued existence of the state*,  despite having absolute  certainty of a corresponding continuation of  its intrinsic engagement in  extortion, robbery, willful destruction of  wealth, assault, kidnapping,  murder, and countless other crimes, *requires﻿ that one imagine non-state  chaos, disorder, and death on a scale that non-state actors seem completely  incapable of causing.*

----------


## Travlyr

> I used the TV as just one example. I explained more above. 
> 
> *If there is a group like you stated above, you don't think honest members of society, of whom there would be many, many times more, could put together the resources to defeat them?*


There is a group like that. They have their fingers on the nuclear weapons. Nobody is stopping them. 

I think modern human behavior has clearly demonstrated that most people think mass murder is okay and will not lift a finger to help others achieve justice. People are self-interested for the most part.

----------


## green73

> Thieves are not going to carry insurance to cover their thefts, and a black market cartel 1000 strong are going to steal things far more valuable than televisions.  In your model, the victims insurance companies will either end up spending hundreds of thousands of dollars raising armies (costing the victims MORE than the value of the items stolen), charge victims an amount at least equivalent to the material being stolen to compensate them (at which point why bother with insurance at all?), or instantly go out of business for taking a constant loss.


Who's to say there won't be defense agencies employed by the insurance companies? A thousand man gang with no legitimacy doesn't sound like that big of a threat against society as a whole. In the unlikely event that they should arise, several other defense agencies may be called into help. Where there is a need the market would answer.

----------


## green73

> There is a group like that. They have their fingers on the nuclear weapons. Nobody is stopping them. 
> 
> I think modern human behavior has clearly demonstrated that most people think mass murder is okay and will not lift a finger to help others achieve justice. People are self-interested for the most part.


I just don't buy that mass murders like that could last for long.

----------


## GunnyFreedom

> There is a group like that. They have their fingers on the nuclear weapons. Nobody is stopping them. 
> 
> I think modern human behavior has clearly demonstrated that most people think mass murder is okay and will not lift a finger to help others achieve justice. People are self-interested for the most part.


Indeed; there is nothing intrinsic that makes a state mob any better than a stateless mob.  My point, and the point of strict Constitutional minarchists like myself, is we want to least mobbish condition possible.  Too much state - mobbish.  No state at all - mobbish.  Just barely enough to secure our rights to life, liberty, and property; and strictly limited to that function alone - less mobbish than the other two choices at least.  Utopia is translated 'no place' for a reason.  We aren't going to find it until after that humankind has been transfigured.  Then, and only then will philosophical anarchism actually work, and at that point I will likely be it's biggest advocate (if it does not simply come about naturally).

----------


## green73

> Well, if they are all independently wealthy and don't need to go to work to earn money for food, maybe.  Or maybe they don't want to dodge mortars for other people's televisions.


That's a ridiculous non-response.

----------


## Travlyr

> Who's to say there won't be defense agencies employed by the insurance companies? A thousand man gang with no legitimacy doesn't sound like that big of a threat against society as a whole. In the unlikely event that they should arise, several other defense agencies may be called into help. Where there is a need the market would answer.


If only that were true. We know who killed 3000 Americans just a few years ago. We are not even allowed to talk about it on the front page let alone do something about it. The 1000 man mass murdering gang are the masters of the world. A legitimate State would serve warrants, arrest them, and present the case in front of a judge and jury.

----------


## green73

> If only that were true. We know who killed 3000 Americans just a few years ago. We are not even allowed to talk about it on the front page let alone do something about it. The 1000 man mass murdering gang are the masters of the world. A legitimate State would serve warrants, arrest them, and present the case in front of a judge and jury.


They have the consent of the governed. Not the same thing at all.

----------


## kcchiefs6465

> If only that were true. We know who killed 3000 Americans just a few years ago. We are not even allowed to talk about it on the front page let alone do something about it. The 1000 man mass murdering gang are the masters of the world. A legitimate State would serve warrants, arrest them, and present the case in front of a judge and jury.


A legitimate state would be founded on consent and would not rob, rape, and pillage the property of those who did not wish to live under it.

Now name me a legitimate state.

----------


## GunnyFreedom

> Who's to say there won't be defense agencies employed by the insurance companies? A thousand man gang with no legitimacy doesn't sound like that big of a threat against society as a whole. In the unlikely event that they should arise, several other defense agencies may be called into help. Where there is a need the market would answer.


It costs a whole crazy lot of money to do such a thing, and you end up in a pretty serious Catch-22.  If this kind of thing doesn't happen very often, then there won't be any defense agencies to combat them, and if it does happen a lot, then it will be too expensive to combat in that fashion.  Still, and again, it ends up boiling down to whomever has the biggest guns, wins.  And, you still have the guy on the bottom of the spectrum who can't afford insurance or can't afford to pay a security company, who wants to go out and start earning a living but can't, because it isn't safe for him to leave his home.

Even accounting for market factors that can provide security, it only works for a society filled with nothing but wealthy people, and that's just not realistic.

----------


## GunnyFreedom

> That's a ridiculous non-response.


Uhh, no.  Just because you are incapable of addressing the issue does not make it a ridiculous non-response.  You work 40 to 60 hours a week and you aren't going to have time to train for a war, particularly against people who probably fight all the time and have some knowledge of how to fight.  Likewise, why is some independently wealthy guy with his own security force going to want to go dodge real mortars for some poor impoverished schlep's television?

----------


## green73

> It costs a whole crazy lot of money to do such a thing, and you end up in a pretty serious Catch-22.  If this kind of thing doesn't happen very often, then there won't be any defense agencies to combat them, and if it does happen a lot, then it will be too expensive to combat in that fashion.  Still, and again, it ends up boiling down to whomever has the biggest guns, wins.  And, you still have the guy on the bottom of the spectrum who can't afford insurance or can't afford to pay a security company, who wants to go out and start earning a living but can't, because it isn't safe for him to leave his home.
> 
> Even accounting for market factors that can provide security, it only works for a society filled with nothing but wealthy people, and that's just not realistic.


Society vs. a 1000 man gang. Who is going to lose the battle of costs?

----------


## kcchiefs6465

> They have the consent of the governed. Not the same thing at all.


Not hardly.

No one today has legitimately consented whether they like our current government or not. They may "consent" (as in, not overthrow the current government) but not at a level that implies responsibility or is legally acceptable.

How can you consent to a piece of paper written over a couple hundred years ago? Truth be told, I'd be willing to bet the majority of those allegedly consenting have not even read the piece of paper of which they are alleged to have consented to.

Because something is tolerated does not mean that those tolerating it have consented to it. There is no consent. There can be no consent until every single person free from coercion signs their name on a line explicitly authorizing the government of which they want to govern them. Needless to say such an attempt is futile.

----------


## GunnyFreedom

> A legitimate state would be founded on consent and would not rob, rape, and pillage the property of those who did not wish to live under it.
> 
> Now name me a legitimate state.


1780 to 1840 United States, particularly the free states that had abolished slavery.

----------


## GunnyFreedom

> Society vs. a 1000 man gang. Who is going to lose the battle of costs?


"Society" coming together to enforce a rule against the will of the people being enforced.  Now you have a government.

----------


## Travlyr

> They have the consent of the governed. Not the same thing at all.


No they do not have the consent of the governed. They have a counterfeiting machine, a military industrial complex with nuclear weapons and drones, a prison industrial complex, indoctrination process (Media, Schools, Hollywood), and private security (police who work for the bankers). We don't have a legitimate State at all.

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## green73

> Uhh, no.  Just because you are incapable of addressing the issue does not make it a ridiculous non-response.  You work 40 to 60 hours a week and you aren't going to have time to train for a war, particularly against people who probably fight all the time and have some knowledge of how to fight.  Likewise, why is some independently wealthy guy with his own security force going to want to go dodge real mortars for some poor impoverished schlep's television?


Why do you keep bringing up the television? I thought we were now talking about a gang of 1000 people, robbing people for their living. Wealthy people are going to have more of an interest in defeating gangs like this, unless they are retired. They have their business interests to think about. But who's to say a wealthy retiree wouldn't assist? I swear, sometimes you minarchists think just as bad of people as your average lefty.

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## kcchiefs6465

Gunny, I have one question for you.

Can I opt-out? If I live peacefully, and do not infringe on other's rights, would you still advocate taking what is mine for the collective "good"? (what I see as the collective evil) That's really all this comes down to. Would your taxmen and government agents come to the mountains, on land rightfully acquired by me, to extract their dues? Am I able to reject that in your society? Or because I was born on some particular place, particular people collectivizing and worshiping a flag have legitimate right over what is mine?

I care not about landmines, television sets, and mortar fire. This question is quite simple.

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## green73

> No they do not have the consent of the governed. They have a counterfeiting machine, a military industrial complex with nuclear weapons and drones, a prison industrial complex, indoctrination process (Media, Schools, Hollywood), and private security (police who work for the bankers). We don't have a legitimate State at all.


If they didn't have the consent of the governed they would instantly collapse like a house of cards.

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## GunnyFreedom

> Not hardly.
> 
> No one today has legitimately consented whether they like our current government or not. They may "consent" (as in, not overthrow the current government) but not at a level that implies responsibility or is legally acceptable.
> 
> How can you consent to a piece of paper written over a couple hundred years ago? Truth be told, I'd be willing to bet the majority of those allegedly consenting have not even read the piece of paper of which they are alleged to have consented to.
> 
> Because something is tolerated does not mean that those tolerating it have consented to it. There is no consent. There can be no consent until every single person free from coercion signs their name on a line explicitly authorizing the government of which they want to govern them. Needless to say such an attempt is futile.


"...accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security."

----------


## GunnyFreedom

> Why do you keep bringing up the television? I thought we were now talking about a gang of 1000 people, robbing people for their living. Wealthy people are going to have more of an interest in defeating gangs like this, unless they are retired. They have their business interests to think about. But who's to say a wealthy retiree wouldn't assist? I swear, sometimes you minarchists think just as bad of people as your average lefty.


Red herring.  Who cares if it's a television or a Rembrandt?  You are the only one trying to make an issue about the _kinds_ of goods being stolen.  The word "television" can be substituted by car, computer, or chewing gum.  The identity of the stolen goods is wholly irrelevant.  A pure anarchistic society will be driven by self interest, it's axiomatic.

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## green73

> Red herring.  Who cares if it's a television or a Rembrandt?  You are the only one trying to make an issue about the _kinds_ of goods being stolen.  The word "television" can be substituted by car, computer, or chewing gum.  The identity of the stolen goods is wholly irrelevant.  A pure anarchistic society will be driven by self interest, it's axiomatic.


I've already said if it's an isolated case of one television, it will be up to the insurance company to determine if it's worth going for. Most likely they wouldn't do any short of putting it on the person's record. Then I said for greater things they could step in with force.

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## GunnyFreedom

> I've already said if it's an isolated case of one television, it will be up to the insurance company to determine if it's worth going for. Most likely they wouldn't do any short of putting it on the person's record. Then I said for greater things they could step in with force.


So 10,000 televisions and the insurance company goes bankrupt.  Now what?

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## green73

> So 10,000 televisions and the insurance company goes bankrupt.  Now what?


That wouldn't happen.

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## kcchiefs6465

> If they didn't have the consent of the governed they would instantly collapse like a house of cards.


You are mistaking what Consent of the Governed actually implies.

Consent does not equal tolerate, like, or even endorse. It has a very real meaning with strict guidelines for it to be reached.

How can someone Consent, that is, be lawfully bound to an outlined government having mostly not even read the paper that outlines the government? How do you Consent to something of which you've never seen?

Lysander Spooner concretely illustrates this in No Treason. Section I is good. The rest are art. 

Here's the audio book:
http://mises.org/media/categories/23...f-No-Authority

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## GunnyFreedom

> That wouldn't happen.


When you run a business, it is necessary that the income be greater than the outgo, or the business goes bankrupt.  If your insurance model compensates the value of the stolen items, then the client ends up paying the insurance company a value equivalent to the amount the company thinks will be stolen from him.  At which point why bother with insurance?  Save up the replacement values yourself and you will spend less money because you won't be paying anybody's salary in addition to the replacement cost of your stolen goods.  If your insurance model requires hiring an army to go out and do battle with the thieves, this costs even more than replacement value of the items stolen.  Again, why would the customer bother with insurance at all when he can just save up the replacement value and get by cheaper than the insurance?

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## silverhandorder

> The difference is that the lowly impoverished schlep can still go out and earn a paycheck without worrying that his house will be cleaned out when he gets home.  And clearly none of us want the government we have today, so that is a strawman.


Well first of all it remains to be proven that anarchy would result as you claim. And I agree that what we have now is not good and it is not minarchism. However I can't see minarchism replacing what we have. Anarchy on other hand is more practical and moral.

----------


## Occam's Banana

> See, this is my issue.  Philosophical anarchism is basically the state mankind was supposed to be in prior to the fall and the corruption.  After that, we descended into a kind of semi-anarchism (the time of the Judges) and as man became further and further corrupted we eventually fell into full-bore statism.  Philosophical anarchism is the ideal condition for a population that is not sinful.  Given a sinful population it is simply a utopian ideal that cannot be achieved.


But if you are correct, then does it really matter? If you are right, then we are royally and inescapably screwed either way - State or no State. If man is as fallen, corrupt and sinful as you say, then what sense can  it make to say that some of them should be given the massive power &  authority of the State over all the others? If everyone is crazy, why should any of them be put in charge of the asylum?

In fact, if anything, it would seem that anarchism should be more preferable under such circumstances - precisely because, as Robert Higgs pointed out in the quote I offered in post #159, the State is capable of far more pernicious destructiveness & criminality (by many orders of magnitude, and in both scale and scope) than any non-state actors could ever hope to be.

----------


## silverhandorder

> When you run a business, it is necessary that the income be greater than the outgo, or the business goes bankrupt.  If your insurance model compensates the value of the stolen items, then the client ends up paying the insurance company a value equivalent to the amount the company thinks will be stolen from him.  At which point why bother with insurance?  Save up the replacement values yourself and you will spend less money because you won't be paying anybody's salary in addition to the replacement cost of your stolen goods.  If your insurance model requires hiring an army to go out and do battle with the thieves, this costs even more than replacement value of the items stolen.  Again, why would the customer bother with insurance at all when he can just save up the replacement value and get by cheaper than the insurance?


First of the insurance company can demand that client take measures that would prevent said TV from being stolen or raise their rate. It is not insurance companies job to protect the tv or get it back. That is the job of a security company. Which are perfectly compatible with anarchism.

----------


## green73

> When you run a business, it is necessary that the income be greater than the outgo, or the business goes bankrupt.  If your insurance model compensates the value of the stolen items, then the client ends up paying the insurance company a value equivalent to the amount the company thinks will be stolen from him.  At which point why bother with insurance?  Save up the replacement values yourself and you will spend less money because you won't be paying anybody's salary in addition to the replacement cost of your stolen goods.  If your insurance model requires hiring an army to go out and do battle with the thieves, this costs even more than replacement value of the items stolen.  Again, why would the customer bother with insurance at all when he can just save up the replacement value and get by cheaper than the insurance?


When they set the price of premiums, they account for the small payouts they make where they will not recoup the cost. Also, it will often be the case that they have taken in more from the customer than they are having to pay out. People have insurance not only for small things but for greater losses as well, say having their house completely ransacked.

----------


## Occam's Banana

> "Society" coming together to enforce a rule against the will of the people being enforced.  Now you have a government.


Yes, you can be said to have "government" in that case (or, more accurately, "governance"). But you do NOT (necessarily) have a State.

As we anarchists use the terms, anarchy does NOT mean "no governance" - it means "no State" (i.e., no monopolistic supplier of governance).

----------


## GunnyFreedom

> But if you are correct, then does it really matter? If you are right, then we are royally and inescapably screwed either way - State or no State. If man is as fallen, corrupt and sinful as you say, then what sense can  it make to say that some of them should be given the massive power &  authority of the State over all the others? If everyone is crazy, why should any of them be put in charge of the asylum?
> 
> In fact, if anything, it would seem that anarchism should be more preferable under such circumstances - precisely because, as Robert Higgs pointed out in the quote I offered in post #159, the State is capable of far more pernicious destructiveness & criminality (by many orders of magnitude, and in both scale and scope) than any non-state actors could ever hope to be.


The whole point of the original US Constitution was that nobody was "in charge," but that there were "X" functions that we basically agreed to do together.  Strict Constitutional originalism is the closest thing to actual voluntarism that the current state of mankind has ever produced.  Spooner's problem was that he somehow expected a piece of paper to animate itself take up arms and start shooting the people who violated it, and failing that it was a failure.  His argument is frankly absurd.  It was never up to a piece of parchment to defend itself, but up to the people in general, or as Ben Franklin put it "...a republic ma'am, if you can keep it."  The most important word there is "you."

The people failed, whether it be through the deception of centralized "education" (not allowed for in the Constitution, of course), or corrupt people lusting after power promising unicorns and rainbows, appealing to the voter's base lusts.  It was never up to the Constitution to defend itself but "We the People" as the preamble implies.

The necessity for liberty is to live in an environment that is the closest thing we can have to a true voluntary society that may possibly exist with the current condition of man.  A nation that strictly obeys the US Constitution (minus the 16th, and 17th Amendments, and with some adjustment on the 14th Amendment)  is that environment.  That nation has not really existed since some time around 1830.

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## green73

"But whether the Constitution really be one thing, or another, this much is certain - that it has either authorized such a government as we have had, or has been powerless to prevent it. In either case, it is unfit to exist." -Lysander Spooner

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## GunnyFreedom

> First of the insurance company can demand that client take measures that would prevent said TV from being stolen or raise their rate. It is not insurance companies job to protect the tv or get it back. That is the job of a security company. Which are perfectly compatible with anarchism.


So the poor are left out in the cold because they cannot afford the bigger guns (or in this case a better security system)?

"Sucks to be you dude, you shoulda been born rich.  Then you would have had peace, security, and property rights."

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## Feeding the Abscess

> Thieves are not going to carry insurance to cover their thefts, and a black market cartel 1000 strong are going to steal things far more valuable than televisions.  In your model, the victims insurance companies will either end up spending hundreds of thousands of dollars raising armies (costing the victims MORE than the value of the items stolen), charge victims an amount at least equivalent to the material being stolen to compensate them (at which point why bother with insurance at all?), or instantly go out of business for taking a constant loss.


Without insurance, how are these thieves going to purchase homes, food, transportation, and these weapons and other tools necessary for their thuggery? Remember, the black market is gone, so drug and trafficking money will essentially be non-existent.

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## GunnyFreedom

> "But whether the Constitution really be one thing, or another, this much is certain - that it has either authorized such a government as we have had, or has been powerless to prevent it. In either case, it is unfit to exist." -Lysander Spooner


Spooner's problem was that he somehow expected a piece of paper to animate itself take up arms and start shooting the people who violated it, and failing that it was a failure. His argument is frankly absurd. It was never up to a piece of parchment to defend itself, but up to the people in general, or as Ben Franklin put it "...a republic ma'am, if you can keep it." The most important word there is "you."

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## GunnyFreedom

> Without insurance, how are these thieves going to purchase homes, food, transportation, and these weapons and other tools necessary for their thuggery? Remember, the black market is gone, so drug and trafficking money will essentially be non-existent.


An anarchistic society will require proof of insurance to buy food?  Holy crap!  That's worse than what we have today!

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## Henry Rogue

> Ofcourse you need to have bigger guns. Bigger guns don't necessarily mean actually more people and better guns. It could mean being organized or implementing a strategy. How is it working out for the empire being bogged down in middle east? Now ofcourse I don't want fighting and predation. What we have now is fighting and predation.*I can't imagine anarchy being worse then what we have now.*


Death by Government.
http://www.ronpaulforums.com/showthread.php?442248-Democide-quot-Death-by-Government-quot
It's why I created this thread. ^

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## green73

> So the poor are left out in the cold because they cannot afford the bigger guns (or in this case a better security system)?
> 
> "Sucks to be you dude, you shoulda been born rich.  Then you would have had peace, security, and property rights."


Mind you, in a free market wealth will be more abundant and insurance prices much more affordable. But if you are poor, you'll have less to insure.

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## GunnyFreedom

> Yes, you can be said to have "government" in that case (or, more accurately, "governance"). But you do NOT (necessarily) have a State.
> 
> As we anarchists use the terms, anarchy does NOT mean "no governance" - it means "no State" (i.e., no monopolistic supplier of governance).


You may be unaware of this, but the original intent of the US Constitution was _anything but_ a monopoly on power.  Indeed, it overwhelmingly encouraged private militias...even more, it _absolutely relied upon_ the existence of non-monopolized force for it's very survival and existence.  Back when the Pinkerton's were founded (not saying that was a good thing) they had nothing whatever to do with any government.

----------


## silverhandorder

> The whole point of the original US Constitution was that nobody was "in charge," but that there were "X" functions that we basically agreed to do together.  Strict Constitutional originalism is the closest thing to actual voluntarism that the current state of mankind has ever produced.  Spooner's problem was that he somehow expected a piece of paper to animate itself take up arms and start shooting the people who violated it, and failing that it was a failure.  His argument is frankly absurd.  It was never up to a piece of parchment to defend itself, but up to the people in general, or as Ben Franklin put it "...a republic ma'am, if you can keep it."  The most important word there is "you."
> 
> The people failed, whether it be through the deception of centralized "education" (not allowed for in the Constitution, of course), or corrupt people lusting after power promising unicorns and rainbows, appealing to the voter's base lusts.  It was never up to the Constitution to defend itself but "We the People" as the preamble implies.
> 
> The necessity for liberty is to live in an environment that is the closest thing we can have to a true voluntary society that may possibly exist with the current condition of man.  A nation that strictly obeys the US Constitution (minus the 16th, and 17th Amendments, and with some adjustment on the 14th Amendment)  is that environment.  That nation has not really existed since some time around 1830.


I don't understand how you can say in one word that voluntary society is good and then claim it is crap because in your thoughts it can not defend it self.

Constitution is just a piece of paper. We started out minarchsit and got here. Constitution did nothing to stop that.




> So the poor are left out in the cold because they cannot afford the bigger guns (or in this case a better security system)?
> 
> "Sucks to be you dude, you shoulda been born rich.  Then you would have had peace, security, and property rights."


Under minarchism the poor will be left to exactly the same situation. How can poor neighborhoods afford the necessary spending to provide protection? I mean after all in minarchism you going to have police departments funded locally right?

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## GunnyFreedom

> Mind you, in a free market wealth will be more abundant and insurance prices much more affordable. But if you are poor, you'll have less to insure.


Probably, but in a voluntary society wealth will be even more abundant than an anarchistic society, which is why I prefer voluntaryism over anarchism.

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## green73

> Probably, but in a voluntary society wealth will be even more abundant than an anarchistic society, which is why I prefer voluntaryism over anarchism.


There is no difference really.

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## Travlyr

> The whole point of the original US Constitution was that nobody was "in charge," but that there were "X" functions that we basically agreed to do together.  Strict Constitutional originalism is the closest thing to actual voluntarism that the current state of mankind has ever produced.  Spooner's problem was that he somehow expected a piece of paper to animate itself take up arms and start shooting the people who violated it, and failing that it was a failure.  His argument is frankly absurd.  It was never up to a piece of parchment to defend itself, but up to the people in general, or as Ben Franklin put it "...a republic ma'am, if you can keep it."  The most important word there is "you."
> 
> The people failed, whether it be through the deception of centralized "education" (not allowed for in the Constitution, of course), or corrupt people lusting after power promising unicorns and rainbows, appealing to the voter's base lusts.  It was never up to the Constitution to defend itself but "We the People" as the preamble implies.
> 
> The necessity for liberty is to live in an environment that is the closest thing we can have to a true voluntary society that may possibly exist with the current condition of man.  A nation that strictly obeys the US Constitution (minus the 16th, and 17th Amendments, and with some adjustment on the 14th Amendment)  is that environment.  That nation has not really existed since some time around 1830.


Spot on!

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## kcchiefs6465

> The whole point of the original US Constitution was that nobody was "in charge," but that there were "X" functions that we basically agreed to do together.  Strict Constitutional originalism is the closest thing to actual voluntarism that the current state of mankind has ever produced.  Spooner's problem was that he somehow expected a piece of paper to animate itself take up arms and start shooting the people who violated it, and failing that it was a failure.  His argument is frankly absurd.  It was never up to a piece of parchment to defend itself, but up to the people in general, or as Ben Franklin put it "...a republic ma'am, if you can keep it."  The most important word there is "you."
> 
> The people failed, whether it be through the deception of centralized "education" (not allowed for in the Constitution, of course), or corrupt people lusting after power promising unicorns and rainbows, appealing to the voter's base lusts.  It was never up to the Constitution to defend itself but "We the People" as the preamble implies.
> 
> The necessity for liberty is to live in an environment that is the closest thing we can have to a true voluntary society that may possibly exist with the current condition of man.  A nation that strictly obeys the US Constitution (minus the 16th, and 17th Amendments, and with some adjustment on the 14th Amendment)  is that environment.  That nation has not really existed since some time around 1830.


Spooner did not expect the Constitution to do anything. He was right in his expectations. He stated quite frankly what should happen to robbers, murderers and thieves. He stated quite frankly what should happen to slave owners, pirates, and money changers.

He also concretely defined what Consent of the Governed actually means and that the United States was anything but. I don't think you've read Spooner aside from a couple quotes here about the Constitution. I posted a link above. If you listen to Section I, II,III,VI,X,XIX and the Appendix (though I'd recommend the entirety) I find it hard to believe you could object. You most probably will applaud. And most certainly you wouldn't say what you just said about Spooner. He quite frankly stated what people were rightfully able to do to protect their property. He spoke as I probably would if there wasn't a surveillance, panoptic apparatus watching over my shoulder, chilling my speech.

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## Christian Liberty

> "...accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security."


Gunny, I don't think this is an answer to his question.  I agree with the Declaration quote.  But his question is whether or not he'd be allowed to opt. out.  If you were crowned king (I know you wouldn't accept it, but bear with me) and some people wanted to opt out of government, not pay its taxes or use its services, would you refuse to allow them to do so?

Even this doesn't completely solve all of the issues.. for instance, the government stole money and property to build the roads, so they aren't really the rightful owners, but you get the idea.

Your mention of judges is interesting, because I would consider this era in Israel's history fundamentally anarchistic (despite not being 100% libertarian, because being the Holy Land Israel had some special rules).  When I talk to most Christians about how anarchy/voluntarism could work, I point them to ancient Israel.  Not that I think that's the only possible way it could work, but most Christians aren't going to accept the validity of Murray Rothbard or Walter Block, but they can't really in good conscience reject the authority of Judges or 1 Samuel.  At any rate, I've decided against using the word "anarchist" personally and have adopted the "voluntarist" label instead.  I don't really care what you want to call it.  

WRT the security issue for poor people, your response honestly does not seem much difference than liberals and moderates who talk about government funding for education or roads on equal opportunity  grounds.  Ultimately, I think charities and other not for profits would likely need to play a role in helping the poor with regards to this, just like with education, food, and the like.  I don't see why you'd need to be wealthy to pay for security though.  I doubt people would generally pay for a small army to stand in front of their house, although I guess you could do that if you wanted.  Far more likely, you'd hire a private police department that would help you if you were robbed or assaulted or whatever, but would also do the same thing for other customers on a subscription basis.  I'm pretty sure this would be far less of an expense than modern police, because of the combination of market efficiency and the abolition of victimless crime laws.  If someone was so poor that they couldn't pay for this, they'd probably be better off not having to pay taxes toward a government police department eitr.  And again, there's always charity.

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## GunnyFreedom

> I don't understand how you can say in one word that voluntary society is good and then claim it is crap because in your thoughts it can not defend it self.


You are the one conflating voluntaryism and anarchy, not I.




> Constitution is just a piece of paper. We started out minarchsit and got here. Constitution did nothing to stop that.


You make the same absurd error as Spooner, expecting a piece of parchment to somehow animate itself walk around, pick up a rifle and start shooting the people who abrogate it.




> Under minarchism the poor will be left to exactly the same situation. How can poor neighborhoods afford the necessary spending to provide protection? I mean after all in minarchism you going to have police departments funded locally right?


Under a strict Constitutional society, a Sheriff is funded at the _County_ level, which is more than enough distribution of burden to make it viable.

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## Christian Liberty

> Probably, but in a voluntary society wealth will be even more abundant than an anarchistic society, which is why I prefer voluntaryism over anarchism.


OK, Gunny, I suspect this probably comes down to terminology, and I prefer the voluntarist term as well for personal reasons.

Do you have a problem with the CONCEPT of anarcho-capitalism, or just the word?

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## GunnyFreedom

> There is no difference really.


Anarchism is _not_ voluntary.  I have no desire to have to sit on my front porch 24/7 with a rifle to defend my home.  I do not volunteer to do that.  Anarchism is a violation of my desire to live in a fully voluntary society.

----------


## Christian Liberty

> Without insurance, how are these thieves going to purchase homes, food, transportation, and these weapons and other tools necessary for their thuggery? Remember, the black market is gone, so drug and trafficking money will essentially be non-existent.





> An anarchistic society will require proof of insurance to buy food?  Holy crap!  That's worse than what we have today!


I'm with Gunny on this one... why would you need insurance to buy food?

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## Christian Liberty

> Anarchism is _not_ voluntary.  I have no desire to have to sit on my front porch 24/7 with a rifle to defend my home.  I do not volunteer to do that.  Anarchism is a violation of my desire to live in a fully voluntary society.


Who says you would have to do that?

----------


## Feeding the Abscess

> You may be unaware of this, but the original intent of the US Constitution was _anything but_ a monopoly on power.  Indeed, it overwhelmingly encouraged private militias...even more, it _absolutely relied upon_ the existence of non-monopolized force for it's very survival and existence.  Back when the Pinkerton's were founded (not saying that was a good thing) they had nothing whatever to do with any government.


The Pinkertons were brought about by industries that were massively subsidized by the federal government. They wouldn't have been able to afford such massive costs without state intervention.

As for your insurance contention, yes, grocery stores and other institutions would service multiple insurance agencies (hell, maybe all of them). For example, the thief who stole the TV and decided not to show up in court may get a visit from an insurance rep. This rep may inform the thief that he can pay a fine, go to a work facility and work off his debt, or, should he decline those, his insurance will be dropped, and every institution that deals with this insurance company would be notified that they are no longer to do business with him. Meaning his electricity, water, ability to buy food, etc is gone. He'd also be an outlaw, meaning bounty hunters could extract payment from him and he would not be privy to legal protection.

Your example of thieves becoming some super wealthy villains is extremely unlikely, when such thugs would be running for their lives and scraping the earth to merely stay alive.

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## GunnyFreedom

> OK, Gunny, I suspect this probably comes down to terminology, and I prefer the voluntarist term as well for personal reasons.
> 
> Do you have a problem with the CONCEPT of anarcho-capitalism, or just the word?


It's certainly not 'just a word.'  In one I am free to do as I please.  In the other I am chained by circumstances beyond my control - I may as well be a slave for all it's worth.

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## silverhandorder

> You are the one conflating voluntaryism and anarchy, not I.


They are one and the same. IF you have voluntarism you have anarchy. Minarchism is a step more authoritarian then voluntarism. In voluntarism you can say not to the tax man in minarchy you can not. 




> You make the same absurd error as Spooner, expecting a piece of parchment to somehow animate itself walk around, pick up a rifle and start shooting the people who abrogate it.


No he is 100% right. The people who believed in the constitution were not able to organize them selves to bring on permanent minarchy. Within several generations the state of society moved away from the original intent. So to tell me we have to go back to a document and try this all over is not necessary. I can see it does not work. And since we strayed from the path the faction that is for original intent has never regained power. 




> Under a strict Constitutional society, a Sheriff is funded at the _County_ level, which is more than enough distribution of burden to make it viable.


Oh so kinda like how it would work with private security companies.

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## kcchiefs6465

It is amazing to me, actually not really, that no one wishes to address the issue of there being a lack of consent (or rather, no consent whatever) to a government allegedly based on consent.

This is a problem. This is _the_ problem.

I wouldn't object to people forming their own nation and paying taxes doing what they will so long as acting lawfully. Those who do not want to be a part of their association are under no lawful obligation to be a part of it. This is the illegitimacy of it all. They take from everyone, under the auspices of protecting rights, no less!, and summarily shoot down any who oppose. And you guys are arguing about televisions and insurance. It would sort itself out. How about you tell me why I'm obligated to pay a debt I never agreed to? How about you tell me HOW I'm lawfully obligated to pay said debt?

And you can misinterpret Spooner's words til the sun goes down. Riddle me those answers and I promise you that your excuses will be illegitimate and subsequently and utterly destroyed.

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## Travlyr

> Anarchism is _not_ voluntary.  I have no desire to have to sit on my front porch 24/7 with a rifle to defend my home.  I do not volunteer to do that.  Anarchism is a violation of my desire to live in a fully voluntary society.


I agree with you. Ludwig von Mises did too.



> "National and governmental affairs are, it is true, more important than all other practical questions of 'human conduct', since the social order furnishes the foundation for everything else, and it is possible for each individual to prosper in the pursuit of his ends only in a society propitious for their attainment." - Mises

----------


## GunnyFreedom

> The Pinkertons were brought about by industries that were massively subsidized by the federal government. They wouldn't have been able to afford such massive costs without state intervention.
> 
> As for your insurance contention, yes, grocery stores and other institutions would service multiple insurance agencies (hell, maybe all of them). For example, the thief who stole the TV and decided not to show up in court may get a visit from an insurance rep. This rep may inform the thief that he can pay a fine, go to a work facility and work off his debt, or, should he decline those, his insurance will be dropped, and every institution that deals with this insurance company would be notified that they are no longer to do business with him. Meaning his electricity, water, ability to buy food, etc is gone. He'd also be an outlaw, meaning bounty hunters could extract payment from him and he would not be privy to legal protection.
> 
> Your example of thieves becoming some super wealthy villains is extremely unlikely, when such thugs would be running for their lives and scraping the earth to merely stay alive.


Good Lord; if I didn't want your society before I sure as heck don't want it now!  I barely tolerate carrying insurance to drive a car.  Now I have to carry insurance to drink WATER?  No thanks.  That's worse than what we have TODAY, much less the government I am fighting for where everyone lives in a voluntary society.

----------


## green73

> Anarchism is _not_ voluntary.  I have no desire to have to sit on my front porch 24/7 with a rifle to defend my home.  I do not volunteer to do that.  Anarchism is a violation of my desire to live in a fully voluntary society.





> Voluntaryists are advocates of non-political, non-violent strategies to achieve a free society. We reject electoral politics, in theory and in practice, as incompatible with libertarian principles. Governments must cloak their actions in an aura of moral legitimacy in order to sustain their power, and political methods invariably strengthen that legitimacy. Voluntaryists seek instead to delegitimize the State through education, and we advocate withdrawal of the cooperation and tacit consent on which State power ultimately depends.


http://voluntaryist.com/

Me thinks you've been too damaged by government schools and other government entities to have a healthy opinion of your fellow man. You are certainly not alone in that regard. Mission accomplished for TPTB.

----------


## silverhandorder

> I'm with Gunny on this one... why would you need insurance to buy food?


You wont need it. It is just you guys bringing up an unrealistic society to in that society that would be a requirement. That type of society would require much stricter controls under minarchism.

----------


## Christian Liberty

> It's certainly not 'just a word.'  In one I am free to do as I please.  In the other I am chained by circumstances beyond my control - I may as well be a slave for all it's worth.


I'm not well enough versed in this to really answer this well, there are people here who can.  But I think we need to define the word "anarchy."

Most people... and this may or may not include you, define "anarchy" as being total chaos, anyone can do anything he wants without any legal repercussions; I can murder you and take your property and get away with it because there are no rules.  If you want to define anarchy this way, that's fine with me.  But then, nobody who calls themselves an anarchist, or at least, the vast majority, wouldn't actually be anarchists.  Which may actually be true.  I'm not really sure what the correct definition is.

Whereas, the people here who actually call themselves anarchists are thinking about something closer to the book of Judges, or Medieval Iceland (Admittedly, I know little about the latter, but I know it was not the kind of chaos that you probably think of when you say "Anarchy.")

At any rate, if not having police protection provided for you by the government makes you a slave, why doesn't not having food, clothing, etc. provided for you by the government make you a slave?  Or are you defining anarchy in a very different way than Rothbard would?

----------


## Feeding the Abscess

> Good Lord; if I didn't want your society before I sure as heck don't want it now!  I barely tolerate carrying insurance to drive a car.  Now I have to carry insurance to drink WATER?  No thanks.  That's worse than what we have TODAY, much less the government I am fighting for where everyone lives in a voluntary society.


You could always find your own land that has water reserves. However, if you're like the majority of society and would prefer the difficult labor be done by someone else, you'd purchase water from a local supply company. In order to have a reputation, you'd need some sort of certification or representation stating that you're who you say you are. I fail to see the oppression here. Do you simply feel you can walk into a private club without some sort of identification or certification that you're a member of that club? If you can't do so, are you oppressed? Are you oppressed if you break the rules of the private society/club and they expel you, and no longer allow you the services they provide?

----------


## GunnyFreedom

> They are one and the same. IF you have voluntarism you have anarchy. Minarchism is a step more authoritarian then voluntarism. In voluntarism you can say not to the tax man in minarchy you can not.


No, if you have anarchy, you do not have a voluntary society, you have a struggle of force that none of the participant volunteered for.  IMHO, anarchy is about as opposite to voluntarism as today's jacked up society is.




> No he is 100% right. The people who believed in the constitution were not able to organize them selves to bring on permanent minarchy. Within several generations the state of society moved away from the original intent. So to tell me we have to go back to a document and try this all over is not necessary. I can see it does not work. And since we strayed from the path the faction that is for original intent has never regained power.


Your exact same argument can be applied against anarchism.  It's never worked for any duration, and nobody fighting to return to it has ever been successful, therefor it is invalid to attempt.




> Oh so kinda like how it would work with private security companies.


No, a private security company would be driven by the bottom line and choose not to offer their services in high crime neighborhoods where they would take a loss.  A proper County Sheriff would not have the option to choose not to secure selected parts of their Counties.

----------


## Travlyr

> http://voluntaryist.com/
> 
> Me thinks you've been too damaged by government schools and other government entities to have a healthy opinion of your fellow man. You are certainly not alone in that regard. Mission accomplished for TPTB.


TPTB do not obey the Constitution. They are above the law. Who do you think TPTB relates to best? 
The people trying to force them to obey the rule of law? Or the people chanting Anarchy?

----------


## kcchiefs6465

> Gunny, I don't think this is an answer to his question.  I agree with the Declaration quote.  But his question is whether or not he'd be allowed to opt. out.  If you were crowned king (I know you wouldn't accept it, but bear with me) and some people wanted to opt out of government, not pay its taxes or use its services, would you refuse to allow them to do so?
> 
> Even this doesn't completely solve all of the issues.. for instance, the government stole money and property to build the roads, so they aren't really the rightful owners, but you get the idea.


I know the answer to my question. I would be hunted down and payment would be extracted. If I resisted in any meaningful way, state's agents would murder me.

And all I can be told is that I was fortunate enough to be born on this particular section of earth as to be under such laws. The interest on the national debt is what this is all about. It is a scheme to extract wealth the size of which only governments could enable. It is illegitimate and goes against any sense of Law. Do note that all statists will not speak of this. They will not address how I ever came to be lawfully obligated to pay a debt I never incurred, signed, or agreed to. How my name was summarily sold to the highest bidder and pimp. But televisions would be stolen otherwise.

----------


## GunnyFreedom

> You could always find your own land that has water reserves. However, if you're like the majority of society and would prefer the difficult labor be done by someone else, you'd purchase water from a local supply company. In order to have a reputation, you'd need some sort of certification or representation stating that you're who you say you are. I fail to see the oppression here. Do you simply feel you can walk into a private club without some sort of identification or certification that you're a member of that club? If you can't do so, are you oppressed?


I'm sorry, but frankly this concept of being required to carry insurance just to breathe in your society is horrifying.  I am not exaggerating, I mean _horrifying._  If I was ever open to this idea before, you sure as heck put _that_ out of my mind for good.  I'm going to live or die based on some nameless faceless actuarial bureaucrat?  Good heavens, that's an order of magnitude WORSE than the nightmare we live in now!  No thanks.  Hell no.

----------


## green73

> TPTB do not obey the Constitution. They are above the law. Who do you think TPTB relates to best? 
> The people trying to force them to obey the rule of law? Or the people chanting Anarchy?


They use governments to get their way. Democratic government has been their biggest boon, because the people think they have some say.

----------


## Travlyr

> I know the answer to my question. I would be hunted down and payment would be extracted. If I resisted in any meaningful way, state's agents would murder me.
> 
> And all I can be told is that I was fortunate enough to be born on this particular section of earth as to be under such laws. The interest on the national debt is what this is all about. It is a scheme to extract wealth the size of which only governments could enable. It is illegitimate and goes against any sense of Law. Do note that all statists will not speak of this. They will not address how I ever came to be lawfully obligated to pay a debt I never incurred, signed, or agreed to. How my name was summarily sold to the highest bidder and pimp. But televisions would be stolen otherwise.


Specifically, what do you mean "Opt Out"?

----------


## Feeding the Abscess

> I'm sorry, but frankly this concept of being required to carry insurance just to breathe in your society is horrifying.  I am not exaggerating, I mean _horrifying._  If I was ever open to this idea before, you sure as heck put _that_ out of my mind for good.  I'm going to live or die based on some nameless faceless actuarial bureaucrat?  Good heavens, that's an order of magnitude WORSE than the nightmare we live in now!  No thanks.  Hell no.


You disagree with private property, then? We're talking a private property society, here. No socialist, bull$#@! 'collective' ownership. Do you feel you should be allowed to receive services from private clubs without paying membership dues or following the rules they lay out, or are being oppressed if they decide not to provide you, a non-member, with membership services?

----------


## Travlyr

> They use governments to get their way. Democratic government has been their biggest boon, because the people think they have some say.


No, TPTB use counterfeit money, media propaganda, and guns to fool you into thinking they are using democratic government.

----------


## green73

> I'm sorry, but frankly this concept of being required to carry insurance just to breathe in your society is horrifying.  I am not exaggerating, I mean _horrifying._  If I was ever open to this idea before, you sure as heck put _that_ out of my mind for good.  I'm going to live or die based on some nameless faceless actuarial bureaucrat?  Good heavens, that's an order of magnitude WORSE than the nightmare we live in now!  No thanks.  Hell no.


Instead you pay taxes and get $#@!.

----------


## kcchiefs6465

> Specifically, what do you mean "Opt Out"?


I mean waive all government benefits and live as I wish to live so long as I did not encroach on another's liberty.

----------


## Christian Liberty

> Good Lord; if I didn't want your society before I sure as heck don't want it now!  I barely tolerate carrying insurance to drive a car.  Now I have to carry insurance to drink WATER?  No thanks.  That's worse than what we have TODAY, much less the government I am fighting for where everyone lives in a voluntary society.


I don't really like that idea, although a business owner would have the right to demand it (I think he was talking about individual business owners, not a law) but I don't see how it would be anywhere near the current system where the average person has to pay a third of their income to the Feds and gets virtually nothing in return.




> You wont need it. It is just you guys bringing up an unrealistic society to in that society that would be a requirement. That type of society would require much stricter controls under minarchism.


Its not really me in this case.  I'd fall under the anarcho-capitalist category, although I use the term voluntarist pretty much everywhere other than here.




> TPTB do not obey the Constitution. They are above the law. Who do you think TPTB relates to best? 
> The people trying to force them to obey the rule of law? Or the people chanting Anarchy?


If anarchy means "no laws" than nobody here is an anarchist, Rothbard wasn't an anarchist, Rockwell, Block, and Tom Woods aren't anarchists either.

Again, if that's the way you want to define the term, that's fine, but if you want to define "anarchy" that way, nobody is arguing for it.  The people here who say they are anarchists are arguing for anarchy based on a different definition of that term.

----------


## green73

> No, TPTB use counterfeit money, media propaganda, and guns to fool you into thinking they are using democratic government.


Oh, ok.

----------


## GunnyFreedom

> I'm not well enough versed in this to really answer this well, there are people here who can.  But I think we need to define the word "anarchy."
> 
> Most people... and this may or may not include you, define "anarchy" as being total chaos, anyone can do anything he wants without any legal repercussions; I can murder you and take your property and get away with it because there are no rules.  If you want to define anarchy this way, that's fine with me.  But then, nobody who calls themselves an anarchist, or at least, the vast majority, wouldn't actually be anarchists.  Which may actually be true.  I'm not really sure what the correct definition is.


I do not.  I define philosophical anarchy as a complete lack of any centralized authority, or nation-state in the form of governance.




> Whereas, the people here who actually call themselves anarchists are thinking about something closer to the book of Judges, or Medieval Iceland (Admittedly, I know little about the latter, but I know it was not the kind of chaos that you probably think of when you say "Anarchy.")
> 
> At any rate, if not having police protection provided for you by the government makes you a slave, why doesn't not having food, clothing, etc. provided for you by the government make you a slave?  Or are you defining anarchy in a very different way than Rothbard would?


If you are a slave to your own property where you have to sit in the defense of your worldly goods then you are just as much a slave as a chattel slave likewise disallowed by his master from leaving the property.  The only difference is you are a slave to circumstance rather than a person.

----------


## Christian Liberty

> You disagree with private property, then? We're talking a private property society, here. No socialist, bull$#@! 'collective' ownership. Do you feel you should be allowed to receive services from private clubs without paying membership dues or following the rules they lay out, or are being oppressed if they decide not to provide you, a non-member, with membership services?


I'd fall under the anarcho-capitalist category myself (Despite being much less knowledgeable than you guys) but I'm really not sure why you'd need insurance to buy food in an ancap society.  Now, I agree that a business COULD require this.  They also could require you to be white, black, Christian, Muslim, or whatever, but I don't see how that's intrinsically linked to the ancap system.

Of course you'd have to pay for groceries, that's a given.  But why couldn't you pay with money (Whatever the private currency system is, gold backed notes or whatever) just like you can now?  I admit I'm not really sure why this would necessarily need to be the case.

----------


## silverhandorder

> No, if you have anarchy, you do not have a voluntary society, you have a struggle of force that none of the participant volunteered for.  IMHO, anarchy is about as opposite to voluntarism as today's jacked up society is.


Oh that can be said of every single society. No society is voluntary in that regard. There will always be people that want something else. I tend not to worry about the type that want to behave as animals aka might is right. 




> Your exact same argument can be applied against anarchism.  It's never worked for any duration, and nobody fighting to return to it has ever been successful, therefor it is invalid to attempt.


Not really. We can see in history who does better and who does worse. Anarchists today are pursuing a time tested strategy. We are organizing and investing in our selves. So that come radical economic collapses and political changes we can weather the storm better then people expanding their resources trying to seize power.







> No, a private security company would be driven by the bottom line and choose not to offer their services in high crime neighborhoods where they would take a loss.  A proper County Sheriff would not have the option to choose not to secure selected parts of their Counties.


Oh please let's not be naive. Who is going to police this proper country sheriff? Who is going to say that the wealthier neighborhood will simply vote not to fund the country sheriff and then hire personal security? Common every single objection you can raise to voluntary/anarchist society can be raised towards a minarchist one aswell.

----------


## green73

> If you are a slave to your own property where you have to sit in the defense of your worldly goods then you are just as much a slave as a chattel slave likewise disallowed by his master from leaving the property.  The only difference is you are a slave to circumstance rather than a person.


Thank god we have government police. PHEEEEEEEEEEEEW

----------


## Christian Liberty

> I do not.  I define philosophical anarchy as a complete lack of any centralized authority, or nation-state in the form of governance.


By this definition I'd be a philosophical anarchist.  Emphasis on *centralized* authority and the nation-*state.
*
I'm mostly OK with minarchism as well, seeing as its 98% of what I want.  But I can't really argue for minarchy with a straight face anymore.  Once you argue for taxation to provide for defense, courts, and/or police, you can't really philosophically argue against taxation for anything and everything the majority wants it for.  Or at least, I can't.  Maybe you have arguments that are better than any arguments I know of.




> If you are a slave to your own property where you have to sit in the defense of your worldly goods then you are just as much a slave as a chattel slave likewise disallowed by his master from leaving the property.  The only difference is you are a slave to circumstance rather than a person.


First of all, I do not think this would happen.  You seem to think that, in absence of the State, there would be no option but to literally pay for security to stand guard in front of your house, or leave yourself completely defenseless against thieves.  I do not think this is the case. I  see no reason there couldn't be competing police departments, who you pay  on a subscription basis.  They don't constantly stand guard over your house, and they defend lots of people, not just you.  But if someone robs you or whatever, you can call them and they'll bring the person to court (assuming probable cause and such.)

----------


## Feeding the Abscess

> I'd fall under the anarcho-capitalist category myself (Despite being much less knowledgeable than you guys) but I'm really not sure why you'd need insurance to buy food in an ancap society.  Now, I agree that a business COULD require this.  They also could require you to be white, black, Christian, Muslim, or whatever, but I don't see how that's intrinsically linked to the ancap system.
> 
> Of course you'd have to pay for groceries, that's a given.  But why couldn't you pay with money (Whatever the private currency system is, gold backed notes or whatever) just like you can now?  I admit I'm not really sure why this would necessarily need to be the case.


It'd be an inexpensive and easy way to weed out criminals and deal with disputes as they arise. We're talking a private property society here, not a fantasyland where all services are somehow provided exactly how they are now but without the tax structure currently in place to make all of it happen.

----------


## Travlyr

> I mean waive all government benefits and live as I wish to live so long as I did not encroach on another's liberty.


Some people may have the discipline to actually not encroach on another's liberty and they should be allowed to opt out. Yet, we know for a fact that some people don't care about that. Obama, for example, claims the right to kill with impunity. He has opted out in spite of the fact that he encroaches on the liberty of others. Whose job is it to stop him? That duty is assigned to the legitimate State. Until we reinstate the legitimate State the Masters of the world will kill with impunity.

----------


## GunnyFreedom

> I mean waive all government benefits and live as I wish to live so long as I did not encroach on another's liberty.


That's pretty much what the original intent of Founders WAS.  Government in America was originally only funded by user-fees and (more unfortunately) tariff.  You only paid for what you chose to use, such as the US Postal Service.  Other things you used basically for free, such as US Postal Roads.  Originally, laws were (by and large with some notable exceptions such as the Alien and Sedition Acts) roughly similar to the NAP.

IF WE HAD a government according to original intent, then what you are asking for would be the case throughout the nation, excepting States like Illinois which would probably implement a communist government at the State level.

----------


## Christian Liberty

> Thank god we have government police. PHEEEEEEEEEEEEW


Honestly, this is the first actually intelligent conversation I've had on this topic, like ever.  I'm not saying I agree with all of Gunny's points, but he actually does have a pretty darn good understanding of what freedom is, at least as much so, if not more so, than Ron Paul.  That's rarely the case with anyone I have these conversations with IRL.  I can tell you right now that if the first ancap I encountered on the internet treated my arguments with this type of mockery, I wouldn't be where I am today.  I'm pretty sure Gunny doesn't support the government police either.  I've seen him mock them enough times to know that

Look, I'm an ancap too.  I'm on your side here.  Let's do this reasonably.

----------


## GunnyFreedom

> It'd be an inexpensive and easy way to weed out criminals and deal with disputes as they arise. We're talking a private property society here, not a fantasyland where all services are somehow provided exactly how they are now but without the tax structure currently in place to make all of it happen.


Except now I'm a criminal for simply refusing to buy insurance that I do not want.  

Hey wait, isn't this bloody tyrant of a President doing exactly that with Obamacare?

----------


## Travlyr

> That's pretty much what the original intent of Founders WAS.  Government in America was originally only funded by user-fees and (more unfortunately) tariff.  You only paid for what you chose to use, such as the US Postal Service.  Other things you used basically for free, such as US Postal Roads.  Originally, laws were (by and large with some notable exceptions such as the Alien and Sedition Acts) roughly similar to the NAP.
> 
> IF WE HAD a government according to original intent, then what you are asking for would be the case throughout the nation, excepting States like Illinois which would probably implement a communist government at the State level.


Illinois rejected slavery from the very beginning.

----------


## kcchiefs6465

> Some people may have the discipline to actually not encroach on another's liberty and they should be allowed to opt out. Yet, we know for a fact that some people don't care about that. Obama, for example, claims the right to kill with impunity. He has opted out in spite of the fact that he encroaches on the liberty of others. Whose job is it to stop him? That duty is assigned to the legitimate State. Until we reinstate the legitimate State the Masters of the world will kill with impunity.


Who enables him? Certainly not I. You've forgotten about the part that Obama is but a puppet installed to ensure the interest on the national debt continues to be paid. Also that no one consented to lawfully be able to be said to be responsible for said debt.

So why do they do it (pay the income tax, for example)? Because the law has been so utterly perverted that it allows for legal plunder. People only think about what they can get for nothing. And there are rippling effects of perversion and immorality that are created when the Law becomes anything but. It is evil.

----------


## Christian Liberty

> It'd be an inexpensive and easy way to weed out criminals and deal with disputes as they arise. We're talking a private property society here, not a fantasyland where all services are somehow provided exactly how they are now but without the tax structure currently in place to make all of it happen.


Obviously services that are currently "public sector" would be handled differently.  But grocery stores are already free market, hence why I'm not sure why there would be the difference.

How would having insurance (insurance for what?  In case you steal something?  Can I instead sign a waiver saying you have the right to shoot me in the head if I ever rob you?) weed out criminals?




> That's pretty much what the original intent of Founders WAS.  Government in America was originally only funded by user-fees and (more unfortunately) tariff.  You only paid for what you chose to use, such as the US Postal Service.  Other things you used basically for free, such as US Postal Roads.  Originally, laws were (by and large with some notable exceptions such as the Alien and Sedition Acts) roughly similar to the NAP.
> 
> IF WE HAD a government according to original intent, then what you are asking for would be the case throughout the nation, excepting States like Illinois which would probably implement a communist government at the State level.


Honestly, I think ALL state governments would implement "communist" (By the standards of the Founders) government at the state level if this were implemented NOW, without the necessary educational groundwork.  Even now, though, I definitely think this constitutional system would be worlds better than the status quo.  I don't think it can be maintained, though, if you leave bureaucrats with a little power they will always try to take more.  You either hack away at their power, until eventually leaving them with absolutely nothing, or they keep expanding their powers.  I don't think this could be prevented, honestly.

----------


## Christian Liberty

> Except now I'm a criminal for simply refusing to buy insurance that I do not want.  
> 
> Hey wait, isn't this bloody tyrant of a President doing exactly that with Obamacare?


This isn't what he's suggesting.  He's saying that a business might refuse to do business with you if you don't get insurance, not that it will be "illegal" to not get insurance.

----------


## Travlyr

> *Who enables him?* Certainly not I. You've forgotten about the part that Obama is but a puppet installed to ensure the interest on the national debt continues to be paid. Also that no one consented to lawfully be able to be said to be responsible for said debt.
> 
> So why do they do it (pay the income tax, for example)? Because the law has been so utterly *perverted* that it allows for legal plunder. People only think about what they can get for nothing. And there are rippling effects of perversion and immorality that are created when the Law becomes anything but. It is evil.


The Pilgrims. The Progressive Movement that performed a coup d'état on America in 1913.

Not perverted. Subverted.

----------


## green73

> Honestly, this is the first actually intelligent conversation I've had on this topic, like ever.  I'm not saying I agree with all of Gunny's points, but he actually does have a pretty darn good understanding of what freedom is, at least as much so, if not more so, than Ron Paul.  That's rarely the case with anyone I have these conversations with IRL.  I can tell you right now that if the first ancap I encountered on the internet treated my arguments with this type of mockery, I wouldn't be where I am today.  I'm pretty sure Gunny doesn't support the government police either.  I've seen him mock them enough times to know that
> 
> Look, I'm an ancap too.  I'm on your side here.  Let's do this reasonably.


There are degrees of mockery. I think this was quite mild. And if you've read the thread you'll see that it's been respectful.

----------


## GunnyFreedom

> Honestly, this is the first actually intelligent conversation I've had on this topic, like ever.  I'm not saying I agree with all of Gunny's points, but he actually does have a pretty darn good understanding of what freedom is, at least as much so, if not more so, than Ron Paul.  That's rarely the case with anyone I have these conversations with IRL.  I can tell you right now that if the first ancap I encountered on the internet treated my arguments with this type of mockery, I wouldn't be where I am today.  I'm pretty sure Gunny doesn't support the government police either.  I've seen him mock them enough times to know that
> 
> Look, I'm an ancap too.  I'm on your side here.  Let's do this reasonably.


It is probably unreasonable to expect reason from zealots.  Only reason I am as calm as I am is because I have grown accustomed to people twisting my positions all out of recognition and applying ideas to me that I do not hold.  For example, under original intent, the County Sheriff did not answer to a government, but only to the voters and the people respectively.  Under original intent, there was no monopoly on force, force belonged to the people first as an unorganized militia, who then voluntarily delegated some of their power of force to an organized militia, who then voluntarily delegated some of their power of force to a State (in times of war or insurrection).

Mind you, just like Spooner did, it is a lot easier to dismiss my position when you make a bizarre caricature of it.

----------


## silverhandorder

> Except now I'm a criminal for simply refusing to buy insurance that I do not want.  
> 
> Hey wait, isn't this bloody tyrant of a President doing exactly that with Obamacare?


Well you made the claim that we will have a mad max society for no reason other then just because. So obviously in that type of society you would need to know who you selling your groceries to.

----------


## green73

> Except now I'm a criminal for simply refusing to buy insurance that I do not want.  
> 
> Hey wait, isn't this bloody tyrant of a President doing exactly that with Obamacare?


Responsible people will purchase insurance. It will be a lot cheaper than paying taxes and you'll get better results.

Insurance companies in free society will probably have a large role, but don't mistake them for the quasi-fascist entities we get in a satist society.

----------


## kcchiefs6465

> The Pilgrims. The Progressive Movement that performed a coup d'état on America in 1913.
> 
> Not perverted. Subverted.


Lincoln destroyed any remaining semblance to the notion of this being a government founded on consent. What was the cost of the Civil War? How was it expected to be paid back?

The country was bought and sold before 1913. 1913 was simply the year that an institution was created to further cement assurances that the debt (or interest on it, rather) would be paid. Lincoln is just as responsible for this tyranny as Wilson.

----------


## GunnyFreedom

> This isn't what he's suggesting.  He's saying that a business might refuse to do business with you if you don't get insurance, not that it will be "illegal" to not get insurance.


He's also suggesting that it be the general practice in order to insure that criminals are unable to purchase water and food.

ETA -- whether it be dictated by a law, or it is just the 'generally accepted practice,' I *DO NOT* want to live in any society where I am required to carry insurance just to buy food and water.  I _DO NOT_ volunteer to live in that society.

----------


## Matt Collins

> The state violates the same rights it claims to protect. It cannot be argued that the state exists to protect rights and enforce contracts. What, then, separates the state from the roving gangs of violence that are feared in a stateless society?


Rule of law, ideally.

----------


## Matt Collins

> A judge who's earned a reputation for being just. If a party does not abide by the ruling their (the party's) reputation will be hurt and people will be less likely to do business with them.


Do you really think that a serial rapist, murder, thief, etc is going to care about their reputation?

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## Travlyr

> Lincoln destroyed any remaining semblance to the notion of this being a government founded on consent.


He did that by defending himself, his family, and the free blacks living in Washington from invasion?

----------


## Matt Collins

> So again it boils down to who has the biggest guns wins.


That is the same conclusion that I reach when I take anarchy (defined as having no government) to it's logical extension.

----------


## kcchiefs6465

> It is probably unreasonable to expect reason from zealots.  Only reason I am as calm as I am is because I have grown accustomed to people twisting my positions all out of recognition and applying ideas to me that I do not hold.  For example, under original intent, the County Sheriff did not answer to a government, but only to the voters and the people respectively.  Under original intent, there was no monopoly on force, force belonged to the people first as an unorganized militia, who then voluntarily delegated some of their power of force to an organized militia, who then voluntarily delegated some of their power of force to a State (in times of war or insurrection).
> 
> Mind you, just like Spooner did, it is a lot easier to dismiss my position when you make a bizarre caricature of it.


You have not read Spooner (aside from perhaps Section I of No Treason).

Please list what specifically you disagree with in Section XIX, for example. Or Section III. It is written in such a way that you cannot disagree with it. It is the truth. You can obfuscate it, take quotes and make memes of it, but most certainly you cannot argue against it in any meaningful way. For example, all that can reverted back to is the tired lie that "Spooner expected the piece of paper to do this or that." That is not the premise behind No Treason. It is that there is no consent.

----------


## GunnyFreedom

> Responsible people will purchase insurance. It will be a lot cheaper than paying taxes and you'll get better results.
> 
> Insurance companies in free society will probably have a large role, but don't mistake them for the quasi-fascist entities we get in a satist society.


So because I object to this notion on principle, that I have to carry insurance to eat and drink, then I'm irresponsible?

yeah.  No thanks.  I'll take the nightmare we have _NOW_ over _THAT_ any day of the week.  And twice on Sundays.

----------


## kcchiefs6465

> He did that by defending himself, his family, and the free blacks living in Washington from invasion at the time?


I am not going to argue with you about Lincoln. He was a tyrant. I'd piss on his grave if given the chance.

Frankly, $#@! Lincoln.

He is a fundamental part in the tale of the wholesaling of American individuals. He might as well have been a slave trader himself.

----------


## green73

> Do you really think that a serial rapist, murder, thief, etc is going to care about their reputation?


They are going to find it very hard to survive, if they somehow avoid being put in a private prison/work camp.

----------


## kcchiefs6465

> They are going to find it very hard to survive, if they somehow avoid being put in a private prison/work camp.


Smh.

----------


## Travlyr

> I am not going to argue with you about Lincoln. He was a tyrant. I'd piss on his grave if given the chance.
> 
> Frankly, $#@! Lincoln.
> 
> He is a fundamental part in the tale of the wholesaling of American individuals. He might as well have been a slave trader himself.


Ignorance of history is no virtue. Lost cause revisionism is a lost cause.

----------


## Origanalist

See Matt? Just post a little bit of the OP and look what happens.

----------


## Feeding the Abscess

> He's also suggesting that it be the general practice in order to insure that criminals are unable to purchase water and food.
> 
> ETA -- whether it be dictated by a law, or it is just the 'generally accepted practice,' I *DO NOT* want to live in any society where I am required to carry insurance just to buy food and water.  I _DO NOT_ volunteer to live in that society.


You are arguing against private property and advocating that you receive services from a private organization that you do not belong to, or demanding that you receive services/property on your terms rather than the property owner's terms.

Additionally, Spooner never argued that the constitution would sprout limbs and defend itself. You're literally reversing his argument and ascribing the opposite view as his. His argument was that they were merely words on paper, that there is no inherent enforcement mechanism in them.

----------


## green73

> Smh.


why?

----------


## kcchiefs6465

> why?


How many people have been exonerated?

----------


## green73

> So because I object to this notion on principle, that I have to carry insurance to eat and drink, then I'm irresponsible?
> 
> yeah.  No thanks.  I'll take the nightmare we have _NOW_ over _THAT_ any day of the week.  And twice on Sundays.


You would be welcome to come up with an alternative. No one will stop you from that. You can put aside money for all eventualities if you can afford it. Or you can be a market innovator and think of a better way.

----------


## green73

> How many people have been exonerated?


Under the current system? How can you even compare the two?

----------


## Feeding the Abscess

> Obviously services that are currently "public sector" would be handled differently.  But grocery stores are already free market, hence why I'm not sure why there would be the difference.
> 
> How would having insurance (insurance for what?  In case you steal something?  Can I instead sign a waiver saying you have the right to shoot me in the head if I ever rob you?) weed out criminals?
> 
> 
> 
> Honestly, I think ALL state governments would implement "communist" (By the standards of the Founders) government at the state level if this were implemented NOW, without the necessary educational groundwork.  Even now, though, I definitely think this constitutional system would be worlds better than the status quo.  I don't think it can be maintained, though, if you leave bureaucrats with a little power they will always try to take more.  You either hack away at their power, until eventually leaving them with absolutely nothing, or they keep expanding their powers.  I don't think this could be prevented, honestly.


'insurance' could cover all sorts of things, from identification, protection from liability on the behalf of the business owner, to proof of reputation of the insurance carrier (and more). A business would very likely not want to expose itself to the risk of serving a customer that contains no sort of identification, or has a confirmed poor reputation. What would happen if the person without insurance caused an accident on the business' property? The business would likely be held liable. Would you sell a house to someone on a monthly payment installment if they had no job history? No identification? We're talking about a society that operates on reputation and ostracism as a likely means of enforcement and economic and social interaction.

----------


## GunnyFreedom

> You are arguing against private property and advocating that you receive services from a private organization that you do not belong to, or demanding that you receive services/property on your terms rather than the property owner's terms.


No I'm not.  I'm saying that I'd rather be dead than to live in a society where I have to pay protection racket money to an insurance company just to live, breathe, eat, and drink.  That's a dystopian nightmare that even dystopian fiction authors have scarce had the courage to imagine.




> Additionally, Spooner never argued that the constitution would sprout limbs and defend itself. You're literally reversing his argument and ascribing the opposite view as his. His argument was that they were merely words on paper, that there is no inherent enforcement mechanism in them.


What else does can notion that an inanimate object failed to enforce itself possibly mean?

As for an enforcement mechanism, I actually want to amend the Constitution to make it a felony for any elected person at any level to violate their oaths of office, and to establish the kinds of violations in a range from the smallest entry-level felony through to the death penalty.  Indeed, in my opinion that has been the biggest weakness of the Constitution is the lack of an enforcement mechanism.  Make a President subject to the gallows for going to war without a declaration and chances are they will think twice; or if not swing by the neck.  Also, you would get a better class of people running for office in the first place if they could end up doing 25 to life for screwing around.

----------


## Christian Liberty

> There are degrees of mockery. I think this was quite mild. And if you've read the thread you'll see that it's been respectful.


I guess the thing is... the way I look at it, Gunny would basically be Ron Paul, maybe even a little better, if he were to run for Congress.  Not to mention the fact that he's almost certainly (I don't follow NC state politics well enough to be certain of the this) the best person to be elected to North Carolina's State House in a long time.  He's a LOT closer to what you and I believe than he is to what the statists believe.  I can understand this type of mockery from a hardcore statist, but its absolutely unwarranted here.




> It is probably unreasonable to expect reason from zealots.  Only reason I am as calm as I am is because I have grown accustomed to people twisting my positions all out of recognition and applying ideas to me that I do not hold.  For example, under original intent, the County Sheriff did not answer to a government, but only to the voters and the people respectively.  Under original intent, there was no monopoly on force, force belonged to the people first as an unorganized militia, who then voluntarily delegated some of their power of force to an organized militia, who then voluntarily delegated some of their power of force to a State (in times of war or insurrection).
> 
> Mind you, just like Spooner did, it is a lot easier to dismiss my position when you make a bizarre caricature of it.


I've always thought that Spooner expecting the constitution to essentially take up arms and protect itself was silly, as you mentioned.  But I do ultimately agree with Spooner's moral argument that the Constituton would only be binding on those who signed it.  I usually ignore this in debates with people who aren't at least in Ron Paul's general ballpark because its a waste of time, but ultimately I would agree with it.  



> He's also suggesting that it be the general practice in order to insure that criminals are unable to purchase water and food.
> 
> ETA -- whether it be dictated by a law, or it is just the 'generally accepted practice,' I *DO NOT* want to live in any society where I am required to carry insurance just to buy food and water.  I _DO NOT_ volunteer to live in that society.


I don't think your definition of "voluntary" is a good one then.  Of course, I doubt you're the only one who feels this way.  I happen to tend to agree with you, as would a lot of people, so its very possible that the people who feel that way could trade with each other and not have to buy insurance.  But that aside, you don't have an inherent right to stop in a store that doesn't want you there without meeting their conditions.  You have the right to bear arms, but you don't have an intrinsic right to carry your pistol onto someone else's property.  You have a right to freedom of speech, but a movie theater owner can prevent you from shouting "fire" in a crowded theater (note that the government CANNOT justly prevent you from doing this, despite their idiotic claims that they can), and I could kick you out of my house if you mocked my family while you were there.  Similarly, if I wanted to only sell food and water to those who have whatever insurance, that's my right too.  Whether you like it or not isn't really relevant when it comes to someone else's property, and whether or not I like it doesn't matter either.



> So because I object to this notion on principle, that I have to carry insurance to eat and drink, then I'm irresponsible?
> 
> yeah.  No thanks.  I'll take the nightmare we have _NOW_ over _THAT_ any day of the week.  And twice on Sundays.


Yeah, I STRONGLY disagree with you on this.  As it is, you have to pay 30% of your income (Rough estimate) to eat and drinka nd be allowed to breathe.  Plus sales taxes.  I'm sure the insurance would be less  expensive than even just the sales taxes, that and there wouldn't be any law preventing a store from not requiring it, whereas with government you have to pay just by living in the geographical area.

I think my joke about giving someone the right to shoot me in the head if I rob them illustrates my point.  I won't steal, ever.  So I really don't feel like I should have to have an insurance company to vouch for me with regards to that.  I don't see why, if nothing else, the word of everyone I know wouldn't be enough.  Personal references are enough to get jobs, so why not to be a respected member of the community in other respects?  But ultimately, its not up to me, its up to the owner of wherever I'm shopping.

----------


## GunnyFreedom

> You would be welcome to come up with an alternative. No one will stop you from that. You can put aside money for all eventualities if you can afford it. Or you can be a market innovator and think of a better way.


It'll be kind of hard earning money to put aside when I am not allowed to buy food and water for lack of carrying insurance.  Indeed, I _would_ carry insurance until it became a requirement to carry it *just* to eat and drink.  At which point I'd probably pick up a rifle and start shooting people.  Because that's a worse tyranny than we have today by several orders of magnitude.

----------


## kcchiefs6465

> Under the current system? How can you even compare the two?


Because I know that even with all the safety mechanisms in the world in place, humans are not infallible.

No one, criminal or otherwise, should be subjected to work camps for private gain, no less. It is a travesty against humanity and should not be tolerated by anyone even musing about how free the society really is.

----------


## Christian Liberty

> 'insurance' could cover all sorts of things, from identification, protection from liability on the behalf of the business owner, to proof of reputation of the insurance carrier (and more). A business would very likely not want to expose itself to the risk of serving a customer that contains no sort of identification, or has a confirmed poor reputation. What would happen if the person without insurance caused an accident on the business' property? The business would likely be held liable. Would you sell a house to someone on a monthly payment installment if they had no job history? No identification? We're talking about a society that operates on reputation and ostracism as a likely means of enforcement and economic and social interaction.


Yeah, I see your point.  I'm not necessarily convinced that reputation and ostracism is the ONLY way it could be handled, but I think that would be a big part of it.  I mean, if somebody killed someone in my family, I'd probably want to kill them, not just ostracize them.




> No I'm not.  I'm saying that I'd rather be dead than to live in a society where I have to pay protection racket money to an insurance company just to live, breathe, eat, and drink.  That's a dystopian nightmare that even dystopian fiction authors have scarce had the courage to imagine.
> 
> 
> 
> What else does can notion that an inanimate object failed to enforce itself possibly mean?
> 
> As for an enforcement mechanism, I actually want to amend the Constitution to make it a felony for any elected person at any level to violate their oaths of office, and to establish the kinds of violations in a range from the smallest entry-level felony through to the death penalty.  Indeed, in my opinion that has been the biggest weakness of the Constitution is the lack of an enforcement mechanism.  Make a President subject to the gallows for going to war without a declaration and chances are they will think twice; or if not swing by the neck.  Also, you would get a better class of people running for office in the first place if they could end up doing 25 to life for screwing around.


While I agree with you, why couldn't they just ignore those words on the paper like they have the other  ones?

Also, what if SCOTUS declares repealing an unconstittuional to be unconstitutional for some reason?  Like, say, they rule that abolishing social security violates the 9th amendment.  Its insane, but no more so than Wickard v Filburn.  I don't think this would actually work, despite the fact that I love the principle behind it (Bush, Obama, Clinton, Bush, and Carter should all be retroactively hanged.)

----------


## silverhandorder

> It'll be kind of hard earning money to put aside when I am not allowed to buy food and water for lack of carrying insurance.  Indeed, I _would_ carry insurance until it became a requirement to carry it *just* to eat and drink.  At which point I'd probably pick up a rifle and start shooting people.  Because that's a worse tyranny than we have today by several orders of magnitude.


Really? It's worse then having to pay tax you don't want to pay vs having to pay membership fee to enter society you like?

----------


## Feeding the Abscess

> No I'm not.  I'm saying that I'd rather be dead than to live in a society where I have to pay protection racket money to an insurance company just to live, breathe, eat, and drink.  That's a dystopian nightmare that even dystopian fiction authors have scarce had the courage to imagine.


Then come up with your own scenario that easily and cheaply deals with crime, liability, and a whole host of other functions (including how property owners may defend themselves from such risks) in a free society. Insurance agencies that provide identification and vouch for customers' reputations is a remarkably simple and cheap way to achieve this.




> What else does can notion that an inanimate object failed to enforce itself possibly mean?
> 
> As for an enforcement mechanism, I actually want to amend the Constitution to make it a felony for any elected person at any level to violate their oaths of office, and to establish the kinds of violations in a range from the smallest entry-level felony through to the death penalty.  Indeed, in my opinion that has been the biggest weakness of the Constitution is the lack of an enforcement mechanism.  Make a President subject to the gallows for going to war without a declaration and chances are they will think twice; or if not swing by the neck.  Also, you would get a better class of people running for office in the first place if they could end up doing 25 to life for screwing around.


It means that it never could defend itself.

Fantastic. The constitution has never really been followed. Ever. How and why is your amendment going to be enforced, when the rest of the constitution hasn't been?

----------


## green73

> It'll be kind of hard earning money to put aside when I am not allowed to buy food and water for lack of carrying insurance.  Indeed, I _would_ carry insurance until it became a requirement to carry it *just* to eat and drink.  At which point I'd probably pick up a rifle and start shooting people.  Because that's a worse tyranny than we have today by several orders of magnitude.


Did somebody say you'd need insurance to buy food and water? That's absurd.

----------


## GunnyFreedom

> I guess the thing is... the way I look at it, Gunny would basically be Ron Paul, maybe even a little better, if he were to run for Congress.  Not to mention the fact that he's almost certainly (I don't follow NC state politics well enough to be certain of the this) the best person to be elected to North Carolina's State House in a long time.  He's a LOT closer to what you and I believe than he is to what the statists believe.  I can understand this type of mockery from a hardcore statist, but its absolutely unwarranted here.
> 
> 
> 
> I've always thought that Spooner expecting the constitution to essentially take up arms and protect itself was silly, as you mentioned.  But I do ultimately agree with Spooner's moral argument that the Constituton would only be binding on those who signed it.  I usually ignore this in debates with people who aren't at least in Ron Paul's general ballpark because its a waste of time, but ultimately I would agree with it.  
> 
> 
> I don't think your definition of "voluntary" is a good one then.  Of course, I doubt you're the only one who feels this way.  I happen to tend to agree with you, as would a lot of people, so its very possible that the people who feel that way could trade with each other and not have to buy insurance.  But that aside, you don't have an inherent right to stop in a store that doesn't want you there without meeting their conditions.


I would never dream of violating property rights in such a way as to shop in a store that didn't want me there.  However, if it became strictly impossible to buy anything anywhere without paying some "insurance company" protection racket money, then society would be more horribly broken than it is right now in this present age.  Today we call such companies "the mafia."  So what you end up with is a society controlled by criminal gangs.  Or in other words, the people with the biggest guns, win.  That's about as far from a voluntary society as you can get.  It's certainly further from a voluntary society than we are today.




> You have the right to bear arms, but you don't have an intrinsic right to carry your pistol onto someone else's property.  You have a right to freedom of speech, but a movie theater owner can prevent you from shouting "fire" in a crowded theater (note that the government CANNOT justly prevent you from doing this, despite their idiotic claims that they can), and I could kick you out of my house if you mocked my family while you were there.  Similarly, if I wanted to only sell food and water to those who have whatever insurance, that's my right too.  Whether you like it or not isn't really relevant when it comes to someone else's property, and whether or not I like it doesn't matter either.


You should not assume that I have any desire to violate the property rights of other people.  It's a false assumption to begin with.




> Yeah, I STRONGLY disagree with you on this.  As it is, you have to pay 30% of your income (Rough estimate) to eat and drinka nd be allowed to breathe.  Plus sales taxes.  I'm sure the insurance would be less  expensive than even just the sales taxes, that and there wouldn't be any law preventing a store from not requiring it, whereas with government you have to pay just by living in the geographical area.


So it's not about principle it's about the cost?  I'm sure you've heard the old joke about how a rich man asks a woman if she will sleep with him for a million dollars and she agrees, then he changes his offer to $20 and she asks "What kind of woman do you think I am?" he replies "We've already established that, now I'm just dickering on cost."

I don't care if it's one penny a year.  I'll take up arms and start shooting people before I submit to that kind of horror show.  




> I think my joke about giving someone the right to shoot me in the head if I rob them illustrates my point.  I won't steal, ever.  So I really don't feel like I should have to have an insurance company to vouch for me with regards to that.  I don't see why, if nothing else, the word of everyone I know wouldn't be enough.  Personal references are enough to get jobs, so why not to be a respected member of the community in other respects?  But ultimately, its not up to me, its up to the owner of wherever I'm shopping.


All of which proves that this 'anarchy' you guys propose is worse than the tyranny we have today.  The very _notion_ that I'd have to pay an _insurance company_ for _permission_ to buy food and water is strictly unacceptable.  I'll die in a blaze of glory first.  Bet on it.

----------


## GunnyFreedom

> Did somebody say you'd need insurance to buy food and water? That's absurd.


I agree that's absurd.  Wholeheartedly.  And with bells on.

----------


## Feeding the Abscess

> Did somebody say you'd need insurance to buy food and water? That's absurd.


He took this post:




> The Pinkertons were brought about by industries that were massively subsidized by the federal government. They wouldn't have been able to afford such massive costs without state intervention.
> 
> As for your insurance contention, yes, grocery stores and other institutions would service multiple insurance agencies (hell, maybe all of them). For example, the thief who stole the TV and decided not to show up in court may get a visit from an insurance rep. This rep may inform the thief that he can pay a fine, go to a work facility and work off his debt, or, should he decline those, his insurance will be dropped, and every institution that deals with this insurance company would be notified that they are no longer to do business with him. Meaning his electricity, water, ability to buy food, etc is gone. He'd also be an outlaw, meaning bounty hunters could extract payment from him and he would not be privy to legal protection.
> 
> Your example of thieves becoming some super wealthy villains is extremely unlikely, when such thugs would be running for their lives and scraping the earth to merely stay alive.


to mean that people would need to buy food and water insurance, when my point was that the insurance agency would no longer vouch for the criminal's identity or reputation, and the likelihood that businesses that also deal with said insurance company would either be barred from doing business with that person or choose to disassociate with them.

----------


## green73

> Because I know that even with all the safety mechanisms in the world in place, humans are not infallible.
> 
> No one, criminal or otherwise, should be subjected to work camps for private gain, no less. It is a travesty against humanity and should not be tolerated by anyone even musing about how free the society really is.


What they would be working for is a debt owed to their victims. And if any body is falsely condemned it will be reflected in the judge's reputation. People will be less apt to use him going forward. Also, the people who failed to prove his innocence would take a hit on their reputation.

----------


## green73

> He took this post:
> 
> 
> 
> to mean that people would need to buy food and water insurance, when my point was that the insurance agency would no longer vouch for the criminal's identity or reputation, and the likelihood that businesses that also deal with said insurance company would either be barred from doing business with that person or choose to disassociate with them.


Ahh. Thanks. I thought it might be something like that.

----------


## GunnyFreedom

> Then come up with your own scenario that easily and cheaply deals with crime, liability, and a whole host of other functions (including how property owners may defend themselves from such risks) in a free society. Insurance agencies that provide identification and vouch for customers' reputations is a remarkably simple and cheap way to achieve this.


Cheap is irrelevant.  I will _never_ voluntarily place my _life_ into the hands of an insurance agent.  _NEVER._  Not for any reason, not at any cost.  I will die first.  I will die first in a blaze of glory fighting to right the wrongs that have brought such tyranny to my land.  What you suggest is severalk orders of magnitude worse than what we have now.  Not only no, but hell no.




> It means that it never could defend itself.
> 
> Fantastic. The constitution has never really been followed. Ever. How and why is your amendment going to be enforced, when the rest of the constitution hasn't been?


Easy.  You take the power away from the power-brokers.  Set it up where a petition of 5% of the electorate in that person's district brings forth the charge, 50% of a ballot referendum levels the indictment, and then a caucus of the district selects 144 persons as a jury to sit in trial and decide the person's fate, rendering a verdict based on a 2/3 supermajority.

----------


## GunnyFreedom

> He took this post:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 			
> 				Meaning his electricity, water, ability to buy food, etc is gone.
> 			
> ...





> Ahh. Thanks. I thought it might be something like that.


And just what else could "_Meaning his electricity, water, ability to buy food, etc is gone._" possibly mean?

"gone" means "gone."

----------


## Feeding the Abscess

> And just what else could "_Meaning his electricity, water, ability to buy food, etc is gone._" possibly mean?


Which businesses would choose to do business with a known criminal? Certainly none in good standing, as they would lose their hard earned reputation.

----------


## Christian Liberty

> I would never dream of violating property rights in such a way as to shop in a store that didn't want me there.  However, if it became strictly impossible to buy anything anywhere without paying some "insurance company" protection racket money, then society would be more horribly broken than it is right now in this present age.  Today we call such companies "the mafia."  So what you end up with is a society controlled by criminal gangs.  Or in other words, the people with the biggest guns, win.  That's about as far from a voluntary society as you can get.  It's certainly further from a voluntary society than we are today.


OK, you're confused about what FTA is advocating.  He's not advocating being required to buy insurance to eat, drink, or breathe.  What he's saying is that a store might require you to buy insurance to vouch for your reputation in order to shop there, and if a thief refused to submit to punishment for his actions, these insurance companies would have an agreement with the stores that the stores would no longer sell them food, water, and such.  He's talking about private property owners requiring certain things from its customers, not some type of "law" that you can be locked up for not following.






> You should not assume that I have any desire to violate the property rights of other people.  It's a false assumption to begin with.


I do not assume this, and it is the precise fact that I do not assume this that renders me confused with regards to what exactly your issue is.




> So it's not about principle it's about the cost?  I'm sure you've heard the old joke about how a rich man asks a woman if she will sleep with him for a million dollars and she agrees, then he changes his offer to $20 and she asks "What kind of woman do you think I am?" he replies "We've already established that, now I'm just dickering on cost."
> 
> I don't care if it's one penny a year.  I'll take up arms and start shooting people before I submit to that kind of horror show.


Start shooting WHO?

More seriously, I get what you're saying here, but I have two things:

First of all, no principle is violated by a grocery store owner requiring people who come into their store from requiring someone to vouch for their identity, reputation, and non-criminality in order to shop there.  Its their property, so they have that right.  

Second off, even if we were talking about forced purchase of insurance for one penny a year, I don't see how that wouldn't be WORLD'S less coercive than the status quo.  I get you on principles, but that's kind of like saying a 5% flat tax is just as bad as the taxes we have today.  No, it isn't.  Neither can be justified on principle, but the reality is that the former is much less tyrannical than the latter.



> All of which proves that this 'anarchy' you guys propose is worse than the tyranny we have today.  The very _notion_ that I'd have to pay an _insurance company_ for _permission_ to buy food and water is strictly unacceptable.  I'll die in a blaze of glory first.  Bet on it.


Except that nobody's advocating that.  But even if someone was, wouldn't having to pay one of a multiple of insurance companies for this right still be less bad than being required to pay the government for this right like we do now?

----------


## green73

Again, Gunny, Insurance companies wouldn't be what we have today. What is so hard about that to understand? They'd have competition. They wouldn't be protected by regulations that keep other players out of the market. They would have only their reputations to stand behind.

----------


## GunnyFreedom

> Which businesses would choose to do business with a known criminal? Certainly none in good standing, as they would lose their hard earned reputation.


So if I refuse to pay the mafia for a protection racket that makes me a 'known criminal?'

Again, your utopia is worse than the current nightmare.

----------


## GunnyFreedom

> Again, Gunny, Insurance companies wouldn't be what we have today. What is so hard about that to understand? They'd have competition. They wouldn't be protected by regulations that keep other players out of the market. They would have only their reputations to stand behind.


OK, so I have to pick one of the _competing_ mafias for permission to buy food at water?

_No way in hell!_

----------


## Feeding the Abscess

> So if I refuse to pay the mafia for a protection racket that makes me a 'known criminal?'
> 
> Again, your utopia is worse than the current nightmare.


No, you'd just have no reputation that others would recognize. Committing criminal acts, ie stealing the TV in this scenario, would make you the criminal.

----------


## Christian Liberty

> And just what else could "_Meaning his electricity, water, ability to buy food, etc is gone._" possibly mean?
> 
> "gone" means "gone."


FTA, correct me if I'm wrong, but I think he's talking about a thief who steals and then, after being convicted by an arbitrator, refusing to compensate the victims.  He's saying that ostracization of this sort would be a tool to force a convicted thief to pay what he owes.  He is NOT saying that an insurance company could or would just prevent people from selling you food or water.  Even if some rogue insurance company started doing something like that to people that it didn't like, the stores would never stand for it, since they'd be losing business for no good reason, and that insurance company would not be used.

Contrast with "government" who can steal from, kidnap, and even murder pretty much anyone it wants due to its legal monopoly.  I know that's not what you advocate, but it is certainly the current system, which is world's worse than what free market anarchists advocate by any definition.

I don't know, either I'm really, really oblivious to the connotations of what FTA and green are suggesting, or you don't really understand it, because I can't imagine how anyone in his right mind could think that their system is worse than this one, and I know you are not a gut reaction "But without the government there would be chaos" type.

----------


## green73

> And just what else could "_Meaning his electricity, water, ability to buy food, etc is gone._" possibly mean?
> 
> "gone" means "gone."


He's saying that if you are a criminal who's made no restitutions that could be your reality.  Pay up, thief!

----------


## Feeding the Abscess

> OK, so I have to pick one of the _competing_ mafias for permission to buy food at water?
> 
> _No way in hell!_


In a private property society, how else would you get water? You're either going to need to own land that has water or purchase it from a store or local water provider. As discussed, local water providers and business owners would likely require insurance coverage in order to do business with them in order to protect themselves from liability, protect their reputation, etc. Requirements for entry could literally be as minor and simple as identification verification.

----------


## green73

> OK, so I have to pick one of the _competing_ mafias for permission to buy food at water?
> 
> _No way in hell!_


Why would they have to be a mafia? Why would no honest player step up?

Also, again with the food and water. Do you not read?

----------


## Occam's Banana

> The whole point of the original US Constitution was that nobody was "in charge," but that there were "X" functions that we basically agreed to do together.


Without getting into details or debating further about it (unless you really want to), I will merely note FTR that I disagree that under the Constitution, "nobody was 'in charge'" (or that the Constitution did not create a group of people who were put "in charge") - and also with the notion that "we ... agreed" (with emphasis on the general and much-too-inclusive "we").




> Strict Constitutional originalism is the closest thing to actual voluntarism that the current state of mankind has ever produced.  Spooner's problem was that he somehow expected a piece of paper to animate itself take up arms and start shooting the people who violated it, and failing that it was a failure.  His argument is frankly absurd.


I am about to commit what many of my fellow anarchists/voluntaryists may  very well consider to be heresy, but I agree with your criticism of  Spooner on this particular point. Or, at least, I disagree with the way  that his expression of the matter is so very often used by other  anarchists/voluntaryists. The problem is that the logic involved would  apply with equal force to any anarchistic/voluntaryist society that  devolved (for whatever reasons) into Statism. Such a devolution would  NOT constitute evidence (let alone proof) that anarchism/voluntaryism  in and of itself cannot possibly work or endure. At most, it would only demonstrate that it did  not actually work and endure under the particular and contingently historical circumstances which prevailed at the time. Likewise for strict, orginalist Constitutionalism. This is why I never quote Spooner on this point. It is a sword that too-easily cuts both ways ...




> It was never up to a piece of parchment to defend itself, but up to the people in general, or as Ben Franklin put it "...a republic ma'am, if you can keep it."  The most important word there is "you."
> 
> The people failed, whether it be through the deception of centralized "education" (not allowed for in the Constitution, of course), or corrupt people lusting after power promising unicorns and rainbows, appealing to the voter's base lusts.  It was never up to the Constitution to defend itself but "We the People" as the preamble implies.


I agree with all of this. NO free society can survive if a sufficient number of its members are not willing to actively assert & uphold the values upon which liberty depends. But just as Spooner's dictum cuts both ways, so does this. It is just not kosher to assert that it is possible for "we the people" to successfully defend & uphold libertarian principle against the corrosion and destruction of liberty by the State (via staunch dedication to and assiduous application of Constitutionalism, for example) while also asserting that it is NOT possible for the members of an anarchist/voluntaryist society to be able to do the same against "armies of thieves" or "whoever has the biggest guns" or whatnot. Those who criticize anarchism on such bases cannot have it both ways ...

----------


## GunnyFreedom

> OK, you're confused about what FTA is advocating.  He's not advocating being required to buy insurance to eat, drink, or breathe.  What he's saying is that a store might require you to buy insurance to vouch for your reputation in order to shop there, and if a thief refused to submit to punishment for his actions, these insurance companies would have an agreement with the stores that the stores would no longer sell them food, water, and such.  He's talking about private property owners requiring certain things from its customers, not some type of "law" that you can be locked up for not following.


if that system has any meaning at all, then it is accepted by everyone.  It's already been stated that there would be no black market in this dystopian society, so that means pay the insurance of die of hunger and thirst.  That's the simple logical conclusion of the data being offered.  You can argue "he didn't really say that" all night and day, but the man said "his ability to buy electricity food and water will be gone."

Gone means gone brother.




> I do not assume this, and it is the precise fact that I do not assume this that renders me confused with regards to what exactly your issue is.


But you did, you launched into a lecture about how I should be trying to force my way into businesses that did not want me.




> Start shooting WHO?
> 
> More seriously, I get what you're saying here, but I have two things:
> 
> First of all, no principle is violated by a grocery store owner requiring people who come into their store from requiring someone to vouch for their identity, reputation, and non-criminality in order to shop there.  Its their property, so they have that right.


Maybe they have that right, but then when 100% of all the stores decide you either pay the mafia protection money or die, then if I'm going to die anyway I'm goign to take out the people forcing the tyranny on me when I go.




> Second off, even if we were talking about forced purchase of insurance for one penny a year, I don't see how that wouldn't be WORLD'S less coercive than the status quo.  I get you on principles, but that's kind of like saying a 5% flat tax is just as bad as the taxes we have today.  No, it isn't.  Neither can be justified on principle, but the reality is that the former is much less tyrannical than the latter.


I don't operate on price, I operate on principle.  I understand that is a foreign concept to most Americans today.




> Except that nobody's advocating that.  But even if someone was, wouldn't having to pay one of a multiple of insurance companies for this right still be less bad than being required to pay the government for this right like we do now?


Harris Teeter has never asked me for a copy of my form 1040 before allowing me to buy groceries.

----------


## GunnyFreedom

> Why would they have to be a mafia? Why would no honest player step up?
> 
> Also, again with the food and water. Do you not read?


Oh I read alright.  I read "his ability to purchase electricity water food would be gone."  I'm not the one failing to read here.  Any random company that can decide whether I eat and drink is wholly and utterly incompatible with liberty.  Period.

----------


## GunnyFreedom

> He's saying that if you are a criminal who's made no restitutions that could be your reality.  Pay up, thief!


And if I choose not to buy the insurance at all in the first place?  Having committed no criminal act whatsoever?  Then I am not allowed to eat, drink, or run my lights. How is that liberty?  How is that voluntary?

----------


## Feeding the Abscess

Is Costco oppressing you by requiring a membership to shop there? It's their property, and they've decided to only let members in. Is this tyranny?

In addition, the black market would not exist as a robust sector of banned goods and services, like it does with State law in today's society. Criminals would not be able to easily accumulate wealth from illicit means as most profitable activities currently in the black market now would no longer reside there.

----------


## green73

> Oh I read alright.  I read "his ability to purchase electricity water food would be gone."  I'm not the one failing to read here.  Any random company that can decide whether I eat and drink is wholly and utterly incompatible with liberty.  Period.


You don't believe in freedom of association, that people may not want your business if you have been convicted of a crime and made no restitution? Seems like you want a society were crimals just sit in cages and everybody has to pay for it, including the victims--who get nothing.

----------


## GunnyFreedom

> No, you'd just have no reputation that others would recognize. Committing criminal acts, ie stealing the TV in this scenario, would make you the criminal.


So a reputation is required to conduct business such as buying food and water, and I have to pay a criminal racket for reputation credentials.  Adding more layers the Rube Goldberg machine doesn't make it any more palatable.

----------


## silverhandorder

It's not any single company. It has to be entire society. If a portion of society supports your behavior and that portion lives in peace with the rest of society then you are good. However if you are a criminal aka hunter by everyone then yes you have to worry.

----------


## GunnyFreedom

> You don't believe in freedom of association, that people may not want your business if you have been convicted of a crime and made no restitution?


If I have to _pay_ for this 'freedom of association' then it's really not any kind of _'freedom'_ at all.  It's 'paydom.'  As on a protection racket.  As in something that today we consider criminal racketeering.

----------


## green73

> And if I choose not to buy the insurance at all in the first place?  Having committed no criminal act whatsoever?  Then I am not allowed to eat, drink, or run my lights. How is that liberty?  How is that voluntary?


Of course not. Who is saying that?

----------


## GunnyFreedom

> Is Costco oppressing you by requiring a membership to shop there? It's their property, and they've decided to only let members in. Is this tyranny?
> 
> In addition, the black market would not exist as a robust sector of banned goods and services, like it does with State law in today's society. Criminals would not be able to easily accumulate wealth from illicit means as most profitable activities currently in the black market now would no longer reside there.


I can easily go to Food Lion that doesn't require a membership.  Your emphasis on 'his ability to buy electricity food water is gone' implies that there will not be such an alternative.

----------


## Feeding the Abscess

> So a reputation is required to conduct business such as buying food and water, and I have to pay a criminal racket for reputation credentials.  Adding more layers the Rube Goldberg machine doesn't make it any more palatable.


A reputation is required to conduct business in many private arrangements currently. Try buying a house, car, opening a bank account, etc with no identification, job history, or verifiable information on you and report to me how that goes.

Is Costco oppressing you by not allowing you to shop there without a membership?

----------


## GunnyFreedom

> Of course not. Who is saying that?


I don't care how you slice it.  Gone means gone.

Unless Abscess is willing to state that what he said was in error, but then that folds back to the original point, and then there is nothing to stop the thief from thieving.

----------


## GunnyFreedom

> A reputation is required to conduct business in many private arrangements currently. Try buying a house, car, opening a bank account, etc with no identification, job history, or verifiable information on you and report to me how that goes.
> 
> Is Costco oppressing you by not allowing you to shop there without a membership?


I can easily go to Food Lion that doesn't require a membership. Your emphasis on 'his ability to buy electricity food water is gone' implies that there will not be such an alternative.

----------


## Feeding the Abscess

> I can easily go to Food Lion that doesn't require a membership.  Your emphasis on 'his ability to buy electricity food water is gone' implies that there will not be such an alternative.


Food Lion exists in a society that has externalized policing, security, and financial protection. In a private property society, Food Lion would be responsible for covering these things, not the taxpayers at large.

----------


## Christian Liberty

> I don't operate on price, I operate on principle. I understand that is a foreign concept to most Americans today.


I agree with you.  Hence why I say ALL taxation is wrong, but that doesn't mean I'd oppose a bill that reduces taxess.  Or why I think ALL drugs should be legalized and not regulated, but that doesn't mean the legalization of marijuana in Colorado and Washington isn't a step in the right direction.

Plus, I'm not sure how you reconcile this statement, in context, with your support for Rand Paul for President.

----------


## green73

> I don't care how you slice it.  Gone means gone.
> 
> Unless Abscess is willing to state that what he said was in error, but then that folds back to the original point, and then there is nothing to stop the thief from thieving.


Are saying that in this case, you are not a criminal? Because, I'm pretty sure the example is of a criminal, and one who has not paid anything to the victim.  

As for the membership--absent of being a criminal, or other bad credit--they are going to want your business.

----------


## GunnyFreedom

> Gunny, I have one question for you.
> 
> Can I opt-out? If I live peacefully, and do not infringe on other's rights, would you still advocate taking what is mine for the collective "good"? (what I see as the collective evil) That's really all this comes down to. Would your taxmen and government agents come to the mountains, on land rightfully acquired by me, to extract their dues? Am I able to reject that in your society? Or because I was born on some particular place, particular people collectivizing and worshiping a flag have legitimate right over what is mine?
> 
> I care not about landmines, television sets, and mortar fire. This question is quite simple.


I would never advocate taking what is yours for 'the public good' whether you chose to opt out or not.  I do not support the 16th Amendment at all.  My first-ever political act was to stand up at a State Convention to seek a resolution to repeal the 16th Amendment.  I also support allodial titles and reject property taxes, one of our Founder's early errors. So in my "ideal society" of strict construction Constitutionalism, you would live exactly as you ask, again, whether you opted out or not.

----------


## GunnyFreedom

> Food Lion exists in a society that has externalized policing, security, and financial protection. In a private property society, Food Lion would be responsible for covering these things, not the taxpayers at large.


In your society I would not be allowed to shop at Food Lion unless I payed some random company protection racket money for reputation insurance.  That's worse than what we have today.

----------


## Feeding the Abscess

> In your society I would not be allowed to shop at Food Lion unless I payed some random company protection racket money for reputation insurance.  That's worse than what we have today.


It could be something as simple as identification.

If your hang up is that a business might want to know who they are doing business with, since they're responsible for covering their own policing, security, litigation and liability costs, I don't know what to tell you.

----------


## GunnyFreedom

> Are saying that in this case, you are not a criminal? Because, I'm pretty sure the example is of a criminal, and one who has not paid anything to the victim.  
> 
> As for the membership--absent of being a criminal, or other bad credit--they are going to want your business.


Yes, I am saying that in this case I am not a criminal.  What Abscess is saying is that someone who does not carry insurance will not be allowed by the sellers to purchase food and water in their stores, because I would not have a recognizable established reputation.  This is his enforcement methodology for thieves and such.  That their insurance rates would go up, and that without insurance they would not be able to purchase electricity, water, or food.  In that system, there would be nothing to distinguish a thief who could not purchase insurance because the rates were too high him being a criminal, and me who refuses to pay protection racket money on principle.

----------


## GunnyFreedom

> It could be something as simple as identification.
> 
> If your hang up is that a business might want to know who they are doing business with, since they're responsible for covering their own policing, security, litigation and liability costs, I don't know what to tell you.


You said that the way to enforce a prohibition against theft would be to tie it to insurance, such that if the thief refused to recompense his victims then his ability to purchase electricity, water, and food would be gone.  Is that _really_ what you mean?  Because if it is, then what you advocate is literally worse than the tyranny we suffer under today.  But if it is _not,_ then the original point stands that there is really nothing to prevent a thief from thieving.

----------


## Feeding the Abscess

> You said that the way to enforce a prohibition against theft would be to tie it to insurance, such that if the thief refused to recompense his victims then his ability to purchase electricity, water, and food would be gone.  Is that _really_ what you mean?  Because if it is, then what you advocate is literally worse than the tyranny we suffer under today.  But if it is _not,_ then the original point stands that there is really nothing to prevent a thief from thieving.


Criminals not being able to function as normal members of society is insufferable tyranny?

Dude, really? Of all things to sacrifice yourself on a hill for, you're throwing in with criminals not being able to be free?

----------


## Christian Liberty

> You said that the way to enforce a prohibition against theft would be to tie it to insurance, such that if the thief refused to recompense his victims then his ability to purchase electricity, water, and food would be gone.  Is that _really_ what you mean?  Because if it is, then what you advocate is literally worse than the tyranny we suffer under today.  But if it is _not,_ then the original point stands that there is really nothing to prevent a thief from thieving.


I really don't understand what the problem with this is, as long as nobody was forced to buy insurance and no company was forced to require insurance.

----------


## Christian Liberty

> Criminals not being able to function as normal members of society is insufferable tyranny?
> 
> Dude, really? Of all things to sacrifice yourself on a hill for, you're throwing in with criminals not being able to be free?


I think Gunny's issue is that he feels like, in practice, he'd have no choice but to buy insurance or be treated as a criminal.  But I don't really see why that would be the case.  I don't THINK Gunny's issue is with people refusing to sell for thieves who don't compensate, but I could be wrong.

----------


## GunnyFreedom

> Criminals not being able to function as normal members of society is insufferable tyranny?
> 
> Dude, really? Of all things to sacrifice yourself on a hill for, you're throwing in with criminals not being able to be free?


I am not a criminal, yet I refuse to pay the mafia for a protection racket.  Now I don't have electricity, water, or food.  That is really the society you want to live in?

----------


## Christian Liberty

> Yes, I am saying that in this case I am not a criminal.  What Abscess is saying is that someone who does not carry insurance will not be allowed by the sellers to purchase food and water in their stores, because I would not have a recognizable established reputation.  This is his enforcement methodology for thieves and such.  That their insurance rates would go up, and that without insurance they would not be able to purchase electricity, water, or food.  In that system, there would be nothing to distinguish a thief who could not purchase insurance because the rates were too high him being a criminal, and me who refuses to pay protection racket money on principle.


You guys are talking past each other.

Gunny, the case you are looking at is simply "Glen Bradley refuses to buy insurance."  In that case, you're right that that's not criminal.  I think green and FTA would wholeheartedly agree with you here.

But the case green is looking at is "Thief steals property and fails to pay back his victims."  So, green is asking you if you believe stealing from people and not paying back your victims is a criminal act.  I am willing to bet that you believe it is, but you're saying no because you're confusing this scenario with just not buying insurance.

----------


## Feeding the Abscess

> I am not a criminal, yet I refuse to pay the mafia for a protection racket.  Now I don't have electricity, water, or food.  That is really the society you want to live in?


How else are you going to have an identity? There's no expropriating State that provides you with an identity. In a private property society, such externalities won't exist. You'll need to have some agency verify your identity. Why would agencies wanting to provide people with a valuable service be a mafia protection racket?

----------


## GunnyFreedom

> I really don't understand what the problem with this is, as long as nobody was forced to buy insurance and no company was forced to require insurance.


Clearly, in his ideal society everybody requires the carrying of this 'insurance' whether it's via some mandatory law (unlikely in this case) or a cartel like agreement.  In either case, my liberty is violated.  I would have no choice but to pay the protection racket or die cold, thirsty, and hungry.  That's not voluntary, that's coercion.  That's coercion worse that that which we suffer today.  If that is what an 'anarchistic society' is, then it's more tyrannical than Barack freakin Obama.

----------


## green73

> Yes, I am saying that in this case I am not a criminal.  What Abscess is saying is that someone who does not carry insurance will not be allowed by the sellers to purchase food and water in their stores, because I would not have a recognizable established reputation.  This is his enforcement methodology for thieves and such.  That their insurance rates would go up, and that without insurance they would not be able to purchase electricity, water, or food.  In that system, there would be nothing to distinguish a thief who could not purchase insurance because the rates were too high him being a criminal, and me who refuses to pay protection racket money on principle.


I don't think that's quite what he is saying. He is saying that they are going to want some record of you in order for you to obtain a membership. That's reasonable. On the other hand, there will probably be places that don't care. The quality of their service and products will probably be less in comparison, but you won't starve.

----------


## GunnyFreedom

> How else are you going to have an identity? There's no expropriating State that provides you with an identity. In a private property society, such externalities won't exist. You'll need to have some agency verify your identity. Why would agencies wanting to provide people with a valuable service be a mafia protection racket?


"buy this or die" is a mafia protection racket no matter how it's renamed, retooled, or justified.  A rose by any other name, is still the same.

----------


## Christian Liberty

> I am not a criminal, yet I refuse to pay the mafia for a protection racket.  Now I don't have electricity, water, or food.  That is really the society you want to live in?


Its not the society I want to live in, but it is the society we DO live in.  Well, you'll get fed, in a cage.

If it were actually the case that nobody wants to sell to you without insurance that will pay them if you steal from them, I can live with that.  But I really doubt this would happen.  There are bound to be a lot of people who feel the same way as you about insurance.  If there are, there will be markets that offer to serve such people.  You won't have no options.  Frankly, I agree with you on this if I have the option.  I'm not going to steal from anybody.  Anyone I know would tell you I wouldn't.  But some other people don't, so maybe some stores require insurance.

By contrast, in the current system, the majority wants to force you to own insurance on your car, so they can just force you to do it... to use the roads that YOU paid for.  Now THAT'S tyranny.

----------


## GunnyFreedom

> I don't think that's quite what he is saying. He is saying that they are going to want some record of you in order for you to obtain a membership. That's reasonable. On the other hand, there will probably be places that don't care. The quality of their service and products will probably be less in comparison, but you won't starve.


If there were places that didn't care, then the thief's ability to purchase electricity, water, and food would *NOT* be 'gone' and the original point stands, there would be nothing to stop the thief from thieving.

----------


## GunnyFreedom

> Its not the society I want to live in, but it is the society we DO live in.  Well, you'll get fed, in a cage.
> 
> If it were actually the case that nobody wants to sell to you without insurance that will pay them if you steal from them, I can live with that.  But I really doubt this would happen.  There are bound to be a lot of people who feel the same way as you about insurance.  If there are, there will be markets that offer to serve such people.  You won't have no options.  Frankly, I agree with you on this if I have the option.  I'm not going to steal from anybody.  Anyone I know would tell you I wouldn't.  But some other people don't, so maybe some stores require insurance.
> 
> By contrast, in the current system, the majority wants to force you to own insurance on your car, so they can just force you to do it... to use the roads that YOU paid for.  Now THAT'S tyranny.


Again, if there are 'other options' then the original point stands.  If the thief's ability to purchase electricity, water, food is *NOT* "gone," then there is nothing to stop the thief from thieving.

----------


## Christian Liberty

> Clearly, in his ideal society everybody requires the carrying of this 'insurance' whether it's via some mandatory law (unlikely in this case) or a cartel like agreement.  In either case, my liberty is violated.  I would have no choice but to pay the protection racket or die cold, thirsty, and hungry.  That's not voluntary, that's coercion.  That's coercion worse that that which we suffer today.  If that is what an 'anarchistic society' is, then it's more tyrannical than Barack freakin Obama.


OK, now I think I get what you're saying.  you're envisioning all the companies banding together and agreeing to enforce those policies on everybody, everywhere.  I'd agree with you that that would be pretty darn tyrannical, but I don't think that's very likely to happen.  If it did, I think it would resemble government quite well, actually, since as it is you have no choice but to pay them or go to prison.

The problem with this sort of thing is that we're literally trying to figure out what every person would do without a coercive State, and that's impossible.  But I think its a lot more likely that some stores require insurance while others don't than it is that your choices would be "buy or die."

Even in the absolute worst case scenario, there's still farming.  Yeah, that's not much consolation, and I don't think it would ever be that bad, but even if it were, I don't think it would quite be "buy it or die."

Ultimately your issue here is one anarchist's predictions of what society would look like without the State, not anarchism as a concept.

----------


## GunnyFreedom

> You guys are talking past each other.
> 
> Gunny, the case you are looking at is simply "Glen Bradley refuses to buy insurance."  In that case, you're right that that's not criminal.  I think green and FTA would wholeheartedly agree with you here.
> 
> But the case green is looking at is "Thief steals property and fails to pay back his victims."  So, green is asking you if you believe stealing from people and not paying back your victims is a criminal act.  I am willing to bet that you believe it is, but you're saying no because you're confusing this scenario with just not buying insurance.


Except the prohibition on purchasing from Abscess's post was simply the lack of carrying insurance.  If the lack of carrying insurance did not prohibit one from buying food and water then his post did not address the original problem, and we are back to there being nothing to stop a thief from thieving.

----------


## green73

> If there were places that didn't care, then the thief's ability to purchase electricity, water, and food would *NOT* be 'gone' and the original point stands, there would be nothing to stop the thief from thieving.


We're back to the thief again, and we are not talking about food, we're talking about utilities. Since you're a thief (again) you will probably be living a meagre existence because utility companies will probably want some record of you.

----------


## Occam's Banana

It's not a matter of "stopping the thief from thieving."
There is NO  system - Statist or Anarchist - that can or ever will do such a thing.
It is simply not a rational or reasonable thing to expect or demand that any system do so.
The matter is one of, "What is to be done to or about thieves who have thieved" ...

----------


## Christian Liberty

> Again, if there are 'other options' then the original point stands.  If the thief's ability to purchase electricity, water, food is *NOT* "gone," then there is nothing to stop the thief from thieving.


I'm not sure where FTA stands on this,  since anarchist views on punishment theory do vary, but I've personally got no qualms about forcing a thief to pay reparations to his victim, or hiring a peacekeeping force/private police department to do it for me.  My issues with government are not because of laws against murder, theft, etc. or punishments for doing these acts, my issues revolve around (In no particular order) compulsory taxation to pay for such, no legalized competition for such, punishments that benefit the State rather than the victim, the fact that the punishment agencies cannot themselves be held accountable (This problem would disappear under competition) and that, even if the government charged user fees to use its infrastructure, it stole to set it up to begin with.  I have a right, morally, to use the road in front of my house (As do my neighbors who live on the same road) precisely because at some point, property was stolen from those who owned those plots of land whenever the road was built to build the road.

----------


## Christian Liberty

> It's not a matter of "stopping the thief from thieving."
> There is NO  system - Statist or Anarchist - that can or ever will do such a thing.
> It is simply not a rational or reasonable thing to expect or demand that any system do so.
> The matter is one of, "What is to be done to or about thieves who have thieved" ...


Agreed.  Which one are you guys (FTA and Gunny) referring to?  Stopping theft or punishing it?

----------


## green73

> It's not a matter of "stopping the thief from thieving."
> There is NO  system - Statist or Anarchist - that can or ever will do such a thing.
> It is simply not a rational or reasonable thing to expect or demand that any system do so.
> The matter is one of, "What is to be done to or about thieves who have thieved" ...


No, no, no. It's about having an identity. That's the mark of the beast. I think that's what he might be getting at.

----------


## GunnyFreedom

> OK, now I think I get what you're saying.  you're envisioning all the companies banding together and agreeing to enforce those policies on everybody, everywhere.  I'd agree with you that that would be pretty darn tyrannical, but I don't think that's very likely to happen.  If it did, I think it would resemble government quite well, actually, since as it is you have no choice but to pay them or go to prison.


Except the proposed system is _worse,_ because at least in prison you get food and water.  I'm sure it is unlikely to happen that EVERY seller would come into a cartel to require this insurance, but in that case his comment did not address the original point, the thief is not prevented from thievery.  Maybe the thief has to buy his food at WalMart instead of Whole Foods.  I don't really think he's going to be very broken up about that.




> The problem with this sort of thing is that we're literally trying to figure out what every person would do without a coercive State, and that's impossible.  But I think its a lot more likely that some stores require insurance while others don't than it is that your choices would be "buy or die."


It's either "buy or die," or his original post fails to address the issue that he was responding to.




> Even in the absolute worst case scenario, there's still farming.  Yeah, that's not much consolation, and I don't think it would ever be that bad, but even if it were, I don't think it would quite be "buy it or die."


No, actually, there is not farming.  You still have to buy seed, you either need to purchase fertilizer, manure, or the animals to produce the manure, the food to feed the animals to produce the manure.  At some point no matter what you will have to purchase something from somewhere.  




> Ultimately your issue here is one anarchist's predictions of what society would look like without the State, not anarchism as a concept.


I don't think so.  Anarchism always eventually boils down to the party with a preponderance of force.  Whether that force is exhibited in the form of fists, guns, or money it all ends up in the same place.  That is not compatible with a voluntary society.  I am a voluntaryist.  I believe that all human action should be 100% voluntary and compatible with the NAP.  Anarchy, no matter how you slice it, is just not compatible with a voluntary society.  There will _ALWAYS_ be the coercion of force, even in the absence of some central authority, for as long as mankind remains sinful in nature.  I would rather this be force fixed and predictable rather than arbitrary and whimsical. If it is fixed and predictable it can be minimized to almost nothing.  If it is arbitrary and random then you never know one day to the next if you are going to wake up in Atlantis or Mad Max Beyond The Thunderdome.

I oppose anarchy on principle _because_ I am a voluntaryist, and anarchy is incompatible with a voluntary society.

----------


## GunnyFreedom

> No, no, no. It's about having an identity. That's the mark of the beast. I think that's what he might be getting at.




Well, I guess we can count _you_ out of the 'principled' set.

----------


## green73

> Well, I guess we can count _you_ out of the 'principled' set.


Oh come on. Let your hair down a little.

----------


## Seraphim

There's a reason why anarchist thought has evolved to define issues of property and enforcement.

The word Voluntarism, is an example of this.

It merely expands on the notion that no government is legitimate if the governed do not consent. ALL individuals - not merely a majority. 




> The problem anarchists have is the word "govern." Explain that one. A contract is a governing document. A standard is a governing document. Do anarchists not want standards or contracts?

----------


## Christian Liberty

> Well, I guess we can count _you_ out of the 'principled' set.


Well, I understand both of your points, but you've been civil and he hasn't, so what can I say?

Personally, I think it would be kind of hard to tell the difference between the type of society you advocate and the type Rothbard advocated.  I'm not really sure what the difference would be in practice, since in your system the government would essentially be completely voluntary and anyone could compete with it for any of the services it provides.

----------


## green73

> Well, I understand both of your points, but you've been civil and he hasn't, so what can I say?
> 
> Personally, I think it would be kind of hard to tell the difference between the type of society you advocate and the type Rothbard advocated.  I'm not really sure what the difference would be in practice, since in your system the government would essentially be completely voluntary and anyone could compete with it for any of the services it provides.


I've not been civil? Seriously? Listen, you admittedly don't perceive nuance. You don't recognize sarcasm and a variety of other things. YOU TAKE EVERYTHING LITERALLY. You know this, so why not set a rule for yourself to abstain from commenting in certain cases. Uncivil? $#@! you! That's uncivil.

----------


## GunnyFreedom

> Well, I understand both of your points, but you've been civil and he hasn't, so what can I say?
> 
> Personally, I think it would be kind of hard to tell the difference between the type of society you advocate and the type Rothbard advocated.  I'm not really sure what the difference would be in practice, since in your system the government would essentially be completely voluntary and anyone could compete with it for any of the services it provides.


I don't really find much to disagree with WRT Rothbard, but I think I confuse the heck out of doctrinaire anarchists when I state that I oppose anarchy on principle because I am a voluntaryist, and that I find philosophical anarchism incompatible with a voluntary society in mankinds current condition.   Nevertheless I am speaking the 100% absolute truth as I perceive it.

----------


## green73

> I don't really find much to disagree with WRT Rothbard, but I think I confuse the heck out of doctrinaire anarchists when I state that I oppose anarchy on principle because I am a voluntaryist, and that I find philosophical anarchism incompatible with a voluntary society in mankinds current condition.   Nevertheless I am speaking the 100% absolute truth as I perceive it.


There is nothing voluntary about a state. If you let people opt out, how will that even work?

----------


## DamianTV

> Celsius zeros at the point fresh water freezes. Fahrenheit zeros at the point salt water freezes. My guess is Fahrenheit's unit of scale determined the boiling point once zero was established.


Pressure also affects Boiling and Freezing points.  32 and 212 are established with sea level air pressure.

----------


## GunnyFreedom

> There is nothing voluntary about a state. If you let people opt out, how will that even work?


I see nothing voluntary in what you offer, I sure as heck don't want anything to do with it, and it is certainly a lot more coercive than what I have suggested.  If you cannot have full perfection in this world then the goal is to get as close as possible to it.

----------


## kcchiefs6465

> There is nothing voluntary about a state. If you let people opt out, how will that even work?


It would work quite marvelously, I bet. How wouldn't it work? Don't want to pay for the stupid $#@! being bought in your name? Opt out. Don't pay taxes. They aren't required.

I could support such a state. I may even find some services to be beneficial.

----------


## green73

> I see nothing voluntary in what you offer, I sure as heck don't want anything to do with it, and it is certainly a lot more coercive than what I have suggested.  If you cannot have full perfection in this world then the goal is to get as close as possible to it.


If you are law abiding, no one would force you to do anything. In business dealings it is good to know who one is dealing with, no? If it is a simple cash transaction, then there might be no problems. If there is the matter of credit, then of course you know one has to vouch for ones self. They may be communities that don't want criminals living amongst them, even if they've made restitution. You don't have to live there. No one is forcing you. 

At the end of the day, your reputation is what matters. The better it is, the better your prospects. I'm sorry that you find that so horrible.

----------


## Christian Liberty

> I've not been civil? Seriously? Listen, you admittedly don't perceive nuance. You don't recognize sarcasm and a variety of other things. YOU TAKE EVERYTHING LITERALLY. You know this, so why not set a rule for yourself to abstain from commenting in certain cases. Uncivil? $#@! you! That's uncivil.


I don't think anyone can detect sarcasm on the internet.




> I don't really find much to disagree with WRT Rothbard, but I think I confuse the heck out of doctrinaire anarchists when I state that I oppose anarchy on principle because I am a voluntaryist, and that I find philosophical anarchism incompatible with a voluntary society in mankinds current condition.   Nevertheless I am speaking the 100% absolute truth as I perceive it.


You confused me for awhile as well.  I'm still somewhat confused, since I still fundamentally see this as a quibble over what would happen in the absence of the State (I wouldn't qualify a completely voluntary government like you seem to support as being a "State") rather an a substantive difference in philosophy, but I could be wrong.  To me, these nuances are somewhat unimportant.

----------


## kcchiefs6465

http://www.ronpaulforums.com/showthr...for-since-1996

DoD - 8.5 Trillion Unaccounted for since 1996

Sigh. What will happen to the television thieves?..... as others quite literally rob this country blind.

The Constitution of No Authority.

Just to be clear, for those who didn't know, you owe that money. And it will be had one way or another. How are you required to pay for what other people spent, having not consented to ever pay the tab, having not incurred the debt, and not wanting what they buy with it? That is a good question. You were born. 

Seems legit.

But again, let us worry about petty crooks, who'd sooner be shot trying to run off with my television or if caught, whooped beyond repair. There isn't more concerning issues of state legitimized grand theft.

----------


## green73

> It would work quite marvelously, I bet. How wouldn't it work? Don't want to pay for the stupid $#@! being bought in your name? Opt out. Don't pay taxes. They aren't required.
> 
> I could support such a state. I may even find some services to be beneficial.


How are the borders defined?

----------


## GunnyFreedom

> It would work quite marvelously, I bet. How wouldn't it work? Don't want to pay for the stupid $#@! being bought in your name? Opt out. Don't pay taxes. They aren't required.
> 
> I could support such a state. I may even find some services to be beneficial.


Indeed, the original idea of America was just that.  There was no such thing as an income tax.  Everything was user fees and (more unfortunately) tariffs.  If you wanted to use the postal service, you bought a postal stamp.  One of my primary regrets was that the Founders didn't think to establish allodial titles and prohibit property taxes.  Back then in that day, if you supported a war, you contributed or bought war bonds.  If you did not support a war you did not.  The original intent was just a hair's breadth from philosophical voluntaryism to start with, and could have been brought even closer.  The original power to tax, for example, while not nearly as awful as the 16th Amendment is today, was still far too broad and ambiguous.

----------


## kcchiefs6465

> How are the borders defined?


However they wish them to be? They're already defined here. Leave them.

Nothing to be given away through voting? Let anyone who wants to come, come. There's room.

----------


## GunnyFreedom

> If you are law abiding, no one would force you to do anything.


Except to pay an insurance racket if I wanted the privilege of buying electricity, food, or water; or to stay at home guarding my stuff if I would rather be out in the world earning a living; or to hire a protection detail to secure my wife and daughters while travelling so we don't get mugged and raped; or to...




> In business dealings it is good to know who one is dealing with, no? If it is a simple cash transaction, then there might be no problems. If there is the matter of credit, then of course you know one has to vouch for ones self. They may be communities that don't want criminals living amongst them, even if they've made restitution. You don't have to live there. No one is forcing you. 
> 
> At the end of the day, your reputation is what matters. The better it is, the better your prospects. I'm sorry that you find that so horrible.


So, lying for effect about what it is that I find horrible is how you demonstrate moral and philosophical integrity?  LOL yeah, there would be no problems at all in this anarchy of yours.  lol

----------


## TaftFan

In my view, anarchy boils down to a world of competing government. The difference being they aren't "official."

I hear the idea of a monopoly on force being criticized. Well, it seems it would be worse to have multiple users of force. 

Government provides stability in the area of law. I don't see how any time could be spent on work or leisure when we have to worry about all these competing governments running around.

----------


## GunnyFreedom

> http://www.ronpaulforums.com/showthr...for-since-1996
> 
> DoD - 8.5 Trillion Unaccounted for since 1996
> 
> Sigh. What will happen to the television thieves?..... as others quite literally rob this country blind.
> 
> The Constitution of No Authority.
> 
> Just to be clear, for those who didn't know, you owe that money. And it will be had one way or another. How are you required to pay for what other people spent, having not consented to ever pay the tab, having not incurred the debt, and not wanting what they buy with it? That is a good question. You were born. 
> ...


preeety sure that almost nobody on these entire forums actually supports the status quo.

----------


## Occam's Banana

> Anarchism always eventually boils down to the party with a preponderance of force.  Whether that force is exhibited in the form of fists, guns, or money it all ends up in the same place.


When put in those terms, every society that has ever existed - or ever will exist - "boils down" to exactly the same thing. There will never be any such thing as a society that does NOT involve applications of force (in whatever form). Anarchism & Statism are in no way different in this particular regard. The question is NOT "whether" force will be manifest in society. Where Anarchism & Statism differ is in the question of "how & by whom" ...




> I am a voluntaryist.  I believe that all human action should be 100% voluntary and compatible with the NAP.


I am a voluntaryist. I believe that all human action should be 100% voluntary and compatible with the NAP.

I am also an anarchist. I do not believe that the existence of a force-monopolizer (i.e., the State) is necessary in a voluntary society.




> Anarchy, no matter how you slice it, is just not compatible with a voluntary society.
> 
> [...] I oppose anarchy on principle _because_ I am a voluntaryist, and anarchy is incompatible with a voluntary society.


This is another case of people talking past one another to no good  purpose, merely for the sake of maintaining perhaps dearly-held (but ultimately irrelevant) semantic distinctions.

As I noted in an earler response to Travlyr, I very strongly suspect that if a truly voluntaryist society is ever actually achieved, we anarchists and non-anarchists will immediately proceed to bicker over whether or not our voluntaryist society is "really" an anarchy or not (with us anarchists insisting that, "Yes, it is!" and you non-anarchists insisting that, "No, it isn't!" ... )




> There will _ALWAYS_ be the coercion of force, even in the absence of some central authority, for as long as mankind remains sinful in nature.  I would rather this be force fixed and predictable rather than arbitrary and whimsical. If it is fixed and predictable it can be minimized to almost nothing.  If it is arbitrary and random then you never know one day to the next if you are going to wake up in Atlantis or Mad Max Beyond The Thunderdome.


Fixity and predictability are no less possible under Anarchism than arbitrariness and whimsicality are under Statism.

Such things are entirely orthogonal to the issue of the presence or absence of a force-monopolizing State.

----------


## TaftFan

The interesting thing is that anarchy is really predicated upon people taking a deep interest in protecting their rights and safety.

If people were that interested, our government would not be out of control and there would be no issue.

----------


## green73

> Indeed, the original idea of America was just that.  There was no such thing as an income tax.  Everything was user fees and (more unfortunately) tariffs.  If you wanted to use the postal service, you bought a postal stamp.  One of my primary regrets was that the Founders didn't think to establish allodial titles and prohibit property taxes.  *Back then in that day, if you supported a war, you contributed or bought war bonds.  If you did not support a war you did not.*  The original intent was just a hair's breadth from philosophical voluntaryism to start with, and could have been brought even closer.  The original power to tax, for example, while not nearly as awful as the 16th Amendment is today, was still far too broad and ambiguous.


How far back? You do know that Lincoln imposed the first income tax to fund the war against Southern Independence, no?  He also implemented fiat currency like the Founders did during the war for American independence, along with the draft. Maybe you agree with me here. Travlyr will be .  I take it we are going back to before this, yes? Because war has been anything but voluntary from that time to WW2--where people had to ration and barely scrape by. Don't give me this business of war bonds funding it all. So what are we talking about, the aggressive war of 1812 where the US got its aggressive ass handed to them?

----------


## kcchiefs6465

> preeety sure that almost nobody on these entire forums actually supports the status quo.


Green incorrectly mentioned that people have consented to this. No one has consented. *In this entire country, not one has legitimately consented.* That was more my point (and it is a very important point). And that was the point of No Treason. 

But actually quite a few on these forums support that. I hear murmurs of wanting to cut offense but increase defense and all sorts of other illogical nonsense. Some like our welfare state. I hear gripes about social security not being solvent. Most want the police. Most want me to pay for their services. There are only a few that are logically consistent. Sometimes one can do nothing but shake their head.

----------


## GunnyFreedom

> When put in those terms, every society that has ever existed - or ever will exist - "boils down" to exactly the same thing. There will never be any such thing as a society that does NOT involve applications of force (in whatever form). Anarchism & Statism are in no way different in this particular regard. The question is NOT "whether" force will be manifest in society. Where Anarchism & Statism differ is in the question of "how & by whom" ...
> 
> 
> 
> I am a voluntaryist. I believe that all human action should be 100% voluntary and compatible with the NAP.
> 
> I am also an anarchist. I reject the idea that the existence of a force-monopolizer (i.e., the State) is necessary in a voluntary society.


Force was in no-wise monopolized in America from 1783 up through about 1850.  Not the military, not the police.  Yet nobody here would describe that period as anarchistic.  I do not support force-monopoly, but I do support a (very!) small and limited centralized authority.  I by and large support Thomas Jefferson's United States, which was a "state" by any definition, and yet it held no real monopoly on force.  No monopoly on military force, these were held in private militias; and no monopoly in police forces, the policing power of the day was held by Sheriffs who answered to no government but the people who elected them, and people readily (and without adverse consequences) formed posses where the Sheriffs failed to do their duty.  I disagree that the lack of force monopoly requires anarchism, as the early period of the United States was not anarchy, and yet there was no monopoly on force.

----------


## green73

> Green incorrectly mentioned that people have consented to this. No one has consented. *In this entire country, not one has legitimately consented.* That was more my point (and it is a very important point). And that was the point of No Treason. 
> 
> But actually quite a few on these forums support that. I hear murmurs of wanting to cut offense but increase defense and all sorts of other illogical nonsense. Some like our welfare state. I hear gripes about social security not being solvent. Most want the police. Most want me to pay for their services. There are only a few that are logically consistent. Sometimes one can do nothing but shake their head.


The people do consent.

Read this..

http://archive.lewrockwell.com/rothbard/rothbard78.html

----------


## TaftFan

> A judge who's earned a reputation for being just. If a party does not abide by the ruling their (the party's) reputation will be hurt and people will be less likely to do business with them.


Because criminals really care if their reputation is hurt and people don't do business with them.

----------


## green73

> Because criminals really care if their reputation is hurt and people don't do business with them.


Obviously you've read the thread. 

They may not care, but they will find themselves living a meagre existence, with few prospects. They certainly will find no comfort amongst good people.

----------


## Occam's Banana

> The interesting thing is that anarchy is really predicated upon people taking a deep interest in protecting their rights and safety.
> 
> If people were that interested, our government would not be out of control and there would be no issue.


I pretty much agree. As I said before:



> NO free society  can survive if a sufficient number of its members are not willing to  actively assert & uphold the values upon which liberty depends. But  just as Spooner's dictum cuts both ways, so does this. It is just not  kosher to assert that it is possible for "we the people" to successfully  defend & uphold libertarian principle against the corrosion and  destruction of liberty by the State (via staunch dedication to and  assiduous application of Constitutionalism, for example) while also  asserting that it is NOT possible for the members of an  anarchist/voluntaryist society to be able to do the same against "armies  of thieves" or "whoever has the biggest guns" or whatnot.


The whole Anarchism vs. Statism issue is entirely moot if people do not take, as you say, "a deep interest in protecting their rights and safety."

----------


## green73

That's why it's a revolution of ideas...potentially.

----------


## green73

> How in the world did the US start the war of 1812?  Britain was the aggressor in that war.  I agreed with you until you said that.


http://original.antiwar.com/justin/2...first-success/

----------


## GunnyFreedom

> I've never heard this argument before.  Does anyone have a rebuttal to it?
> 
> 
> How in the world did the US start the war of 1812?  Britain was the aggressor in that war.  I agreed with you until you said that.


Honestly, BOTH sides did things to predicate the 1812 conflict.  The US mostly by expanding into the Northwest Territory and displacing the British ally Tecumseh, and provoking the former loyalists who had fled to Canada.  The British in a BUNCH of ways like forcing trade embargos, harassing our shipping lanes, kidnapping our citizens and forcing them to serve on British warships, planning, training, and supplying Indian raiding party attacks against American cities, and including that whole sticky "invading the United States" thing.

----------


## Travlyr

> Indeed, the original idea of America was just that.  There was no such thing as an income tax.  Everything was user fees and (more unfortunately) tariffs.  If you wanted to use the postal service, you bought a postal stamp.  One of my primary regrets was that the Founders didn't think to establish allodial titles and prohibit property taxes.  Back then in that day, if you supported a war, you contributed or bought war bonds.  If you did not support a war you did not.  The original intent was just a hair's breadth from philosophical voluntaryism to start with, and could have been brought even closer.  The original power to tax, for example, while not nearly as awful as the 16th Amendment is today, was still far too broad and ambiguous.


Exactly right. Even a young Lysander Spooner would have agreed with you.

----------


## TaftFan

> Obviously you've read the thread. 
> 
> They may not care, but they will find themselves living a meagre existence, with few prospects. They certainly will find no comfort amongst good people.


I skimmed every page.

And while true, your comment doesn't really change anything. Criminals have the same attitude now. They don't care, or they wouldn't be criminals. Except presently there are legal deterrents which help discourage crime through penalties, and prisons exist to reduce the number of criminals in the outside world.

----------


## green73

> I skimmed every page.
> 
> And while true, your comment doesn't really change anything. Criminals have the same attitude now. They don't care, or they wouldn't be criminals. Except presently there are legal deterrents which help discourage crime through penalties, and prisons exist to reduce the number of criminals in the outside world.


Well, you skimmed every page. That's good.

----------


## GunnyFreedom

> Exactly right. Even a young Lysander Spooner would have agreed with you.


Well, he shoulda stayed young then.  Instead he grew old and cynical, and that never helps anything.

----------


## Occam's Banana

> Force was in no-wise monopolized in America from 1783 up through about 1850.  Not the military, not the police.  Yet nobody here would describe that period as anarchistic.  I do not support force-monopoly, but I do support a (very!) small and limited centralized authority.  I by and large support Thomas Jefferson's United States, which was a "state" by any definition, and yet it held no real monopoly on force.  No monopoly on military force, these were held in private militias; and no monopoly in police forces, the policing power of the day was held by Sheriffs who answered to no government but the people who elected them, and people readily (and without adverse consequences) formed posses where the Sheriffs failed to do their duty.  I disagree that the lack of force monopoly requires anarchism, as the early period of the United States was not anarchy, and yet there was no monopoly on force.


I do not say that the lack of force-monopoly requires anarchism. I say that the lack of force-monopoly *IS* anarchism (by definition). So just accepting _arguendo_ (and without further qualification) your assertion of the total absence of any force-monopolization in post-1783 America, I would indeed "describe that period as anarchistic."

Ha! So, there!  And in case you missed it (since you replied to my post before I made this edit to it):



> As I noted in an earler response to Travlyr, I very strongly suspect  that if a truly voluntaryist society is ever actually achieved, we  anarchists and non-anarchists will immediately proceed to bicker over  whether or not our voluntaryist society is "really" an anarchy or not  (with us anarchists insisting that, "Yes, it is!" and you non-anarchists  insisting that, "No, it isn't!" ... )

----------


## kcchiefs6465

> The people do consent.
> 
> Read this..
> 
> http://archive.lewrockwell.com/rothbard/rothbard78.html


As I earlier said,  having the Consent of the Governed is not equal to a majority accepting a given government. It is not equal to voting year in and year out. There are specific steps that have not even begun to be met in order for a government to meet the requirements for it to be said that it has the consent of the governed. Namely, it must be completely voluntary (since no one can be said to have voluntarily consented free from coercion, this conversation could be ended now), the outline of the government specifically defined, signatures from each and every under its rule, and the government must act within its constraints or within the contract the people have consented to of which has been previously defined.

The Constitution is the document that supposedly outlines government functions. Most Americans have not read the Constitution. How can they consent to what they are not aware of? None were alive at the time the document was ratified. No one has an obligation to consent to it. It cannot be said that participating in the processes the government has established amounts to consent. It also cannot be said that being born on a particular section of land amounts to consent. Furthermore, the government has not remained within its legal bounds. If someone had consented, lawfully it would be null and void as the contract has long since been violated and desecrated in every imagination of the words. In short, how can I be lawfully made to pay a debt which I have not contracted or agreed to? Such circumstances or pleas would hardly stand up in any court worth its weight in salt. What I mean is, you say that because a majority likes or tolerates the government that they are effectively contractually obligated to pay some 17 trillion dollars respectively. That is amazing to be heard. Legally, lawfully, legitimately no such thing could be said. Most of the debt was incurred before the people obligated to pay it were even a thought in the mind of their forefathers.

I understand that some people like the government. Some people work for the government. Some or even a majority of people endorse the government. That does not lawfully equate to consent. I don't want to sound as if this is semantics or whatnot. It is not.

Lysander Spooner outlines every possible scenario you could come up with trying to establish that any one person has consented. I implore you to listen to his words. Quite frankly, such truth has hardly been seen elsewhere.

http://mises.org/media/5309/Section-I

Listen to them in order or as you see fit. It is well worth it.

----------


## kcchiefs6465

> Well, he shoulda stayed young then.  Instead he grew old and cynical, and that never helps anything.


Probably had to do with the Federal government squashing his business and the fact that he could not simply be left alone. It tends to annoy the righteous.

----------


## Feeding the Abscess

> Except to pay an insurance racket if I wanted the privilege of buying electricity, food, or water;


In a free society, there is no expropriating State that grants you an identity, or proof of it. Such externalities do not exist in a free society. You will need to gain some sort of identity verification if you want any sort of ability to live comfortably in a modern society (getting a job, obtaining credit, a bank account, gaining access to utilities, buying a home or a car are a few examples in our current system). To gain this verification, you'll need to purchase some sort of proof of your identity. With this, these agencies would also likely offer to communicate with your employers to verify your work history, banks you've dealt with for your credit information, etc for ease of use in daily life. Maybe they'll even offer you health and life insurance. Even auto and home owner's or rent insurance, if the agency is successful or large enough. Having such a package deal may even earn you discounts on each plan, as well as with companies that also do business with the agency you employ.

Business owners would likewise defer to similar organizations when it comes to identifying individual customers, business partners, delivery companies, warehouse management, etc. It would be far cheaper and much less labor intensive for businesses to rely on these agencies' ability to judge the reliability and reputation of these partners than it would be to have a entire workforce dedicated to investigating every new dealer they work with (division of labor! It's a wonderful concept, and one that facilitates expansion of wealth). Remember, externalities don't exist in a free society, so businesses could not rely on government provided security, identification, and fraud prevention services. These would either need to be performed by the business itself, or purchased from an agency that specializes in this area. Checking identification of customers would be a remarkably cheap and easy way for customers and business alike to achieve this.




> or to stay at home guarding my stuff if I would rather be out in the world earning a living; or to hire a protection detail to secure my wife and daughters while travelling so we don't get mugged and raped; or to...


Do you need to do any of this now? Why would this change in a free society? With a vast increase in wealth, less perceived necessity for crime would exist. Crime rates are even dropping like a stone in our current statist society. Simply locking your door and closing your windows, as is done now, would do plenty to deter crime. Would your wife not know how to handle a gun, if it came to that? If she didn't, how would our current society save her? If a rapist wanted to break into the house and rape her, our statist society doesn't cast a magical barrier at your doors and windows to prevent it from happening. In fact, with restrictions on gun ownership and defense in the home, our current society, in my estimation, makes these rapes and robberies more likely to occur than in a free society.

----------


## KCIndy

> People who do not believe that laws apply to them. 
> 
> Just like Vietnam and all the other mass murder in the last 100 years. War Is A Racket. It pays big bucks.



Side note:  It never ceases to strike me how well Smedley Butler's work (_War is a Racket_) stands the test of time.  Take this excerpt as one example:




> Out of war nations acquire additional territory, if they are victorious. They just take it. This newly acquired territory promptly is exploited by the few  the selfsame few who wrung dollars out of blood in the war. The general public shoulders the bill. And what is this bill?
> 
> This bill renders a horrible accounting. Newly placed gravestones. Mangled bodies. Shattered minds. Broken hearts and homes. Economic instability. Depression and all its attendant miseries. Back-breaking taxation for generations and generations.


This was written almost 80 years ago, BEFORE World War II.

Some truths are immortal.

----------


## Travlyr

> Side note:  It never ceases to strike me how well Smedley Butler's work (_War is a Racket_) stands the test of time.  Take this excerpt as one example:
> 
> 
> 
> This was written almost 80 years ago, BEFORE World War II.
> 
> Some truths are immortal.


Smedley Butler's work is some of the most important work in the history of America. It should be required reading for anyone who believes in liberty, peace, and prosperity.

----------


## Neil Desmond

> Indeed; there is nothing intrinsic that makes a state mob any better than a stateless mob.  My point, and the point of strict Constitutional minarchists like myself, is we want to least mobbish condition possible.  Too much state - mobbish.  No state at all - mobbish.  Just barely enough to secure our rights to life, liberty, and property; and strictly limited to that function alone - less mobbish than the other two choices at least.  Utopia is translated 'no place' for a reason.  We aren't going to find it until after that humankind has been transfigured.  Then, and only then will philosophical anarchism actually work, and at that point I will likely be it's biggest advocate (if it does not simply come about naturally).


Bingo.  Both too much "state" and too little "state" are as you put it, mobbish.  As long as capitalism exists, there will always be mobbish-ness.  I don't see any difference between people who want too much or too little "state"; to me they both have a desire to make it very mobbish.  I take libertarianism, or where I position myself as a libertarian, at that point of equilibrium where there isn't too much "state" or too little "state" resulting in the least amount of mobbish-ness possible.

I think the best thing to do is have small, local, limited governments or "states".  There are probably ways to determine what these sizes and limits ought to be for things to work.  For example, there's a concept called Dunbar's number, which is basically about the limit of the number of people that someone can have social relationships that's stable.  Something like this probably plays a significant role in the difference between a government that works for its community and one that doesn't.

There's probably something similar that could describe what the limit of the number of people could be before that society gets too large for the state to remain stable.  Maybe back when the states were created, the population of each state was below this limit & now that has changed.  I'm pretty sure that whatever this number might be, it's nowhere near 300 million with which Obama tries to have a stable social relationship.

----------


## muzzled dogg

the group with the most guns wins now... yet statists somehow justify that group's monopoly on the use of force

----------


## Travlyr

Challenge for anyone who hates Abraham Lincoln. Take your hate to the Lincoln thread.

----------


## ClydeCoulter

> Challenge for anyone who hates Abraham Lincoln. Take your hate to the Lincoln thread.


Please?

_I brought a NEW MEMBER to our ranks.  He signed up yesterday and THIS THREAD is the one I pointed him to for discussion.  Then I came here and saw pages of a fight over Lincoln.  Now I need to go and try to CONVINCE our NEW MEMBER that every thread will not turn into childishness and ASK that he ignore the childishness._

----------


## Ronin Truth

Sorry Matt, well functioning free markets precede governments by several millenia.

----------


## Travlyr

> Sorry Matt, well functioning free markets precede governments by several millenia.


Give a concrete example.

----------


## Travlyr

Matt's premise still stands. "Free Markets Require Government"

----------


## Neil Desmond

> Sorry Matt, well functioning free markets precede governments by several millenia.


So what happened to this well functioning free market system preceded by governments?  Why isn't it still around?

----------


## Ronin Truth

> So what happened to this well functioning free market system preceded by governments? Why isn't it still around?


Who says it's not?

For an example: Zomia

http://wiki.mises.org/wiki/Zomia

----------


## Ronin Truth

> Give a concrete example.


http://wiki.mises.org/wiki/Zomia

----------


## Neil Desmond

> Who says it's not?
> 
> For an example: Zomia
> 
> http://wiki.mises.org/wiki/Zomia


Oh, ok; in that case I wonder why haven't ancaps decided to live there?  It seems like they'd get what they desire if they did.

Anyways, I would also like to know - why has it been replaced or taken over by societies with governments?

----------


## Ronin Truth

> Oh, ok; in that case I wonder why haven't ancaps decided to live there? It seems like they'd get what they desire if they did.
> 
> Anyways, I would also like to know - why has it been replaced or taken over by societies with governments?


Yep, I've wondered the same thing.  

And

I don't know.  Maybe it's hader and more trouble than it's worth.  Kinda like Switzerland in WWII with the Nazis.

----------


## A Son of Liberty

I really don't have time for this bull$#@! anymore; that being said, my skimming of this abortion of thread leads me to believe that the following reminders need to be issued:

A political philosophy which does not acknowledge objective, observable truths is not only doomed to fail - as I fear all political philosophies ultimately are, as a consequence of the unavoidable imperfection of humanity - but is built upon a failed premise from the very start. What is objective and observable is that each individual human being is sovereign until himself.  This is _self-evident_: Who but I can think with my mind?  Who but I can feel with my heart?  etc.  The adoption of the political philosophy of _the state_ - that entity with a monopoly on the initiation of unprovoked force within a given geographic area - is by definition the adoption of a political philosophy *at odds* with what is objective and observable about human existence.  NO STATE - however limited by temporal agreements - can coexist with this reality, outside of a state of "one".  The aims of the state are by definition _subjective_, since the state is an invention of humans and not self-evident or naturally-occurring.  Thus it cannot exist without violating the objective, observable fact that individual human beings are sovereign unto themselves.  

"Government" is something with which advocates of statelessness find no objection.  All human behavior is "government", to some extent or another.  Even the very extent to which one limits his own natural inclinations is, by definition, _government_.  We advocates of statelessness hold no quarrel with "minarchists" on this particular point.  

Finally, I would caution folks of the anti-state inclination to avoid arguing with statists over petty "well, what if..." scenarios.  For better or worse, there are near 8 billion human beings on the planet at this particular moment in time.  Not any single one of us is intelligent enough to imagine all of the particular solutions that any single one of those billions of beautiful, brilliant, sovereign individual human beings might devise to address any one of those "what if..." scenarios.  Anti-statism is the ultimate human leap of faith... None of us can know if our lives would be better or worse as a consequence of what we advocate.  But that is not at all the point... The point is that we advocate for an organization of human civilization based upon what is just...

Be SO FREE as to accept that you have no idea how human beings might organize themselves without you or anyone else forcing everyone else to accept your subjective standards.  Live in accordance with the objective, observable truth that we are all individual sovereigns.

----------


## ClydeCoulter

@A Son Of Liberty,

Without any "what if's ..." I'm not sure that the idea of self-ownership would have been realized in the hearts of men.  It has been a long travel down a hard road to get to the point that we have.  

And, I would point out, whether accepted or not, that we live in a time of the utmost deceit.

It's is as though mankind is coming into a new, and hopefully better, understanding of ourselves and others.  But, we have more road yet to travel before we realize the ultimate in full self ownership and self responsibility.

----------


## heavenlyboy34

> The people do consent.
> 
> Read this..
> 
> http://archive.lewrockwell.com/rothbard/rothbard78.html


That's not what Murray argues in this essay.  He's making La Boetie's argument more or less as in Discourse On Voluntary Servitude.  Neither of these philosophers say that "The People" explicitly consent-but that their lack of dissent is understood as consent by the Regime, and the Regime acts accordingly.  

"The People" do not consent to servitude (in a rational state of mind) any more than a rape victim consents to her/his rapist.

ETA: in case _La Ronde_ informs your understanding of rape, real women don't feel that way about their rapist.  Just FYI.

----------


## kcchiefs6465

> That's not what Murray argues in this essay.  He's making La Boetie's argument more or less as in Discourse On Voluntary Servitude.  Neither of these philosophers say that "The People" explicitly consent-but that their lack of dissent is understood as consent by the Regime, and the Regime acts accordingly.  
> 
> "The People" do not consent to servitude (in a rational state of mind) any more than a rape victim consents to her/his rapist.
> 
> ETA: in case _La Ronde_ informs your understanding of rape, real women don't feel that way about their rapist.  Just FYI.


Indeed. It is impossible to lawfully prove any single person living today has consented to that which we have. Even if they had, the terms of the agreement (the Constitution) have been so incredibly violated as to nullify said compact. 

This is a very important point to be made.

Frankly I would not mind coexisting with a government that acted lawfully and that rested on consent. (i.e., those that did not wish to be a part of it but did not violate another's rights were left in peace) I could think of a couple things I would not mind voluntarily contributing to. The issue arrives when this is not an option. When those acting lawfully are violated and those violating are glamorized. Collectivism, legal positivism and socialism are some of the most immoral concepts ever thought up.

ASOL had it right. I would give up my relative prosperity to live in a truly free and voluntary society. He mentioned not knowing the precise outcome. I do; An era of peace and prosperity never before seen in human history. It's overcoming the apparent inherent evil in man that is the problem.

----------


## Keith and stuff

> The government's only job is to secure individual rights, uphold justice, and enforce contracts. It doesn't do any of these very well, and typically fails at anything it tries. But it is guaranteed to fail at anything outside of the scope of those 3 points.
> http://www.forbes.com/sites/harrybinswanger/2014/01/24/sorry-libertarian-anarchists-capitalism-requires-government-2/[/URL]


A free market can only exist where government doesn't exist. A free market is a market without any government regulations.

----------


## Occam's Banana

> Finally, I would caution folks of the anti-state inclination to avoid arguing with statists over petty "well, what if..." scenarios.  For better or worse, there are near 8 billion human beings on the planet at this particular moment in time.  Not any single one of us is intelligent enough to imagine all of the particular solutions that any single one of those billions of beautiful, brilliant, sovereign individual human beings might devise to address any one of those "what if..." scenarios.


^^ This x 1000000.

It's rather like Charles Babbage and Ada Lovelace trying to argue over how to write a device driver in C ...

----------


## green73

> That's not what Murray argues in this essay.  He's making La Boetie's argument more or less as in Discourse On Voluntary Servitude.  Neither of these philosophers say that "The People" explicitly consent-but that their lack of dissent is understood as consent by the Regime, and the Regime acts accordingly.  
> 
> "The People" do not consent to servitude (in a rational state of mind) any more than a rape victim consents to her/his rapist.
> 
> ETA: in case _La Ronde_ informs your understanding of rape, real women don't feel that way about their rapist.  Just FYI.





> ...This, then,                  becomes for La Boétie the central problem of political                  theory: _why in the world do people consent to their own enslavement?                 _ La  Boétie cuts to the heart of what is, or rather should                   be, the central problem of political philosophy: the mystery of                   civil obedience. Why do people, in all times and places, obey                   the commands of the government, which always constitutes  a small                  minority of the society? To La Boétie the  spectacle of                  general consent to despotism is puzzling  and appalling: 
> 
>  I  should                    like merely to understand how it happens that  so many men, so                    many villages, so many cities, so  many nations, sometimes suffer                    under a single tyrant  who has no other power than the power                    they give him;  who is able to harm them only to the extent to                    which  they have the willingness to bear with him; who could                     do them absolutely no injury unless they preferred to put up                     with him rather than contradict him. Surely a striking  situation!                    Yet it is so common that one must grieve  the more and wonder                    the less at the spectacle of a  million men serving in wretchedness,                    their necks  under the yoke, not constrained by a greater multitude                     than they... 
> 
> And this                  mass submission must be out of consent rather than simply out                  of fear: 
> 
>  Shall  we                    call subjection to such a leader cowardice? ...                     If a hundred, if a thousand endure the caprice of a  single man,                    should we not rather say that they lack  not the courage but                    the desire to rise against him,  and that such an attitude indicates                    indifference  rather than cowardice? When not a hundred, not                    a  thousand men, but a hundred provinces, a thousand cities,                     a million men, refuse to assail a single man from whom the kindest                     treatment received is the infliction of serfdom and  slavery,                    what shall we call that? Is it cowardice?  ... When                    a thousand, a million men, a thousand  cities, fail to protect                    themselves against the  domination of one man, this cannot be                    called  cowardly, for cowardice does not sink to such a depth...                     What monstrous vice, then, is this which does not even deserve                     to be called cowardice, a vice for which no term can be  found                    vile enough ... ?
> It is  evident                  from the above passages that La Boétie is  bitterly opposed                  to tyranny and to the public's consent  to its own subjection.                  He makes clear also that this  opposition is grounded on a theory                  of natural law and a  natural right to liberty. In childhood, presumably                   because the rational faculties are not yet developed, we obey                   our parents; but when grown, we should follow our own reason,                   as free individuals. As La Boétie puts it: "If we                   led our lives according to the ways intended by nature and the                   lessons taught by her, we should be intuitively  obedient to our                  parents; later we should adopt reason  as our guide and become                  slaves to nobody."                    Reason is our guide to the facts and laws of nature and to  humanity's                  proper path, and each of us has "in our  souls some native                  seed of reason, which, if nourished  by good counsel and training,                  flowers into virtue, but  which, on the other hand, if unable to                  resist the vices  surrounding it, is stifled and blighted."                  And reason,  La Boétie adds, teaches us the justice of equal                  liberty  for all. For reason shows us that nature has, among other                   things, granted us the common gift of voice and speech. Therefore,                   "there can be no further doubt that we are all naturally                   free," and hence it cannot be asserted that "nature                   has placed some of us in slavery."                  Even  animals, he points out, display a natural instinct to be                   free. But then, what in the world "has so, denatured man                   that he, the only creature really born to be free, lacks the memory                   of his original condition and the desire to return to  it?"
> 
> ...


..

----------


## ProIndividual

State socialism is the coercive collective ownership of the means of production, or a state monopoly (and in the case of demand, coercive monopsony), over one or more markets. In capitalism in the context of a state, the state socialism is limited to a few markets (usually roads, defense, police, courts, and law making - as opposed to emergent law). State communism is when this state socialism holds all markets. Moderate state socialism are all forms of state socialism in between these extremes.

minimalist state socialism (capitalism in the context of a state) ------ moderate state socialism ----- maximalist state socialism (state communism)

That's the continuum of state socialism. Any capitalism in the context of the state is in fact, logically, a minimalist form of state socialism. All minarchists are state socialists, whether knowingly or not. They support a form of state socialism, logically. They defend the need for state socialism in a minimalist form. There is no escaping this fact.

Anarchists, whether free market advocates or those who want voluntary socialism/communism, are those people who oppose state socialism in all its forms. Some want to interact ONLY via free markets, and this is by definition purely voluntary. Others want to avoid free markets, but to do so voluntarily (not enforcing any coercive monopolies, as to form a state). Voluntary association or disassociation with either system is completely non-compulsory. Any "anarchist" who claims to want to impose geographically-based coercive monopolies is just a state socialist by another name. But as long as they strive for voluntary association and disassociation, they are anarchists, and oppose state socialism that minarchists and totalitarians alike support.

The question to minarchists is: Why do you SAY you support free markets, but simultaneously argue for state socialism (even if just a minimalist form)?

The difference between minarchist capitalists and totalitarian communists is just a matter of degree, logically...it is not a matter of principle (the principle of support for state socialism is shared by both, it's just a degree of difference on the continuum).

----------


## green73

> State socialism is the coercive collective ownership of the means of production, or a state monopoly (and in the case of demand, coercive monopsony), over one or more markets. In capitalism in the context of a state, the state socialism is limited to a few markets (usually roads, defense, police, courts, and law making - as opposed to emergent law). State communism is when this state socialism holds all markets. Moderate state socialism are all forms of state socialism in between these extremes.
> 
> minimalist state socialism (capitalism in the context of a state) ------ moderate state socialism ----- maximalist state socialism (state communism)
> 
> That's the continuum of state socialism. Any capitalism in the context of the state is in fact, logically, a minimalist form of state socialism. All minarchists are state socialists, whether knowingly or not. They support a form of state socialism, logically. They defend the need for state socialism in a minimalist form. There is no escaping this fact.
> 
> Anarchists, whether free market advocates or those who want voluntary socialism/communism, are those people who oppose state socialism in all its forms. Some want to interact ONLY via free markets, and this is by definition purely voluntary. Others want to avoid free markets, but to do so voluntarily (not enforcing any coercive monopolies, as to form a state). Voluntary association or disassociation with either system is completely non-compulsory. Any "anarchist" who claims to want to impose geographically-based coercive monopolies is just a state socialist by another name. But as long as they strive for voluntary association and disassociation, they are anarchists, and oppose state socialism that minarchists and totalitarians alike support.
> 
> The question to minarchists is: Why do you SAY you support free markets, but simultaneously argue for state socialism (even if just a minimalist form)?
> ...


Good to see you over here spreading your wisdom. How's the poker coming along?

----------


## ProIndividual

> Good to see you over here spreading your wisdom. How's the poker coming along?


I came back to the RPF just a few days ago...just had an itch to see how things were going over here. Thanks...glad to see you still here. Poker is going...not getting rich, but still getting by

----------


## Occam's Banana

> Green incorrectly mentioned that people have consented to this. No one has consented. *In this entire country, not one has legitimately consented.* That was more my point (and it is a very important point). And that was the point of No Treason.





> The people do consent.
> 
> Read this..
> 
> http://archive.lewrockwell.com/rothbard/rothbard78.html





> That's not what Murray argues in this essay.  He's making La Boetie's argument more or less as in Discourse On Voluntary Servitude.  Neither of these philosophers say that "The People" explicitly consent-but that their lack of dissent is understood as consent by the Regime, and the Regime acts accordingly.  
> 
> "The People" do not consent to servitude (in a rational state of mind) any more than a rape victim consents to her/his rapist.
> 
> ETA: in case _La Ronde_ informs your understanding of rape, real women don't feel that way about their rapist.  Just FYI.





> ..


The problem is that there are two senses or "modes" in which consent can be said to occur - "active" and "passive."

Active consent is the explicit, deliberate, intentional & positive agreement with and/or acceptance of its object.
Active dissent is the explicit, deliberate & intentional negation of agreement with and acceptance of its object.
Passive consent is thus to be understood as the lack of both active consent and active dissent.
By its nature, passive consent is implicit and neither deliberate nor intentional with respect to its object.

KCC and HB34 (and Lysander Spooner) are employing "consent" in the active sense.
In this sense, it is correct to say that "the people" have NOT consented.

green73 is employing "consent" in the passive sense.
In this sense, it is correct to say that "the people" HAVE consented.

La Boétie's _Discourse_ is concerned with the unfortunate prevalence of passive consent (and with advocating for widespread active dissent).

----------


## fisharmor

> Finally, I would caution folks of the anti-state inclination to avoid arguing with statists over petty "well, what if..." scenarios.  For better or worse, there are near 8 billion human beings on the planet at this particular moment in time.  Not any single one of us is intelligent enough to imagine all of the particular solutions that any single one of those billions of beautiful, brilliant, sovereign individual human beings might devise to address any one of those "what if..." scenarios.  Anti-statism is the ultimate human leap of faith... None of us can know if our lives would be better or worse as a consequence of what we advocate.  But that is not at all the point... The point is that we advocate for an organization of human civilization based upon what is just...


And another point which I make regularly here:
If any one of us knew how it would work, then it wouldn't be statelessness.
If any one person knew how to make it work, then statism would work.
And we are surrounded by evidence to the contrary.

----------


## Madison320

> A free market can only exist where government doesn't exist. A free market is a market without any government regulations.


Wrong. A free market can only exist in the absence of coercion. Without a government to ban coercion, free markets can't exist. Anarchists make the logical error of lumping voluntary and coercive actions together.

----------


## Occam's Banana

> Wrong. A free market can only exist in the absence of coercion. Without a government to ban coercion, free markets can't exist.


How does a government ban coercion? Coercively or non-coercively?

If coercively, then how can a free market exist under a government (since you say that free markets can only exist in the absence of coercion)?

If non-coercively, then how can such a ban work?




> Anarchists make the logical error of lumping voluntary and coercive actions together.


What voluntary and coercive actions have anarchists lumped together - and under what name/term or concept?

----------


## mczerone

> Wrong. A free market can only exist in the absence of coercion. Without a government to ban coercion, free markets can't exist. Anarchists make the logical error of lumping voluntary and coercive actions together.


I accept your modified definition (with the further modification of "coercion" into "aggression").

Without govt, there may be other aggressive agents disrupting free trade.

But you laid out a huge non-sequitur in that govt is the ONLY way to limit aggression on the market. I agree that there needs to be governance, but a monopoly state only exists by violating that very goal.

----------


## Madison320

> How does a government ban coercion? Coercively or non-coercively?
> 
> If coercively, then how can a free market exist under a government (since you say that free markets can only exist in the absence of coercion)?


Coercively. The way it's "supposed" to work is that the government only "retaliates" against force. So in theory there would be no coercion if no private citizens initiated the use of force. 





> What voluntary and coercive actions have anarchists lumped together - and under what name/term or concept?


The way I see it, anarchists are inconsistent in their treatment of voluntary and coercive actions. Anarchists believe in natural law, they believe that there is a fundamental difference between voluntary and coercive actions, right? But they don't distinguish between voluntary and coercive actions in that they want both types of actions to be handled by the market. As a minarchist I believe there is a fundamental difference between voluntary and coercive actions and I believe that the market should handle voluntary actions, while the government should handle coercive actions.

----------


## Madison320

> I accept your modified definition (with the further modification of "coercion" into "aggression").
> 
> Without govt, there may be other aggressive agents disrupting free trade.
> 
> But you laid out a huge non-sequitur in that govt is the ONLY way to limit aggression on the market. I agree that there needs to be governance, but a monopoly state only exists by violating that very goal.


First of all can we agree that the only way to limit aggression is with the retaliatory use of force?

----------


## mczerone

> Coercively. The way it's "supposed" to work is that the government only "retaliates" against force. So in theory there would be no coercion if no private citizens initiated the use of force. 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> The way I see it, anarchists are inconsistent in their treatment of voluntary and coercive actions. Anarchists believe in natural law, they believe that there is a fundamental difference between voluntary and coercive actions, right? But they don't distinguish between voluntary and coercive actions in that they want both types of actions to be handled by the market.* As a minarchist I believe there is a fundamental difference between voluntary and coercive actions and I believe that the market should handle voluntary actions, while the government should handle coercive actions.*


Holy Infinite regress of aggression, Batman!

----------


## mczerone

> First of all can we agree that the only way to limit aggression is with the retaliatory use of force?


"Only" way?  No.

Prosperity, social norms, incentives, and retributionary-force are probably all better ways than retaliation to limit the use of force generally.

Retaliation, in common meaning, is the use of force not to prevent force, but for the personal psychological satisfaction of harming someone who harmed your interests.

----------


## Madison320

> "Only" way?  No.
> 
> Prosperity, social norms, incentives, and retributionary-force are probably all better ways than retaliation to limit the use of force generally.
> 
> Retaliation, in common meaning, is the use of force not to prevent force, but for the personal psychological satisfaction of harming someone who harmed your interests.


OK, we have to agree to disagree.

----------


## silverhandorder

> Coercively. The way it's "supposed" to work is that the government only "retaliates" against force. So in theory there would be no coercion if no private citizens initiated the use of force.


Taxes is not a retaliation against force. Laws are not a retaliation against force.

----------


## Madison320

> Taxes is not a retaliation against force. Laws are not a retaliation against force.


Taxes are an initiation of force but how are laws?

----------


## Occam's Banana

> I accept your modified definition (with the  further modification of "coercion" into "aggression").


And still further modification is required with regard to "initiatory aggression" and "retaliatory aggression."

----------


## silverhandorder

> Taxes are an initiation of force but how are laws?


I assume you would be for a law that bans other government's from forming? You would have laws against gay marriage? You would have laws against immigration? IF answer is yes to any of them those laws are an initiation of force.

----------


## mczerone

> OK, we have to agree to disagree.


And if we can respectfully do that, then no monopoly state has the right to exist...

----------


## Occam's Banana

First, let me strongly emphasize that there are two legitimate - but quite different - senses of the term "government" (or "governance").

There is "government" (or "governance") in the sense of the existence, application, adjudgement & enforcement of rules and standards in society. Anarchists are not at all opposed to "government" in this sense.

Then there is "government" (or "governance") in the sense of the existence of the State - defined as a limited-membership group of force-monopolizers who assert sole and exclusive authority to create, apply, judge & enforce rules and standards upon everyone else in society. Anarchists are very much opposed to "government" in this sense.

IOW: Anarchists are NOT opposed to "governance" _per se_ - they are opposed to governance by the State.

I have assumed that by "the government" you mean "the State" - and that is how I have interpreted and used the term in what follows ...




> Coercively. The way it's "supposed" to work is  that the government only "retaliates" against force.


But why should private citizens (individually, in groups or as a whole) be unable  or forbidden to retaliate against (or otherwise deal with) initiations of force against them?

And if they are NOT unable or forbidden to do so, then why would a government be needed in the first place?

IOW: Why is a force-monopolizer required in order for there to be adequate means of retaliating against (or otherwise dealing with) force-initiators?




> So in theory there would be no coercion if no private citizens initiated the use of force.


And what of when - not if, but when - the government initiates force? (Forget "theory" and "the way it's 'supposed' to work" - force-monopolization and force-initiation it the way the government - by which I mean the State - always has and always will actually "work.") Is it to be left to "private citizens" to do something about it?

If so, why was a force-monopolizing government needed in the first place (since said citizens  could have done the same thing to non-government force-initiators - and very  probably with a much greater chance of success than they would have against government force-initiators)?

But if not, then what is to be done and by whom? (And why couldn't said citizens just have done the same?)




> The way I see it, anarchists are inconsistent  in their treatment of voluntary and coercive actions. Anarchists believe  in natural law, they believe that there is a fundamental difference  between voluntary and coercive actions, right? But they don't  distinguish between voluntary and coercive actions in that they want  both types of actions to be handled by the market.


The fact that anarchists want voluntary and coercive actions to be  "handled by the market" does not mean that they don't "distinguish  between voluntary and coercive actions." This is like saying that greengrocers do not distinguish between apples and oranges because they  sell both of them in their stores.




> As a minarchist I believe there is a  fundamental difference between voluntary and coercive actions and I  believe that the market should handle voluntary actions, while the  government should handle coercive actions.


As a statement of what you believe, that is fine as far as it goes - but you haven't shown us why we should (or you do) think that it is the case that  "the market" is not adequate to "handle ... coercive actions."

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## Neil Desmond

> "Only" way?  No.
> 
> Prosperity, social norms, incentives, and retributionary-force are probably all better ways than retaliation to limit the use of force generally.
> 
> Retaliation, in common meaning, is the use of force not to prevent force, but for the personal psychological satisfaction of harming someone who harmed your interests.


In other words, flower power?  I myself am not a war monger, and I don't necessarily have anything against olive branches, doves, white flags, Mortal Kombat friendship rainbows, etc., but if necessary, I'm going to attempt to neutralize something that's unacceptable to me by smashing it or using whatever amount of force in some other way that I feel is adequate.

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## ProIndividual

> Coercively. *The way it's "supposed" to work is that the government only "retaliates" against force. So in theory there would be no coercion if no private citizens initiated the use of force. 
> *
> 
> 
> 
> *The way I see it, anarchists are inconsistent in their treatment of voluntary and coercive actions. Anarchists believe in natural law, they believe that there is a fundamental difference between voluntary and coercive actions, right?* But they don't distinguish between voluntary and coercive actions in that they want both types of actions to be handled by the market.* As a minarchist I believe there is a fundamental difference between voluntary and coercive actions and I believe that the market should handle voluntary actions, while the government should handle coercive actions*.


1. Not all anarchists believe in the NAP, Utilitarianism, or natural law. I personally don't buy into any of them, although I can speak in the language of them to people who do wish to go that semantical route.

2. There IS a fundamental difference between voluntary and coercive acts, logically. It's not that anarchists assert this, it's that there is no other way to see it logically. Boxing is not assault, S&M sex is not rape, and euthanasia is not murder...the former three are consensual acts, and the latter three are coerced. That is really the major difference between them.

3. As a minarchist (minimalist state socialist) you are supporting the coercion of people...please read post #397 to see why. You can't support minimalist state socialism (capitalism in the context of the state), which threatens competition with property seizure and rape cages if they try to provide a service the state SAYS only they can possibly provide (which is doubtful, given anthropological and historical evidence to the contrary), and which threatens extortion victims (taxpayers) with property seizure and rape cages if they don't fund the state's coercive monopolies, without supporting coercion. Legalizing and institutionalizing coercion for a ruling class hardly makes it ethical or non-coercive. 

4. Given #3, you are trying to protect us all from coercion via state response to coercion (which in theory is fine, as it would be more or less self defensive), by first, before anyone does anything wrong, coercing people into paying for the state and allowing the state to coerce any potential competitors out of their state socialized markets (which is initiating coercion, not responding to it, which forms the paradox of minarchism).

5. The way it is "supposed" to work, has never in history been the way it has worked. It always ends up like this, or worse. I think the definition of insanity is known by all, so I won't repeat it...

6. The state is the most coercive thing in history, not criminals or terrorists. Democide is the number one cause of unnatural human death in the last 100 years...250+ million dead over that century. Democide is being murdered by the state you ostensibly pay to protect you from coercion, via genocide, mass murder, and politicide. It doesn't count any wars or putting down of armed resistance (war was the 2nd leading cause). Nothing else came close to democide...especially not criminals or terrorists. So what do we need protecting from more than the state again?

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## ProIndividual

> In other words, flower power?  I myself am not a war monger, and I don't necessarily have anything against olive branches, doves, white flags, Mortal Kombat friendship rainbows, etc., but if necessary, I'm going to attempt to neutralize something that's unacceptable to me by smashing it or using whatever amount of force in some other way that I feel is adequate.


Anarchist legal order is anything but "flower power". If you want to know how it might plausibly work (given logic, anthropological examples of stateless legal systems, and historical evidence of how these legal orders emerged), go here and watch some videos:

http://www.ronpaulforums.com/showthr...=1#post4404486

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## kcchiefs6465

> The problem is that there are two senses or "modes" in which consent can be said to occur - "active" and "passive."
> 
> Active consent is the explicit, deliberate, intentional & positive agreement with and/or acceptance of its object.
> Active dissent is the explicit, deliberate & intentional negation of agreement with and acceptance of its object.
> Passive consent is thus to be understood as the lack of both active consent and active dissent.
> By its nature, passive consent is implicit and neither deliberate nor intentional with respect to its object.
> 
> KCC and HB34 (and Lysander Spooner) are employing "consent" in the active sense.
> In this sense, it is correct to say that "the people" have NOT consented.
> ...


True.

It cannot be said that passive "consent," that is, that simply because people have not revolted, that they are lawfully required to pay "the People's" debt. Which of any one particular person could be lawfully said to have contracted said debt? If any one particular person could be said to have lawfully and legitimately consented to the government, the question would be answerable quite simply.

Furthermore, you know what Thomas Jefferson was referring to. He wasn't referring to people being birthed in a particular area, not knowing another way, perhaps pragmatically tolerating the government, as being the Consent of the Governed that is so necessary in any legitimate government. He wasn't referring that said people, and their possible posterity being obligated to pay what another was _so wise_ as to spend simply because they do not at the moment consider another way. If the courts were not often times whores of the state, and if they respected the law, this would be easily established. The only way it cannot be said to be well established is in a collectivist, legal positivist, environment. That is, that the "good" of the majority outweighs the Justice for all. That the government can make its own rules so long as if someone, somewhere, benefits, and so long as if the supposed morals were righteous or in the intention of doing "what is good" for society (of course it is never questioned how these men have became so wise as to _know_. They can't, and they don't.) But forcibly taking from one, to give to another can never be Just.. no matter the morals or outcome of said theft. 

I am sure you are aware of the concrete case Lysander Spooner spelled out in No Treason. I'm sure you are aware of what I'm speaking about. No single man can be said to legitimately be responsible to paying the national debt. This is no little point or triviality. It destroys any sense of a Just government. (as is often claimed that we have) It matters not that the people vote etc. That is not Consent. It may be consent, or passive toleration, but the concept of Consent of the Governed was not referring to that.

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